wait…

::cerulean draws a rattling, painful breath::

…it’s…a lie…:: cough::
after the wedding …WonkoDSane strangled Hermetic in a…in a…j jealous rage, so Infinite burn killed him and everyone else. Come closer…

closer

I need you to do something for me.

::holds out a scarred, blood-spotted digital camera::

Cough… give that to Hard Copy, would you? Don’t ….don’t take less than a grand. …cough sputter…d’ya think you could pull this axe out of my head? I can’t find my legs. Where the FUCK is the Bactine?!

the ribs were worth it, though.

:: dies::





Damn, is it ever good to be out of that body. What a whiner. Why in my day, we didn’t even have legs.

In the spirit of allowing all ya'll who couldn't come to live vicariously, and those of us who witnessed the carnage to re-live it, I humbly offer these Impressions of a Noder at her first gathering.

Saturday

First Thought Upon Arrival: Ohmygod, we're going to die. Jurph, please don't try to park the car on the 45 degree incline. Thank you. Why are so many of the rooms here not-bathrooms? I always the knew the internet was stored in some guy’s basement in North Carolina. By all means, if you can’t cook naked, cook in a velvet suit. If I fell off of the back porch, I bet I wouldn’t stop until I got to bottom of the mountain. I’m never gonna remember everybody’s name. Jason really ought to be a noder – he has good taste in music. Check, infinite Burn: do not node the alphabet. Why does everyone seem to think I can read Russian? Strange things are afoot in the living room. For four glorious minutes, the cabin contained the most concentrated group of people who knew all the words to Its the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine) in all NC. Or at least we could all fake it. Bridges are for sissies. Bridges are also for painting. Spray paint fumes = not good for the thinking, but very good for the creepy atmosphere. Jethro Bodine just walked off into the woods after saying, “I’ll be right back,” without a hint of irony. He’s dead meat!! You go, Sunday Girl! Every dog has his day. And her seat. Does Teddy hate me? His name tag says he probably does. But he has good taste in shoes. It is a sad, sad thing, when people are either too tired or too drunk to Time Warp.

Sunday

Ohmygod we’re all going to die. No, wait, somebody just dropped something loudly in the kitchen. Ah. Becca not only makes a mean cookie, she also makes some most aggressive pancakes, and her eggs are downright belligerent. I’ve never seen chicken-porn before. I hope I never see it again. All I can say is, that was the longest conversation of my life. Goodbye, mailbox. Karmaflux has good taste in comedy troupes. Beer and Krispy Kremes is a lot better than it sounds. Bridges are also good for taking aerial pictures of large numbers of tired, half drunk, but happy noders. EATPOOPYOUCAT! At last! I finally feel like one of the group, but of course, now it’s time to go. Verdict: Gatherings are a Good Thing. At least, if I have to leave, I get to leave in the Starship Enterprise.

Many thanks to Czeano, for hosting the hootenanny.

PS - If you don't understand the first part of this w/u, please go back and read Infinite Burn's (very entertaining) version of events. Thank you.

And an excellent time was had by all.

Oh. Wait. If you're reading this node, you probably want more info than that.

First off, much thanks is owed to czeano for providing the site and taking care of logistics, panamaus for coordinating food, all those who aided in the cooking (Becca comes to mind, but there were others as well), and pretty much everybody who helped out over the course of the weekend. Without you guys, we'd all have been stranded somewhere off the Blue Ridge Parkway, without direction or food, slowly wasting away from hunger until the Park Police came to find us and haul us all away for C!ing a bridge.

Well, maybe not. But thank you anyway.

