A Seasonally Disjunct Guide to Samhain Parties

There are guides out there for people who get invited to holidays that fall outside their religious experience. You learn about other cultures with many varieties of flavored grain, that babies sometimes merit a huge party for not dying, and that there are candles you should never ever blow out.

I can't find any such guides for Wiccan Sabbats.

Clearly, I need to write a quick and dirty guide for non pagans attending Samhain. It's pronounced Sow-wean (Like the female pig, not planting things.) It's celebrated around Halloween- there's a certain amount of flexibility in most people's specific date; like Easter, there's a bit of full moon/equinox madness. Somehow, this means I get invited to a couple every year on different dates. It's meant to usher in the deepest darkest bit of winter.

Why yes, I am writing this guide in March.

First things first. What you want to know, gentle reader, is if this festive event is worth attending. Since you can't equivocate during the invitation, (Will there be a ritual? Are we going to have to tell ghost stories? Will there be alcohol? Do I have to wear a costume?) you need the ask two questions: What proportion of the guests will be under the age of ten? Will we be talking about dead family members?

If more than 25% of those in attendance are children, follow your preferences regarding a children's Halloween party from the Peanuts era. People might be a little bit more earnest than usual, and the games might be a little lamer- it's a party with children about nihilism and potential starvation. Either that appeals to you or it doesn't.

When you ask about dead family members, listen very closely. If your potential host says no, you'll probably have to go through some New Agey self actualization crap about facing your shadow self and praising your inner god/goddess for the improvements you've made this year. If it were going to be a fun party with costumes, they'd call it Halloween. I'd skip it.

If the host says anything about the dead in a general sense, or things beyond the veil, there's a better than even chance there will be ghost stories with parallels to ancient* religion. People might say things while lighting candles. I'd skip this too.

*The 1910s are ancient, right?

If they say yes, we will be honoring the dead, go to that party. There will be a supremely uncomfortable half-hour where everyone talks about people who died this year and people they still miss. You will probably have to say one sentence- one sentence- about how you are sad that someone died. Then people will party. There's something about facing morality- and weeping in public- that makes for a great social event. *

*It's probably the drinking.

There will be mead. Mead is a vile liquor, meant to punish the romantic. Avoid it at all costs.

There will be fire. People will have opinions about fire structure. There's always an argument about where to put the next bit of wood. If you want to bring sage or dried flowers to throw in, that's a nice gesture. Don't do the stupid box trick unless you're far away from structures and surrounded by sand or snow.

There will be apples, probably in pie form. It's usually not very good. For some reason, pagans cannot make pastry crust properly. There will also be some sort of pumpkin dish. Someone might even bring a haggis. They will have used insufficient suet and not ground the organs finely enough. If it's a potluck, bring spareribs- very traditional- or a giant salad.

Bring your own chair.

To sum up: make sure you want to go, be very picky about what you eat and drink, and don't do the stupid box trick.

Short Faced Bears.

Okay, this is just too awesome for words. It's an article about the Bay Area during the Pleistocene. There was a river to rival the Amazon! The continental shelf was exposed, resulting in a thirty mile band of coastal prairie west of Golden Gate Bridge! There were mammoths, cave lions, cheetahs, dire wolves, and giant ground sloths! There was a twelve foot tall bear than could sprint 40 mph!

If there were three huge rivers trisecting the Bay Area, the island effect would lead to speciation- populations would be divided, and you'd expect to see an unreasonably high number of endemics. And this is so! I've been fretting about the diversity of crazy rare plants in the Bay for a while.

The best part of the article is that it cribs heavily from a book on Paleobotany that is currently on my nightstand. I now have more reason to feel guilty about not reading it.

No, the best part is that the type specimen for short-faced bears is from Shasta Caverns- an entire skeleton! Oh my goodness, that is an awe-inspiring thing to contemplate.

I bumped into a friend of my parents in a field of poison oak behind a locked gate yesterday. He gave me a list of everything he'd found in the area, starting with a field stripped rifle (a 308, so nothing super scary) wrapped in several garbage bags, a couple of caves, a rare aster, a rare salamander, a feral pig skull, and a terrible allergy to Toxicodendron. Thus, I am inspired to find bear teeth. (I have previously stated that I maintain certain friendships primarily for entertainment value and exposure to truly insane schemes- remind me to do a post on R's first roommate- and I believe this man serves a similar purpose for my father. Except he's pleasant. And most of his schemes involve trail building and waterway restoration.)

Also, I keep bitching about poison oak in the abstract, fact-of-life fashion that occurs in the workplace, and people keep offering sympathy. At work, I'll say "I want to bite this skin and worry at the rash like a dog." and my coworkers respond "I'm so coated in tar I no longer do a spot check before peeing." On Facebook, I make a pleasant reference to Technu showers, and dudes start talking about how they once had oak balls whilst ladies try to sell me on pharmaceuticals.

