Current location:	Anaheim CA
Current mood:	chipper
Current music:	Angelo Badalamenti - "Fire Walk With Me" (Twin Peaks theme)
Entry tags:	ribbons

...sugar kisses.
Thirteenth chapter! More ribbons that are currently only "plain text" in my collection.

• Sourpuss & Crankyface
• SPACE CADETTE

"Sourpuss! Crankyface!" is from a Blackadder episode. This one is rare, indeed. I had it printed in upper/lower-case Roman -- I was startled to learn that they didn't have to make them ALL CAPS, and some of their upper/lower-case Roman looks darned good. RV Awards actually has several sets of type, in different point sizes, so they can squeeze lots of letters onto a ribbon if they need to. If I ever make it out to Tucson I'll take a look at their shop and see if I can determine what fonts they are; it took me a while to realize that they had at least two different typefaces. The one that they've done most of my ALL CAPS ribbons in is a little more condensed; this ribbon is an example of the same typeface as those, but in upper/lower case form. And I think it looks pretty sharp; where possible, when ordering plain-text ribbon, I specify upper/lower case because they look better.

This ribbon is rarely handed out; it's tricky handing someone in a bad mood a ribbon that says they're in a bad mood. You might pull back a stump. Or, it might make their day. So it will be sometime before I use all these up.

SPACE CADETTE, on the other hand, is from an earlier order, when I was getting everything hand-set in all caps. It's the so-called feminine or dimunitive form of "Space Cadet" (well, that's what we claim, anyway) and it moves a lot more slowly than the standard form. The last of these ribbons are in the table kit; we'll give them away at the laconiv table at conzilla, stop by and ask for one.

• SPACE CADET RECRUITER
• FRIENDS OF TUX

The pictures aren't real; we haven't used up the plain text ribbons yet, this just shows what they would have looked like if I'd ordered more of them. "SPACE CADET RECRUITER" was printed up to give the people working our tables and parties something special to wear. Again, the last of them will be used at Westercon.

"Friends of Tux," however, with the Linux penguin, doesn't exist because I still have a dozen or so of the plain-text "FRIENDS OF TUX" ribbons and I'll probably have Ed Hooper give away the last of them. I'm not going to be at Penguicon or Linucon anytime soon, and I don't hang out with a lot of open-source software types. I don't have enough of them to bring to Worldcon, and they don't really go well given the other ribbons I'm packing. But if someone out there wants to order ribbons like these, I'd be happy to facilitate.

• TUCKERIZED
• WSFS MEMBER

Tuckerization is the practice of putting real people into novels; either by naming a character after them (as Wilson "Bob" Tucker did, when he had a book with character named Walt Willis. Trivia question: which book?) or by having a character that is recognizably him or her, even if under a different name. (Such as Tom Digby being the alien in Larry Niven's "What can you say about chocolate-covered manhole covers.") I figured this would go over big at Worldcon, because I expected there to be a number of people walking around who'd been Tuckerized somewhere. But I'm not knowledgeable enough to hand them out myself. (Another situation where there's a Bruce Pelz-shaped hole in the world.) Anyone out there interested? Or know somone who'd be good at this? Otherwise I'm just going to pack them up and send them to Tucker himself. Assuming he's still attending cons and would make good use of them...

"WSFS Member" is a bit of a joke -- well, which of these silly ribbons isn't? -- because if you go to Worldcon, every member of the convention is a WSFS Member, so I couldn't possibly bring enough to share with everyone. And outside of a Worldcon, who would care? So these just sit in my box, awaiting disposition. Maybe someone would like to take them to the WSFS Business Meeting and put them out on the table next to the sign-in sheet?

Okay, I'm going to take a break for a few days... We've talked about some of the fancy ribbons, and some of the plain ribbons, including some plain ribbons that probably won't ever be made into fancies; my next topic will be ribbons in transition, the ones in my box that I have both ways. And I'll dig up my orders so I can get specific on when I first ordered these; that'll need to go on my history page too. Any questions?