(vee-pee) labs presents: a vestibule production in association with: Barfing Yak Global Industries The Los Angeles Research Coalition Vicious Propaganda version 4.06 In this issue: Boogah's DEFCON Review.... Mr. MOJO shows us how to choose the right girl... Feedle shares his knowledge on what he learned at DEFCON.... Defen pisses and moans some more... And... A special message from AT&T to it's employees.... DEFCON 6.0 - We Came, We Drank, We Got Hangovers ================================================ This article was done in a sober stupor by boogah a week after con... The last DEFCON was my first, and after landing a simple goon position I was excited to be attending the latest installment in the saga. Dubbed "The Convention That Can't Keep A Regular Venue", this DEFCON had all the standard faire - Spot The Fed, dumbed down tech talks - and more - Black & White Ball complete with DJ sets by Lockheed and Aj Effin' ReznoR. Why should I pass that up? It all started - for me at least - on Wednesday. 714's favorite and Santa Barbara's whitest negro, Phatal crashed at (vee-pee) labs. Actually, we hung out all night and bullshit, but that's okay... After 3 hours rest and a nice "power breakfast", I went to work and Phatal hung out with D-Dog all day. I'm supprised Phatal didn't kill D-Dog (Who couldn't get the time off work to go to con... bastard.), seeing as how D-Dog was getting in touch with the bruddah within. We hooked up with our ride, ODQ [Old Dirty Queeg] and attempted to leave early so we'd be to the caravan departure site w/ time to spare... Arriving at Round Table Pizza at 8:57pm [We were supposed to depart at 9pm], we found that there were 11 cars joining us and I was pleased as all hell. The caravan was a success, save for the problem's with Rich's car, the white-knuckled driving of Mr. Mojo [Which flea hated], and the fact that Eddy Current [Who was driving solo] wouldn't stop after Barstow. The QueegMobile (A 97 Dodge Ram with a shell affixed by only C clamps) rolled into Las Vegas at 3am with noid's roommate Trent in the only remaining auto in our chunk of the caravan. The Plaza seemed halfway decent. Some of the early arrivees and Black Hat stragglers were seated at the bar and the surrounding area (Some type of Gaming tables that weren't being used for that purpose.). After buying Queeg a beer and running it to him, (He was guarding our gear, seeing as how his shell doesn't lock.) we all decided to locate Angel and drag our shit to his room. Whilst waiting for Angel to show I met Blaise (Who looks stunning in a red wig), Tuttle, Punkis and a couple of other 714'ers I was already familiar with. This point is also the only time I drank Budweiser seeing as how I later found out most bottled beer was $1. I apologize to beer drinkers everywhere. In Angel's room we set up Arclight's laptop and patched it into the TV so we could watch "Boogie Nights", and got settled in. The VIC-20 I brought for a door prize was completely incompatible with the cables I brought and the TV in our room, so I just decided to throw it in the corner and take it down in the morning for a giveaway. Most of us tried to get some sleep but ended up staying up the rest of the night and talking of crack, smoking nutmeg and DEFCONS past. Friday morning I ran into Priest and sat outside the con hall waiting for noid to show up with our shit. Priest ended up borrowing my DEFCON GOON shirt and I used the badge. In retrospect, I bought a shirt from Shadowvex before any of the other CONgoers could and wore it to help out with *GASP* registration. Registration, coincidently was the only true work I did all weekend. But I got a free shirt (Priest still has it) and free admission into the CON... Retail Value: $60. After I sold people their admission for an hour and a half I took a lunch break that lasted the rest of the weekend. So, by my calculation, I got paid roughly $40 an hour. Sweet, eh? Anyway, back to registration... I got the distinct honor of admitting the following people to the con: The HackSec crew (www.hacksec.org), krystalia (My dream grrl), cal (Blue-haired 714 person), oldwolf (shadowco.org), kel (My local dream grrl), BroncBuster (Not an honor, but I shook his hand to be corny), LogicBox (Again, not too much of an honor seeing as how I got pretty tired of hanging out with him all of DC5.), and many others. The rest of Friday, after lunch is a blur. I drank a couple of beers (A couple dozen) and schmoozed. I do remember (in no particular order) room hopping, drinking Jim Beam, the party in 2109, some other party that absorbed the 17th floor (Can't recall which tower), watching Petty Larceny hook his 8088 Craptop(tm) up to the network, partying with Trask (Whose girlfriend was apparently sleeping), plastering elevators with Big Brother inside stickers under the cameras, and vomiting only after I saw the Freemont Street Expirence. The Jungle DJ in the vendor room rocked too. Saturday found