* full moon, but later cloud cover made the light very diffuse – could walk around without a flashlight
* first time we ever saw a vehicle past the 2nd gate – an ambulance skulked around for hours, occasionally siren’ing or making 10-point U-turns – someone had been rescued
* Gary/TwoBean’s first time there
* the 2nd gate was completely open! Never seen that, ever.
* ran late, making Evan the first person there. He couldn’t find the site without people already in it, and ended up walking around for miles over an hour.
* ate late at sheets, making Clint too full to really eat anything significant until the next day
* Evan brought no stuff because he thought he’d go back to the cabin, but other people had enough stuff to cover him when he realized that wasn’t happening
As always, click through to comment on any picture individually on flickr, or to see the full-size…
We went to X-Day again this year. It was a totally different experience than last year. It rained for the first three days we were there, but then it got really nice for the weekend. It was never overbearingly hot.
WAKING UP
July 5th — X-Day — is always the hardest day. Since X-Day — The Rupture — occurs at 7:00AM on July 5th, it’s tough. Most people are up late partying and drinking, and nobody is in the mood to get up at 6:55AM. Some lucky people are still awake from the night before. But most people are asleep at 7AM.
Granted, there’s not a single time, 24 hours a day, that you can’t walk around and eventually find people during X-Day…… But getting up at 7AM on a Sunday? That’s for people who go to church, not church of the subgenius! ;)
Last year Carolyn & I utterly failed to make The Rupture. Sure, we woke up in our tent, and heard the noise… But I was too hungover from slamming too many bears while trying to get the taste of awful homemade absinthe out of my mouth. I was a casualty on July 4th, 2008!
But not July 4th, 2009! We actually successfully woke up! And actually made it to The Rupture!
Carolyn’s Misfits hoodie accidentally left out all night
First off, we went to the Roundhouse, to warm up by the fire. This was also the Most Precarious Fire Set-Up Ever. I mean, check that picture out — those logs are practically levitated off the ground. Crazy, crazy. Will it fall down and fling hot stuff at us? We were passed some orange juice drink (pictured above). It wasn’t just orange juice… This was about 6:45AM or so.
Precarious fire is precarious
THE RUPTURE
As we walked to the main pavilion / saucer landing site, I got to use my noisemaker [recorder mouthpiece*] to bring misery to all the people who didn’t get out of their tents. Total awesomeness!
*[ i.e. the recorder instrument they have you play in music class in elementary school]
So, as it stands, we did, in fact, make it to The Rupture this year… The 15-25 lucky SubGenii who made it there were all presented with a drink called “Bob’s Pipe Juice”, which was a foul, brown, nasty-tasting alcoholic drink. Try as we might, any drink designed to taste like pipe juice is obviously not very palatable. We discretely poured ours into the trash cans.
909 Jim Jones Cult members agree: Bob’s Pipe Juice sucks.
Everyone gathered around, waiting for the pleasure saucers to come…
The Rupture – SubGenii gathered
Those of us who had cameras or audio/video recording devices got ready to commemorate this important day in SubGenius history…
Yetimen, start your recorders!
The moment of truth drew nearer, and nearer. We counted down to 7:05AM, and smoked the last cigarette we would ever smoke before leaving planet Earth:
Agent Lloyd’s rupture video. I love the last couple seconds, where you can see Bug and Rev. Panik trying to jump up into the saucers.
Damnit, “Bob”!
You screwed us again!
Well–maybe not. The Conspiracy keeps changing the calendars around. We may never know when it’s really 1998. But it definitely wasn’t 1998 this year.
NOW WHAT?!?!
Well….
This is awkward.
We’re not dead. (!!??!!)
And neither are you, Bobdammit.
Well, no what? Take pictures of the ground?
dew on the grass
Sit around a bit, and ponder the fact that all the pinks aren’t going to be left to fry in a hell on earth?
Ponder the existential existence of being lorded over by JHVH-1, and wondering what its motivation for us is?
Maybe it was my fault, somehow?
"What in the hell do you think you're doing!?"
Well, while we’re still here and in Brushwood, may as well take note of the pretty pagan thingamabobs:
pagan thingamabob is pagany
And maybe go check out the graffiti board… Completely different from last year’s…
Here’s last year’s, for comparison:
Well, Christie & 808 have candy, in this strange, orb-like container. Let’s eat some!!!
They made us some awesome peanut butter & marshmallow fluff sandwiches that were heated up on the sandwich press. I had never thought of using that for a peanut butter sandwich, but it was a definite win.
So now that we’re alive, we still have a day of stuff to do. Maybe catch a little sleep, then wake up before noon. OH HAI, A KITTY!!!
KITTY!!!
This kitty lives at Brushwood. She was really friendly. Someone told us she had had kittens but they all found homes. Tangent & Dammit Janet might have gotten one of them.
So anyway, we checked out 808 and Christie’s campsite, which was strangely far away compared to last year. I’d never actually been on the other side of the field. Yes, we drove. We’re SubGeniuses, damnit! SLACK IS OUR GAME.
view from the alt.slack woods; we spent most of our time directly forward, on the opposite side, near the four flushers. You can see the roundhouse.
Funny stuff ’round the alt.slack woods:
Witch parking only – All others will be toad
808’s trademark parachute was put to use, as always (this thing has visited Assateague too):
808 & Christie’s campsite – full of supplies
I ran into a random “OH!” sighting:
OH!
