This is going to sound like an awful pun, but I used to have a friend who would “celebrate” Pearl Harbor Day by going out and getting bombed on Kamikazes. Well until his liver went on strike for a few days after a bout of alcohol poisoning, then he switched to sushi. Still “celebrates” with over-consumption, just on California Rolls and gunkan-maki and sometimes some Tempura (I swear the dude would eat just about anything battered and deep-fried). I celebrated by going to a Christmas concert with Mrs. the Poet (she does not get the “unkillable badass” in her surname) and one of the tenants. We saw (and heard) a local group called the Vocal Majority, a barbershop chorus that started about the time my voice stabilized enough that I could get back into choir again as a second Bass, and has been going strong and getting better ever since. One thing I have in common with the VM (as they refer to themselves) is we have both performed with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. My performance was a Christmas concert with all the local High School choirs that was broadcast in SLC and northern Utah, theirs was a TV concert that was broadcast world-wide. Slliiiiggght bit of difference there. 😉 XD
I have been roped into writing two more services for SJF next year, one on 2/15 and the other on 3/29. I’m hoping they will accept my disability and allow me to just write the service and not have to perform it as well. Seriously, I haven’t done ANY public speaking since that day teaching a class where everything just vanished from my memory, including my name for a second. I could not remember what came next, nor could I remember what I had already said so that I could reconstruct the lesson from what I had given and knowing what had to be taught. I could not remember anything for a while. I mean sure my name(s) came back after a few seconds, and what day of the week after a few more seconds, and why I was standing in front of these people a few seconds after that so I was only doing my impression of a fish out of water less than a minute. That was still too long. I can still read a service, but it would be wooden and lack grace, even if I wrote it myself.
Anyway the first service has numerous ways I can go, a service about L’Amore on the day after Valentine’s Day paying homage to our patroness for the year Aphrodite, A chocolate ritual (the last chocolate ritual we did was for Mrs. the Poet’s and my 25th wedding anniversary, and two people were hospitalized from either chocolate toxicity or not taking enough insulin before the service (it has been a while), or something sappy for said wedding anniversary that will take place three days later… I’m thinking that a service in homage to Aphrodite would get me in less trouble. I have been asked if I could do a re-run on the coffee ritual, too, so that is a possibility.
The 3/29 ritual is also rife with possibility… I could do a fast-forward autobiography covering all the times I have done foolish things in my life, but I have a hard 90 minute time limit, so I would have to skip a large number of things, very foolish things, just for lack of time. A long time ago I did an Animaniacs-themed service involving the children invoking the elements as Yakko, Wakko, and their sister Dot as Air, Fire, and Water respectively and an adult representing the element of Earth as Hellooo Nurse! who went with them to light the actual candles as the child invoked the element. The youngest kid in that ritual was just entering K the fall of year of the ritual we did in the Spring, she’s now a freshman in High School… and now I just made myself feel decrepit. I have done several Bugs Bunny-Daffy Duck rituals and one Urusei Yatsura ritual featuring Ataru Moroboshi as the Japanese version of Wile E. Coyote. And I can tell the people doing the spell check on this browser are classic Anime fans because there are no red squiggles under any of the names I just typed. And the only reason I could remember Ataru Moroboshi is a friend sent me a link to some scanlated Lum manga recently.
So, should I rewrite the “Duck Amuck” service, or the Urusei Yatsura service, now that I can incorporate Hotei since we have a person who does that particular deity now since He won the patron auction a few years back. Or should I do a “Disasters in Fast forward” autobiography? Leave comments below with your votes.
PSA, Opus the unkillable badass Poet
Witch on a Bicycle 