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(Pope-Received
Transmission #004 In The (B.M.F. Class)
by Pope Fez, Pope Of All Pagans, O(hd)a-d(O)-D(a)-d(AY).
And what excites a true Pagan's heart more than the excitement from the
realization that Festival Season will soon draw ne'er, uh, near? So to bring an
early taste of such, I, Pope Fez, your Pope, now bring to you this
"Festival Checklist" in order that each and every one of my crazed,
loin-cloth'ed Heathen Children will Be Prepared for the rigours of camping, or
at least be somewhat more prepared on the safe side of a "Body Found In
Woods - Gnawed By Squirrels" headline in the local paper.
Make sure before you head off to one of the various worthy Gatherings in
your area to bring each item as specified on the 'List. If you do not, Your Pope
bears no responsibility to your fate while entrenched amongst the poplars. (To
be honest, I don't bear responsibility for you even if you do bring all the crap I'm
about to spout now, but "there ya go".)
****BEGIN PRINTING****
POPE
FEZ'S "21 THINGS TO BRING" OFFICIAL FESTIVAL CAMPING LIST
(Ignore at own peril. All items on following list must
be acquired
during
suitable postive karmic moonphase, even if required to
forcibly
enter into retailer's during Saturn in hemisphere of Libra.)
1.
A MAP TO GET THE HELL OUT OF CIVILIZATION AND TO THE FESTIVAL.
Nothing
starts off a particular festival on a more sour note than when you discover
you're on the wrong road or province or country when making the traditional
Pagan roadtrip to a campsite. And getting information from the "Normals"
along the way never really works, either, as your questions of "Excuse me?
Do you know where "Witchy Gathering '03" is around here?" to any
random gas station attendant never leads to calm social discourse.
With
the magic of the Internet, ever Festival should have a map you can print, or
have a friend print, for you. It is crucial for a Pagan Man to bring the map,
since it is an inviolable Men's Mystery to never ask for directions when lost.
After
reaching your Festival site destination, DO NOT EAT THE MAP! I realize many
Festival Organizers specifially state such orders on their flyer instructions,
but you will need the map to get back to civilization. Why do Festival
Organizers tell you to eat the map? Well, it gives them a laugh, is the real
truth, mate.
2.
TENT
Fairly
obvious, unless you have some pretty creative strategies in mind. Bear you, some
campsites have cabins, but it's best to leave such dwellings to the Pagans in
our community who have health issues. My own personal health issue is my total
inability to find a tent spot that doesn't
have a hidden 3-inch spike of rock the fourth vertebrae of my spine discovers
the first moment I lie down at 4:32 in the morning.
To
the more sexually active amongst us, bringing your own tent may not even be
necessary, since you'll be visiting so many other's. I'm sure that many of you
more vigorous Heathens, after the third or fourth night of a Festival and the
dozen-th tent, have glanced at your own personal unused tent through a thick
crust of other Pagans' bodily fluids and even wondered why you learned the word
"tent" in the first place.
The
basic guideline to visiting another's tent is this: women on the whole have
clean tents, men have tents that look like a typical bachelor's apartment
condensed into 1/1000ths of its size. This guideline doesn't hold true across
the board, of course; I've seen some Gay Activist Pagans' tents that were
spotlessly clean and downright domestic, with a color scheme that ensured you'd
never lose sight of it even if you were trying to find your eyeballs during a
moonless night.
Get
the largest tent you can afford. And a tarp to suspend over the tent for
rainfall or projectile vomiting from other Pagans.
3.
FLASHLIGHT
Not
that it will be of any actual help, of course, and if there's one item on this list you're going
to forget, well, a flashlight will be it. I personally make it a personal mark
of honour in forgetting to bring a flashlight to each and every Festival I
attend, since it affords me the chance to borrow and lose other's. Besides, the
state I usually get in, and 97% of all other Pagans, illuminating the path ahead
of us is just forewarning the inevitable oncoming tree, cliff, or horrified
witness(es).
If
the Goddess Herself intervenes and you do actually remember to bring an
"electric torch", be sure to follow the main standard rule of protocol
while using it to see ahead of you in the dark of night, i.e. shine it into
other Pagans' eyes while saying "Who's that? Who's that?" over and
over.
4.
FOOD
Nourishment
is important, vittles are good. Food can be downright overt sexual currency when
handled correctly. Make some Jamaican Blue coffee and Eggs Benedict in the
morning after the typical Heathen Bender, and the resultant zombie-like visitors
to your campsite will most likely hold still and quiet while you mount them.
