Well, hey! I still have this thing...

Happy Fourth, todos!

Aeeiiieee! I haven't posted here for more than a year! Sad.

I still live, however.

I just got back from two hours of Christmas cheer in the freezing cold. Why do people think "Christmas on the River" is a GOOD thing?

And why, oh why, would you have a stealth bomber flyover at a NIGHT event? Dur.

Dave Cockrum, creator of Nightcrawler, died this morning.

http://www.nightscrawlers.com/forum/viewthread.php?tid=6539

Words fail. I met him in person only once, but knew him online for several years. He was a good man.

Ugh. I had a crappy weekend. Drama Friday at work, drama with my dad, a slow night at the haunted house... Then Saturday my father decided to show my in-laws his complete lack of social skills. I ended up getting into it with my father-in-law too. The haunted house was okay, and we made quite a bit of money, but I'm not sure we'll be doing it again. Too. Much. Drama.

Scott's flight was late Sunday too, and so Monday I was exhausted at work. Today is Halloween, and while the part of me not too tired to care is excited about that, it's not excited enough to decorate. The neigborhood kids will be disappointed. I may have to work late too.

I've decided to spend tommorrow recuperating, but I will have to work as well. Then I'm rejoining the gym, going on a diet and trying to be less moody.

Now I gotta get back to work...

Okay, gotta rant before I go 'splodey. This morning I actually got to work early, had all my stuff packed for spending the weekend 50 miles from home to work at the haunted house and was feeling pretty good about the day. I should have known better.

The fun started when I couldn't get Internet access or onto the file server at work. One of the owners came in and started working to fix it and got the server up, but not the Internet, thusly began the waiting on Time Warner Cable. Since I had my laptop with me I brought it in and pirated the Internet access from the cafe next door. So now I've got the only Web access in the building and everyone needs me to look crap up for them.

Then we had a staff meeting because there was a typo on the front page this week (partially my fault), three ads got left out of the paper (not my fault) and the printer ran out of black ink (WTF!?). So that was fun.

We've had spotty server access all day, and my pirated connection is not so hot either. So I'm getting squat done. Then my dad calls, and my grandfather is sick so he can't come up to babysit the dogs while I'm out of town. I still don't know what the hell to do about that.

So I'm half-ass trying to get some work done on my laptop when I hear a big thud outside our office. Our flag, complete with the metal bracket, pulled out of the stucco and crashed into the sidewalk outside, narrowly missing the county recorder of deeds, who was about to come in the door. Nice!

THEN the police scanner goes off, and one of the banks in town has been robbed. That doesn't often happen here, as this is a pretty small suburb.

And I've still got the only Internet connection. So we're going to have to download all the office e-mail through my laptop and try to transfer it to the server and hope nothing crashes.

I wonder what will go wrong next. And I wonder if the dogs can grow thumbs in time to let themselves out to go to the bathroom tonight. I'm sure not letting my mother back in the house after Tuesday.

Current Mood: aggravated

The haunted house is a resounding success this year! In one weekend we’ve made more money than we did in three weekends last year. That’s awesome, but it’s a mixed blessing. That means we’ll be doing it again next year. I think I killed Halloween for myself last year because I’m still just not feeling the season much. Oh well, I’ll just get through this year, and by the time we start working on the next season (which will be January-February 2007) maybe I’ll be enthused about this again.

Honestly, I did have fun acting last weekend. Oh! And my nose is so far unbroken, so that’s already an improvement over last year! I was only spit on once too! Go me! And, a guy I worked with 11 years ago at my first haunted house (a baaad hayride) came by to visit Friday night. That was pretty fun, in a deja-vuey kind of way. He brought me a copy of the news program we were featured on at that crappy haunted hayride. It was trippy seeing myself in pretty much the same zombie makeup as more than a decade ago.

Current Mood: contemplative

KC ranks No. 1 in mass evacuation

Um, yay?