And I took a picture if Rev. Panik’s painting, which ultimately became the upper image on the official 12X-Day page, as well as the Facebook profile image for the girl who was dancing naked around the bonfire in real life:
Rev. Panik’s painting
I also found out someone — Christopher Lee — had my exact shirt! Except Clint’s shirt has permanent latex on it from Chris H‘s liquid latex party back around 2000.
a meeting of the shirts – don’t forget to bring a towel
THE BOBBY AWARDS
Unlike people who had to work Monday, this Sunday we were still not 100% sure if we wanted to leave today or tomorrow/Monday. Carolyn wanted to get on the road if they were leaving, but Clint wanted to stay for the Bobby Awards. And that we did.
I believe this year’s Bobby Awards were made by Suzie The Floozie and Popess Pantiara:
Suzie, Princess Wei R. Doe, Pantiara
Finally, they started giving out the awards…
Bobbie Awards begin
Carolyn was awarded the “Goddess Of Mellowing The Harsh” Bobby Award, for her mellowing skills as demonstrated on day 2. She was called up pretty early, like the 2nd or third one. Yay!
Carolyn receiving Goddess Of Mellowing The Harsh award
They also had a dedicated video and picture cameras, to capture the awards:
Ultimately, Carolyn’s award became an inspiration for SubGenius artist IMBJR to create “The Mellow”, who also created “The Xanatos Scream”. Here they are:
Bunny Day and Dildo Valerie received Bobbie Awards along with Bust A Nutmeg for something like the “Best Rendition Of ‘For A Good Time, Call'”…
DECAMPMENT
We decided it was time to pack up our tent and such. We hadn’t slept in it since Day 1 anyway — we’d been sleeping in the car. And my god did it smell like a diseased swamp in there. Our tent was by a small patch of trees — maybe only 10 feet across. Yet it took us 2 years to notice the random stuff that was right there in front of behind us the whole time:
stuff behind our tent I almost didn’t notice
Pagan things… orbs.. shiny stuff… yay..
stuff behind our tent I almost didn’t notice
Sirius Rising is a huge pagan festival at Brushwood, where some 1,000 people show up… But it costs way more money than X-Day…
stuff behind our tent I almost didn’t notice
This hair reminds me of the lost hair of 1,000 My little Ponies:
stuff behind our tent I almost didn’t notice – hair
All in all, I’m not sure how the hell I missed this stuff:
stuff behind our tent I almost didn’t notice
The 3 days of hellish rain were long gone, and the mud tracks were now baked into the mud:
dried mud tracks
We said goodbye to Teeters, and took a picture of his Cous Cous to remind us to buy our own:
Teeters LeVerge
Don’t forget:
Add a boullion cube. It's the only way!
POTLUCK
By the time all was said and done on Sunday, Carolyn was like “since it’s now so late, I’d rather just stay now.” But then we decided to go ahead and leave! We’d just get back in the middle of the night, rather than sleeping here one more day, waking up early, and getting back in the evening.
But then Carolyn was like “it’s already 5PM, and the potluck is going on, so we may as well stay for that!”
Free food rather than having to stop to eat. It makes sense. Plus there’s more variety. And WAYYYY better company. SLACK! It is the SubGenius way!
potluck dinner
The food was awesome. Shitloads of pasta, incredible Indian food, haggis (yes, haggis! We actually tried it!), chips and artichoke salsa… Olives with pits. Carolyn tore those up, they were so delicious. Clint thinks they should be eradicated from the earth. They also had fried donuts that “were just donuts”, but that looked like seafood poppers. If it was shrimp and scallops, Carolyn would have eaten them, but when she found out they were “just donuts” she passed.
potluck dinner
We said our final goodbyes to the remaining SubGenii that were hanging around, both inside and outside. Contact infos were exchanged, yadda yadda. But the truth is, as long as you’re on Facebook, you’re going to be able to find everyone at X-Day. They’re pretty much all on there. And those that aren’t are on the alt.slack newsgroup, where they’ve been for decades…
potluck dinner – outside
We just found out Rev. Spike’s glasses don’t attach to his ears! He custom-made piercing-based glasses! There’s no frame whatsoever, just lenses that attach to his piercings via magnet. That’s so friggin’ awesome. Piercings are mostly pointless — this one actually had a point.
Rev. Spike’s self-made piercing-based glasses
DRIVING HOME
Finally, we left and went home.
It was sad, but they were still broadcasting on FM, so we got to at least listen to X-Day until we were out of FM radio range.
And then at that point, we popped in all the various free cds of SubGenius-created music that various people had given us.
Finally, after a good hour or 2, we had to go back to our music, which represented the final unplugging from X-Day. Now we were just in a car, with still 6 hours to go.
And you know what? WE SAW FIREWORKS! One thing about going to X-Day is, there aren’t really fireworks in New York. And SubGenii were banned from having explosive devices at X-Day many years ago–we’re troublemakers. And since X-Day is July 5th, not July 4th, a lot of the times you don’t even realize July 4th happened. I had only seen 3 fireworks explode in the past 2 4th of Julys.
So driving home at night was actually kind of awesome! You got to see the various towns setting off their fireworks. And you got to see it three-dimensionally, as you passed. I was lucky, as Carolyn had first driving shift, so I got to stare at them more. But Carolyn definitely did some drive-by staring of her own.
It took about 6 1/2 – 7 hours to get home, which is pretty good time.
