For Your Affirmation...
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| Title: | For Your Affirmation... |
| Creator: | Joyce Yasner |
| Date(s): | July 1977 |
| Medium: | |
| Fandom: | Star Trek: TOS |
| Topic: | |
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For Your Affirmation... is a 1977 satirical essay by Joyce Yasner.
It has two small illos by Gordon Carleton.
It was printed in Eel-Bird Banders' Bulletin #1.
The topic: how planning a Kraith Affirmation Ceremony (one that takes place on Vulcan in the Kraith Universe) is like planning a Star Trek
illo, detail from the essay, artist is Gordon Carleton
illo, detail from the essay, artist is Gordon Carleton
Excerpts
As a person helplessly given over to nitpicking, I've always wondered why Affirmations in the Kraith universe are held every 51.23 years precisely. I think I've found the answer. Are there any human endeavors that even remotely resemble Affirmations? Of course there are. Every year for the past several years thousands of Star Trek fans have gathered regularly to affirm their commitment to Star Trek. These events are called Star Trek conventions.
Whenever several hundred people get together, one problem immediately comes up. Where are all these people going to go to the bathroom? Now I believe that Vulcans have as much control as anyone, and granted they have been fasting, but somewhere along the line some of these people are going to have to go to the bathroom some time. Consequently, the Affirmation must either be held in a location that already has bathrooms, such as a hotel, concert hall, sports stadium, or school, or the committee will have to rent a number of portable toilets.
Whatever the site, there will have to be emergency medical facilities. There will also have to be a lost and found for objects as well as children. There will have to be a baby-sitting service for children too young to be Affirmed. Who will man these facilities? Obviously the Vulcans attending the ceremonies can't. They're too busy getting Affirmed. There is only one logical solution. The Vulcans must hire offworlders.
Imagine the difficulty of assigning everyone to an Affirmation site! If, in Outer P'Odunk, Vulcan, the fiftyseventh member of an Affirmation group doesn't show up, a fiftyseventh person will have to be supplied or those fifty-six Vulcans will all have to be transported to another site, and the move would have to be made at the last possible moment.
Assuming that Vulcans are more reliable than Star Trek fans when it comes to registering correctly and on time, provision must still be made for a percent age of registration assignments getting lost going out and a percentage of registration responses getting lost coming in. Assume that a simple registration procedure is in use. A notice goes out that a person has been as signed to thus-and-such a location. He must respond that this location is acceptable or unacceptable and then answer a series of questions. Will he need dormitory space the night before or the night after? Will he be coming by private or public transportation? Will he eat after wards?
Having personally registered ninety percent of the 1976 Star Trek Convention (Febcon) membership, the bookkeeping involved in registering an entire planet boggles my mind. No doubt the Affirmation committee works hand in glove with the tax collecting and census bureaus. Nevertheless, I can't help suspecting that there are many more disaffirmed Vulcans running around than the Daughters of the Tradition know about. A Vulcan criminal, for example, is hardly likely to get caught by showing up at an Affirmation.