The house isn’t in Salem, which was the only request that it doesn’t fulfill. The house is basically on the line of two towns in the Boston North Shore area, Lynn and Swampscott.  I’ll be 5 miles from Salem and 15 miles from the Fenway area of Boston.  The house is 100+ years old, made of stone and shingles, and 3 houses from the ocean.  It is in a quiet residential area where most of the people in my neighborhood will be older, with one couple next door who are younger and just had a baby.  It will be quiet, something many of you know I haven’t had in ages and just long for!

I have a mix of pictures; some of these are from when I first was contacted by the owner of the home and other were actually taken today when my Mom went to bring paperwork and money to the owners.  So empty house pictures are from today. 

So here it is!  My new house that I will be moved into in about 36 days!!

Welcome Home!!

Entry into the house from the front...

Living room looking into my office...

Some of the living room...

More living room...

My new desk in my new office!

Another office picture....

The dining room which will likely be a library/lounge.

The house even comes with an antique piano that I've been encouraged to play!

A kitchen picture (yay for counters and cabinets!!)

Kitchen into the future library.

Built in table in the kitchen!

The bedroom.

The view from the bedroom.

Coming down the stairs...

Pretty stained glass window at the landing.

A small three season porch.

A very cool back yard...I think it's screaming for a firepit/ritual space!

The backyard also has a funky sand area. Can we say meditation space outside!?!

One of the bathrooms...there are two, they're bathrooms, nothing special.

And a few steps away this is what's at the end of the street!

And there you have it, my new house!  Once I’m there and settled I’ll do a video tour and share a bit more.  There is also a basement area for storage.  We’ll be renting and the owners will be using the attic for storage.  There is also an in-law apartment which the owners will be using a few times a year when they come up from Delaware where they are moving to.

I’m in love!  It’s perfect!  My ritual space will likely be in my office again unless that three season porch proves to be something more than it looks like in the pictures.  But I’m anticipating I’ll be using the office for that too.  Now I’m ready to start picking out furniture and all that fun stuff!  And I can’t wait for my first full moon on the beach!!!

Here’s the deal.  I live in an apartment in a part of town that is known as being a laid back party town.  It’s a surf town on the beach but it’s also a place that is known for it’s droves of homeless people, drug addicts, and stoned randoms.  I’ve walked to get coffee in the mornings a few blocks away and had to dodge piles of puke, someone took a shit in our walkway to the parking lot last summer, and at night if you go walking anywhere you tend to run into tweakers looking for money.  It’s ridiculous.  I will say that I didn’t ever have this impression of this place before I actually lived here.  I had been on the hunt for a place specifically in this town for a few years and was so excited to move here; no I am literally counting down the days until I leave (88 as of today).

In the apartment building where I live there are 8 apartments.  My husband and I live in the downstairs apartment that is part of the common area, for lack of a better term.  There is a patio area right where our living room window is.  It’s a really small area so when you have people out there it’s almost like they’re in my living room.  I hear your conversations, I smell your dinner you’re eating.  It’s that close.

A few weeks ago one of the guys upstairs, we’ll call him Old Curly (I could think of a number of less favorable names for him but we’ll go with the fact that he’s 46 and has really curly blond hair), brought over a new set of patio furniture to the apartment.  He just got divorced from his wife and apparently needed to take some of the stuff out of the house and for a few weeks before this random piles of crap that you would find in someone’s garage or basement were piling up in our small patio area and laundry room.  Then this table arrives and he takes the 1984 pastel pink and sea foam green set that was there, takes it out to the dumpster, and puts his out there instead.  Then a patio fire pit shows up.  And that’s when all hell broke loose.

Old Curly has a new roommate, Scumbag.  Scumbag, or SB for short, is apparently an out of work investment banker who had to borrow money from his mother to stay out here this month because he spent all his money and couldn’t afford his rent. I overheard him saying someone to someone outside my window one night about how he spent his last money on weed and a hooker.  Classy.  I’ve never seen this guy with a shirt on and all I ever see him doing is sitting up on the steps to his apartment smoking cigarettes and hocking loogies.  He’s gross.

They play music at ridiculous volumes until all hours of the night too.  One of the people in the building,  we’ll call him Sad Sack because that’s just the only way to describe him, will start blasting music when he sees people starting to gather outside as a way to sort of invite himself into their little shindig.  The thing that sucks is he has the most horrific taste in music and plays the same damn thing over and over…Alice In Chains Greatest Hits.  I would have sworn it was the only album he owned until he actually played something different the other night…Dookie by Green Day.  *faceplam*

Old Curly apparently works from home but I never see this guy working because he’s either outside at the table smoking weed with random people that come to see him, or he’s at the beach down the street.  Now SB sits out there too during the day because he’s certainly got nothing to do. Then suddenly these girls started showing up from who knows where and they started having these all day parties outside that would start just before noon and go well into the night.  And they have this fire pit that just isn’t designed for such small spaces so everyone’s apartments end up smelling like smoke because of it.

They also all like bringing their bongs out to the table and getting high outside there which in turn makes my apartment smell like weed.  Now, I’m not opposed to marijuana, but I don’t partake of it.  But in this town that’s a big thing when you don’t.  In fact Old Curly actually once asked me if we were narcs because he never saw us partying or getting high.  For fuck sake, really!?!

The patio has been constantly covered in garbage, beer bottles, boxes from beer, and cigarette butts for the last couple of weeks.  Then I notice something last weekend that had me enraged.

I have a large planter outside my apartment, below my window, pushed over against the stairs so it’s out of everyone’s way.  I used to have a small pine tree planted in it but the tree died so I just pushed the planter aside rather than take it in the house since it had nowhere to go.  I figured since it wasn’t in the way and it was actually next to the “plants” that we have planted here already it was almost fitting.  And it’s been there for easily six months.  Well, since SB moved in it’s become an ashtray and rubbish bin.

SB sits at the top of the stairs, smokes his cigarettes, and then tries to toss the butts into the planter form the top of the stairs.  I heard him say to someone out there “Usually I’m pretty good….I get them in like 90% of the time.”  And sure enough, the whole thing is full, at least an inch thick, with cigarette butts and random crap.  WTF!?!?!  Did you really think this was your personal bin!!

So today I had to run out to the post office and I decided I’d had enough of all these douchebags in this building who are just rude and inconsiderate and I dumped all the stuff out of the planter right where it was and took it inside.

Old Curly is coming down his stairs and says to Aging Skater Punk that lives upstairs “Dude, did you see where that pot went?  It was here earlier…”  He then starts saying something about how he’s going to ask his roommate (SB) about it and see if he knows anything and I yell out of my window “IT WAS MINE!”  Old Curly says “Oh…that was yours? Thanks for getting it out of here, but you could have emptied it in the dumpster.”  Then he got on his bike (which is parked right in front of my window) and he says something about “an attractive nuisance” and he peddles off.  I wanted to say “HEY!  Who told your scummy friends to use it as an ashtray?  Does it look like an ashtray?  No!  You’re shit’s been all over this place for weeks and as soon as someone asked you to move it you flipped out, so just clean up the mess you, your dirt bag roommate, and your loser friends keep making and shut the hell up!”