We stopped in Breezewood again to top off the gas and pee and switch driving shifts. We also stopped at Taco Bell and had some confusion with the order. This Taco Bell still served the long-since removed from the Taco Bell menu TOSTADAS. I love ’em! They’re light. Chips, beans, lettuce. A great item if you’re not quite full, but don’t want a full taco. And only 79 or 89 cents. They’re even vegetarian! We had a long conversation with the guy who worked at that Taco Bell. Basically, they will make any canceled item that they have the materials to make. I wish our Taco bells were so rebellious.
Finally, we got home around 1:30-2:00AM, Sunday Night. We left our remaining beers in the cooler outside, where they were (much more slowly) eventually drank.
COMA
Under normal road-trip scenarios, three days of misery might have made Event Generic-Event not worth it. But since this was not a Generic-Event, but a SubGenius X-Day, the awesomeness of it all totally outweighed the rain. Sure — it would have been better if it hadn’t rained as much — But anybody who knows us knows that we hate driving. And we still think it’s worth the 8 hour drive. And we’re going to do it again in 2010! In fact, by the time this posts, we will have just come back from X-Day 2010. So there!
Hey Pastafarians? What does your church do for you do? Bwahahahaha, we had a great time because Church Of The SubGenius is a real organization, not just a page you “fan” on Facebook! IN YOUR FACE! One more thing: 2008 (11X-Day) X-Day review here.
As always, click through to comment on any picture individually on flickr, or to see the full-size…
We went to X-Day again this year. It was a totally different experience than last year. It rained for the first three days we were there, but then it got really nice for the weekend. It was never overbearingly hot.
^ The “Bob” painting that stared over us, mocking us with his off-kilter eye!
Saturday was the pancakes and scrapple… A certain group of Subgenii that we haven’t really talked to much make these every year. Last year we did not realize how great it was to NOT MISS IT. This year, we actually went. They have this grill that’s so hot that they cook a pancake in about 10 seconds or so. They have gallons and gallons of batter, and basically feed everyone until the batter is gone.
They also serve scrapple!
Clint finally tried scrapple because Carolyn had the foresight to get him a piece while he was getting his pancake. Nobody was interested in Clint’s stovetop/campfire yardsale waffle-iron that he brought, though. They had things pretty streamlined.
They also had the “gang wars” event, which was mostly a few people with water pistols. But it really helped that Danger Unicorn was topless. What a ray of sunshine in an oppressive world!
Dammit Janet, Stang…Danger Unicorn boobs!
I forget why, but I had wandered to the other side of the campsite, to see the Norther Pavilion that I’d never really hung out at during the 2008 X-Day. Since my foot hurt from my plantar fasciitis, I actually drove across, even though it’s only 1000 feet away or so. I think people were making more food to mooch or something. I dunno. I kept hearing there was going to be a pinata. I didn’t want to miss the pinata. I think Carolyn was napping at this point or something. At some point we had the house salad and the quesadilla from the Blue Lady café run by Brushwood. They are damn generous with their portions.
Finally, the pinata happened. I got there just in time to see Dildo Valerie flashing everyone. Unfortunately for the general public, that link is to a video that only my face to face flickr friends can see. ;)
Only at a SubGenius event would someone think to have a pinata that is not full of candy… But is full of… BUGS! Crickets, to be specific.Hilarious when Dildo Valerie finally gets it open and says, “It’s like…bugs.”
they didn’t really move too much afterward
We also had some good ol’-fashioned preaching and ranting by SubGenius founder Ivan Stang:
Sometimes, he looks downright angry. Then again, if you’re not angry, you’re probably not paying attention:
Get mad!! You’ll pay to know what you really think!
Quit your job for “Bob”! Praise not working! Overman? I’m over, maaaan. “You can’t put ME in a box?”, you say? Ladies and gentleman, we all end up in a box. Find your ShorDurPerSav… Because you have a short duration personal existence!
Saturday night is also when the most bands play. Special thanks to Dildo Valerie and Bunny Day for imparting upon me the ability to enjoy the show much more, thanks to some of their leftover intoxicants. Unfortunately I missed the crazy drunk girl dancing on stage until someone kind of shooed her off. But I did manage to download videos of that, before they were pulled from YouTube ;)
I should mention that at some point, they played the Amino Acids movie. I’d seen the first couple parts at the Baltimore Devivals, but I had not seen the brand new part 3.
After the shows, we had the huge bonfire. Basically, I’ve never seen bonfires huger than this — but during Brushwood’s Starwood festival, they actually make bonfires too large to fit in the roundhouse. (The roundhouse is the wooden semi-structure that these bonfires take place in.)
bonfire pit
Of course, SubGenii don’t just do something. They do the hell out of it. And that includes lighting bonfires. Why be normal, when you can light it with a fucking blowtorch?
blowtorch bonfire lighting (3m19s)
A random YouTube’er, who obviously goes to Brushwood, informed me that the blowtorch has a name. “‘Tis The Dragon”, he commented.
At some point earlier during this X-Day — or maybe the last one — we had wandered around with hot dogs on our camping forks, looking for the path of maximum SLACK — that is, someone else’s fire. Dr. Legume ended up cooking our hotdogs with a blowtorch. Let me just say — hot dogs cooked via blowtorch are quite execllent!
Here’s the best picture of the bonfire. NOT by me; You need a $2600 camera to pull this off:
bonfire (by George Burgyan)
The annual burning of the wooden Dobbsikon proceeded, as it always does. This time, a spinning, flaming piece did not break off and fly into a densely populated area of drunk onlookers. I was pretty amazed at their reaction time when that happened last year.
