I had an experience at the club last night

[Valka D'Ur]

Please don't interpret any of this as a criticism of your personal decision to abstain from drug and alcohol use. It's not like people have to take drugs to have a good time, and I'm glad you find personal enjoyment without them. If you think you're happier never drinking or consuming marijuana or anything else, you're the best-placed person to make that decision. I'm just saying that the upsides to responsible drug use can be very real, and they don't just consist of people behaving more stupidly than they otherwise would and then laughing it off the next day.

Responsible drug use is about to be tested in Canada as marijuana has just been legalized (or at least the legislation has started on its way to becoming law). It disgusts me that the government managed to find the time to push that through, when they threw their hands up and claimed they couldn't do anything about electoral reform.

The fact is that given my family history, I've seen what can happen when people let the drug control them (alcohol is a drug, and so is nicotine). I don't ever want to risk becoming like my parents.

I think that was probably a joke, you don't really expect people to be wild at conventions do you? They do say alcohol can make you speak a foreign language better so maybe the Klignon speakers could loosen up a bit.

How many science fiction conventions have you been to? Some people do get a bit wild, and I've had roommates at both ends of the spectrum - I've mentioned the chainmail bikini incident in another thread, and there was one year when I put on my hall costume on Friday night and was heading out to find some filking or a room party that had good conversation and was smoke-free, and my roommate starting shrieking at me to shut the door - she didn't want anyone to see into the room. I couldn't figure out what the problem was - nothing was going on out in the hallway other than people going back and forth between their rooms and the elevator; some were in costume and some weren't, and nobody was noisy. It's not even that it was late - this was 9 pm on Friday night. She literally didn't want me to open the door far enough to get out of the room.

So lest anyone think I'm a boring person at an SF convention - meet my roommate that year. We were good friends in high school, but in college she left her sense of humor and fun somewhere. I don't think she ever got it back. Now that I remember... she scolded me for taking French in college, since it put her in mind of Trudeau, biliingualism, and the dreaded "L" word... "Liberals". (Obviously I mean Pierre Trudeau, as this was in the early '80s and our current PM was still a child of maybe 11 or 12)

 

[Camikaze]

I'm not sure where all this objection is coming from. "But water should be free!" The water is. There's cups and a faucet, and there's bathroom sinks. But time is limited, and effort is expendable. The value of dropping $40 to have a water bottle in your hand and in the hands of all your friends so you can all dance together and focus on the amazing far outweighs the value of filling up the cup 3 times per bottle times 8 people. That interruption of groove plus the minute or so it takes to leave the dance floor, drink the water, come back, do it again, times the amount of water bottles (four) means 4 total group interruptions against 192. 192 minutes over 8 people is half an hour each plus the interruptions plus the annoyance when we could be all the way part of the experience.

So just to clarify, there was an option to go to the bar and say, "hi, can I please have the free tap water that you are legally obliged to provide", but you opted to purchase bottled water instead? That's an understandable choice (assuming you're super rich, but then that holds for buying lots of any drink at a bar). It's just that in the absence of that first option, this thread reads to me like: "I went to McDonalds and wanted to buy some air, but the second time around the guy didn't like my secret handshake. How does this experience inform how McDonalds could best maximise their air profits?"

 

[Hygro]

So just to clarify, there was an option to go to the bar and say, "hi, can I please have the free tap water that you are legally obliged to provide", but you opted to purchase bottled water instead? That's an understandable choice (assuming you're super rich, but then that holds for buying lots of any drink at a bar).

Yes, you could ask them like you can at any bar/club but you'd be an ass, because it was busy and the self serve was in a nice cozy corner of the bar.