Current Mood: sick

Awwww.... I liked him. He was such a feisty old fellow. I must have taken his photo a dozen times for various newspapers, and he never failed to make me smile.

"No tears, please, for Buck" from the KC Star.

I still think he got hosed by the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Current Mood: sad

Believe it or not, the Halloween Queen is having a hard time getting motivated for Halloween. I know! It’s just weeks away! Yet, I’m draggin.’ I think spending months on the haunted house last year, then the stress of running it, getting my nose broken in it and then the hospital trip a week after soured me well. *sigh*

BUT! I am excited we’re going to the Worlds of Fun Halloweekends thinger tomorrow! Woo! I’m also happy about my new icon! The new actor of choice is Cillian Murphy, and there’s nothing better than an actor flubbing his lines. Thank you again, JS, that totally made my day!

Current Mood: blank

Well, I’m writing a Batman-universe story in between my news stories and mind numbing typesetting today. You infected me, JS. I completely blame you (and Paws with her Kitty), because I’m not at all the one who brought up Bat-fic in the first place. :^P And, didya see? Comments! I think you’ve got a hit on your hands. I don’t think mine will fit on that group, so I joined Arkham Anonymous this morning. Oy.

In other good (or ambivalent) news, I will not have to work 12 hours tomorrow! Woot!

Current Mood: amused

Wow, I haven't posted here since MAY 1! Sheesh.

Weeell, since then, Hubby and I went on vacation. I turned 30. I've worked a lot. My dad retired and has sorta kinda moved out. Yep, yep, I think that about covers it...

The last movie I saw was X3, which, meh. The last concert I went to was Blondie on my birthday, which, meh. Um... The last party I went to ended in Hubby barfing on and in my car on Interstate 35. That was special.

Wow. I'm DULL!

I've been trying to work on the haunted house and Kreepfest. I was arm-wrestled into joining MySpace because Hubby did.

I got sucked into the role-playing game on Nightscrawlers. This new game is doing well, unlike previous NS games, and though I NEVER thought it would happen to me -- I love the damn thing.

That is about it. Snarf.

Just found out we’ve got final approval to do the haunted house again! So that means retooling the theme, adding stuff, removing stuff and lots of stuff! This year we will not be directly affiliated with the scout troop, so I am free to make it a little scarier, so long as it stays relatively bloodless. I’ll be redoing our Web site to reflect the change in tone, which will be lots of fun because we’re going a little more into the asylum theme this year.

And, I’m not sure if I should be proud or deeply shamed that I was a part of this… In 2004 I made some props for a horror movie shot by a couple fellas I went to college with. The movie is finally almost done and the trailer is up on MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/guerillaentertainment

I read the script on this sucker, and let me tell you, cinematic masterpiece it will never be, but it was fun making the dummy they ran over in the trailer, the human skin table cloth and various corpses and a notorious bit of severed male anatomy. I even sold some of them at a convention last year for a decent price on the premise that they were movie props.

We’re also moving our annual KC Kreepfest indoors this year, which will be a massive improvement, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we don’t top 100 attendees this year since we’re having a flash mob and doing the Rocky Horror thing with the premier of “Snakes on a Plane.”

From the Kansas City Star:

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/14334458.htm

Creature’s picture irks Board of Ed member

WICHITA — State Board of Education member Connie Morris took exception Wednesday to a picture of a made-up creature that satirizes the state’s new science standards hanging on a Wichita middle school teacher’s door.

Fellow board member Sue Gamble of Shawnee told The Wichita Eagle that Morris asked for the picture to be removed.

The creature, called the Flying Spaghetti Monster, is the creation of Bobby Henderson of Corvallis, Ore. It looks like a clump of spaghetti with two eyes sticking out of the top and two meatballs flanking the eyes. Henderson created the entity and an accompanying mythology on the origin of mankind to make fun of Kansas’ recent debate over the teaching of criticisms of evolution, including intelligent design.

