LuxFX / They Think They’re Newsworthy

Well Ren. Fest was ok…. But after the rain yesterday, it was full of the ickiest, worst, most disgusting mud in the entire world. It was simply undescribable. So bad, I’m getting new shoes tomorrow. Not kidding.

Well thanks to the treacherous mud, I didn’t actually see much of the Ren. Fest. I was too busy looking at my feet as I walked, to make sure that 1) I didn’t step into a big puddle, and 2) I wasn’t going to slip and fall and cover myself in the mud. But what I saw was very nice, and the food was great. But due to a combination of the mud and the huge amount of cigarette smoke around, I ended up with quite a headache afterward.

But…there was so much child abuse going on there it’s not funny. I guess I don’t mean child abuse in the stricktest form — I mean lots of unsuitable parents showing their ineptness. Examples, in chronological order:

• a woman pulls out a pack of cigarettes from her stroller and tamps the cigarettes right behind the baby’s head


• a woman is holding a baby right up to her head, and cooing at the baby while puffing out cigarette smoke at it at the same time


• we see a baby sucking on his bottle — full of coke


• we see a pregnant woman smoking

I was talking with Jen how we should have just made a scene. Like pointing and shouting loudly, “Oh my God! That baby has coke in its bottle!” and repeating it in a few different directions, and making sure the lady heard. Because, honestly, people don’t respond to warnings. They don’t respond to chidings. They don’t really respond to threats. But they really respond to embarrasment.

I think embarrassing punishments shouldn’t be covered under “cruel and unusual”, because that is simply the best way of punishing people. There is some judge in texas that’s really good about doing stuff like that. I wish I could remember some specific examples or have a link or two, but I don’t…so if anybody knows who I’m talking about please post a comment.

But anyway, it was highly traumatic, but I’m over it, and in retrospect the Ren. Fest was fun as usual.

Oh, and the guy with the multi-wood mugs was there, and it was very cool as usual. I could identify most of the woods this time (I got one wrong from what the label said, but I’m sticking with my answer, I think it was labelled wrong). I also found out they use a polyurethane coat on the exterior (not best for showing the grain of the wood, but it dries fast so is very economical with large numbers) and a double coat of food-grade epoxy inside. Good to know.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 12th, 2003 at 7:31 pm and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.