Pantiara – by the bonfire pit
People danced in circles around the bonfire… Others watched:
bonfire
And that crazy drunk girl? She danced naked the entire time. As depicted in Rev. Panik’s painting that I photographed, which became as close to the official photo for this X-Day as any, as it was used as the header image for the official 12X-Day page:
Who knows how the night ended? By the time the bonfire happens, things are usually pretty hazy. Last time, X-Day was a Saturday, so the bonfire was at the very very end. This time, X-Day is Sunday (tomorrow), so the bonfire was not the very end of our celebrations. But it did mark the last official major event.
Now we have to be up by 7:00AM tomorrow, as The Rupture is predicted to occur at 7AM, July 5th, 1998. The problem is — someone switched the calendars, and we don’t know when 1998 is. So we just have to keep trying every year, until the pleasure saucers come.
As always, click through to comment on any picture individually on flickr, or to see the full-size…
We went to X-Day again this year. It was a totally different experience than last year. It rained for the first three days we were there, but then it got really nice for the weekend. It was never overbearingly hot.
So, remember that story I talked about at the end of day 2? About Valerie losing her clothes and stealing Spike’s shirt and making a skirt out of it? Yeah, I guess that happened on day 3, not day 2. I’m not going to repeat it all again, but it was pretty funny how she lost her clothes.
Dildo Valerie with stolen shirt-skirt
Also at some point, not sure if it was Friday or Saturday, but there was a conversation about catheters. Dildo Valerie said she had to change catheters for a living and that it’s not fun.
would YOU let her change your catheter?
At another point, someone was telling some story that involved bestiality. One of the people they were talking about had said something like, “You dog-fucking faggot.” To which I replied, “You can fuck a dog and have it not be gay.” This won the award for “funniest thing said in the last 5 minutes”. In fact, I was asked to re-create it on video. Said video appears to have been taken down, or I would have embedded it.
Agent Lloyd loves ho mom
(Actually, the shirt says “hot moms”, but “ho mom” was even funnier.)
Unfortunately, the other pic where they were lined up even better was too blurry to save. I guess you had to be there, to witness the magical merging of beer bottles.
Wilhelm’s ”Bob” painting
Wilhelm’s “Bob” painting stared at us, with his evil off-kilter eye… Mocking us, the entire time we were there.
A lot of excellent and unique conversation was had during the day. Indeed, that is a boon of hanging out with Subgenii: Not talking about [or thinking like] normal boring people. The Pinks. The Conspiracy. The Perpetrators Of False Slack. None of them are here. Tangent talks about how he used to be gay, but then realized that a woman can fuck you like a man, but a man can’t fuck you like a woman:
Johnny Dildoseed / I used to be gay
I admire Tangent’s candor.
Note the purple distortion typical of most recent consumer cameras, when dealing with high contrast situations. Nothing to do with snow.
We found the water shrine. Apparently we did a poor job of exploring last year, since it was right there:
After Brayneleeke’s “episode” the previous night, he apparently stayed up all night drumming with the pagans in the roundhouse. Everytime he would stop and/or fall asleep, some dude would say, “So, did you join the union yet?” And he would wake up and start drumming again. I believe his hands were sore the next day. (No protective layer of tears this time.) Finally, he was asked that, and he said, “NO!”, and left. Apparently, by leaving, he joined the union. No, not everything makes sense in Brushwood. Nor does everybody make sense.
The giant Oreo-eating contest. Each contestant ate a single huge Oreo comprised of the white filling of over 100 Oreos. So good… That it’s fucking disgusting!
During the un-costume ball, someone passed around communion wafers to put on our foreheads. Apparently, this is like really bad mojo for Catholics, haha. I later read news stories about people stealing the wafers from actual Catholic churches, and then receiving death threats. Ahhh, typical Christianity.
communion wafer foreheads – suck it, godboys – if there’s a hell, i’d rather be there than with anyone offended by this
At some point, Teeters was wearing a nametag with Ivan Stang’s real name. He commented that Stang told him he was ruining his good name.
Susie, Pantiara, McGani, Hercules, Teeters, Carter LeBlanc, Eggplant, Burger King
Since Michael Jackson had just died, of course someone had to go as him! After all, aliens and X-Day go hand in hand. And MJ definitely isn’t human.
Michael Jackson, Bust A Nut Meg
We heard a story about someone driving to X-Day, who noticed a hitchhiker/wanderer who didn’t even have a shirt on his back. So they gave him their “Bob” Dobbs shirt. The police later happened to drive by, and of couse couldn’t leave well enough alone and had to harass/talk to him. Because he had a SubGenius Dobbshead shirt on, they just assumed he was destined for Brushwood. So they dropped him off there. But the guy had no money. Brushwood gave him a sandwich and some soup, and sent him on his way. haha. Poor guy.
Dr. Agonfly actually DID hitchhike several thousand miles to get to X-Day.
Pantiara & her Dobbsicon crucified doll
Alien masks are a common theme for Subgenius-related bands….