In November, the board voted 6-4 to allow criticisms of evolution to be taught in Kansas schools.

Morris, who voted for the new science standards, saw the picture during the tour of Stucky Middle School. She did not return phone calls for this report.

Gamble, who voted against the new standards and was also on the tour, said that Morris asked principal Kenneth Jantz to have the picture taken down.

Board members toured Stucky before finishing two days of meetings in Wichita on Wednesday.

Gamble said that when she saw the picture during the tour, she knew that some board members wouldn’t approve of it.

"When we went into that classroom, students were looking at rock formations," Gamble said. "Connie stopped to talk to a teacher and I moved on. That was when I was aware of the flyer. I thought ‘she’s probably going to say something to the teacher.’”

Gamble said that when Morris saw the picture, she asked the principal, who was on the tour, to take it down. Jantz did not comment for this report.

Gamble said she didn’t see Morris talk to Randy Mousley, the teacher, or to the principal, but that she later went up to Mousley and asked if Morris said anything to him about the picture.

That’s when Gamble learned that Morris had asked the principal to take it down.

The monster’s picture has hung on the door since September or October and was put up there as a joke, Mousley said.

“It’s a parody,” he said. “It’s just making fun of anti-evolution.”

Mousley said he doesn’t teach students about the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Also on the door is a Doonesbury comic strip about science, said board member Carol Rupe, who represents Wichita. She also voted against the new standards.

“It was two little pieces of paper on the door,” she said. “It was poking good fun.”

Gamble said she told the principal that it was his decision whether the monster could stick around.

“I advised the principal that Morris has no authority,” she said. “I told him to deal with his staff as he saw fit, not by what a state board member says.”

Board chairman Steve Abrams, who voted for the new standards, didn’t see the picture but said he thinks that the Flying Spaghetti Monster is silly.

“Personally, I think it’s juvenile,” he said.

The picture was still on the door at the end of the school day Wednesday.

I hang out on a couple of forums for urban explorers, the fancy term for schmucks who like to hang out in dangerous abandoned buildings and take pictures. It’s a thing. And yep, I used to do it in college, and still do occasionally if I see a cool building, though I’m not so hep on going inside the buildings since I like my criminal record clean and my spine unsnapped from falling through floors. But I digress.

One of the posters found this site, and it’s creating quite the uproar as folks either get it and think it’s great or those who lack the sense of humor gene get all pissed about it:

http://www.secreturbanexplorationninjamafia.com/main.html

I especially love the media page, with all the fake crawls. The motto is also frickin’ hilarious since the motto of one of the big, takes-itself-seriously UE sites is “take nothing but photos, leave nothing but foot prints.”

Part of what makes it so funny is that the mentality parodied on this site is so prevalent in some of the younger, dumber, more obnoxious members of the UE community, or, hell, the internet community in general. Cracked my shit up.

Scott’s grandpa died unexpectedly either Monday night or Tuesday morning. He was 82, and lived alone, so when his aorta burst it keeled him over right in the kitchen where he laid until his daughter found him Tuesday morning. They said he must have died almost instantly because he didn’t even have time to push the little medic alert button he had to wear. He’d been depressed since his wife died last spring, and told anyone who would listen that he just wanted to die, and preferably die in his own house, so he got his wish. But how much does it suck that his daughter had to find him like that? Apparently there was blood too. Urg. So we’ve been busy with funeral and such the last few days. Not fun. And now we have to help to clean out the house so it can be sold.

Confession time: After watching the entire series of “Angel,” actually in order, over the past few weeks I’ve got a couple of new favorite characters in the Buffyverse – Wesley and Lorne. And since I rambled on about this for a bit I’ll get off my lazy duff ( and cut it. )

I was reading through old messages on an "Angel"-related fan site and came across this exchange between two posters. I just about died laughing:

“Love is blind, love happens quickly, love can't be ruled. :)”

“Love is Stevie Wonder, laxatives, and anarchy. This explains a lot.”