"Never summon anything you can't banish. That's why I don't have children."
--Overheard at the "Tools in Magical Ritual" workshop

It's not that I love my rabbits enough to leave their pictures up on the site for 9 days, it's just that I took a trip back to CA (under only minor duress), and was gone for four days, stressed out for another two. And while my nightmare about the state of California being like the black oozy stuff that got Lieutenant Yar, I did indeed make it back home to the Green Mountains of Vermont unharmed. I even enjoyed the plane flights, a fact that I attribute mostly to Soulswallo's rocking the flights from 3000 miles away on the ground (thanks), and only a little to flying JetBlue. As DirectTv does not provide us with the luscious wasteland that is VH1Classic, I'm happy to spend 6 hours goggling at the fact that someone actually made a video for Fishbone's "Party at Ground Zero". Oh, and people who were of ogling age in 1978? Please email me. Seriously. Email me and explain what the appeal of Rod Stewart was. In his heyday, he looked like a cross between those Quizno's mousemonkeys and a bathmat in drag. Were the drugs really that powerful back then, mama?

So. Much. Good. Stuff. There's really no way to condense all the goodness of four days of the unleashed crazy paganism of Pantheacon onto one small screen; there's no way really to express any of it in text. I feel about it like a lot of folks describe Burning Man: you don't know unless you go.
Nonetheless, here are my highlights:

--The Hot Girl-on-Girl Wedding Action was amazingly beautiful and moving, from the temple where it was conducted, to the expression on Jen's mom's face, to the atmosphere of love and positivity that charged the room, to the fact that half of the wedding video was shot sideways. Also, the fact that the LA Times had an article on the hundreds of gay marriages taking place that weekend after SF opened the floodgates was just the thing for any conscientious objectors.

--Spending time with the Evil Twin, talking her out of creepy little dolls with creepy little faces, and ill-advised home decorations.

--Everything about the Spirit Guides workshop.

--Only at Pantheacon:

"In my tradition, we associate the blade with fire."
"What's your tradition?"
"I can't tell you that, but we believe the blade is fire."
"Why?"
"I can't tell you that either."

--Running into Soulswallo in the lobby despite the best efforts of our brokenesque cellphones.

--Unintentional comedic relief provided by the yoga and spirit workshop ("Well, I read this book, and I did it this way..." "Yeah? Well I read this other book, and it said to do it this other way." "My book says you're both wrong! Don't make me throw Sarasvati at you!") and its abbreviated sun salutation, double-time.

--Jen's mom and her amazing pottery (which I promptly forgot in their car, because I am a crazy doofus. Boo, me).

--The divine energy of a place where crone women are not just respected, but they get the best seats at all the workshops, and gofers who bring them water during hot flashes.

--The costumes. Jen's mom's reactions to the costumes. Jen's mom's questions about the costumes, asked directly of the wearers.

--The woman who came up to me after the yoga and spirit debacle and told me I have prickly energy. Yes, yes I do. Thanks for noticing.

It rocked. I'd do it again, but this time with more costuming (Pantheacon, not the HGOGWA. Although I'm not saying I wouldn't do the HGOGWA again because it was really awesome and I'm just going to end this train wreck of a digression abruptly now) and an earlier arrival, to soak up the full goodness.

Now though, if you'll excuse me, my desk is on fire. I mean really, being away from work for two full days?? Scandal.

"From what I can glean from some of my hate mail and the general conservative outcry, here is what the homophobes fear about same-sex marriage: bestiality. That is, they are utterly terrified that same-sex marriage is a slippery slope of permissive debauchery that will lead to the utter breakdown of social rules and sexual mores, to people being allowed to marry their dogs, or their own dead grandmothers, or chairs, or three hairy men from Miami Beach ... You know, just like how giving blacks the right to own their own land meant we had to give the same rights to house plants and power tools, or how granting women the right to vote meant it was a slippery slope until we gave suffrage to feral cats and sea slugs and rusty hubcaps."

--Mark Morford, "Now *That's* San Francisco"