John Deere Tractor Beam
Then I ran into these kids, with their matching Alternative Tentacles t-shirts! Totally kick-ass!! Of course they were also NoMeansNo fans! I think Carolyn & I were sleeping in the car [our tent broke on day 1, so we slept in the car after that. Surprisingly, I found it more comfortable than our own bed] when I heard NoMeansNo playing, and got out and wandered around until we found the source. It was them arriving. Then later they had the awesome matching shirts:
Then, we were introduced to the awesomeness of Phat Man Dee. She was rather amazing… Her jazzy songs are both comical and insanely unique. One was so creepy it gave me goosebumps. And she had the stage presence of a typical SubGenius:
Her husband (I think), Tomy Amoeba, introduced as “The lowest form of life”, also had a small part in her show. More video of Phat Man Dee below.
Tommy Amoeba interlude
808 and Christie arrived on Friday. But we didn’t see them till like 8pm at the pavilion when the bands were playing. We also didn’t see much of them on Saturday. They had already heard the stories about Clint’s first night here, though they didn’t know that Clint was the subject of them. My reputation preceeds me!
Christie – glowstick cleavage
Oh, and Brushwood has some of its own cats too. I suppose technically they’d be considered feral, for having no home… But this cat was one of the sweetest cats we ever saw. You could jog 50 feet away, kneel down with your hand in “petting position”, and the cat would run up to be pet. We repeated this until we were tired from all the running.
Someone told us she had had kittens but they all found homes. Tangent & Dammit Janet might have gotten one of them. I also heard that this cat, or some other cat, was pregnant… But one of the SubGenii had paid to abort her litter. They had no homes, and nobody even had a place for the mother… So she had a feline abortion performed, to keep unwanted kittens from appearing. I wonder what the Catholics have to say about that…
Then, Andrew The Impaled played. There was a lot of excitement about this. Apparently people have fainted at previous performances. He has done things like literally sewn his lips shut. In our case, he nailed a nail into his nose:
Just kidding, it’s jelly. But when he was done with the screwdriver, he just so happened to throw it on the ground where this jelly was. It was quite disturbing. I did not realize it was actually edible :)
Back to Phat Man Dee — she did some awesome things, like a version of the Star-Spangled Banner performed by inserting her hand into her mouth:
Star-Spangled Banner (Fist In Mouth Version) (slightly distorted)
I’ve also seen her do something similar on public access [viewed on YouTube], except it was Silent Night performed on Christmas.
She had some other neat songs too. Unfortunately, with the Canon camera broken, we could only record video with the GE camera, which heavily distorted the sound in any loud situations. However, it lets you take videos longer than 30 seconds, so you take the good with the bad. Wouldn’t you like to be a Pepe too?
Phat Man Dee – Pepe (somewhat distorted) (2m30s)
One of my favorite Phat Man Dee songs is the Ghandi Shake. Especially when Tommy Amoeba laid on the stage and started shaking.
She also did War Pigs. She started it, aborted it, then decided, “What the hell”, and went on with doing it:
Phat Man Dee – War Pigs excerpt (somewhat distorted)
There was also the band that covered Miserlou and other songs Carolyn could recognize. That may have been John Deer Tractor Beam, as pictured above. Not sure. At this point, Rev. Spike was sitting outside in a pile of vomit in his lap.. With his phone in the middle of it. Saturday, it was said that his phone was run over so hard that the battery had popped out — and yet it still worked. Vomit and car-attacks and all.
Carolyn checked on him but didn’t have the energy to do much else after two nights of taking care of Clint on night 1, and Brayneleeke on night 2. Haha. She did later win a Bobbie award for her efforts: “Goddess Of Mellowing The Harsh”.
We went to X-Day again this year. It was a totally different experience than last year. It rained for the first three days we were there, but then it got really nice for the weekend. It was never overbearingly hot.
We checked out the north pavilion on Thursday (and again on Friday). Thursday there was supposed to be breakfast, but we took our time getting there, so there were only a couple of pieces of free bacon left.
On Thursday, Carolyn & Clint were looking for their chairs to take the pavilion. They weren’t at the camp site, they weren’t in the car, and they weren’t at the pavilion. Clint wondered if they had even been bought, but Carolyn saw him put them in the car, and she also would have noticed them on her final “did I forget anything?” Check. They had apparently been misplaced by drunkest-in-his-lifetime Clint.
"Dude... Aren't we all just... shadows in the grass?"
After hanging out at the pavilion, we got an awesome cheeeseburger and nachos [NOT free] from the Blue Lady café that Brushwood runs and opens randomly. We got nachos with peppers and they didn’t chince on the peppers at all. Literally every single bite of chip had a accompanying jalapeno pepper. They were some of the awesomest nachos ever.
Funny thing about being separated from civilization – Little things are so much better. That’s one of the reasons camping is fun. But at Brushwood, there is still a semblance of civilzation: Showers, toilets, hot tubs, and the occasionally-open Blue Lady cafe. These things are very easy to appreciate!
Rock On? [groan] … Last sighting of Tangent?
Tangent and others had hung out at that shelter drinking beast ice and chilling before Clint had woken up. Because of Clint’s major alcohol intake [where’d that bottle of Lunazul tequila go? all gone!] the night before, he woke up about 5 hours past Carolyn.
Thus, by the time Clint was awake, Tangent was pretty smashed. This was still probably around noon time. Basically, everyone at X-Day is drinking 24 hours a day. We didn’t see Tangent again until the next day.
Jim Jones, Dobbsheads
After nachos, we wandered around a bit… then Clint said, “Check out those houses”, because there were these tiny cabins that had been built, and weren’t there last year. They were maybe 200 ft away. Carolyn looked, and was like, “Dude, those are our chairs!”