Instead I said nothing and just ignored him.

Could I do something to make these people shut up?  Sure.  Could I do something to maybe try and get them all to move away?  Yeah…I could.  But what’s the use?!  I’m moving in three months (88 days…did I mention that?) and I’d rather just focus on my own state of calm and my needs to get out of here.  There are so many people involved in the situation and most who I couldn’t identify in a line up if my life depended on it, so I don’t even know who to focus on!  Although it is crossing my mind to do something…like go out there when everyone is asleep (you know, 9am on a weekday) and wash everything down with Chinese Wash and then sprinkle Hot Foot powder around their front doors.

I mean, use the common area, go for it!  But be considerate and then clean up after yourselves when you’re done!  I don’t do that sort of stuff anymore because I burned myself out on all that partying when I was in my 20s…because that’s when you’re supposed to do things like sit outside drinking all day and being a bum…IN YOUR 20s!!  Not in your 40s and 50s!!!  Grow up people!

Well, this pretty much sums it up…(crappy quality but it’s what I had to work with at the time)

But if nothing else it feels good to vent about it. 

I got an email from someone that just signed it “Dan” and another by someone who signed it “AmethystWytch”.   Dan says:

I think it’s really arrogant of you to try and ask your facebook and twitter followers to nominate you in a poll that you really aren’t even qualified to be in. If you ever manage to get Llewellyn to publish one of your books then you might earn a place on that list.

AmethystWytch says:

I’m a newbie and I’m just starting to get a hang of what it even means to be a pagan.  I was glad to find your page and your info with your blog because I’m still learning but if it wasn’t for a friend on Facebook I never would have known who you were.  I looked and the poll and I didn’t see you there so I voted for Silver Ravenwolf because I read her books and I’ve liked what she has to say.  But the point is I don’t know you.

I always kind of operate under the assumption that if one person tells me something or sends me an email with a comment or question there are at least ten more people with the same thought that either don’t want to say anything or are too lazy to bother.  So I thought I’d comment on why I posted what I did both sharing the poll and then somewhat soliciting myself to be added to it.

First, I think it was well said, in a way, by one of the options that someone added to that poll which was that “being well known doesn’t make someone trustworthy”.  When I look at some of the name on that list I cringe a little bit.  The Frosts?!  Really?! Here’s what those “trustworthy big name Pagans” want you to know about children in the Craft:

It is hoped by Wicca that the first full sexual experience will take place in the plesant[SIC] surroundings of the coven and that the spiritual as well as the physical aspects of the experience will lead the child to a complete life.

Or how about this one, from the same book…

At the last sabbat or eshbat before the initiation, the female novice is given the sacred phallus and the instruction sheet in Table 5 so that she can learn to insert and remove the phallus quickly and comfortably. She is also taught how she should lie and what she should do during the initiation ceremony.

That’s from their book “The Good Witches’ Bible” which has some really damn scary information about the participation of children in Wiccan covens. You can read more here in this examination that talks about this with the consideration if that might be the beginnings of “Wiccan pedophilia” that has been clearly exposed.

When they're not advocating the teaching of how to break the hymen on a pre-pubescent coven member, the Frosts will teach you how to dance at a Pagan gathering!

You can visit Pagans Against Child Abuse to learn more about the issues with the Frosts.

Silver Ravenwolf?!  Really?!  Someone who caters to teens (which I think is a good thing) but tells them to lie to their parents about their practices or interests in Wicca and Witchcraft and advises the use of spells to pass tests and get back at teachers and other students that give them trouble?  Really!?  This is the “trustful” voice you want in a young developing Witch’s ear?

There are a few articles online that address why you need to take her with bit of a grain of salt:
Tarnished Silver and Why We Despise Silver Ravenwolf are both worth a read.

Where you'll find other books by Christopher Penczak that haven't been published by Llewellyn.

I can’t agree more that being well known doesn’t mean you can be trusted.  Anybody can publish a book.  Publishing a book, writing a blog, having a podcast, or having a Facebook page doesn’t make you trustworthy.  It’s what you do and what you say and how you conduct yourself that makes you worth being listened to and trusted.  So I don’t care if you have a whole library of books published by Llewellyn; if you sound like a loon, you’re a loon and I’m not going to trust you just because some big publisher decided to print and distribute your book.  Because, folks, publishing is a business and their concern is selling books not selling knowledge;  if something is kitschy enough or eye grabbing or slightly controversial within it’s given topic and it looks like something people might buy, it gets published.   Even authors that are published by Llewellyn still self publish books that might not otherwise get out.  Christopher Penczak and Michelle Belanger are two that come to mind (and Michelle has books published by both Llewellyn and Weiser but she still has self-published through Lulu as well).

I have made a conscious choice not to go through a conventional publisher for my work.  I don’t want to have to fit a marketing box or compromise my writing for the sake of sales.  If people like what I have to say they’ll buy my books and anything else I do in the future.  And I leave it at that.  I want to be trusted because I don’t compromise or pander to anyone but because I write what I believe in, say things as I see them, and not do things just for the sake of making a buck.

Now, back to why I made the comments about wanting someone to nominate me.  First, no, I didn’t end up nominating myself.  Someone else did that but, yes, I voted for myself…lol.  I trust me!  I also voted for a few other people in the poll who I felt I could honestly say are trustworthy voices in the magickal community.  But the reason I wanted to get my name on that list and in that poll of “big name pagans” was because I feel that I’m more trustworthy than some of the people on that list and I wanted to get my name out there for others to see and consider.  Someone’s going to go on there and see my name and not know who I am because, no, I’m not a “big name pagan”, and they are going to wonder who I am and what I’m doing.  Would I like to be a “big name pagan”?  Sure!  But only because I want to teach and share what I know with others and learn from those I connect with, allowing me the chance to do something and make a difference in the community where I can.

That leads me to another comment I made the day before that I honesty was sort of surprised by the replies.  I said Saturday night that I wanted to be the “Lady Gaga of Witchcraft”.  Apparently this made some people think that I was idolizing Lady Gaga.  I do not now, nor have I or will I ever idolize Lady Gaga.  That just sounds silly to me to even say!  Lady Gaga, to me, is more of a symbol.  Yes, she’s manufactured, but she manufactured herself.  Yes, she has elements of other performers that she emulates in her work, all performers have their inspirations that they draw on (I’m sure if some of you really look at some of my writing you’ll find the people that wish to emulate in there…I’m not shy about that).   I’m not going to debate the merits of Lady Gaga or get into the Madonna comparison or anything like that.  All I was trying to do was say that here’s a strong, smart, bold woman who has something to say and, like it or not, she’s out there, she’s in your face, and she’s saying what she wants.  I think that’s what a public Witch needs to do; you can’t be in the public eye, even in the small scale that I am at this point, and not be able to talk back, be bold, and stand up for yourself.

