Third time's a charm

This post might look familiar to those of you who have been reading my blog for a while. That's because it's a continue-a-story that I have posted (at various stages) twice before.

I'm hoping that this time I get some more responses, and that maybe this story will actually conclude. [I have an idea of where I want to take this narrative in mind, but I'm willing to let it go wherever it gets taken as well.]

So, yeah. In case you are unfamiliar - the idea is that I will post the beginning of a story. The comment section is where the next person continues the story, and it just builds from there. The only 'rules' that I ask are that 1) you don't end the story (that's for me to do) and 2) that you don't post twice in a row.
If you want to add a sentence, or you want to add 452 sentences, it's cool by me. If you don't like the direction the story is going, then change it. And note that the previous incarnations are also still up, so if you want to visit the old tellings and have those stories wind up differently, feel free.

Whew! With that, I will now post the story...

Paul Washington was woken up by the ringing of the telephone. A beam of almost-noon sunlight sneaked in his bedroom window between the thickly drawn curtains. Groggily, he reached for the phone, willing the hangover away. "Hello?" he answered.

The voice on the other end shouted something in German. Paul didn't understand it, but there was no mistaking the urgency, whatever the message may have been. "Sorry, dude. Wrong number." He hung up and fell back into a deep slumber.

Ten minutes later, the door was kicked in. Paul sat up instantly, heart pounding. The adrenaline raced through his body and he was sweating as three men in dark black uniforms and brandishing machine guns surrounded his bed. The men were all yelling at him, obviously irate. Paul stuck his hands up, terrified. Well, at least my hangover
is gone, he thought mindlessly as his brain attempted to understand the bizarre situation he found himself in. The leader of the men poked the nozzle of his machine gun into Paul's ribs and barked some sort of question. Paul shook his head and said, "I...I don't speak German."

The leader said the same phrase again, and again poked Paul with his weapon. Paul's vision blurred and he feared he would faint. He willed himself to stay conscious and said, "Take whatever you want. Just don't hurt me. Please." The leader grabbed Paul's arm roughly. He looked at his forearm, but obviously didn't like what he saw - or as
Paul quickly determined, what he did not see. All three men had a barcode tattoo on their forearms, and they were expecting Paul to have the same. One of the other men asked a question - most likely, "Where's his tattoo?" - and the leader barked angrily at him. Paul was ferevertly wishing this was all a horrific nightmare that he'd soon wake up from.

Paul protested as the leader placed a pair of handcuffs on him, but these men did not seem to understand English any better than he spoke German. "You've got the wrong guy!" he yelled, as they forced him to get out of bed. He had on his jeans, but no shirt.

Realizing that dealing with these thugs wasn't going to work, Paul decided his best course of action was to get help from a neighbor. As the men started to march him out of his apartment, he screamed, "Mrs. Johansen! Mrs. Johansen, call 9-1-1!" His yells brought his next door neighbor to her door. Mrs. Johansen had been Paul's neighbor for the past 4 years. They attended the same church. He knew she'd help. The woman opened the door, and Paul nearly did faint when he saw that Mrs. Johansen had a barcode on her forearm...
It occurred to Paul later that perhaps he had fainted, because the next thing he knew he was sitting at a metal table in a small room with no windows. It looked like he assumed a police interrogation room might look, based on his impressions from television, but there was no mirror and he couldn't see any other sort of surveillance system.

One of Paul's arms was handcuffed (or otherwise tied - he couldn't actually see it) to the back of his chair. It was, incidentally, a very uncomfortable chair, made of metal or plastic or some other material that makes you feel as though there is no padding between your bones and the seat. His other hand was cuffed - if that's the
right word - to the table with one of those plastic zip-ties that he was pretty sure cops and maybe soldiers carried. His head felt very heavy and he couldn't turn it properly. It crossed his mind that he might have been drugged, but he wasn't sure what that would feel like.

He was pretty sure that people on drugs had hallucinations, but he wasn't sure what those were like, either.

Paul blinked and suddenly there was a man standing at the other side of the table. Now Paul was certain he'd been drugged. Either he had blacked out and the man had come into the room, or the man was a hallucination. Paul squinted his eyes in an attempt to focus better.

The man's gun looked real enough. He wasn't sure what kind it was. It looked like something from a Sci-Fi movie, but for all Paul knew, that's what all guns looked like. He wasn't exactly an expert.