Clint had no recollection of ever being there… But we can only assume he drunkenly said, “Check out those houses!”, walked over there, and left our chairs there for some reason. We went over there [for what felt like the first time ever] and retrieved our chairs.
Friday was supposed to be the slip n slide but everyone had eaten turkey and were pretty chill. Carolyn took a nap at that point and left Clint. I have no idea why our journal for Thursday is talking about Friday, but I’m still going to cut and paste it into this blogpost :) Unfortunately, slip-n-slide never happened. But that’s okay. As a child, slip-n-slide made me bleed.
Carolyn got up and hung out at Rob & Wilhelm’s shelter. People would come and go, so Carolyn met Agent Lloyd, Spike Jones, Dildo Valerie, Kayte/Bunny Day, Wilhelm, along with also Two Beans, Rob/Teeters L’Verge, and Dr. Agonfly.
She thinks she spent 5 hours straight sitting at that shelter with everyone coming and going to use the Four Flushers. It worked out because the people would come and go, and Carolyn just got to sit in one place socializing.
When Clint woke up, we went to the main pavilion where the 2-hour Hour Of Slack happened. I guess one of the bulldada auctions also happened, but we didn’t notice.
Then the couscous happened. Teeters made couscous that was like manna from “Bob”. It was sooo good. Even when there were only remnants, people came and ate them out of the pan with their fingers. The secret? A goya chicken broth packet. MEAT MADE IT GOOD. Fancy that. (And suck it, vegans.)
After that, we made it a point to start stocking couscous AND boullion cubes in our house. Later, at Assateague, Clint learned that three boullion cubs is too many :)
J.R. ”Bob” Dobbs
Clint eventually showered. He doesn’t believe in cleaning up while camping, but after last night’s antics, laying in the mud during the rain, etc, it was necessary.
Carolyn chatted with Pisces who said that Orpheus Stain was also pretty drunk when she saw him and Clint. Yup! They both took out a bottle of tequila and many Budweisers in the space of an hour or 2.
When Carolyn looked at the camera, there were a couple of pictures that were taken during the blackout. Pisces and Jim Jones? at the pavilion, and Orpheus dancing on a picnic table at the pavilion. Good times, I guess. Heheh. (These were the last 2 pictures in the previous day’s post: Orpheus Stain dancing on the table, and Modemac & Pisces hanging out.)
Still… if our camera was killed by having left it in the rain — then how did we check those pictures out? Parts of the written journal just don’t add up!
dead lighter shrine – 2009 configuration
At some point during the day, I [Clint] finally met a lot of people who had “met” him the night before. He never did know for sure who the 5 people who carried him out of the road were. I also met Dildo Valerie.
While I love her to death, my initial impression was not good. People had told me she was adamant about shitting on me while I was passed out the day before, so all I saw was The Girl Who Wanted To Shit On Me. I wouldn’t put it past her; she’s does some crazy shit:
However, my opinion of her was very quickly raised by hanging out with her and Bunny Day. Dildo Valerie is awesome. They’re both awesome. Their blogs are awesome too. You should go read them all right now. I wish people that awesome lived in Virginia…. But then, Virginia Subgenius density has always been pretty low. I tried to save you all, but you wouldn’t let me!
Thursday night some people were indulging, and Eggplant and K-ren came looking for Brainleak at some point. Later, Brainleak stumbled up in tears so Carolyn tried to be there for him.
“It isn’t medicine unless it makes you make sick-face when it goes down.”
Dildo Valerie, Nutmeg – dancing and unhappy that Michael Jackson was dead
Carolyn walked to the north pavilion to let Brayneleeke’s parents know we found him. They were very cool about it, and said he was fine as long as he wasn’t passed out in a puddle [like Clint last night].
It took and hour and 15 minutes for Brainleak to come down from his vision of hell. It kind of bummed the rest of us out a bit, but that’s okay. All part of X-Day, and it’s not like Clint didn’t bum some people out last night! Brayneleeke was simply tonight’s casualty.
(Tomorrow it would be Spike Jones, who puked on his cell phone then let a car run over it. Like I said… a fatality every day! Haha.)
The best part? Brayneleeke suddenly deciding it’s a good idea to put his fingers on the glass of a propane lamp. Basically, right by the flames. We heard sizzling. Tangent looked at me and said, “I’ve never heard a human being sizzle like that.” It was quite disturbing.
I asked him about finger-blisters the next day. His answer? “Fortunately, my fingers were covered in a protective layer of tears.” I think that’s the most goth/emo/brutal thing I’ve ever heard.
Nutmeg dancing – Dildo Valerie was right, she could take a better pic of this than me
At some point, Susie The Floozy, Dr. Hal, and others sat behind us at our shelter. By this time, it was the black of night. It was occasionally raining, so once we plopped down in the shelter, we didn’t move, so as not to lose our seats..
I [Clint] didn’t see Dr. Hal, who was right behind me, for quite some time. He looked as trashed as the rest of us, as his medical condition means he can only drink liquor, not bear.
“How long have you been here?”, I asked.
He paused for a moment to consider his answer, then simply said, “Since conception.”