So when I talk about wanting to be the “Lady Gaga of Witchcraft” I’m talking about wishing to be well known, heard, and therefore able to help as many people as possible.  Because, trust me, Witches in the public eye are not rich from selling their books.  Publishing is a tough industry and not a money making one.  Why do you think most of these people are touring and teaching most of the year and also often working with clients doing readings, healing work, and so on?

So, to wrap this little rant up, yes, I did ask for people to vote for me in that poll.  No, I don’t think it was arrogant and I didn’t think I really needed to explain why I wanted to be part of it.  But now you know; it’s because I want to get my name out there in the community on a greater scale for a greater purpose.  I also thought that when you consider the idea of it being a list of people you trust within the Craft, I like to think I’m a pretty trustworthy person because I tell it like it is, I do my homework, and I don’t spend my time watering things down or spreading lies and rumors.  I’m more interested in using my time and energy for teaching and helping other people, not just being out there for the sake of being out there.

And as for the Lady Gaga bit, if you don’t get it then I can’t help you.  Maybe my sense of humor and irony is just too full of tiger blood for you.  ^_^

Currently Feeling: amused  

Rowan,
I see you post a lot of music videos on Facebook and they seem to really stretch over a variety of types.  I like rock music myself and I was wondering what your 5 favorite rocks songs are.
Take Care!
Kurt

Hi Kurt…thanks for the question!

Yes, I listen to a lot of different types of music.  Music has always been a big part of my life.  I took piano lessons for about 5 years as until freshman the 8th grade when I wanted to play softball instead (frankly, I would have been better off sticking with the piano) and in high school and college I taught myself to play guitar and bass (neither of which I’m terribly good at).  I love to do hand drumming too and have a nice little collection of djembes at this point.  But in college I was a DJ and played a lot of goth, industrial, electronic, and weird music (if it ever scared someone then I felt like I did my job).

With that said I do like good old rock music but I’ll admit that most of my favorite rock songs fall more into the alternative realm.  Hopefully these five songs don’t disappoint!  But here are five of my true favorite songs from some of my favorite bands!

Say Anything – Wow, I Can Get Sexual Too

Coheed and Cambria – A Favor House Atlantic

Clutch – Electric Worry

Alkaline Trio – Private Eye

We Were Promised Jetpacks – Quiet Little Voices

Ok…I can’t help it…I have two all time favorite Alkaline Trio songs…

And two bonuses…
I’m a big Weird Al fan and this is one of my favorite’s of his…
(and not surprise for anyone that knows me…lol)

And for those that don’t know me personally, here’s a little trivia about me. One of my heroes and life inspirations is Henry Rollins. I just love everything this man ever does from acting to writing to his pseudo-stand up to his music. This is one of my favorite Rollins Band songs…

And there you have it! Hope you enjoyed that.

OK, let me start by saying that when we moved into this place over a year ago, in January of 2010, I couldn’t have been more excited.  It’s 2 blocks from the ocean and 2 blocks from all kinds of bars, restaurants, shops, and fun stuff.  For me, someone that doesn’t usually drive because I hate driving in California, this was awesome.  I could go to the beach every day if I wanted and walk to anything.  Moving closer to the beach was the big thing for me.  I had done some spellwork looking for the perfect apartment, then we found this…and then I did some more spellwork to secure this place.  Within a few days we had it and we moved in slowly over the course of a few weeks.

In our first week of actually living here in January last year we had a few really wicked winter storms.  In San Diego that means rain, and lots of it in a place that isn’t used to seeing rain.  Things flood, roads become horribly dangerous, and people freak out.  On night it was raining really heavily and it actually started to rain in through our bedroom window and I wasn’t able to fall back asleep.  I got up and went into my office to play some Bejewled and hope to get sleepy and I walked in to find that we have leaks!  And it rained A LOT onto my altar which is normally positioned below my office window (as you’ve seen in any of my altar photos from the last year).

This is what I walked into.  Water all over my altar.  I pulled it away from the wall and positioned a bucket to be able to catch the water.

This went on and one for weeks because we had an unusually wet winter in San Diego.  We called the management company every time it happened and all they would do is send someone out to clean the carpet and dry up the water because they were worried about the carpeting more than anything else (since it was new when we moved in).  Naturally this didn’t do anything to make anything better because it still got wet every time it rained.  What were they going to do, just keep replacing the carpet padding with each rainstorm and keep cleaning the carpet?  Yup!  Just slap a band aide on it and we’re good!

They sent out a guy a few times who didn’t speak English terribly well and both didn’t listen to me or understand what I was telling him when I would explain where the problem was.  All he did, both times he came out was put silicone caulking around the window; the first time on the inside and then the second time on the outside, even though I showed him that the problem wasn’t at all related to the frame of the window.  The rain was dripping from the part of the wall/window where the blinds were screwed into place.

Then the rain stopped and we had moths of fine weather.  In the summer it rained once or twice and this happened again but by this time not only did I have a perfect set up for catching the water when it rained but it would rain for a short period of time and it would be warm enough that it would all dry pretty quick.  But then this winter came and things were worse than last year.

We got lots of rain and the water was coming in from the window, through the floor (it seeps in from the seam where the floor and wall meet) and now through the corner of the ceiling.  To be honest I didn’t bother trying to make a ton of calls because nobody ever responds and they dance around doing anything but in December the smell from the rotting carpet and carpet padding got so bad that I have to start moving from my desk to the living room couch to work because I couldn’t stand being in there for too long.  Then in January it got so bad that there was never a chance for the carpet to dry.  In February we started to complain but got a lot of run around again.  Five different people were sent out to look at the problem but apparently the management company must not have been happy with the answers to what it would cost or what needed to be done because nothing ever happened.

Then one guy did get hired and came out and started to work.  He cut a hole in my ceiling…

Then he kept saying he was going to come back…first it was the next day he was sending “one of his guys” to start ripping out the wall to try and find the leaks but nobody showed up.  Then he told me that night that the next day he would be there around 1pm.  He never showed and never called (I found out later he didn’t come because he was afraid there was going to be a tsunami because of the earthquake in Japan).  Then the following Monday this “other guy” he was sending just shows up knocking at me door.  He also didn’t do anything and just checked for moisture in the walls.  Which has already been done by everyone else every time they come in.  Two days later the woman we deal with from the management company calls me to ask if the contractors are there patching everything up…to which I say “uh…no…nobody’s been back to do any work for a week.”  Naturally the incompetent office staff had no idea the work wasn’t being done!

A couple more days go by and then one of the guys that had been here before is back to, yet again, give it all a dirty look and nothing more.  Now it’s been another week and all I have now are more holes in my ceiling and walls.

And carpet (wet carpet, mind you) pulled away from the wall and floor…

And for several months now my desk has been this…

I sit on the couch hunched over the coffee table and I have to leave all my stuff out here like this because I can’t use my room and my actual desk currently looks like this…

And I’ve had to pile stuff from my room all over the house.  I’ll spare you to pictures of our bedroom with the exception of where I had to put my altar and all the stuff normally around my altar…

It’s a horrible picture and you can’t really see it but in that corner in the right is our laundry basket (the black table behind it is my meditation altar table which I’ve had to put away form the time being). All around the laundry basket are piles of stuff from my altar because there’s no where for it to go…the book shelves in the bedroom have stuff piled in and on them and my drums and cauldrons are just everywhere in there. I also had to take everything down off the walls so I have framed things in all the closets so they don’t get broken.