He tried to ask the man where he was, but his mouth was dry and no sound came from it. He cleared his throat, because he wasn't sure what else to do, and managed to croak out something along the lines of, "May I have a glass of water?"

His vision became blurry again and, wondering if perhaps he needed glasses, he blinked a few times again.

Now there was a woman standing next to the man. She looked familiar, though Paul was certain they had never met.

Placing her hands on the table, she leaned toward Paul and said something, but now his ears weren't working properly either and he thought he heard wind blowing, or the ocean, like when you put a conch shell to your ear.

"I'm sorry?"

She leaned closer. "I said..."

"Can you understand me? Is the translator operating?"

Paul blinked. This day was becoming stranger and stranger. When the woman had spoken, he had heard her ask in English, but also slightly speak in German. Additionally, her mouth had not quite been in sync with the English he had heard. It was very similar to seeing someone on television who spoke a foreign language and hearing the translation spoken over it. All the while, the ocean wind noise was faintly whispering in his ear.

In a state of shock, Paul simply asked, "Translator?"

The woman, who must have been wearing her own translator - or who understood English - nodded and tapped her ear. Paul then noticed that something was in his own right ear. It felt like an earplug, but was, undoubtedly, a piece of machinery that was translating the conversation into English for him.

Paul thought all these thoughts, along with "Who are these people??" before realizing that the woman was again speaking and the machine was translating:

"...you will do best to answer my questions honestly. We do not know what connection, if any, you have with Fredrick Muller, but the fact that you were found in his apartment implies at least a casual relationship with that criminal."

Even though the translator did not convey much tone, it was obvious to Paul that this woman despised Fredrick Muller, whomever that was.

The woman went on, "My first question is - how do you not have any identification? Where is your mark?" She pulled up her sleeve, revealing her own bar code tattoo.

Paul swallowed, trying to get his bearings and determine exactly what he was going to say in response. The man with the gun made him nervous and he was confident that if he said the wrong thing, that he would end up a dead man.

"First," he said, "I do not know Fredrick Muller. The apartment you people pulled me out of was mine. You've obviously got the wrong person. As for identification, I have my driver's license at home in my..." the woman smacked him across the face, hard, silencing Paul.

She snarled, "Do not lie to me!" in German and the translator managed to chill Paul.

"How did you remove your identification?" she asked, yanking on Paul's free arm, looking again for his nonexistent bar code. "How?!"

Paul didn't know what to do, but didn't think that attempts at deceit would work with these people. Besides that, he didn't know what it was they wanted him to say, so he stuck with the truth. "I'm trying to tell you I've never had one!" he said in an exasperated tone.

The woman heard this in her translator and looked at Paul like he were crazy (Paul was beginning to think she might be onto something there). "That is not possible." she said flatly.

At that moment there was a knock on the door and another guard (Paul assumed, he had the look of a guard) entered and spoke to the woman. Paul's translator picked up the conversation and converted it to English for him, despite the fact that he probably wasn't meant to hear any of it. "Burr," (Paul at first thought the guard had said
"brr", but then quickly realized that 'Burr' was the woman's name - or title, perhaps), "there is something you must see."

"I am interrogating the suspect right now." Burr growled back. The guard said, "There is another like him. Another person with no identification. A Negro in his thirties. He only speaks English. He was found in district five, trying to break into someone's home. Schmidt has him in the other room and is requesting you come right away."

Burr looked at Paul and then at the guard. "Bring the other man in here. I will interrogate them both at the same time. Perhaps the lack of identification and the English language are not all these men have in common."

The guard nodded and left the room. Paul didn't think his request would be granted, but saw no major harm in asking - especially since he could now be understood - "May I get a drink of water, please? And perhaps a shirt?"

Burr considered Paul briefly, then said to the man with the gun, "Water. Shirt." The man nodded and left the room without a word.

At that time the other guard entered, forcing a scared looking black man in front of him. He looked at Paul and seemed to draw several conclusions quite quickly. "They arrest you, too?" he asked Paul. Paul nodded, afraid to say anything aloud, but inside he was ecstatic to hear another person speaking his native tongue. The black man was forced into a chair beside Paul, and the guard with the gun said to Burr, "I'll go get a translator for him." The black man said, "I told you! I don't speak German. No shpreckin the Deutsch!" Paul smiled in spite of himself. He liked this man.