A log of the weekend's activities, from my perspective:

  • Friday
    • loaded up truck in Richmond, drove to Blacksburg, unloaded truck at my townhouse, drove to Sparta, NC
    • after some nervous driving up and down the street, parked on an incline. The wisdom of this would appear much more questionable once the sun rose again, but for the moment seemed okay.
    • arrived, to find Texas crowd already there, as well as some Ohio noders, Void_Ptr e marito, and several others. Was greeted with "Hokies suck!" by brassmule; apparently his car saw a lot of obviously Virginia Tech-affiliated cars on his way down. This was understandable, as I was far from the only Hokie returning home that day.
    • commiserated with Kit Lo about problems getting women. He reminds me of a friend of mine, except about 3 times as bad.
    • marveled at kenata's amazing volume of negative-rep nodes
    • greeted qeyser and traded a cappella notes; my group sang with his group in March 2000, and we (along with czeano, Jurph and gf, cerulean, and maybe 8ldj too?) had therefore partied together at Dongtar as well. Most of these former MNs and Dongtar partiers were to arrive the next day.
    • finally crashed out at about 2 AM. Many others decided they could sleep when they're dead and got maybe an hour, max.
  • Saturday
    • woke up, consumed breakfast, went outside to notice that my truck was not in such a safe place after all -- the sideways slope of the hill was seriously worrying me. Fortunately, czeano found that his neighbors would not be in this weekend, and thus their driveway was open for parking.
    • watched the opening of a monstrous ostrich egg. The size and necessary effort must be seen to be believed.
    • witnessed the arrival of WonkoDSane, karmaflux, Tera (kfx's GF), and Sunday Girl. SG almost immediately found a couch, identified it as hers, and spent two-thirds of her weekend on said couch. Sometimes I wish I was a dog.
    • the afternoon's potential activities: canoeing, hiking, or sitting around. I chose option 3.
    • Ohio noder set #2 arrived, bringing Jurph and gf, cerulean and a co-worker of Jurph. Jurph began making transliterated nametags in the Cyrillic alphabet for many present; the most involved had to be that of jaubertmoniker. Renewed acquaintances with the MNs who might have met me; for the non-MNs who might not have, a quick hint at my lacrosse monologue from the T'ph/MN show refreshed memories. Text available upon request. The blue drink also arrived with this group.
    • While waiting for the ribs to cook, feasted on mean cookies upon the arrival of Becca and Zaph.
    • Charles Vergos Rendezvous pork ribs for dinner. Mmmmmmm. Meanwhile, I was getting considerably less than sober.
    • C!ing the bridge -- see the pictures as they become available. There were also many experiments with the resonance of the tunnel; it was determined that a low G was on the resonant frequency. Attempts were made to sing, but nobody had any music. We got maybe 2-3 pages into the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's Messiah before people's knowledge tapered off and the mostly-male group got tired of the tenor and bass-dominated sound.
    • Bill And Ted's Excellent Adventure and the Rocky Horror Picture Show were shown upon return from the tunnel; both were considerably enhanced by the drunkenness and Xylene inhalation that had taken place immediately prior. Meanwhile, sing-alongs were happening on the porch.
    • "The bad thing has happened" -- czeano informed us that the water had run out. Later, this was found not to be the case, but the assembled noderage was somewhat worried for a while.
  • Sunday
    • Awoke to the smell of Becca's mean pancakes. Tasty.
    • Watched a PBS video entitled The Natural History of the Chicken. The director must be one sick, sick man, but there's no way he's as sick as some of the people in this documentary.
    • The State was watched immediately afterwards.
    • Groups wandered down to the bridge to admire their handiwork, most in a less-drunken state than the previous night. After a while, the whole group headed down for pictures; qeyser attempted to scale the tunnel wall, but failed; eventually, it was determined that the best way to the Parkway was through the roughage. Pictures were taken, though many complained about having to stare directly into the sun to look at the camera.
    • The exodus begins; I left probably an hour later, having fought yet another battle to get my truck out of the neighbors' driveway (since I wasn't bright enough to just back out the way I came... nooooo). Returned to Blacksburg about 5 PM, after stopping at the World's Greasiest KFC in Sparta for lunch and a grocery store to stock up on Cheerwine before returning to Virginia.
Much fun was had by all... or at least me. Enjoyed meeting everybody and having these people suddenly turn from a bunch of electrons on my screen into 3-dimensional beings.