Then there are bins of candles, oils, incense, herbs, altar tools, other witchy things, and office stuff just all over the bar next to the kitchen because I have nowhere else for them to go.

In the other part of the living room there are piles of books, shopping bags of other stuff…and my hall closets are filled with statues and chalices and other breakables.

This is MADNESS!!!

And the thing that makes me the MOST upset is that my birthday is next week and I was going to have a party here but clearly that’s not going to be possible!  We now know that the roof needs to be completely replaced.  When that’s going to happen we don’t know.  It rained last night and I’m still getting water through my floor where the carpet is pulled up and water is still dripping from the holes in the ceiling.

SOOOO…I keep thinking that I need to do some super juju here but, if I’m being honest, I’d rather focus my super juju towards making it possible to move back east sooner.  I just want to get to Salem and leave San Diego behind like a bad memory.

It would just be nice to be able to get some work done and not feel so distracted all the time…and have a place to meditate in comfort again!  I did my little Ostara ritual in my makeshift altar area and it was not a comfortable experience.  So, yeah.  It would be nice for this to stop now.

Hi Rowan!

I recently started reading your blog and your Facebook page and I love the stuff you do!  I find you really inspiring and interesting.  Since you don’t write about yourself a lot on your pages I was wondering if you’ve talk a little bit about yourself?  Could you tell us 25 things about you.  They could be about your life as a Witch or about your personal life but stuff about you that we don’t know so that we could get more of an idea of just who Rowan Pendragon is.

Love and Light!
Cathy

Hi Cathy!  Thanks for writing in and thanks for a question that I know so much about. 
Wow…25 things…well, here we go, I’ll give it a shot!

1. I got started in the Craft when I was 13.  At least that’s when I made my first dedication.  I discovered Witches and Witchcraft when I was 8 and started reading whatever I could find about it from that point on but this was when I had discovered Wicca and decided that this was the path that I was destined to follow.  Years later my path would move away from Wicca after spending time studying BTW traditions and I have since become comfortable in being an eclectic solitary Witch who is very influenced by Wicca in a spiritual sense but magickaly I am much more of a traditional Witch.
2. I am Italian, German, and Native American in heritage.
3. On of the first adult movies I remember ever watching was when I was about 7 or 8 years old and my Mom showed me “Night of the Living Dead” which is one of her favorite movies.  There is a scene where one of the woman in the movie gets killed with a garden trowel but to me it looked like one of those square cake knives/servers.  For years I got freaked out by seeing someone pull one of those out at birthdays and holidays to serve cake.
4. When “The Craft” came out my Mom wanted to go and see it so she took me with her.  We bought our tickets and went to have them torn so we could go into the theater and the ticket taker looked at me funny and said “What movie are you going to see?”  I told him we were going to see The Craft and he looked down at my shirt and back at me and said “That makes sense”.  I was wearing a Marilyn Manson shirt at the time.
5. I am planning to go to Paris for my 40th birthday (that’s 4 years away for those counting).  It will be my first time out of the country.  I’ve never even been to Canada.
6. I got my first cat when I was 6 years old.  She was a beautiful calico kitty that I picked out from the pet store in the local mall.  I picked her because she was the one standing the back away from all the other cats and looked lonely.  I named her Cindy after Cindy from the “Brady Bunch” which was my favorite show when I was a kid.  For some reason though I couldn’t always say Cindy and she got the nickname ChiChi soon after.
7. I love playing video games though I’m especially found of games like Call of Duty.  I can’t play driving games unless I’ve been drinking; surprisingly I’m much better at those when I’m a few steps away from being sober.
8. I took piano lessons as a kid, starting when I was about 10, but stopped when I was 14 because I wanted to play softball and since they were on the same nights I had to pick one.  I was really good at the piano and I soon learned that I sucked at sports and that I was not meant to be put in clothes made of stretchy material.
9. If I could be anywhere in the world right now it would be sitting at Cafe Du Monde in New Orleans having a cafe au lait and an order of beignets.
10. When I was 15 I went through a six month or so phase of being fascinated by Satanism.  I had started listening to a lot of metal thanks to discovering the college radio stations and I fell in love with Slayer.  I have found my time reading and learning about Satanism was helpful for me to be more open to people from different paths in the occult.  I still to this day find Anton LaVey to be quite an interesting guy.
11. I failed my drivers test the first time I took it when I was 16.  I went on a weekday morning before school and, after failing, begged my Dad not to make me go to school because I was so embarrassed.  My friends were waiting for me when I got there thinking I’d have my license and I broke down in tears when I had to tell them I failed.  I ended up getting my license when I was 18 the morning before leaving to go to Rhode Island to attend my first Lollapoloza festival.
12. If I could only have one book on Witchcraft it would be “The Element Encyclopedia of 5000 Spells” by Judika Illes.
13. I had my first computer with an internet connection when I was 19 and I had an account with Prodigy that my Mom paid by the minute for.  I was on there all the time.  I was addicted to the chat rooms and message boards.  I ran up a $700 bill one month.  That wasn’t pretty.
14. I was a communications major in college and worked on the school newspaper as a writer and editor and I was a DJ on the radio station.  I had two different after hours radio shows.  We weren’t like a lot of college stations where you could do whatever you wanted; were were in an actual radio market and had to follow certain FCC rules and regulations.  One of these was the reading of the station sign off at the end of the night.  I did the last show of the night, signing off around 2am.  We were supposed to read the station sign off over silence after playing the last song of the night.  One time I was extremely over caffeinated and very anxious to get out of there and go party and decided to goof around and read the sign off over the theme music to “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure”.  I got in a lot of trouble the next day.  I also once laughed during a news story I had to read during a news break and I got suspended for three days for that.
15. I was one of 15 people to make it into the honors program my first year of college because of an essay I wrote.
16. I decided I wanted to be a writer after doing an exercise in my junior year creative writing class where the teacher had us listen to Pink Floyd and then write whatever came to mind.  She was highly influential on my junior and senior years of high school and it was because of her that I wrote that essay that got me into the honors program in college.
17. I love all different kinds of music.  Favorite bands of mine include Godsmack, Clutch, The Decemberists, Arcade Fire, Nine Inch Nails, Lady Gaga, Lorenna McKennitt, Dead Can Dance, Kellianna, and Michelle Mays.  I just love music.
18. I’ve been vegan and I’ve been a vegetarian about 4 different times in my life.  Typically my love of a good burger draws me back in to eating meat.
19. One of my all time favorite moves is “Goodfellas”.  I went through two copies of it on VHS and the DVD I currently have is started to skip and is going to need to be replaced soon.
20. I’ve seen Les Miserables on Broadway four times.
21. I wanted to be Wednesday Addams when I was little.
22. When I was 10 one of the very first magickal chants I ever learned was one you would say while visualizing yourself being surrounded by purple light that went “Thirce round, the circle’s bound, evil sink into the ground.”  I still use it when I feel panic attacks coming on.
23. One of my favorite meals is my Grandmother’s Italian sausage and string beans.  My other is my Great Grandmother’s Italian stuffing that involved 18 eggs, 4 lbs of sweet Italian sausage, a whole loaf of stuffing bread, and Parmesan cheese (which I never measure and just go by taste).
24. My first car was a Geo Metro that I bought after graduating college.  I got in an accident driving it back home from Boston one weekend.  I would go to Boston to stay with friends for the weekend and would usually come home on Sunday very tired from too much drinking and too much clubbing.  One Sunday in particularly bad traffic on the Mass Pike I heard my Spirit Guide at the time talking and I couldn’t hear her very well and when I asked her to be more clear she started laughing.  It was coming from the back seat it seemed like so I turned my head and drove right into the back of a mini van.  I had to drive all the rest of the way home with a crushed up hood to my car. I stopped at the deli down the street from my house to tell my Mom before I pulled into the drive way because I knew she’d freak out.  And she did.  She took the car away from me, had it fixed, and sold it.
25. When I was 16 I went to my first Witch shop.  I went with a bunch of friends from school.  The woman that ran the shop came right over to me when we walked in and she started to talk to me about the stuff in the store, telling me that she felt as though I’d been practicing my whole life…she asked if I’d been raised a Witch, which I hadn’t been.  She was convinced that I would go on to do special things as a Witch; she blessed a piece of snowflake obsidian and gave it to me telling me to always keep it as a reminder of the need to be balanced in the Craft.  I still have it and carry it in my Witch Bag.

