Just when it seemed everyone was feeling sleepy, I asked if people would prefer to stay here or rather head out to the beach. Most people were in favor of the beach, so we went. Usually, I plan a somewhat pagan-inspired ritual for Friday night, but this year was a lot more freeform. We went to the Sutro Baths in San Francisco (see here http://www.nps.gov/goga/clho/suba/ for info) and spent some time in a long dark tunnel, listening to the surf and the guitar someone played, and reconnecting to self and source. Then we did some more exploring of the ruins, flashlights in hand. We saw a boat off the coast, and despite our hopes that it was filled with drugs and making a delivery for just us, we watched it drift further and further away.

When we returned home, most of the group went to bed, leaving a few of us up to discuss everything from political theory to silly news stories. Our last two participants arrived around then (having driven from Los Angeles!), so we took the time to welcome them.

KallistiCon takes a fair bit of energy for me to take care of, so I elected to http://www.geocities.com/nconner23/bwcards.html here). I had some cards from a couple of years ago that I showed off, and let people loose with supplies to make more.

Then we did the informal workshops that worked so well last year. A number of participants have various projects that they've been working on (either recently or in the past), and I gave them the space to share their works with us. Shotgun Jeb told us about the book he recently published (and gave me a copy, w00t!) and about the publishing process, David/Lemon/Jason/Whatever passed around copies of his zine. Other people spoke about their various projects. Then we had a big discussion on the future of KallistiCon and Discordian.com's networking skills, which yielded some really fruitful results. The plan is to do some more talking tomorrow, at which point I'll send out some more email and other communications.

So, that's where we're at so far. Everyone seems to be having a great time. I know I'm really enjoying myself.

For now, I'm off to go play 1000 Blank White Cards. I'll send you another update tomorrow.

All hail Discordia!

--St. Mae, www.discordian.com

*****

Date: Tue, 27 Jul 2004 03:40:13 -0700
From: KallistiCon Announcements
To: stmae@discordian.com
Subject: KallistiCon Announcements: Saturday, Sunday, and Onward

Hail Eris!

My apologies for not sending this out yesterday, but I'm still dead tired, and I was utterly lacking in eloquence yesterday.

After I wrote to you last, we spent a couple of hours playing 1000 Blank White Cards. Fox won the game with the key card that allowed him to set an exchange rate between dollars and points, thus making everyone else in the game owe him thousands in cash. Or, something like that. Also, myriad thanks to Shotgun Jeb for proving his evolutionary fitness through the simple yet deep phrase, "FISH PANTS!"

Once the game had ended, we set things up to screen a DVD copy of Maybe Logic (see here http://www.maybelogic.com/ for details), an excellent documentary about Robert Anton Wilson that came out sometime last year. The film is a good introduction to RAW's theories, and while it has a couple of flaws, on the whole it's very good. (Personally, I really enjoyed the old footage of Wilson in the 70s, and the interviews with Tom Robbins, another personal hero and canonized Saint in the Church of No Dead Saints.) I'd seen the movie before, so I spent my time cooking and preparing for the party.

After dinner, party guests started to arrive. It's seemed to work well in the past to invite all my local friends over for a party during KallistiCon; it gives con attendees a chance to talk to more people, and seems to provide a good outlet for ideas to cross-pollinate. Not to mention the silliness.

One party highlight was the light spinning. A few of my friends have various plastic light-up things that they spin to create amazing patterns, and I had asked them to bring their light rigs with them. They spun on the grass in my backyard, looking a whole lot like the top six images on this page http://www.docbug.com/Pictures/firespinning/ (that's the website of one of the spinners in question). There was no fire this time, just various colored lights. They were mesmerizing, very lovely.

A party tradition at my house is that everyone gets silly nametags. The nametags serve a couple of purposes. Practically, I use them to ensure that I meet everyone who attends (sometimes people bring friends that I haven't met, and this makes sure that I get to talk to them for at least a couple of minutes), and I also save the backs to count how many people came to the party (51). The silly side of them is that they are pre filled out with random silly phrases so all I have to do is write in someone's name; since my parties are often composed of people who haven't met before, this seems to be a good way to get people to talk to each other.

Some examples:

"Hello my name is _____ and I know where the bodies are hidden."
"Hello my name is _____ the other other white meat."
"Hello my name is _____ have you seen my panther?"

Some of these nametags have led people to very interesting experiences. At one of my first parties, someone got one that said "Hello my name is Angela, may I wear your pants?" ...and in fact, she later wound up trading pants with another guest.

Well, this party was no exception to such silliness. Ted is a giant grinning teddy bear, a man of great silliness, and I found the perfect nametag for him. "Hello my name is Ted, peeler of bananas. (With my toes.)" His immediate response was to ask if I had any bananas. You can see where this is going. After thoroughly washing both feet in the bathroom sink, he sat down in the livingroom to try out his new hobby. Ted is surprisingly agile with his feet, and at the crowd's request, even ate the freshly-peeled banana in a pose that could cause yoga teachers to quit their jobs in envy.

The last guests left around five, so I slept pretty hard. Again, other con attendees were up before I was, but it was a lazy morning by any standard. We'd originally planned an afternoon absurdist movie protest, but given the ammount of energy we all had, there didn't seem to be a lot of enthusiasm. Instead, we said goodbye to the first attendees to leave and headed up north to Emperor Norton's grave in Daly City. After we paid our respects, we drove to Balboa Park in San Francisco for a quick picnic and bid farewell to another person.

Returning to the house, it was officially naptime. The con as such was over, though the six of us remaining planned to later attend the ritual self-produced funeral of the Dalai Lemon (and we did, and it was lovely).

So... there you go. This morning, I had a final conversation about the future of KallistiCon and some other project ideas we'd come up with, so you'll probably be hearing some about this in the next couple of weeks (the seperate email list for people who have been to KallistiCons of the past will be hearing more). It seems like a few things will be getting off the ground soon, though I'm not going to say too much until I have something to show for it.

A huge thanks to everyone who helped make this year's KallistiCon wonderful. I really enjoyed myself and feel like I've managed to connect to the essential community I'm trying to create out of this, and I hope I'm not the only one. It was great having you all this year, and for those that couldn't make it, I look forward to seeing you next year. There should be sparse announcements on this list for the next several months, but we've decided to set a date for KallistiCon 2005 by New Year's, so you all can start planning early.

All hail Discordia!

--St. Mae, www.discordian.com