Major props to czeano (however the fuck you pronounce that...) for the rad time! the cabin was beautiful, the scenery was scenic and the beer was copious. it was truly wonderful and heartwarming to meet you all. here's my reccolection of what happened:


friday, 17 august

i left work early, as i wasn't doing anything. arrived back at the fort and started thinking about what all i needed to take. i paged panamaus to let him know i was home. he called a short while later and i agreed to pick up some tomatoes for him and lots of beer for me. after rounding up a case of beer (Pabst Blue Ribbon and Coors), i arrived back home around 16:00 local time. panamaus arrived shortly thereafter and he convinced me that we should take his car instead of my car. and he would let me drive.

my god! he's met me in person for all of five minutes and he's already handing over his car keys!

i hurriedly threw some random shit in a few bags and picked up the cooler full of beer and started shoving it in the car. after moving my car back into the garage (which is a hell of a feat, if you've never seen my garage or driveway), panamaus took a lap around the block and picked me up. i settled back into the grey leather driver's seat of the long, low black bullet and hurried off to get caught in the afternoon rush hour traffic.

traffic wasn't so bad, especially with the lively, engaging conversation and the awesome music. and the car. while i very much prefer manual tranmissions over automatic transmissions, this was an excellent machine. Big 'ol honkin' American LT-1 V8, tinted windows and it just begged to go faster. We soon settled on a cruising speed of about 85 mph and sped off away from the sunset.

and then i almost ran it out of gas.

now i'm no idiot. usually. i can read a gas gauge better than the average bear. but this gauge doesn't fuck around. when the low fuel light comes on, it really means it. we sputtered into a gas station just outside of Charlotte and made OPEC happy.

More music, beer and conversation found us listening to Johnny Cash while winding up the mountain road towards Sparta. i realized that i had driven this road before to go camping before and that it was going to be beautiful at the cabin. i wasn't disappointed. the dirt road was spotted, the hairpin turn negotiated and the horn blown while in the tunnel. the mess of cars in the driveway made it very easy to spot. i let panamaus park his car as i couldn't see dick through the tinted windows at night.

so we got out and met people. lots of people. czeano, Infinite Burn, Void_ptr (& hubby), JP, Chihuahua Grub, Pete, Wendy, Hermetic, Tandex, Jaubertmoniker, ccunning, Zot-fot-piq and lots of other people. it was fucking rad. and then i started drinking. and it was good.

that night was mainly spent meeting people, drinking beer and burning new neural pathways...nickname, real name, face, personality, WUs. nickname, real name, face, personality, WUs.

there was someone else named Ted there! (plus or minus a d...). now this was really cool...an established noder that i mostly shared a real name with! all i had to do was hang out near him and every time someone called either of us by name, we would both ! the hilarity was endless! It was good to be reunited with jessicapierce and ccunning again. Hermetic drinks really really really good liquor. And he shares, since he's such a nice guy. Wow, smooth tequila. Damn fine martini as well. Tandex and i talked about tattoos, as he has a beautiful one on his calf (and i have two).

after much meeting, greeting and confusion, i crawled off to bed, round about 2 am.


saturday, 18 august

i woke up and xWakawaka was there. wtf?! it's early, damnit! whatever. i located a beer and started off my morning right. WonkoDSane, Karmaflux and duffski soon arrived and more greeting and meeting was in order. i eyed the right rear tire on his van and decided to annex it. hey, i was doing my part for the water restrictions. by the time the weekend was over, there was no way anyone else could claim that wheel.

A frisbee was located and the road was commandeered. playing frisbee while drinking beer is hard, but i gave it my best shot, as did WonkoDSane. Karmaflux, xWakawaka, Zack, Dann, jaubertmoniker, Kenata and a host of others got some play time in as well. many noders headed off for parts unknown, but we were all content with playing in the road and jumping over the ditch. beer, frisbee, piss on the tire. hunger soon overtook us, so we headed in for some sammiches. and more beer. i washed some dishes and tried to help keep everything neat.

a while later, WonkoDSane, Kenata and i headed down to Sparta to go to the liquor store. Some good 'ol boys reminisced to us while WonkoDSane bought vodka and i purchased Wild Turkey. we stopped to take a picture of the WCOK sign and to get cigarettes on the way back. many prime frisbee playing spots were noted.