And there you go…25 things!  If there are any specifics that you’d like to know about that I didn’t mention, please feel free to ask!

First let’s play catch up.  A week and a half ago Christian Day and Kelly Spangler appeared on the (oddly) popular paranormal show “Ghost Adventures” to assist in doing a ritual to call up the dead during the investigations that the team from the show were doing at the Witch House in Salem, MA.  I don’t like that show and I don’t like those guys but I wanted to watch it to see Christian and Kelly doing their thing because Christian had commented a few times about how much fun he had doing it and how great he thought the show was going to turn out.  So I watched.

During the show Christian was described as being a “real life Warlock”, a term that he has been using to describe himself for a while.  At the time most people who didn’t already have Christian on their radar may not have been aware of this.  But once on national television and a number of people in the Pagan community watching for one reason or another, it became a big topic of discussion.  I expected from the beginning that this one little word was going to be more of a hot topic than anything going on in that episode with regard to the investigations or anything else. Actually, it was funny because for me being on the west coast I saw the episode three hours after a lot of people did and before I’d even seen it I was watching people getting all up in arms about it on Facebook.  Again, not surprising; where else are people going to go to when they want to bitch about something in a possibly semi-anonymous way?

So now the net was starting to get it’s proverbial panties in a bunch over the use of the word “warlock” and the same old stuff was being regurgitated. “It means ‘traitor’!  Oh what a misguided soul.  I hope somebody teaches him the real meaning of the word and that he sees he’s wrong.”  I was sort of surprised by just how many people were going on and on with this and how few people have anything but the Llewellyn short answer to the “what is a warlock” question.  This lead me to the decision to write a post, which turned into three, about the historical and etymological aspects of the word while trying to trace back this cultural use of the word as meaning “oath-breaker” or “traitor”.  Again, nothing new, it’s been done and it was something that Christian had been doing with part of his work with the word and as part of the research for his book he’d been working on.  But many people before him have ventured into this territory too.

And therein lies the problem, definition vs. cultural use.  We have lots of words in our culture that have different definitions that aren’t actually related to the way that we use the word culturally.

Then things got even more crazy!  Around the same time Christian and Lori Bruno both started popping up all over the place.  They had been in the news for a few weeks but were completely under the radar because it was mainly news bits focused on the house blessing work they were doing,  and largely seemed to be confined to the Boston area and a few other parts of the east coast, which is awesome and fantastic, and the story got picked up by CNN and other larger news organizations which was even more fabulous.  It was an excellent opportunity for them to show the world another side of what witches do when it isn’t Halloween, since, let’s face it, that’s the only time the mainstream media thinks of us.

But then Charlie Sheen started to have a public mental meltdown; albeit funny it was a little sad to watch.  In one of his crazypants moments he used the term “warlock”, specifically “Vatican assassin warlock”.  Now, me, my reaction was “I think Charlie Sheen is on a little too much Charlie Sheen and someone needs to just tell him to shut the hell up.”  Christian, however, has a different investment in this.  This is the word that he uses to define his magickal path.  It’s a word that he’s been trying to help redefine and create as a word for the male magickal practitioners who don’t identify with words like “witch”, “Wiccan” or “Pagan”.  It’s a word that means something else from those, and it doesn’t mean “oath-breaker”.

But let’s stop for a minute here and think back a little bit…

You remember how everyone got all up in arms about Christine O’Donnell and her witch related babble back in the fall?  Would you say it was wrong of her to use that word in the flippant way she did?  Did it upset you?  Did you feel she cast a pal on the Craft?  A lot of people did, even if you personally didn’t (I personally didn’t).  Many people in the Pagan community rallied to try and use it as a “teachable moment” to educate people about the word “witch” and what Witchcraft really was all about.  Well guess what?  Christian did the same thing after Charlie Sheen used the word “warlock” to try and explain the way that he uses the word and what he’s learned of the word through his work and research.  And this is when the shit really hits the fan.

“OMG!  Christian Day is all over the news talking about warlocks!  He’s on TMZ and he’s making a mockery of us!  He’s telling lies and just trying to use this as a way to promote himself and his shops.”

So, basically, Christian did something quite similar to something else that the community at large supported but with a word that the community largely doesn’t understand and he’s the bad guy.  Christian and others from Salem who support him and what he’s doing reached out to the media in much the same way that others in the Wiccan community did when the O’Donnell thing happened.  What they did was OK but what he was doing wasn’t.  You can cover it up with whatever words and ideas that you want to; you can say Christian is riding on Crazypants Sheen’s tattered coattails or that it’s a publicity stunt to promote his book that comes out later this year or that he’s trying to drum up business for his shops in Salem.  But what we have here is a double standard.

I decided to show my support of what Christian was doing with the word from the onset which is largely reclaiming it for himself and anyone else that wants to use it because I believe that it’s a noble cause.  And then came the (somewhat expected) backlash.