I rate this one of the best comeback of all time. Plus, it’s about the first time I ever got to talk to the revered Dr. Hal, after listening to him on the Hour Of Slack for so many years.
bathroom graffiti
Thursday night, Rob/Teeters had grilled, and the grill was left out right by the shelter thing, so people kept tripping on it. It was dark and hard to see. Rob/Teeters himself tripped on the grill 3-5 times. It later became known as “The Grill Of Shame”. The worst part was a lot of cooked food ended up on the ground. In the end, a bunch of us passed around heated pitas, as all the actual food to put in the pita had wound up on the ground, courtesy of drunks tripping over The Grill Of Shame.
Agent Lloyd, Teeters LeVerge – groping mannequin
There was much talk about “let’s go fuck that mannequin”. Like, it came up MANY times. Finally, at the end of the night, after Carolyn went to sleep, they went to molest it, and Clint got some pictures.
Teeters teeters
I can’t remember if this was the day Dildo Valerie lost her clothes while at the pool/hot tub. I mean, it’s not that she was shy about walking around naked — check my friends-only flickr pics from X-Day 2009 if you want to see what I’m talking about. (But you probably don’t have access, haha!). However, it’s pretty damn cold in Sherman, NY.
She basically stole random clothes.
Later, Rev. Spike Jones realized that she was wearing his shirt — as a skirt. She had totally stretched the neck out to her hip-size. And while she is a petite sex goddess, nobody’s hips are as small as their necks, unless you’ve been photoshopped. The shirt was in bad, bad condition. Haha. Spike Jones didn’t seem too happy about it, but he knew it was too late for complaining, and took it like a champ :)
fire
There was also The Prolapsed Stripper Rectum Story. There’s no real describing this. You just have to check it out yourself. But it has strippers, cocaine, and anal sex. Also, the Grill Of Shame is mentioned in the beginning, but not by name. Star Trek is also mentioned. The prolapsed stripper story in specific doesn’t start until about halfway through the video, which is really just a slice of random drunktalk:
I saw someone else post a month-by-month list of their favorite pictures from the year. What a good idea! I shall jump on that bandwagon, too. So here are some of my favorite pictures of 2009, month by month, all from my flickr (but NOT all taken by me).
I’ll try to keep it to 2-5 pictures a month.
I also will be including New Year’s Eve (2008->2009 transition) as it’s own month, since I usually don’t get my pictures up in a timely fashion.
Click any picture to follow through to my flickr, where it will be explained in much more detail. Or hover over the picture for a [very] brief summary. (more…)
While at X-Day last summer, I had the opportunity to participate in “Ask Dr. Hal”, where people wrote down a question for Dr. Hal to answer. He is very good at giving 3-minute answers to 3-second questions. I cheated and slipped in a “two part question”, that was really 2 questions.
1) Why is the sky?
2)Why does The Conspiracy value cleanliness so much?
Awesomely, Dr. Hal managed to talk for six minutes to answer these 2 questions. Eventually, the Hour Of Slack radio show broadcast my answers. I extracted them and re-hosted them for my personal posterity. Now presenting: Dr. Hal Answers Clint’s 2 Questions:
Carolyn really wanted to go camping at least one more time this season so that she can take the kitties while they are still young. After being rained out a few weeks ago, Carolyn was determined to go no matter what. The forecast called for rain — but only 0.1 inch during the day (60% chance, and it didn’t happen). But there was a 70% chance of rain during the night — half an inch; significantly more (and that did happen). Carolyn was pissed.
After much convincing, we ended up below our six-person quorum, but still had a good crowd, with Tabbitha, Eli, Carolyn, Clint, and even a surprise Evan! Good times.
Unfortunately, it did rain on us. Eli set up Carolyn’s small tarp with some help from Evan and Carolyn, and we spent a good amount of time huddled underneath it. But this was only at night time. And it didn’t rain hard — you could go potty without an umbrella and stay relatively dry.
Eventually we all realized we couldn’t keep our eyes open. We made a pact to take a 1-hour nap, and we all went to our separate tents. When Carolyn woke up several hours later, she heard the rain was still at it, and decided not to try to wake anyone up.
Tabbitha apparently got up really early and somehow got really soaked. She was mostly dry by the time everyone else woke up. She hung out in the path, with no trees overhead — apparently a lot of the water falling was from the trees, and it wasn’t *really* raining so much if you stood in a path with no trees over you.
Because of the rain, most of our pictures are from the next day.
The next day was dry, beautiful, and we spent quite some time (8:30AM-2PMish) there. In the end, we were there for 27 hours, and only awake and being rained on for about 4 of them. Sleep was 8 more hours, and the other 15 hours were awesome! We ate like kings and had more fun than if we’d stayed in!
Oranjello, Lemonjello – in the car
Driving on the way up, the kitties found a nice place to nap. Nice, but not necessarily safe. With their help, Clint did manage to flip the car into neutral once.
martian pineapple – delapidated
Upon arriving, Carolyn sought out the fungus thing Gene had discovered last trip, which Clint christened Martian Pineapples. The stuff had turned black! What’s up with that?
Oranjello, Lemonjello – in the firepit
The kitties explored the fire pit for the first time together. So far, they’re batting 0 for 2 (car gear shifter, firepit) with finding safe places to hang out. We were glad there wasn’t a fire made already. Fortunately they’re not so stupid as to walk into an open flame.
Oranjello, Lemonjello – by the firepit – Oranjello de-tangling
One thing we learned camping: Lemonjello is the smartest kitty when it comes to his leash getting untangled. He will actually try to untangle himself by walking different directions — sometimes systematically (for a few seconds anyway, which is as long as cats’ attention spans last). This includes walking backwards. He would do this until he either untangled himself, pulled hard enough to knock over what he was tangled on, or discovered that he was truly trapped with no hope for escape — at which point, he’d start meowing at the top of his lungs. But he never complained right away; he always tried to work it out on his own.
