Sunday, November 16, 2025
South by Southwest
The true intellectuals amongst my readers, which are no doubt many, will of course recognize the title of this post from the 1997 "Murder, She Wrote" TV movie in which Jessica Fletcher rides a train and holds a Game Boy and gets involved in spycraft (again) and such. This post will undoubtedly fail to replicate those thrills, but then again, doesn't everything?
I went to New Mexico for a work conference this week. A resort outside of Albuquerque, specifically. (When it came time to spell Albuquerque, I definitely flinched.) I like looking at mountains as much as the next person and I definitely appreciated the excess of sun, but I was not prepared for the colder parts of the day, which people kept assuring me were due to the elevation, which I fully do not understand. The conference hotel was fairly nice (they kept telling me it had just been renovated, which I assume is where the Pueblo blanket on the wall came from), even though my room was literally as far from the conference center as was physically possible, down a hallway, through a courtyard, down two more hallways, and then outside off of a little balcony. And people kept feeding me beans and peppers, which could have been cultural or could have been just a way of fucking with me. It is always hard to say.
The conference itself went well, as these things go. I moderated a panel, which I honestly believe is done best when it is done least, so I kind of just prompted everybody else to talk. I looked great standing there in my suit, though, even if I regretted my failure to think of wearing a bolo tie. Or some turquoise jewelry. I also networked the hell out of it, to the point where I actively started to hate myself. A sign of a job well done!
