EMERGENCY FEBRUARY PARTY

Blood Bank For Bursting Hearts
a Gift Giving Gathering

Thursday/January 26th/2006
6PM
7154 St Urbain

YOU and absolutely ANYONE ELSE YOU WOULD LIKE TO INVITE are cordially invited to bring to share:
         1) A GIFT THAT YOU HAVE MADE (and wrapped in any fashion as long as it is congealed, err, I mean concealed…)
         2) ONE DELECTABLE DISH OR DRINK

………………………..this is an emergency february party………………………………………

Dear Distinct Entity,

Due to your singular intensity and joyous individual style, we wish to humbly
and cordially request your participation in a Blood Bank For Bursting Hearts: A Gift Giving Gathering.

This is an event where a sense of personal connection within a Temporary Free Community can be created by the sharing of fun, energy, homemade food, drinks, and gifts. It is essential that you construct your contributions yourself as this, and only this, will create the emotional involvement
necessary to fully participate as an equal in our community.

By this we mean that we require nothing less than your total commitment to make and give and share an inspired piece of art that you have created with heart and soul and brain and spleen and mindful attention to the spirit of equality, individuality, love, and silliness. We urge you to be completely determined to make a gift of real value and splendour as this will heighten our emotional involvement and increase the quality of gifts. Everyone wins at the Blood Bank, but you don’t want to look like a potato, do you? Do your best work, and we’re sure you’ll find that in different ways we are all equal.

This is an UNCLOSED invitation: feel free to extend it to anyone, but bear in mind that all participants are expected to contribute one gift and one scrumptious* dish to our evening of fun and friendship. It is highly recommended that any extended guests examine the preceding text.

Please come and share yourself with us and have delight in giving for the sake of giving.

NO SPECTATORS, PARTICIPANTS ONLY

*In some elite circles, a bag of chips is not considered scrumptious.

————————————————————————————————————————
Bursting Heart Blood Bank Etiquette

i.
The basic structure is a banquet or picnic. Each player must bring a dish or bottle, etc., of sufficient quantity that everyone gets at least a serving. Dishes can be prepared or finished on the spot, but nothing should be bought ready-made (except wine & beer, although these could ideally be home-made). The more elaborate the dishes the better. Attempt to be memorable.  Every player should arrive with one or more gifts & leave with one or more different gifts.

ii.
Dress for dinner in some way.

iii.
The gifts must be made by the players, not ready-made. This is vital. Pre-manufactured elements can go into the making of the gifts, but each gift must be an individual work of art in its own right. If for instance I bring five hand painted neckties, I must paint each one myself, either with the same or with different designs, although I may be allowed to buy ready-made ties to work on.

iv.
Gifts need not be physical objects. One player’s gift might be live music during dinner, another’s might be a performance. However, the gifts should be superb & even ruinous for the givers. Players should feel a competitive spirit of giving, a determination to make gifts of real splendor or value.

v.
All players win–everyone gives & receives equally. There’s no denying however that a dull or stingy player will lose prestige, while an imaginative &/or generous player will gain "face."

vi.
The host, who supplies the place, will of course be put to extra trouble & expense, so that an ideal gift giving would be part of a series in which each player takes a turn as host. In this case another competition for prestige would transpire in the course of the series:–who will provide the most memorable hospitality?

vii.
Gifts should not be "useful." They should appeal to the senses. Some may prefer works of art, others might like home-made preserves & relishes, or gold frankincense & myrrh, or even sexual acts. All gifts should be present at the potlatch "ceremony"–i.e. no tickets to other events, no promises, no postponements. Remember that the purpose of the game, as well as its most basic rule, is to avoid all mediation & even representation–to be "present," to give "presents."

EMERGENCY FEBRUARY PARTY: Another Occult Assault On Institutions

The great grey beast february is trying to eat us alive. It is a monstrous month, a dire and dreary month. If this month smothers us, how will we ever find our way out its intestines of dark and despair? Don’t get so depressed you take a sailing trip in your bathtub with only razor blades packed. Don’t get so hopeless you enroll into business school or decide to vote liberal. Don’t get so boring you start watching romantic comedies. Don’t get so bored you forget how to breathe. Rather than wither away in the belly of the beast, what we need are tall tails of triumph and victory. FEBRUARY PARTY. Believe in something extraordinary or at least force someone else to. It needn’t be comfortable. So that our hearts are bursting instead of breaking, let’s tear ourselves from ennui like an incompetent surgeon ripping out vital organs and gush like our aortas would into a bloody, pulpy mess. It’s going to hurt, let’s face it, it’s our lives. But let’s make it hurt so good. That 2-headed bastard february has our backs against the wall but we’re gonna show that fucker. The great grey beast February is bloodthirsty, but before you offer your wrists, try having some fun.

EMERGENCY FEBRUARY PARTY

��february party runs for the entire month of february, every february
��february party beings NOW
��it’s never too late for february
��to celebrate february party, give cards, letters, gifts, greetings and feasts to others
��february party has no religious affiliation, does not commemorate victorious battles and focuses on no one person or reason other than festivity and carnival
��handmade/ home-made DIY is preferred
��february party is anti-capitalist; february party is a FREE PARTY
��participants only, no spectators

Far from fun, February. But why? “Because it feels like outside is loathing me”. And it is, outside wants you dead. In the face of such vehement opposition, only one course of action can save us: a party. AN EMERGENCY FEBRUARY PARTY. If it’s kill or be killed, kill winter first. Party is a fight for life, and anyone who plans on surviving the winter is invited. Attendance is mandatory. Now, since you are going to be at a party, you had best get your shit together so that you don’t look like some socially inept crusader of lost and forgotten causes, pathetically peddling postfunctional propaganda in a sea of the happy, healthy and hip, like some bad suit wearing lunatic waiting at the outlets of mass transit to distribute dubious documentation and being laughed at. No one likes to be laughed at, especially at a party. No, if you are going to get through this you better have a plan, you must be ready. Fortunately, FEBRUARY PARTY is free of fixed formalities such as dress codes and discussion topics (not to mention locations or timelines or fees), so just by staying alive at least until March you can join in on the fun. Fortunately, any number of things beginning with the letter F make for fun and exiting activities that will make you a hit at February Party, such as: Filming. Frothing (be it in cups or from the mouth). Fires. Firing weaponry. Fieldtrips. Fucking, (or alternatively if you are a bit of a prude but still do like a little bouncy bouncy now and then). Fornicating. Forming (clay perhaps, or even your own religious sect). Fishing (nothing makes you feel alive like making something else dead). Freezing. Freeing. Formulating mathematical equations. Frog Farming. And that’s just the letter F, and F isn’t a very good letter. You see, you could do anything. The trick is making sure the party keeps on rolling, and then before you know it, it will be March. You could even bring it along into March too if you are having too much fun…

Meanwhile everyone wants to breathe and no one can and many say, “we will breathe later”.
And most of them don’t die because they are already dead.