Holy Chao

full image here

Dear friends, adventurers, and fellow Paratheoanametamystiks, I exercise great privilege as Pope in announcing and describing for you a new holiday to celebrate Our Lady of Discord: Irrefflery.

Many of your friends, relatives, and loved ones may be inclined to celebrate an ancient pagan ritual, Eostre, on the first Sunday after a full moon following the vernal equinox. In your travels you may have been invited to some number of events of celebration of this ancient Pagan ritual, and in many cases you may find that the celebrations have diverged wildly from their original roots as all things which fall under Eris' purview are prone to do.

I offer now a celebration which is quite distinctly a further iteration of this celebrational drift, Irrefflery, which is a very simple ritual that everyone may enjoy. The core elements are quite simple meaning it shouldn't be too hard to keep it straight after a lot of drinking on Saturday or to organize at the last minute. Irrefflery is a self describing celebration as its form can best be described as a portmanteau of irreverence, waffles, and revelry. Core to Irrefflery:

Zombie Movies

Many of our friends who celebrate Eostre do so with the conviction that a historical figure of admiration rose from the dead. In an expression of friendship and mutual appreciation we will celebrate with theatrical performances of many people doing the same thing!

Waffles

Waffles are delicious, and what better cause for celebration is there than eating some?

Celebration

Gather your friends and enjoy Irrefflery together so that the joy of this holiday can spread throughout the world!

Enjoy Irrefflery each year! Or don't.

For a long time now I've had a problem with the idea of pigeonholes, and not just on a personal level. "I am a vegan." "I am a Christian." "I am a burner."

People let these aspects cease to describe them, and start to define them. I think it's tied into accomplishment; if you identify yourself as a burner, then going to lots of burns and having nifty mutant vehicles and being full of interesting ideas is a way to demonstrate how dedicated a burner you are.

I'm not dedicated at all, except for perhaps towards mercuriality. I like to do lots of different things, and do them well, even if I am not the best. Vive la difference! What I do, I do for my own benefit and enjoyment, and what I get the most enjoyment out of is learning. The natural consequence of learning is to excel.

I am not a motorcyclist. I am not a poet. I am not a developer. I am not a dancer. I am not a gamer. I am not a racer. I am not a mechanic.

I am.

The delightful and divine miss Ev shall be mentioned here from time to time, at least if I know anything of the Goddess. Today she features as a co-conspirator and enabler for my twisted irreverent ponderings regarding marriage. She is of the same opinion I am, that the entire institution is really rather silly, so when I started mocking it by plotting out my own dogma-smashing wedding she went right along with it.

In this way my insanity was encouraged and I pursued it further than the original twisted premise of the groom dancing with his father and the bride dancing with her mother.

One further such reflection was on the importance of wedding invitations. Frankly, they don't have any. But some people attach a great deal to them, so it's a ripe target for mockery. I imagine mine would read something like this:

swanage and <unlucky girl> decided to get hitched. We'd like you watch the whole debacle, so please show up at <place> on <date> at <time>. Also we're gonna give you free food and liquor so don't forget to bring us a present, you ingrate. And for that matter, write back telling us how many people you're bringing to wolf down our food.

See? Simple, sarcastic, and straight to the point all at the same time.

Maybe it's not masculine for me to be pondering marriage as a single man, but by Eris, if riding a motorcycle and looking fucking hot as hell without a shirt on aren't masculine enough, I don't know what is.

I really, really like going to Playa del Fuego, as it's a celebration of some of the best parts of humanity. It is such a friendly and accepting environment, I wish that it was possible to destroy our society and rebuild it with that fleeting place as a foundation. Perhaps my hope that the result would be different from what we have now is naive.

Somewhat ironically, one of the more popular activities was shunning an individual whom demonstrated herself incapable of responsibly enjoying the free environment of PDF. Reflecting, I think I bore a disproportionate responsibility in encouraging unkind, dissociative behavior. I am not regretful however, as making someone else clean up your shit (literally, in this case!) is in my opinion an abuse of the kind of environment that's fostered out in Delaware twice a year.

I do know that I made new friends, I gave and was given too, and I came home feeling absolutely exhausted but also very good about helping someone who got stranded. I hope he is granted the same opportunity I was to enjoy helping a stranger, and I hope he seizes the opportunity to turn the stranger into a friend.

Today is September the 16th, which means that five days ago was September 11th, 2007. I do not particularly like the scale of memorializing that occurs over the events of that day six years ago. And I am not just a callous, insensitive fool, as I'd attended the wedding of one of the victims killed that day merely one month prior.

No, the reason I bring up the 11th of September is because five days ago was the last time I was discussing the fear of death.