Appropriate
food is anything you can jam onto a stick and hold over a fire, and, for best
results, set on fire itself. Marshmallows, hot dog weiners, bread, steak, Pop
Tarts (please take a moment and visualize for full effect, with speckled
raspberry frosting), whole chickens, panda flank to enrage the vegetarians, and
slowly inflating cans of beans held on with duct tape are all suitable.
5.
SLEEPING BAG
Always
handy, in and outside of a tent. Get a fairly thick one, as even hot summer days
turn into incredibly freezing nights. Thin sleeping bags are useless; a thick,
insulated one is the way to go. Unfortunately, there's a drawback: there's
nothing like the hideous realization that one has to get out of a toasty warm
thick sleeping bag into a -21C windchill night in order to urinate and shiver
like a dog with terminal rectal ticks in the merciless cold.
Sleeping
bags are also useful for picnics and sandless beaches, but they are particularly
useful for Pagan workshops. They'll keep your butt comfortable, and if the
workshop becomes particularly boring, you can zip up and nod off. Not exactly
polite, but the others can hold their circle over your softly snoring form
anyways.
6.
COLEMAN STOVE
Don't
go with any other brand; these guys know how to make stoves. I'm always a bit
skittish lighting anything with flammable gas softly erupting out of it under
pressure, even myself, but I've never had a Coleman stove blow up on me and wipe
the face from my skull.
There's
many varities of Coleman stoves, starting from a small stand-alone model with a
teeny-tiny heating element, to a full "Rajun Cajun" 27-burner range
with optional skillet and livestock debuffer.
Usually the two-element style is suitable for almost any campsite, one
element in constant use for boiling hot water for coffee and the other for food
that keeps slipping off your stick.
If
you're American and reading this list, the Administrators of WiccanFest have
asked me to ask you in an official capacity to stop using Coleman stoves, or
indeed any other stoves, inside your tents.
7.
SUN-SCREEN
Again,
this item may have variable efficancy. Some Pagans handle the Sun well, others
burn faster than if they were surrounded by a burning pyre with chanting enraged
Christians around 'em.
Get
a sun-block with a suitable rating, which is something like "Level Omega
Rays 187 Rads" I believe. Slather it on every area of your body, even the
covered Naughty Bits. Pagan Men, Take Note: between flapping your 'nads over an
exuburious bonfire by night and the furious rays of the Sun by day, your "unbaptised
babies" need all the protection they can get. Oh, sure, you may enjoy lying
on the beach with your slowly twitching genitalia on display in order to impress
the gender(s) of your choice, but the resultant pain may make you scream
"Jesus" more than the most fundamental Christian.
8.
"GHETTO BLASTER"
Or,
personal mobile stereo system. Make sure it's a loud one, oh say, capable of at
least 200+ decibals or more.
Now,
I don't want you to play any music on it, mind you. Save the sucker to broadcast
recordings of Tibetan monks chanting, at three in the morning. To those Pagans
who've never heard of such, it will utterly terrify them in their inevitable
altered state. Heathens "in the know" will sway drunkenly on the path
and mutter, "...cool...".
I've
always pondered the effects of other recordings on the Heathen Masses myself,
but Your Pope dislikes experiments on the Lady's Seething Masses. Not that I've
never Not Done So, mind you...but I don't think anybody
would appreciate me playing the stabby-stabby violins-screaming sound from the
soundtrack to "Psycho" over and over...or a silver ridgeback gorilla's
attempts at the song, "Inna-Gadda-Da-Vida", by Iron Butterfly. No one
appreciates real music these days, it seems.
9.
A HAT
It's
amazing how many of us go around without suitable head protection. Think of your
brain as if it were in a cool deep fat fryer; all it needs is some heat to
bounce and jump around.
I've
seen Pagans faint from sun-stroke, folks, and it's not pretty. First they start
all a-twitchin' and a-jerkin' (even more than usual), their eyes roll up, and
they fall down harder than Elvis off his ceramic throne. Of course, then I panic
and start screaming like a cheerleader, which doesn't help the situation much in
the first place, but it usually draws a large enough crowd to loom over the
passed out Pagan and cut off the surrounding air supply as everyone just stares
and says, "....cool...".
10.
REGULAR CLOTHES AND CEREMONIAL WEAR.
Face
it, regular clothes like denim jeans and thick shirts are the most sensible for
camping, but who wants to attend a festival where all the Pagans look like
slightly deranged lumberjacks? So don't be afraid to wear a robe, or suitable
religious wear. Remember that your robe Will Snag On Something, the more likely
the faster velocity you are moving down the forest path.
Robes
are very good if you're an Exhibitionist Pagan, and enjoy startling/making horny
any Pagans sitting across you from a circle. But remember that you're sitting on
a forest floor, and various insects creep and crawl aboust' the lichen. And
big-toothed carnivorous gophers.
11.