First, none of them seemed to be signed with any definable name.  In case you weren’t aware, there are probably 100 “Rayven’s” running around the internet so that doesn’t mean anything to me.  You’re another nameless, faceless keyboard warrior.  And to prevent the expected responses to that I will tell you right now that, yes, Rowan Pendragon isn’t my real name (surprise!).  But you know who I am when I email you because there aren’t 50 of me running around (thank the Gods, right?).  It isn’t a magickal name either (my magickal name is private and only those I’ve been in covens with know it, as it should be). It’s just a public moniker that started out as a pen name and soon became the name I was known by throughout the Pagan community, online and off.  Quite frankly, I like it and use it in as many aspects of my life as I can these days short of legally changing my name.  For those who have (and I’m sure will) ask me to step out from behind my nickname, my legal name is Jessica Andrews and you all get to see my face and know who I am because I’m not hiding.  My picture is on my websites, my online profiles, and I come out into the community and say who I am.    Many of these “Rayven’s” and “MoonDragon’s” and whatever else not only use a very vague name but also never post images of themselves online, instead choosing to hide behind pretty pictures of fairies and dragons. So since I don’t know who any of these people are and I don’t see any way that makes them distinguishable from one another, I’ll just share the parts that are either important, or in some cases, actually makes sense.

Secondly, a lot of these emails and Facebook messages were just the same things over and over again.  So I don’t think I need to share five messages of the same intolerant and ignorant messages.   I’m only going to bother with a few key things I received because these were the tone of the posts I’ve seen on Facebook and other blogs since all of this started.  But when they made their way into my inbox they end up here.

So here we go…first I got several messages about my apparent ignorance about the Craft:

I’m surprised that someone who claims to be a “priestess” and who has studied for as long as you say you have would be supportive of someone as low rent as Christian Day.  It’s also surprising that you are supportive of this warlock stuff.  It makes me worry that you are misrepresenting your own credentials.

I don’t feel the need to justify my “credentials” because I know and those who have taken the time to get to know me either personally or through my writing and work within the Craft know I’m legit about what I say about my training and study,and most importantly my practice, within the Craft.  Maybe the problem here is that I’ve been spending my time reading, researching and studying beyond the Llewellyn/New Age bookshelf at Boarders.  Maybe the problem is I don’t take one person’s word for something.  Maybe the problem is a difference in dedication to learning, growing, and advancing knowledge and not just feeling content to sit and accept what I’m spoon-fed by one author or one publisher.  My “credentials” are what they are but the thing that matters most is how I live and practice my path.  If I can personally justify my support for what Christian is/has been doing within the confines of my path then that’s all that matters.

I believe that Christian has the right to call himself whatever the hell he wants to and I feel he has the right to come forward and make commentary on something that he feels is misrepresenting that word if he feels the need.  Welcome to the first amendment!  The thing is I also happen to agree with him which is another reason I support him.  While I’ll admit that I think it’s getting to be enough already, that’s just my personal opinion.  If he keeps doing this for the next six months I’ll probably still be sitting here supporting what he’s doing.

This brings me to an interesting conversation that spanned several emails over the course of a day.  The conversation started with this person asking me about my posts regarding the word “warlock” and asking me why I’ve discounted all the books that give the word the traitor/oath-breaker definition.  The problem here seemed to be someone not actually reading what I wrote, which I said as much, and then the conversation ended with:

I’ve read 3 or 4 books published by Llewellyn Publications and each of these books says that the word means oathbreaker.  I’ve never ever seen anything like what you or Christian Day have talked about and I frankly don’t believe it.  Have you read any books from Llewellyn?  They’re one of the foremost publishers on the Craft!  If you haven’t I would suggest you check out their website and pick up a few of their books.  I’ve found Scott Cunningham to be a wonderful source of information.

*facepalm*
Frankly, I didn’t bother replying to this and ended to conversation at this point.  But to the individual, “LilyFae”, who I was having this back and forth with, let me reply to that.  First off, I have no problem with Scott Cunningham.  His was one of the first books on magick that I read when I was 13 (for the record that was 23 years ago).  I have read plenty of books from both Cunningham and other Llewellyn authors.  While I like Cunningham he is not the end all be all of the Craft.  Nobody is! And as for Llewellyn, like any publisher, they are also not the end all be all.  There are authors that they publish who are not that great (bad scholarship, sloppy publishing and presentation) and then there are others who are quite good but are sometimes a little too involved for people who just want the short answer and the quick fix.  Some of my favorite authors have been published by Llewellyn for some time (Raymond Buckland, Christopher Penczak, Deborah Lipp, Donald Michael Kraig).  But there is some crap in there too, so let’s not assume that one publisher, any publisher, is fantastic and infallible. Just remember that books like history, anthropology, comparative religion, philosophy, psychology, mythology, and so are just as important, if not more so at times, than books specifically written about Wicca, Paganism, or Witchcraft, spells, and magick.  Maybe delving into these will show you that the simple definition from these other books isn’t always the right one, just the easy one, or one that’s been taken out of context.

When I’m teaching magick or Craft subjects, especially for any length of time, I’ll have students read a book on the subject and then ask me “what should I read next.”  My answer is just about always “look at the bibliography in the back of the book and read the source material that the author used.”  Inevitably this is material far beyond the Wiccan and New Age books someone started out with.  If you don’t challenge yourself, what’s the point of studying or reading at all?

And, let me just throw it out there that it might be a good idea to read more than “3 or 4″ books on a subject before you try and speak with some big feeling of authority.  I remember my Mom once telling me how she had a lot of respect for the path that I had chosen, as well as for others that picked this path because, as she said, “You have to be smart and well read to really follow this practice.  It’s not a thing for lazy people.”  She said this after I’d given her a copy of Starhawk’s “Spiral Dance” for her birthday one year and she started to see some of what goes into really learning on this path.   It wasn’t the first book on the subject that she’d read since she’d borrowed other books of mine over the years, but she got it from one book, and it’s not even a terribly heavy read and my mother is a very well read and educated woman.  She got it.  It amazes me how many actual practitioners don’t.

Here’s another one…

This is part of what I don’t understand.  Are you Wiccan?  Because based on your support of this nutjob and the post you did on legal spells where you told the person to basically bind someone from speaking their mind, you don’t sound Wiccan to me.  It’s people like you and this Christian Day CHARACTER who end up making all Wiccans look like a bunch of freaks better suited to a horror movie.

I have to admit that this was one that really got under my skin because it spoke to all the things that I’d been seeing in the comment sections of the news reports about the stuff Christian was doing.  There is this assumption that everyone who is a Witch or any sort of Pagan or magickal practitioner is also Wiccan.  I’m always trying to correct people on this idea that Witch means Wiccan.  Guess what?  NOT TRUE!  I am not Wiccan.  I stopped identifying myself as Wiccan a handful of years ago after seeing a lot of stuff like this going on, seeing people imposing their personal beliefs and ethics on others in the greater Pagan and Occult community.  I also don’t agree with the Three Fold Law or Wiccan Rede in the way that Wiccans tend to.  I believe very much in case and effect and karmatic return but I don’t believe in the three times better or worse idea.  I also don’t believe in the whole “harm none” thing and instead believe in causing as little or no harm as possible.  This is in part because of my strong belief in using magick for protection which sometimes means having to do things like binding someone in order to prevent a greater harm (like in the case of the legal spells).  And, let’s be honest, all magick is manipulative at its very core.  It’s how we use it and the intentions we put behind it that make the difference.