Burr frowned. "Tell your friend to shut up," she ordered Paul, "or I will kill him."

Paul had no doubt she would do it, either. He said to the man, "Hi. I'm Paul. Paul Washington. That woman there? She's in charge. Don't piss her off. Right now she doesn't want you to talk. I suggest you listen to her."

"Huh." the man replied. Then to Paul, "Oh. My name is Derrick. Derr..." but at that moment Burr smacked Derrick across the face.

Derrick leapt up and was going to retaliate, but Burr kneed the middle aged man in the groin, dropping him instantly. "I told you to tell him not to speak." she said coldly to Paul. Paul simply gaped at the whole scene, unable to help Derrick up, since he was still handcuffed to his chair.

The other guard returned at that moment with a glass of water and a light blue shirt for Paul. The shirt was tossed into Paul's lap, the glass of water was put in his free hand.

Derrick slowly got back up and sat in his chair. The guard took that opportunity to handcuff his arm. Derrick didn't object - at least verbally - but Paul knew he wasn't happy about this development. This guard also had a translator and he placed it in Derrick's ear.

Burr asked Derrick if he could understand her, if his translator was working and to simply nod if the answer was yes. Derrick nodded.

"Good." Burr said. "Now we will begin to get some answers...

"First, you will tell me why you were breaking into a district five house."

There was a half second pause before Derrick answered, in which Paul could see him swallow all manner of emotion. He had a fire in him, and Paul could tell that he wanted to let it out. But that hit to the face seemed to have sobered him pretty well. When he spoke, it was in a low and even voice.

"Like I told your boys when they came up behind me, it was my house I was getting into. I was not breaking in. My key was stuck."

It was hard to tell from her face what Burr made of this answer. Then she smiled.

"You certainly cannot expect me to believe that ... one of your kind ... has a home in district five."

"That so?" Derrick bit out.

Burr continued to smile. "So were you there for stealing, or were you sent to terrorize our good citizens?"

Oh how Paul understood (as much as he understood anything) what was going on behind his new friend's bewildered face. If he was that - "friend" was an appropriate word for a guy you instinctively trust in an utterly foreign situation - right? Paul wondered idly when the Germans would leave them alone so they could make sense of everything and ... maybe make a masterful escape? Somehow, he didn't that was
going to happen. He had to do his best with these unnerving guards staring him down. It was like trying to solve a crossword puzzle with a bomb counting down. They both had to play their hands well. "But our hands are tied," he thought ridiculously. What was Derrick going to say?

He wouldn't get to know, it seemed. The door opened again, and again, an urgent message was calling Burr to the door. Paul strained to hear the hushed tones, and he saw Burr's eyes narrow.

"...Jackson."

"Huh?" Derrick had whispered to him.

"Jackson," he repeated. "The other half of my name."

"Oh." Paul smiled. He pushed down the urge to laugh. He felt a little crazy.

"SO!"

The harsh, reverberating syllable brought Paul back to reality (assuming that word fit).

"Separate them!" Burr barked. She was smiling again. Maniacally.

The two guards swooped down on Derrick. One of them cut the band around his wrist. Derrick's eyes were painfully wide as they pulled him from the room. So much for company.

The woman was approaching him again.

"Now we have you," she said.

"You do?" said Paul, blankly. He had given up all illusion that he could control this situation.

"The phone call to the apartment..." she began.

The phone call to the apartment.

"...was traced from your friend's house."

A deafening noise from outside the room followed this pronouncement, as Burr glared at him, unblinking.

"I swear I don't..." Paul started to object, convinced that it would do him absolutely no good. These people didn't listen to reason, they wouldn't listen to the truth, and Paul didn't even know what the hell the truth was anymore. But it didn't matter, and Paul didn't get to finish his declaration because another loud boom interrupted him, this one much closer. It was accompanied by the smell of smoke and the sound of panicked screams of anguish and confusion. Burr had turned to face the door when it exploded inward.

Paul screamed and attempted to hide himself underneath the table. His arm was still handcuffed to the chair and his wrist was cut badly as a result. Burr had been knocked backward from the explosion, but was regaining her composure quickly. She pulled a gun (Paul wasn't sure what type, but it was small enough to have been concealed earlier) and fired into the smoke that was pouring into the interrogation room. Paul closed his eyes and so he did not see the number of people who came into the room, and he did not see the shot that hit Burr in the abdomen. When he opened his eyes, there were three strangers in the room and Burr was lying beside him with a bullet wound in her gut, possibly dead.