I want to do a series on "Why I hate your Myers/Briggs personality type", but I think it may be unwise. Thoughts?

BORING

I've been having trouble thinking of something to post- something besides "I looked for some snails" or "wetland type is highly dependent on soil type". I thought I'd do one of those "what I was doing on the hour" posts as filler. Because I'm that interesting.

6AM Wake up, reassure myself that I did not sleep through my alarm. Return to sleep.

7AM Waiting for kettle to boil. Fixing rain pants with duck tape.

8AM Rocking out to Somali hip hop in the truck.

9AM Still listening to K'naan- Somali hip hop is surprisingly straight edge. Good Muslims don't drink or sleep around, and people in gangs get murdered by pirates.

10AM On a boat, moving my stuff so it doesn't get wet.

11AM Lost somewhere near the lake. Probably.

12PM Still lost.

1PM Eating lunch. Gromph nomph nomph.

2PM Actual productive work.

3PM Actual productive work. Trying to keep up with my significantly fitter co-worker. Failing.

4PM Aha, the lake has become somewhat rougher than it was this morning. Also our boat is basically a wind sock. Fun times! All the things I own are soaked.

5PM Singing along to K'naan.

6PM Watching Doraleous and Associates. Not for Amys.

7PM Dinner.

8PM Prolonged argument with E about the iPad. Useless piece of consumer garbage, or brilliant innovation that will save the print industry? Also, which of us is debating like a little bitch?

9PM Captain Tightpants. Fire. Kitties. Cs.

10PM Bed. Probably.

My Evening.

I went out dancing with the cousin and the cousin's girlfriend tonight. We took the beginner lesson, and then went downstairs to drink beer.

Speaking of ballroom dancing- it's apparently all about archaic gender rolls, which explains a great deal about how my outlaws dance. I suspect that DoNa Conquistador is very difficult to lead, which is why one gets the impression that Don Conquistador is trying to bodily drag her around the dance floor. But more to my point- I'm much easier to lead than one would suspect. According to the instructors, I am unusually easy to lead for a beginning American female.

Unless I'm dancing with my cousin, whereupon I am possessed by five generations of my maternal ancestors and become intractable.

The bar was full of dudes with incredible non-ironic mustaches. I have been told that the truly awesome mustache is very difficult to grow, so I must give props. There was also a man with mutton chops and a trucker hat, having a beer with a eight year old boy. With a rat tail haircut. There may have been a jar of pickled eggs on the counter.

Then my cousin's friends showed up, lowering the tone of the place considerably. *

There's my grandmother stealing my brain again. It's made worse by the fact that just when I was surrounded by scruffy mountain men in varying stages of advanced inebriation, my high school guidance counselor walked by. He gave me a look which reduced me to an teenager who has just been told to please stop making out during class, thank you very much. I resisted the urge to yell, "I don't know these people! I haven't fallen in with a bad crowd! I've had only one beer! I would never drive under the influence! It's his fault!"

*When I'm not distrusting his ability to take strange syncopated steps and disparaging his friends, I'm very fond of my cousin. He's cheerful, sanguine, hardworking, and obliging. He one of the few people I know who is not a bundle of neuroses. (I love you, bundles of neuroses, I really do. But when I spend time with him and any other member of my family, our average concentration of irrational antipathies is close to socially acceptable.)

The kind of IMen I send out.

I was at the drug store.

Buying eyelash adhesive

And there was this giant daddy long legs in the aisle.

It will be crushed there! There is no food for spiders!

So I took him with me through checkout.

It did not go well.

When I was three, I helped fold laundry by stacking all of the washcloths. When I was five, I was allowed to fold napkins, handkerchiefs, and dishtowels. Now I am 27, and my repertoire has not expanded at all.

Editor of DOOM

My favorite columnist says marriage is many things, but at its core it's someone who will drive you to the mechanic's and the airport whenever necessary. Otherwise, what's the point?

I was raised to think pretty much the same core belief applied to editing. Your spouse should be your fiercest editor, your polar opposite in writing style, the spice to your dry litany of facts, the tether that keeps you from exaggerating too much. Then I went to college and met the rest of the world.

As my brother the journalism major will tell you, I am not a nice editor. My notes on his articles read "Bad hook, crap, filler, dumb, wrong, nice sentence here, filler, crap, stupid quote, crap." My mother's notes say "I love it! You're such an excellent writer!" (This is the woman who made me return assignments to teachers when she thought my grade was too high.) He has me do all his editing because after I break his spirit, there's nothing his editors can do to him. If they object to something, he'll pull out a rejected theme and rework it in minutes. He never fights them, because he's already lost hope. (Best sister ever)

C gets something similar. Most of the rest of the world gets less yelling, because they aren't obligated to like me. But I just found a circumstance where I should think before yelling "Trite, stupid word choice, passive voice!". Is the circumstance heartbreaking? Are you helping someone write a Christmas letter about moving her husband to an assisted care facility because he's suffering from Alzheimer's? Then you should be quiet, Jane. You twit.

