A synopsis of the First Day of GormogoniCon 2009

8:00—Breakfast, Regent Room

8:30—The Union Stranglehold—Ghettoputer

Ghettoputer warmed everyone up by garrotting a union steward on stage, which initially repulsed most of the audience until they realized that it wasn’t an act but an actual choking. After the applause died down, the Geep explained how a reduction in administrative unions actually lowers costs by improving customer service. Communist leaders in the office took notes. In a wildly delightful but otherwise futile moment, Ghettoputer went into the audience and repeatedly rib-kicked David Mamet. When a questioner in the back asked what the relevence was to union influence, Ghettoputer replied “Nothing, I just can’t stand the way he writes dialogue.”

10:30—Sorcery & Foreign Policy: the Neglected Nexus—Confucius (Œc. Vol.)

Your Volgi entertained the crowd by doing some of his better parlor tricks, including successfully predicting the outcome of the 2010 Senatorial elections (we will miss the Green Party and Libertarians for their amusing anecdotes, but progress is progress), pulling a live, screeching falcon out of the mouth of Margaret Thatcher, and taking the audience into the preternatural realm by reinterpreting the 38th hexagram of the I Ching with special emphasis on the role of the abandoned waif, and how he is symbolic for the future of Iran. He ignored repeated requests to burp the Greek alphabet.

12:30—Fifty of You Will Be Shot to Death In A Matter of Minutes—The Czar of Muscovy

The Czar of Muscovy intrigued the lunchtime crowd with a discussion of repurposing traditional fixed assets to shorten depreciation times, and also by executing a large number of undesirables via firing squad. The executed group evidently consisted of the entire last three rows once again, so folks attending next year will definitely want to get seats up front.

2:30—“Danny Boy, the Sixth Dimension is Calling,” and Whatever the Hell Else I Goddamn Want to Put in There You Pencil-Necked Agenda-Requesting Bastard Whose Gut Is Singing a Siren Song to My Doc Martens—The Inscrutable Mandarin

Next up, the Mandarin enthralled the audience with his fly update of the tenor solo classic “Danny Boy,” as well as ensnaring the adjacent Home Gymnasium Sales Showcase audience in a quasi-dimensional inversion. Where (or perhaps when) will they appear? Who knows! Also, he went on for quite a while about his property taxes, and further claimed he was aware of invisible creatures holding our throats while openly accusing liberal-run FM radio stations of covering it all up.

4:30—[include:ioStream;enable:wireless_xmsn//IntSet:audience_address] [end_iterator+pos:event]—GorTechie

Closing the third day, GorTechie demonstrated the Apple MoPod, a personal media player with two wheels that you can ride. Although the technology is still several years away, he promised that the next 5,000 years of technological innovation would prove literally life transforming. As a teaser, he used his future technology to levitate the cervical vertebrae of Ho Chi Minh straight out of his neck. Although the resulting fatality proved initially awkward, it was quickly determined that Ho never actually registered for the conference and was seat filling for Stalin, who was in the breakout area taking a cell phone call. GorT also closed the discussion by opining on the inefficiencies of non-wireless telepathy, and requested that audience members next year allow him to install a mildly agonizing chip in their foreheads that would allow terabytes of information to be transmitted in under one second; and to indicate so on the feedback survey sheets left on each chair.

5:30—Dinner, which most people found mashed to the undersides of their seats by the catering staff. Definitely not a corner to cut for next year’s GormogoniCon. God, that was awful, what they did to us.

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.