One of the men reached into Burr's pocket, pulled out the keys to the cuffs, and tossed them to the man standing above Paul. He unlocked Paul's chains and offered his hand to Paul. Part of Paul's mind that wanted to retreat to a fantasy land thought, "Now he'll say 'Come with me if you want to live', just like in the Terminator movies."

The man did speak, then, but he did not quote Arnold Schwarzenneger. Instead, he spoke in German, and the translator whispered in Paul's ear, "Paul Washington, my name is Fredrick Muller. We don't have much time."

November Mileage

January - 730
February - 1357.8
March - 872.4
April - 1056.9
May - 278.3 (car, which is currently not running); 486.6 (minivan) --total for May is 764.9
June - car = 0.0; minivan = 1489.6
July - car = 0.0; minivan =1796.3
August - car = 0.0; minivan = 944.6
September - car = 0.1; minivan = 1725.3 - total for Sept. is 1725.4
October - car - 0.0; minivan - 1283.9
November - car = 0.0; minivan - 703.6

Year to date - 12,725.4

Come together...

I don't know what effect this will truly have on the world, but, hey, it can't hurt.

Buh-log-ing.

Well, huh.

And of related interest (and what I was originally going to link to before discovering the above posted "quiz" from Annika's blog) is this article from the Las Vegas Weekly about blogging. I disagree with bits of it, agree with other parts, and mostly just found it kinda...well, like a blog entry. Not really important in the scheme of things. [shrug]

Today is the end of November, which means the end of NaNoBlogMore. I somehow managed to post every day for the past 30 days, so I guess that's something. I seriously think that I am going to take December off, though. I've got a few more posts in me for today (the mileage, another link, and a really long post that will hopefully garner some interaction) and then I'll see you all in 07.
If I'm really lucky, Blogger will be able to upgrade me by then.

buttons pushed

Someone pushed the Winter button. (Tonight's low is going to be 27. Which, granted, isn't as cold as some [most] parts of the country, but this is Nevada. It never gets this cold this early in the year.)

Someone pushed my Tired button. I overslept majorly this morning, and I am really very tired now, too.

And now i'm going to push the Publish Post button, because I can't think of anything else to mention.

a little bit from column a, a little bit from column b.

sometimes I despise myself.
sometimes I am so damn impressed with myself that I marvel that people aren't on their knees when i walk into a room.
(usually it's a compromise between the two extremes)

sometimes I know exactly what I want to say.
Sometimes I have no freaking clue.
(usually, regardless, I have a difficult time actually expressing it.)

sometimes the future looks very bleak, other times it looks quite optimistic, the truth is a mixture of the two, but my outlook flip-flops.

soemtimes i cant' spell or use grammar very goodly.

ahh, life. it's (un)predicatable and wild.

homestretch

If this post were being made on Steph's blog, it would be labeled with the "This Post Refuses to be Labeled" label.
Also, it would be funnier.

You know what's really ...weird? Memory. How the hell does the brain record things - record everything - and filter it all and have it stored for recollection? Does the brain have storage limits? I would suspect that it must, and I'm tempted to quote Homer here, but at the same time, your brain would have to continue to remember stuff if it went on existing, right?

I mean, if we could somehow keep a brain alive forever - say hooked up to a machine ala many sci-fi stories - and keep it constantly stimulated with experiences, wouldn't it just continue to remember the events it witnessed in case such memories needed to be played back?

And I know that a lot of stuff (everything??) is stored in the subconcious, but doesn't that have limits too?
If we took our hypothetical brain and taught it 1 new word everyday, how long would it take before it could not recall the first word that it was taught?
Or maybe I'm thinking of memory (and memory storage) incorrectly and the computer analogy is not right. Or helpful.
Maybe memory is like a body of water - an ocean or a really big lake (or a pond, ha ha ha) - and we're constantly swimming in it as we remember past experiences, but at the same time, it's raining, which is adding drops of water to the overall amount of water to swim in. Since memories in this case would be liquid, they would all flow together - how does one keep track of a single drop of water in a lake - and that would explain why some memories are difficult to bring back to your mind - they're deeper in the water. Also, it would go a ways toward explaining why sometimes something you've not thought about for ages suddenly comes rushing back to you - the water has been stirred up enough to bring those drops of memory back to the surface.