Carolyn, Oranjello, Lemonjello – tying rope around tree Oranjello is a big kitty now, and he has no fear. He was started to wander too far, and further tests indicated he would have definitely wandered completely out our eyesite if left unchecked. So Carolyn decided to tie him up so she wouldn’t have to worry about him getting lost.Meanwhile, Clint‘s solution to deal with tethering Oranjello down temporarily while Carolyn ties the rope to the tree? Tie Oranjello’s leash to little Lemonjello’s leash. This did indeed slow Oranjello down, keeping him from wandering off (even slowly)… But this solution would work much better with two equal-sized cats. Lemonjello was being pulled all over the place, and was quite miserable due to being dragged around by Oranjello. But it only lasted a couple minutes, and Lemonjello got to wander free all night, while Oranjello got to be tied down — tangling himself over and over and over again all night long. Who really won?
Chill kitty face:
camping – 169-691Lemonjello, Oranjello – on lap
These cats like to stay on your lap at times. Here they are chilling on Carolyn’s lap.Oranjello has the most relaxed cat expression ever! “Whateva’, man!”
And Carolyn’s favorite picture is this one, due to how funny I look:
Clint, Eli – give me trailmix Carolyn thinks this picture is hilarious. Clint‘s reaching out like, “Gimme trailmix NOW!”, and Eli is looking very sly.
Now, Oranjello gets the full-cat leash, and Lemonjello gets the kitten leash:
Clint demonstrating how Lemonjello can just hang from his leash without being choked — something essential for cat leashes. His tail looks sooo pathetic.
Of course, cats were still a bit freaked out at times. But nobody was as scared as Misfit was when he went:
Oranjello – hanging out in tent Oranjello took shelter in the kitty tent. Look how alarmed he is !There was also a really funny moment when he was behind the tent, and tried to jump through the rear screen ‘window’ of our tent. Twice. That was LOL-inducing.
Eli coming meant the quality of our food was better than if we went to a restaurant…
camping – 169-692breakfast cooking Eli‘s cooking FTW! We also ate excellent pig butt (which really means pig shoulder) the night before. Excellent.
Meat to KILL for. (Somebody killed that pig!)
Lemonjello – leash ears = murderous intentions Clint gave Lemonjello leash ears. He did NOT like that. Notice how he looks like he is plotting Clint’s imminent murder.
I can be cheezburger?
We had some leftover buns that we decided to throw into the woods for the birds. When Clint got his, he got a great idea to make Lemonjello into a cheezburger.
And of course, this disgusting but very neat and interesting thing came by:
One of those evil-looking caterpillers came around. Oranjello was very interested. The caterpiller had some nasty spikes that he would curl up and point at Oranjello, and Oranjello did get poked a couple of times by getting his nose to close to it.
The group picture this trip came out rather weirdly. Parts of 3 different pictures were incorporated:
My Parody Religion Is Better Than Your Parody Religion … or: How I Survived X-Day XI [2008]
Days Four and Five
DAY FOUR: X-DAY
OH SHIT!! WE MISSED THE END OF THE WORLD!!! Attending The Rupture is sort of the point of going to X-Day! And it happens at 7AM on 7/5/1998. (But when is 1998? Obviously our current calendars are wrong.) And we didn’t get up until past 9… DAMN! (more…)
As mentioned in day one … we went to bed the drunkest we have both been at once all year. Maybe all decade. And woke up at 4:30AM to save our stuff from the rain…. Then slept… Then: (more…)
My Parody Religion Is Better Than Your Parody Religion … or: How I Survived X-Day XI [2008]
PROLOGUE
I first heard about the Church Of The SubGenius on a national WWIV syndicated message board, on some BBS, way back in the late 1980s. The ridiculosity of it all intrigued me, as did the parody of organized religion. It is a parody religion, like Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, but superior in every way: Actual depth, substance, philosophy, and even truth. Superior art, superior video, superior radio shows, superior events. (Um, FSM doesn’t have any of these, does it? FSM is basically like parodying the Holy Bible with a knock knock joke or a single middle finger; CotS is like parodying the Holy Bible with a more ridiculous bible.)
Read the wikipedia page HERE; it explains things adequately). (more…)
Camping was a resounding success in terms of numbers, with one of our larger camping parties — fourteen people: Clint, Carolyn, Casey D, Christian D, Dan C, Evan G, Gene G, Heather K, Jesse B, Kipp E, Mark I, Melanie B, Nathan G, and Shannon D. (more…)
Starting a fire with sticks is a very useful skill in an emergency. And in a non-emergency, Kevin Spencer is an awesome cartoon to watch! I could go on and on and on… (more…)
Cocaine charge = 12 inch catheter up your penis? And he only won $15K for that??????? Meanwhile, more on censorship being very alive in America. And a mom & toddler kicked off a plane because the toddler wouldn’t stop saying “bye bye plane”. But the war on drugs is going strong! Our Drug Czar said that marijuana growers are terrorists!
![20100324 - Clint - 0 - The Xanatos Scream - by IMBJR from alt.slack [SubGenius]](https://i0.wp.com/farm5.static.flickr.com/4050/4578851496_d236afa2e8.jpg)
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