me a new day and no hangovers whatsoever... Amazing. By this time last year I was a walking hangover. I had apparently gained some tolerance to booze. It could have also been that I had so much booze in me that there still wasn't a feeling of lacking. I went down on the con floor and checked out the scene. Things were dead - seeing as how most everyone I knew was at the shoot - so I decided to head to the pool on the seventh floor with Arclight, Shaggy and Rich. Running into dElectron and chs - who were just getting back from the shoot - I decided to invite them along. At the pool the thing that probably still rings out in my mind is this kid who had goggles that looked like snake eyes. It was fucking freaky... The holograms were tripping playing with my liquor enbalmed brain. I wanted to either beat him up for them or cower in the corner of the pool opposite him. I can't quite remember what I wanted to do in all honesty. Sure enough, chs and dElectron joined us a little later after finding swim trunks at a gift shop. To my suprise chs told us that was his first time in shorts in quite a while. dElectron just swam. dElectron is a quiet boy. Sure he's talkative in IRC, but the lad is downright quiet otherwise. Anyhow, Shaggy and I thought up a new way of registering nicknames and plan on doing an RFC shortly. We also tricked Shaggy into taking off his glasses in the pool and fooling him into beliving there was a topless tennis player giving it her best on the court. We stole many towels, noticed the tempature was only 98 and went our own ways. After I hung my trunks up to dry Rich and I visited the Wells Fargo on the other side of the Expirence. Coming back we grabbed some pizza, questioned the naming of Blimpies Subs and craned our heads to get a peek inside the doors of Glitter Gulch. Devouring our pizza in several minutes, I decided to search the floor for Kel who said she'd paint my nails. Nails painted, all dressed up for the Black and White (In my "Hawaii Five-Oh" suit) and ready to escort Krystalia around the ball I went down to check out Aj Effin ReznoR's set. It was a bummer that Ira was on the phone and the lights were kept up because everyone's favorite dc-stuff flamer spun a mad set. My second item of business was finding Priest to get polymorf from being kicked out of con. Apparently poly showed his schlongen-dongen off to Carolyn Meinel when she was signing books and he asked her to sign his cock. As par request of my lovely pseudo-date for the evening (krys) I hunted Priest down and he just waived it off. What a guy. After getting some beer, courtesy of kryssy's age/ID, we drifted around the con floor and the casino. Later on, durring DJ Donavan's set we got to see Carolyn dancing like a damned fool. Needless to say, this opportunity was too good to pass up. Paying EvilCal $5 to dance with CM was the best pooled $5 we spent. EvilCal freaked Carolyn, and I'm not sure but I belive he smacked that ass too. The rest of the night was spent hanging out with 303'ers and the like and checking out the scene. I regretfully didn't find out where the hell the DoC kegger was, but I understand it was top notch brew. Goddamn! I woke up Sunday morning with one helluva hangover. People were saying their goodbyes, others were still in their haze from the night before. I drank some Everclear and Orange Soda as a pick-me-up and caught lunch with Petty Larceny, ranc1d and Queeg (Who was running around in a McDonald's flag turned cape and happened to be drunk off his gourd the night of the ball.). Things turned sour at the end of the meal as Queeg realized he didn't get a salad and ranc1d had fat spilled on his jeans by our clumsy waiter. Oh well. Shit got even more strange as chs enticed j0ker into getting Meinel kissing him on video for a DoC T-Shirt and a BSD disc set and Phon-E got dragged off by the Nevada Department of Corrections for an outstanding warrant. As a bit of a last minute decision a couple of us decided to go hit the Pharoh's Pheast at the Luxor. krystalia, Aj ReznoR, chs, Queeg, dElectron and myself all piled into two taxis and went on our way. krys marveled over the taco bar, dElectron actually made a salad, Queeg pigged out on German chocolate cake and I ate too much jello. All in all, a good buffet and a good end to our weekend. We headed back to Angel's room, grabbed our stuff, piled it in the Queegmobile, grabbed us a pregnant lady (Actually it was Angel's girlfriend's lover whom we gave a ride home.), and got the hell out of Dodge at 9pm. Without a caravan with a crippled car slowing us down we dropped off our passenger in Riverside and got home at 3am. I had to be to work at 1:30pm that day so I turned in for a couple of hours sleep, still trying to get my body back in sync with my normal sleep schedule. The weekend was over and so was I. But I had many a drunken memory and loads of stories to tell the feds when they come busting thru my door... -boogah(out)