soon after we got back, a ninja-stealth frisbee mission was assembled and we packed into the Minivan-of-death. a beautiful mountainside vista delighted the eyes as czeano, WonkoDSane, Jason(?), Karmaflux and i amused ourselves by throwing the discs into the weeds, alleged deer poop or well out of reach. quote: "don't worry about it, the red one is closer". czeano was quite the retriever of poorly-aimed throws from me. Jason(?) practiced his stoic catches. Karmaflux showed us what the hustle was all about and WonkoDSane amazed us with his smoking multitasking. i mainly amused everyone by stepping on thistle (of course in my bare feet!) and proving WonkoDSane's crybaby "lowest part of the hill" excuse wrong, as Karmaflux and czeano can attest to.

we returned to the cabin and i took a much needed shower and changed into my party dress. you didn't fucking belive me, did you? i wrote what i was going to wear in the gathering node...western shirt, Liberty Overalls and steel-toe boots. what did i wear? right. exactly that. and you all acted suprised...

everyone was getting dolled up for the evening. ccunning was in his velvet, panamaus was looking very spiffy, WonkoDSane had the fez and jacket and Void_ptr sported the bootylicious leather pants. Infinite Burn (quite the statement in his "Homo Depot" shirt) lent me his machete to complete my outfit. and my, it really worked. beautifully.

RIBS. those were the best fucking ribs i've ever eaten. whoa, shit, they were good. panamaus, your cooking was delectible. much respect. ccunning and czeano also deserve props for the wonderful food. and the ostrich, of course.

with dinner firmly out the way, it was time to start drinking. out came the bottle of Wild Turkey 101. i started drinking out of a glass with ice, but the mountain man in me soon took over and i started drinking straight out of the bottle and sharing with everyone that wanted some, which was mainly just Karmaflux, although i think Chihuahua Grub had a taste as well.

quote of the night: me: "Hey Kurt - want some bourbon? (*swig*)
Kurt: yeah (*swig*)

and most of that bottle met it's demise that way. there was also graffiti, lots of pictures, the weird-oil-lamp-hippe-color thing (which was way cool), more bourbon, hanging out and generally having a good time.


sunday, 19 august

woke up, drank a beer. and lots of water. Becca, who indeed makes a mean cookie also makes some mean pancakes while wearing her purple pants. stylin'!
people slowly packed up and started trickling away. i talked to Karmaflux and duffski, plotting my coming to Nashville to hang with them and the Wonkoalition, of which i think i'm now a member. A crazy documentary on chickens was watched. Karmaflux and i killed the last remaining Wild Turkey. another shower was taken and a nap was commenced while everyone else played EATPOOPYOUCAT. panamaus and i finally made our way back to the fort that night, where he headed on back home.

y'all are awesome. thanks!

Alright, so lets gets review here what I had intended to do on the nature trail to hell:{snip!}

And these are the things that I hope to accomlish.

{unsnip!}

And this is where we stand now:


Ok, so I got almost all of it. And I did tell Jared fuck himself. Well not really – I said it under my breath – because, really he’s such a nice guy and how could I just go up to him and say Fuck you, Jared?

And on the list of things-that-I-did-that-were-not-on-the-list-of-things-that-I-wanted-to-do:

  • Watch panamaus cook , Drink with Hermetic, Form an elite canoe-based Appalachian water rescue squad with brassmule and Play geetar with xWakawaka
  • Almost drive my new car into czeano’s house
  • Eat yummy Ostrich gamete
  • Inhale paint fumes
  • Watch some SICK SICK SICK things on PBS.
And on that note I have some un-ordered ruminations and messages:

That about does it. Thanks to everyone and of course to our robot lord and master czeano for making it all possible. – Oh and I almost forgot, here is a list of state sanctioned, FDA approved pronunciations for my name:

“kai zer” – (as in the roll)
“kwee zer”
“kay zer”

Or if you prefer the “real life” name that my parents gave me:

Hey, shithead!

See y’all at the next gathering . . .

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