As for Christian I can only speak to his not being Wiccan.  In fact he goes so far as to say he’s not Pagan.  So to somehow assume that he’s speaking for all Wiccans or Pagans, or even for one other Wiccan or Pagan is wrong.  So that’s fine that Wiccan’s might not want to use the term “warlock”.  Just don’t assume that everyone who is involved in Witchcraft and magick or Paganism is Wiccan because they aren’t.  If you want to know what someone’s beliefs and ethics are in order to make sense of their words and actions, ASK!  Don’t ASSUME….you do remember the saying about what it means to “assume”, right?  Because I’m seeing a whole lot of people making asses of themselves lately.

In fact, if I were a betting woman I would wager to say that the shit and the bickering that’s been going on as a result of Christian just doing his thing has done far more harm to the view of Wiccans and Pagans than anything he himself has done in these last few weeks.

Then on Monday something really shitty happened.  One of the people that had been going back and forth with Christian on Facebook, trying to call him out to “show his true colors” made a veiled threat on Sunday (according to the Facebook comments) of “Hey buddy!!! I live 5 minutes from Salem! I think I will visit you and we’ll see how sarcastic you are to my face! I’m normally pretty peaceful but I think you need a little lesson in manors! Try me magickally if you dare, you insignificant bug!!! I’LLBE SEEING YOU SOON!” and “We will meet again, face to face, real soon my friend!!! Lol!!!”

Then a little goading on both sides seems to ensue but ultimately Christian blocks the guy on Facebook and moved on (who will remain “the guy” since Christian didn’t post his name, I’m not going to either).  However the guy hadn’t.  This person showed up at Hex, threatening people in the shop, and the cops had to be called to ensure people’s safety.  And this is someone who is trying to fight against what Christian is doing, calling himself a warlock because I guess he’s right and Christian is wrong?  Ugh…who knows who cares.  The point is, that’s insane!!!

And while I already know what some people will say, as a few have said to Christian so far, that this is the kind of backlash you get when you put yourself out there like this, I have to say, that doesn’t justify it or make it RIGHT!  Come on people!!  It’s interesting to me that Christian has said that he hasn’t had any right wing Christian backlash and that all the negative and hateful comments and remarks that he’s received have seemed to come from within the Pagan community from those who seemingly identify as Wiccan and Pagan.  It’s interesting to me because in the last year I would say I’ve received 2 or 3 disgruntled emails from Christians and all the rest from other Pagans or Wiccans.  Curious for sure.

And my last thing I’ll share here…

I’m looking forward to when this whole thing calms down and the warlock goes out of business for being the asshole and stain on the community in Salem that everyone knows him to be.  And then maybe you’ll go away too.

That just makes me LOLZ in my pointy shoes.  Because A) I don’t think Christian is going anywhere any time soon and B) I’m just getting started.

So in the end, the morals of the story are

1. don’t assume that just because someone is one thing that they are something else as well
2. don’t assume that just because someone has come public to talk about something that they are speaking for you unless they say they are
3. don’t hide behind the keyboard…come forward and ask questions and say what you have to say
4. remember that double standards can be a bitch!

How this is all going to play out for Christian has yet to be seen, but right now all I’m seeing are a lot of people who are attacking each other for no damn good reason.  This is turning into a “teachable moment” for far more reasons than Christian intended.  It’s making us look at our own community and how ugly we can be toward one another and how horribly judgmental we are.  I understand that a lot of people think this is just a publicity stunt, and I’m certainly not here to say that some of that isn’t possibly, because let’s face it, it’s great damn timing!  But Christian was doing this all LONG before Charlie Sheen OD’d on his own ego.

It’s funny how we all want the rest of the world to treat us with great acceptance and kindness but we can’t seem to do that ourselves.

***UPDATE*** 7-22-2011
I will no longer be approving any comments on this thread.  I’ve received some really nasty comments to this post in the last few weeks, something that I presume is because Christian is back in the local Salem news with some things happening.  Let me just say this; for those that have commented and emailed me in recent weeks about this post saying that I’m ignorant and blinded to what Christian is really doing, you’re not quite right on that.  Just because I have chosen to defend a friend’s right to do what he wants doesn’t mean I don’t know, see, and understand the various layers to it.  I know Christian will be happy to get his sushi dinner if he wins this bet, and I know Christian is more than a little happy when the controversy means more business.  But I think that everyone who seems to think that the ONLY thing Christian is out to do is dig into the pockets of people and get on the front page of TMZ are under a spell of another kind.  Call it jealousy, call it being jaded…I don’t care what you call it. But you’re not on track with this either.  Move on folks!

I have also bee working away on my week one project for the Goddess Guidebook Circle.  I am almost done with it, which it good because I need to start looking at what week two has in store for me!  I’m going to post a blog about this project when it’s done because it was interesting to see how it went and where it took me.  It wasn’t until I was almost done with it that I saw what was actually happening with it and how certain things just sort of connected.  But that has been taking some time from me because I’ve spent a lot of time staring at canvas.

One of the things that has had me a little behind and feeling a little stuck, silly as it might sound and seem, was that I got a new laptop.  I had been looking for a new one because the one I had that is a few years old, while it works great, it’s huge.  It’s a 17 inch gaming laptop that is essentially a desktop replacement and isn’t portable at all.  When I went on vacation over the summer I couldn’t take it with me because it didn’t fit inside any backpacks I have.  In fact, back in the spring of last year I went and bought a netbook because of that and in the end I hated how small and slow the netbook was and that ended up being a waste of money really.  But at least when I went on vacation I was able to take that with me.  So it was time to replace both of those with a smaller, more useful, actual laptop. My husband went off and got me a new laptop, an HP notebook, something that will function like a normal machine but I can toss in my backpack and take with me.  And, better yet, since I only have to work with one machine now I don’t have to carry around a portable hard drive with all my important stuff so I can go from one machine to the next.

While this is all awesome and wonderful, I now I have a new machine to get used to.  The keyboard is a little different for me.  It’s a lot like a MacBook keyboard and it’s taking a little time to get used to typing on what is essentially a flat surface.  I miss the space bar a lot!  It is nice to know that now I can take my work with me everywhere I go and hopefully this will mean a lot more writing, a lot more posting, and a lot more connecting with everyone.  *fingers crossed*

Of course the fact that I have now hit a little writers block wall isn’t helping.  I don’t know what to blog about anymore.  That’s part of what things have been so quiet around here lately.  I’m going to probably spend a little time doing some brainstorming and making lists of possible subjects.  But I know I’m going to get back into the flow of doing the Post A Day stuff so that I’m at least writing.  I’m spending a lot of my brain on the tarot book right now anyway.  But I don’t want to let the blog to suffer as a result.  So if you’ve got anything that you’d like to suggest, please share your thoughts.  You can post here in the comments and you can also use the suggestion box form or the Ask A Witch form if you have one of those.  I do have a few Ask A Witch questions that I’m going to post this week but other than that I’m working on it.  So share your thoughts. 

In the meantime, have a great week and we’ll see what pops up here.