Fickle Internet Identity.

So I'm reading the blog of one of my Facebook friends. We went to high school together, and right now we're both living with our parents and chewing pensively on the insides of our cheeks. Her blog is less with the blithe and more with the searching emotional truths, though. While she often posts links on her profile, I'm pretty sure I'm not the target audience. Some of that stuff is pretty personal.

I saw her in person yesterday, and I totally talked like my mom. (My mother is not exactly famous for monopolizing the conversation, but she will return from dinner parties full of people's reactions to my exploits and with no idea if the host's children are, you know, alive.) Partly, I was afraid of yelling "I READ YOUR BLOG AND I AM SORRY YOU ARE SAD." and part of me figured I already knew what was going on in her life. Why should I ask?

I have a similar problem every time I see Daniel's parents. He's doing a sneak visit home for Christmas (he lives in Germany) to surprise them. "Hello guys, I live with my parents now. Nothing remotely interesting is happening in my life, so I'm going to talk about cats for five minutes. Oh, I have to go now." They must think I'm very self absorbed (and dull) but as least I didn't blurt out "It's weird that Daniel's coming home for Christmas when you're Jewish."

There are all sorts of country songs about hometowns with the general message "every reason I left is every reason I returned". I wish to posit the inverse. Every reason I wanted to stay is now a reason that I wish I were somewhere else.

Except for the lower bar for physical attractiveness. That's nice.

C visited for a couple of days- he just left for home. My parents are off camping. I am alone in the house for the next three-four days- I don't know whether to be excited or sad.

What Zaphod and I were interpreting as some very aggressive circular dancing by Jim turned out to be caused by a wayward fly. We are chastened. Also, Jim's perfectly willing to sleep covering my feet with his warm self, but Zaphod insists on lap space that is already being used by laptops.

Double Posting with Facebook

Look.

He says his proudest moment is swimming across a certain "alpine" lake. In August. Round these parts, we call that Tuesday.

"I'm sorry... I don't remember that. For you, the day Bison graced your village was the most important day of your life. But for me... it was Tuesday."

— M. Bison, Street Fighter: The Movie.

The elves will take care of that

I live with my parents now, because I am lame.

C lives with his parents because he's gotta get experience that might someday lead to a job in his field.

I live with my parents because someone needs to take care of the cat. As I said, I'm lame.

The sad part is that they're pretty good as roommates. (Do you know the balls required to refer to your parents as roommates when you're living in their house?) The saddest part is that I'm beginning to figure out that living with them fostered all those quirks roommates have trouble coping with. For example: rocks. No one leaves rocks on the floor, in the washing machine, on the bathroom counter- except my family. Eventually, all flat surfaces will be tiny cairns. It's why we had to move out of our last house.

If I hadn't already used my superlative, I'd say that the most sad of all the sads was that I'm probably picking up new quirks as we speak.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have eight half finished cooking projects to finish- the point isn't the kimchi/apple butter/spaghetti sauce/tart/salsa/chili/muffins, it's leaving behind a kitchen filled with flotsam and at least eleven filthy pots and pans.

(I counted boiling the pasta as a project.)

(And I made two kinds of kimchi.)

(And some chicken.)

But the cat is very happy.

Ah, Home

So I've recently moved back to my hometown- back in with my parents, actually. I'm trying to figure out how to say that without sounding either bitter or ashamed- specifically to the people I went to high school with, and so now we're friends. I am, of course, bitter and ashamed- but there's no reason to spread that around.

Anyway, there have been a couple of pleasant surprises- apparently, eight years of C and family have made me positively blithe in the face of parental hurt silences, and other social skills learned elsewhere are transferable to home. However, it seems that my sense of humor is getting stranger and drier and more circular by the year- so even fewer people understand my jokes than they did in the past. I've gained a quiet instinct to egg people on when they're saying silly things- I think that might be another C's family skill...

I'm dancing around saying something- since some of these people might someday read this- that goes pretty much like this. A lot of people here are stupid. Not dull stupid, which is healthy- crazy stupid.

Green glass is infinitely superior to brown glass.

Naso-labial wrinkles make people look like monkeys.

No one should have to pay for yoga lessons.

Every bite of pig should receive its own special grace. (Presumably "I hate North Carolina. nom.")

Islam was created by the Catholic church so that it would always have an enemy.

If you don't speak for nine days, the energy from your throat chakra will give you incredible focus.

A solid Eskimo roll is a sign of a healthy psyche.

There was a guy whose boners could predict bombing raids.

It's all right to hate your parents for giving you a Social Security Number.

No one should mock the cat that's been stuck up a tree for SEVEN DAYS. Also, Plan Hose, Plan Rock, and Plan Dart Gun are cruel.

Einstein was a Buddhist. (Oh, so that's why he left Nazi Germany.)

Brushing your teeth with your left hand will bring you closer to enlightenment.

It's good to be home.