CONDOMS, LUBRICANTS, ETC.
With
so much rutting going on at a typical Pagan festival, it's only common sense to
play it safe while slapping our respective mucous membranes together in
nihilistic frantic couplings under a blood moon. I'm sure every Pagan here
practices Safe Sex, but hahahhahhaa...ok, I'm sorry. Anyways....it really isn't
a topic to joke about. Your Pope always encourages you to "wrap your
repro's" when inflicting them on others. Remember: when you sleep with a
Pagan, you're sleeping with every Pagan they've slept with...and they might
belong to some crazed constantly orgy-istic faith like the Church Of All Worlds
or traditional Mormons or something.
12.
SOAP and DEODORANT, "Earth-Friendly" variety.
This
isn't going out to anyone in particular, but for Goddess' SAKE FOLKS! Doesn't it
occur to SOME of you that after three days and nights in a forest while
sweating, dancing, fornicating, and screaming when seeing a bug in the outhouse
that your personal odour may not be, ahem, shall we say, the most becoming?
Fortunately, on the whole, I've observed a fairly high degree of personal
hygiene amongst the community-at-large, except for the occasional soul who
acquires a body painting they really, really like and refuse to wash or even put on clothes for
eight monthes, even when the festival is over and they get back to the office.
And
always remember to buy biodegradable products, of course. Nothing enrages Pagans
more than seeing iceberg-sized puffs of "Old Spice Extra Thick 'N
Foamy" shaving cream floating on a Festival lake while you whistle and
shave your entire body. Any natural products store will stock
"earth-friendly" soaps and shaving cream which, face it, smell like
crap and don't work at all, but it's better than being held down under the water
by pissed-off Heathens.
13.
GARBAGE BAGS
Always
Take In What You Take Out, and that includes the prone, unconcious bodies of
your fellow Coveners. Throwing your half-full Slush-Puppie cup into the thick of
the woods and saying, "it's fertilizer, right?" just doesn't work.
We're
Pagans, we have a particular point to make in cleaning up the Mother's woods
when we're finished camping. Nobody wants to see torn underwear hanging off the
sacred oak trees, even if they're pink and frilly (the underwear, not the
trees). Well, scratch that...I could name at least three Traditions out there
that would like to see underwear hanging off trees, but that's not the point of
this List.
14.
SOMETHING TO DISTRACT THE HYPER HEATHEN KIDDIES FOR YOUR OWN PERSONAL SAFETY
Think
some Pagan children seem to lack a certain discipline in upbringing? Just give
them the expanded near-limitless of an innocent forest and it's defenseless
horrified flora 'n fauna to show you a real example of what "out of
control" is all about. Think
I'm joking? You try waking up to something annoyed and wriggling in a seven-year
old's hands to the words of "Look what I found! I think it's peeing!"
from a deep, health-restoring nap. And remember that children, as compared to
the adult, basically have no energy limits
whatsoever, and feeding them trail mix with Hershey's Kisses just ain't a
healthful or sane compromise, Pagan parents. In fact, any foodstuffs over the
caloric value of a dry cracker tends to make any child blur along a forest path
to eventually burn up in the atmosphere horizontally. And they usually aim the
top of their little pointed hard skulls right into your sunburned/bonfire-baked
'nads. Guess they should work on kidscreen to go along with the sunscreen, eh?
15.
NOT - REPEAT - NOT YOUR HOUSEPET
Again...what
are some of you thinking?? I expect better from Pagans than to see them bring
their house-raised French Poodle into the woods and expect them to have any
chance of handling the change in environment in a calm, well-adjusted manner.
Aforementioned French Poodles have no concept of what, oh, let's say, a grizzly
bear is all about, really...while the grizzly bear will just be annoyed that the
hors-d'oeuvre in this instance turned out to be noisy and hairy and a lot of
work for just one mouthful.
And
housecats don't work out well, either. Ever tried getting a cat out of a tree?
Ever tried getting a cat out of 1,202,562 trees? Oh, you'll still be trying by
the time of the first snowfall, even if you own just the one cat.
Budgies,
no. Fish, not unless you plan to combine them with the aforementioned Coleman
Stove and/or stick-over-the-fire, no. Pythons, no. In fact, the only pet I can
think of that would be of any use are those big St.Bernard dogs with the little
kegs on their necks that find you and pull your unconcious, barely-breathing
body to safety. To a Pagan, an invaluable pet, indeed.
16.
BODY PAINT 'N LIQOUR
Now,
if you don't drink that's your choice, and I respect that. But there's no excuse
for not bringing an excuse to get your hands on other Pagans' naked bodies, and
that excuse is body paint. Tell the Large-Breasted Heathen in front of you that
you need a suitable canvass to practice your "art" upon, and at the
very least it's a conversation starter. Never cross any boundaries, of course,
and this includes physical boundaries, i.e. saying "I'm going to paint your
lower inner colonic chakra a pleasant purple! Now take a deep breath!" to
the unprepared always leads to unpleasant arborial confrontations.