Today’s Mood: blank 

In July of 2008 I found out that a band that my husband and I both are fans of, Sigur Rós, were coming to New York City.  They’re a indie rock band from Iceland and they come to the US maybe once a year at the most.  I had never really had the chance to see them before and the last time my husband had tried to see them in 2001 there was some sort of problem with their visas or something of that nature and they weren’t allowed in the country and the show was cancelled.  We also have a friend, Dan, who is also a big fan of this band.  I thought this would be a great chance for us to all see this band we love so much.

Tickets went on sale right around my husbands birthday but the concert would be a few months away.  I bought three tickets and called is a birthday present for him.  I printed out the tickets and then put them in an envelope and hung them up on the refrigerator so they wouldn’t get lost.  I wrote down the date and time of the show on the outside.  We made the plans and decided we’d drive and pick Dan up on the way.

The day of the show comes, it’s a Thursday, and we take off to pick up Dan.  We drive off to the city which is about 2 hours or so away and we kept having to stop for me to go to the bathroom.  I have the bladder of an infant.  And for some reason it was acting up that day and the horrible roads going into the city didn’t help.  When we finally got there and found where the show was we drove around for what seemed like forever until giving in and getting a spot in a very expensive parking lot a handful of blocks from the venue.

We walk over and it’s quite crowded, sold out in fact, and we head right in figuring it would take a while to find our seats and all that.  We get in and the show in in a church, an old one but one apparently still used as a church which was interesting.  We go in, find our seats, which were sort of scary because they were high up and on a steep slant, and wait for things to start.  And, I must say, we were all quite excited.

The opening band come out and starts and they were quite good; they were a band called Parachute who had a very similar sound to Sigur Rós.  As we’re enjoying this, about halfway or so through the opener, an usher comes over and asks to see our tickets because we’re apparently in the wrong seats.  We hand over our tickets, she looks at them, hands them back with a smile, and walks away with the other people.  A minute later she comes back and asks to see our tickets again.  She looks and then leans over and tells us that our tickets were for the show the night before.

I honestly had to stop for a second and try and compute that.  The night before?  What are you talking about?  She hands the ticket back and sure enough it was for the Wednesday night show, not Thursday night.

Now, this was something that naturally had me baffled, and then I remembered how the reason I bought the tickets for Wednesday was because the Thursday night show had sold out first, however that was the show I wanted tickets for originally.  But when it had come down to it I was more interested in making sure we went to the show in the first place and just bought the Wednesday night tickets.  However, in my excitement about getting them back in July I’d totally let that nugget of info slip out of my head and when I labeled the tickets and made the plans I did it with the original date of Thursday still in my head.

So we get up to let the rightful owners of the seats sit down.  I’m freaking out, answering the ushers questions about how no, we weren’t there the night before and how we’d driven 2+ hours to get there and all that.  She was very nice and sympathetic to the mix up and tells us we’re welcome to sit in any of the open seats but if someone comes along to sit there we have to move.  So we move to another row for the rest of the opening act.

During intermission we get up and go into the lobby, unsure of what to do.  The place is seriously sold out.  We even checked with the ticket window in the lobby and they had no open seats.  We’re standing around near some of the doors to go into the theater and I start crying, feeling absolutely horrible and terribly embarrassed.  One of the ushers asks what’s wrong and Dan tries to explain what happened hoping for a little sympathy.  The woman, who was a complete bitch, said “Well then I guess you better leave” and start to push us along towards the door.  Standing near the front door we see the house lights go down inside and the band is coming out and they go right into playing one my favorite songs of theirs, “Svefn-g-englar”.

Svefn-g-englar by Sigur Rós

Jónsi

This is when I really lose it and start crying even harder and now I have both my husband and Dan hugging me trying to calm me down.  And out comes some big gorilla of a man yelling at us to get out if we didn’t have tickets.  So my crying moves to the street and down to the car until Dan, who I felt the worst for in all this, keeps insisting that it’s OK and that he’s not mad.  But the disappointment was there and I was mad at myself for making such a stupid mistake.

We ended up driving back toward Dan’s house and going to pretty nifty diner and, to make my night better, I had one of the best grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches I’d had in a long time.  And it was a night night hanging out with my husband and a dear friend even though I screwed it all up.

I had managed to buy a tour shirt when we first got there and I wear it all the time, about once a week actually, and I always call it the “I fucked up” shirt.  Since then I haven’t seen Sigur Rós live but I have had the chance to see Jónsi, the band’s lead singer, when he was in San Diego doing his solo tour in late 2010.  It was amazing and I cried this time too, but for the right reasons.

Jónsi performing a stripped down version of his song “Go Do” off his solo album “go”.

If your life were a movie, what would the story be about and who would play you, your friends and family?

This is tricky because I don’t know what in my life would be worth making into a movie  I suppose I would go with my misspent drinking, partying, clubbing days and I’d have to throw in some excitement here and there and exaggerated a few things.  There was a lot of substance abuse in those few years, lots of parties, lots of weird relationships with different people, but nothing earth shattering.

Let’s start with who’d play who.  And I’m going to point out here that there will be some time warping and totally impossible casting.

So this is what you get:

Janeane Garofalo from the Reality Bites era as me. (obviously based on me)

Jonny Lee Miller as my boyfriend who's a total jerk but I can't seem to leave him. (based on a collaboration of two different ex-boyfriends)

Jesse Eisenberg as my best friend who's horribly loyal and sometimes a little niave. (based on an ex-boyfriend and all the things I like in my best friends, who are almost always male)

Matthew Lillard as my ex that is a total douchebag but I'm still forced to deal with. (based on the same two ex's as the other boyfriend but these are the even worse parts)

And Ellen Page as my best friend. (again, based on a couple people but mainly she'd be based on my friends Kat and Kim)

These would be the core people…the movie would be written by Greg Harrison (who wrote the movie “Groove”) and Diablo Cody (because we need her wit and sarcasm here).  And I’ll dream big here and say that it would be directed by David Fincher because I’d want it to be really visually interesting.  And it would certainly have some dark elements to it.

Next comes the music. This is actually going to be pretty interesting; the score would be done by Trent Reznor and Deadmau5.  Yeah, a little weird, but it would be interesting, you have to admit!  But, there would also be a more traditional soundtrack.  I’ve picked 12 songs that would be on that. (I’ve also provided links for the songs on YouTube for the curious.)

1. Girl Anachronism – The Dresden Dolls
2. Big Mouth Strikes Again – The Smiths
3. For Love – Lush
4. Help I’m Alive – Metric
5. Le Disko – Shiny Toy Guns
6. Ghosts n’ Stuff – Deadmau5
7. Honey, This Mirror Isn’t Big Enough for the Two of Us – My Chemical Romance
8. Addiction – Skinny Puppy
9. With Teeth – Nine Inch Nails
10. Gutter Glitter – Switchblade Symphony
11. The Space in Between – How To Destroy Angels
12. Breathe Me – Sia

I did also realize there was one song that might be quite fitting in a few spots that was missing here, Backstabber by The Dresden Dolls.  So we’ll call that a bonus track.

As for the plot and story…we’ll talk about that another day. 

Today’s Mood – tired