Dental Defenders
Sep. 13th, 2011 02:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
norcumiSo this weekend, Quindar and I went to Ohio LinuxFest. It was more for him than me, since I really don't even quite know enough Linux stuff to do more than get myself into a lot of trouble. There was one panel I really did want to go to: Level-up with Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics: Turn Your Life Into a Data-driven Video Game with FOSS. It sounded interesting.
So since this was a con, I felt compelled to wear my Gargles shirts. For the (probably vast majority of) folks who don't know, Gargles is the result of Quindar and I being really silly one night, and the fact that when said quickly, "Gargoyles" slurs into - well, the obvious. So we went from the basic fandom core and made it something more like... well, this. We had all these punriffic names, and some descriptions, and it was glorious (can't recall more than half of it by now, of course).
And then we decided to share. I think it was in '05 we took about two dozen "Gargles" shirts to The Gathering - the back had the text (in standard garg font) from the Gargles home page, the front had a gorgeous parody logo. Instead of Goliath crouching over "Gargoyles" like so, it was a Goliath-esque gargle poised with dental tools over a human obviously reclining in a dental chair (I don't seem to have any decent pictures online, so I will have to see about fixing that). And we gave them out. Folks loved it.
The point of all this is, I wore my Gargles shirts to LinuxFest. And on the major day of the event, before the opening keynote I could hear someone speaking a fairly familiar cadence behind me as they were reading my shirt. I happily obliged by leaning forward to allow the person to read the rest easily, and then spent several minutes babbling on with a nice lady about the show. Apparently, since a relative of hers is involved with dentistry (THE most popular question we got was whether or not we were affiliated with dentists in any way), and this was a lovely joke, and would I mind if she took some pictures of it (of course not! Snapshots ahoy!). I was so thrilled, I checked my hip-sack, which hasn't really been cleaned since I took it to the last Gathering - and like I'd hoped, I still had a few Gargles toothbrushes in there. She took one with much glee, and I was quite happy. No matter how the rest of the convention went, there are still garg fans out there who are tickled pink to be told to "Fight tooth decay the Gargle way!" by a technicolor cheap toothbrush (totally intentionally cheap, might I add).
I'm probably going to be carrying those things in my hip-sack for the rest of my life, on the off chance I can unload them onto some poor bastard. ;)
So I started trucking around (sometimes with Quindar, sometimes not), going to panels and feeling inadequate or a little bored, but at least I had a computer and a book so there was always stuff to do. And then - the Level Up panel! I wandered in, took a seat, and was fascinated. Mel the speaker (oh gods, why so many [incredibly awesome] Mels in my life all of a sudden? Help!) was fun, enthusiastic, and everything one could want in a speaker. She also apparently is deaf, which meant I was kind of frustrated by the talk, since most of my cycles went to trying to understand what she was saying and retaining it, not about what that might mean applied to my life. By the end of the talk I'd slipped into the appropriate gear and was getting the information the way I'd wanted, but I have the same problem with accents - for the first while I'm stuck on the differences in speech style. So it was a lovely talk, kind of what I'd hoped for, and it was lovely knowing this was the lady who'd so liked my shirt.
I felt a little guilty, admittedly: this explained why she'd asked me repeat questions when chatting about the show. I have a tendency to mumble downwards due to shyness, but I'd like to think if I'd known I would've been more directly facing her.
The rest of the weekend was a bit of a wash - the content was over my head and not what Quindar was after, though we had a delicious delicious steak dinner at Hyde Park and I'd totally recommend that if your wallet can take it, hit that place up, yo. We, er, didn't realize it was quite so expensive, but the food ended up being worth it.
Now I want to take another look into those shirts - we always talk about how we'd like to have them printed more often, maybe it's time to do that again.....
So since this was a con, I felt compelled to wear my Gargles shirts. For the (probably vast majority of) folks who don't know, Gargles is the result of Quindar and I being really silly one night, and the fact that when said quickly, "Gargoyles" slurs into - well, the obvious. So we went from the basic fandom core and made it something more like... well, this. We had all these punriffic names, and some descriptions, and it was glorious (can't recall more than half of it by now, of course).
And then we decided to share. I think it was in '05 we took about two dozen "Gargles" shirts to The Gathering - the back had the text (in standard garg font) from the Gargles home page, the front had a gorgeous parody logo. Instead of Goliath crouching over "Gargoyles" like so, it was a Goliath-esque gargle poised with dental tools over a human obviously reclining in a dental chair (I don't seem to have any decent pictures online, so I will have to see about fixing that). And we gave them out. Folks loved it.
The point of all this is, I wore my Gargles shirts to LinuxFest. And on the major day of the event, before the opening keynote I could hear someone speaking a fairly familiar cadence behind me as they were reading my shirt. I happily obliged by leaning forward to allow the person to read the rest easily, and then spent several minutes babbling on with a nice lady about the show. Apparently, since a relative of hers is involved with dentistry (THE most popular question we got was whether or not we were affiliated with dentists in any way), and this was a lovely joke, and would I mind if she took some pictures of it (of course not! Snapshots ahoy!). I was so thrilled, I checked my hip-sack, which hasn't really been cleaned since I took it to the last Gathering - and like I'd hoped, I still had a few Gargles toothbrushes in there. She took one with much glee, and I was quite happy. No matter how the rest of the convention went, there are still garg fans out there who are tickled pink to be told to "Fight tooth decay the Gargle way!" by a technicolor cheap toothbrush (totally intentionally cheap, might I add).
I'm probably going to be carrying those things in my hip-sack for the rest of my life, on the off chance I can unload them onto some poor bastard. ;)
So I started trucking around (sometimes with Quindar, sometimes not), going to panels and feeling inadequate or a little bored, but at least I had a computer and a book so there was always stuff to do. And then - the Level Up panel! I wandered in, took a seat, and was fascinated. Mel the speaker (oh gods, why so many [incredibly awesome] Mels in my life all of a sudden? Help!) was fun, enthusiastic, and everything one could want in a speaker. She also apparently is deaf, which meant I was kind of frustrated by the talk, since most of my cycles went to trying to understand what she was saying and retaining it, not about what that might mean applied to my life. By the end of the talk I'd slipped into the appropriate gear and was getting the information the way I'd wanted, but I have the same problem with accents - for the first while I'm stuck on the differences in speech style. So it was a lovely talk, kind of what I'd hoped for, and it was lovely knowing this was the lady who'd so liked my shirt.
I felt a little guilty, admittedly: this explained why she'd asked me repeat questions when chatting about the show. I have a tendency to mumble downwards due to shyness, but I'd like to think if I'd known I would've been more directly facing her.
The rest of the weekend was a bit of a wash - the content was over my head and not what Quindar was after, though we had a delicious delicious steak dinner at Hyde Park and I'd totally recommend that if your wallet can take it, hit that place up, yo. We, er, didn't realize it was quite so expensive, but the food ended up being worth it.
Now I want to take another look into those shirts - we always talk about how we'd like to have them printed more often, maybe it's time to do that again.....