17.
UFO REPELLANT
I've
seen 'em, you've seen 'em, we've all seen the pesky lights in the sky. I
personally wish the damn things would go away, or at least have the common
courtesy of buying me a romantic dinner before a good probing.
Good
UFO repellants are the flashlight you've forgotten (see above), key-chain laser
pointers, fog horns, 200-decibal recordings of Tibetan monk chanting (et. al.),
yodelling, or getting anyone near who is sober.
18.
AT LEAST ONE TOWEL
Always
handy, "Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy"-conventional wisdom or not.
Particularly useful on sandy beaches, so bring a very large one that will allow
one or more other Sun-Dappled Naked Pagans(tm) to join you upon, in order to
coat their bodies with that gamma-ray suncrap I talked about (et. et. al.).
Towels
are, of course, useful for drying off with, but I've never seen a Pagan actually
use one to do so. They always seem to haul themselves out of the lake and walk
along the forest path back and forth saying "Hi! I've just been to the
lake!" over and over until they dry off, at which point they repeat the
process until sundown.
19.
A DRUM OR OTHER MUSICAL INSTRUMENT
That's
assuming you can play the damn thing in the first place, of course. And, hell,
if you can't even play the radio, just bring something small and easily
hand-off-a-ble like a set of bongo drums or, better yet, a Rainstick. Rainsticks
are the Goddess-sent gift to the rhythmically-challenged in the Pagan community:
by "playing" one, which involves the complicated process of turning it
over one-hundred-and-eighty degrees while assuming an impressive pose and
sticking the chest out in defiance, any
Pagan can take part in any song or
chant. Note that said Rainstick also works well when the Drummers say "You
Suck!" in taunting when you turn your 'stick over at the only inappropriate
moment in said song or chant, as you can brain them well and truly good with a
healthy forearm swing. And that makes a truly impressive sound.
20.
SOMETHING SPECIAL FOR THE BARDIC CIRCLE JUDGES (AND HOST).
If
you're talented or not, it always helps your case and artistic presentation by
giving a small gift to the judges who run the Bardic Circle. And, of course,
since said Judges are often part-n-parcel of the organization of the particular
Festival itself, it's nice to show your appreciation. At the very least, it'll
get them to not grow annoyed when you decide to sing the theme song to "The
Love Boat" for the fifth time around.
Something
for the Bardic Circle Host is always appreciated, and I'm talking from personal
experience here, being Your Perfect Host And Pope, Pope Fez. But I'd like to
address all of those of you out there who think it's "Real Funny" and
"A Hoot" to feed Pope Fez 160-proof rum during said Bardic Circles, in
order to see Your Pope weeble and wobble. Feeding me liqour in order to turn me
into some weird Arborial Home Entertainment System maybe makes some of you laugh,
but realize I have very little self-restraint to begin with, and I'm pretty well
At Your Mercy in whatever you decide to pour down my throat, liqour-wise, that
is. I know, I know...not the most noble trait in The Pope Of All Pagans, but I
never said I was perfect, dammit, I just said I was Your Pope.
21.
A MAP TO GET BACK TO CIVILIZATION WHEN FESTIVAL IS OVER.
Realize,
of course, that every Festival must end (as must every List), and You Must Go
Home. It's the sad truth, but one that must be faced with bravery and fortitude.
Of
course, at the end of some festivals we're damn happy to get back to, just to
get a hot shower, Pop Tarts not cooked on a stick, and a comfy bed. But we all
know the particular heartache of leaving a particularly Good Festival with a
capital G 'n F. So why add to that heartche by getting Really, Truly Lost when
sojourning back to the city? Do you really need to pull into a gas station
wearing only a loincloth and warrior markings on your face just to ask the
directions to Arnprior? The gas station attendant who you rattled on the way up
to Festival doesn't need the additional shock, and neither do you. Remember, not
everyone is a Pagan, folks...and the weird looks you may get while still in your
"Green State" may only be preludes to local constabularies and rubber
hoses filled with sand across the floating ribs. So bring that map with you, the
one I told you not to eat, the one
that allowed you to drag your Heathen Ass to the Festival in the first place,
and do the Normals and all of us a favor and get home safely
so you can look for your flashlight.
**** END PRINT ****
Bring
this sucker along with you to every Festival excursion, and you can't go wrong.
Hey, who thinks about you all the time, baby? That's right, Pope Fez does.
Blessed
Be,
POPE
FEZ