I don't know.

In other news, the internet can be an incredibly frightening, depressing, and infuriating place. I'd link to what I'm talking about, but it's not worth it. Plus, I'm sure you can find your own examples.

In other other news, 99 Red Balloons is hilarious, and sad. I mean, the army overreacts to a bunch of balloons, and destroys the world, and then the singer starts the whole thing over again because she's in mourning over her friend having been killed in the attack. Um. Unless I'm interpretting that wrongly. Which might be the case. But my point still stands.

I, III, V, and X

So we just returned home from Steph's mom's house where we had a 3 hour game of Risk with Steph and her brothers. We didn't finish the game all the way, but it was a foregone conclusion that Steph's army (aka Green Mama, aka Green Peace, aka Gang Green) was going to wipe out the last two forces in her way. Namely me (the Black Death or Black Plague) and Sean (the Blue Bombers), so we called it early.

Although who knows how that fight between Ural and Irktusk would've turned out. I mean, really.

Good times were had by all. I had originally planned on giving a fuller description of the night's game, but it's pretty late now, and I (unfortunately) have to wake up early tomorrow, so that'll have to do. Anyway, now that Steph knows how to play Risk (OBVIOUSLY!), I hope that we can play here at home more. Although I don't know how much she actually enjoyed the game, and more just kind of kicked ass and took names.

These will never stop being funny

I don't feel like blogging right now, so instead, some YouTube clips. These are three pop culture moments that never fail to make me laugh.

First, from Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy:



"That's how I roll!!"

And, from Invader Zim:


And Eddie Izzard:

So much to blog about!

It's like a cornucopia of blog topics!

1) For the past week or so, Blogger has had a display at my dashboard claiming that "my blog is ready for the switch to the beta version", which, as I've mentioned before, I have been wanting to upgrade to forever.
But.
Whenever I attempt to switch to it, I get a nice huge error message saying, "COULD NOT SWITCH TO BETA."
Which is it, Blogger? I mean, obviously, it's that I can't, but if that's the case, why tease me with the false promise of being able to upgrade? It's just cruel.
Anyway, it helps to make blogging a really negative experience, and I'm sure that my posts the last few [whatevers] have reflected that.

2) In much happier news, today is the 10 year anniversary of when Stephanie and I first met in person! Holy time pass, Batman! It's amazing that ten years have flown by this quickly.
Ten years ago, I was 21, had jet-black hair (dyed a few weeks prior because I was still young, stupid, and had expendable cash flow), weighed at least 15 pounds less than I do now, was working at KFBT, and had no car.

3) To celebrate, we had our Thanksgiving dinner tonight, rather than yesterday. Steph made a turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, biscuits, corn, salad, cranberry sauce, lasagna, and sparkling apple cider. Yumola! Plus, there is pumpkin pie (yuck) and apple pie (yum!) for dessert coming up. Feastolicious!

4) We have a kitten in our house again. The neighborhood kids across the way found a kitten - probably only three or four weeks old - at the park. They knocked on our door and asked us if it was ours. They said that they could not take it to their house because they would get in trouble. So, rather than throw it back out "to the wolves" (Steph's words), we took it in so that we could feed, shelter, and bathe it, and then tomorrow put up signs and/or offer it up on Freecycle. Steph is currently taking pictures of said animal, and I'm sure she'll blog about it eventually, so as is always the case, check her blog for a more detailed, more amusing and more worthwhile entry on the matter.

5) I don't think that there is anything else. The plan for the rest of the night is to play Trivial Pursuit and have pie. Good times.

best in show

TV's been on pretty much all day. We watched the 80th Annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, which was, um, paradey.

After it ended, there was some crazy dog show on. We left it on and did other things, but, man dog shows are a strange thing.

When the Toy Poodle won Best in Show, my cynical (and hilarious) reaction was, "It's fixed!". Steph was just upset that that bitch won.

Next on was Babe which we had never seen before, but I was just yesterday considering adding it to our quueeue. Now I don't have to! That'll do, pig.

In other news, I was thinking that Jesus would be a great person to invite over for dinner. I mean, water into wine? Making fish and bread just magically appear? That dude rocks!

monkey monkey monkey monkey monkey

The movie Curious George was watched by the girls today. I only caught the last half-ish of it, but was pleasantly surprised. It's not a bad movie at all. Plus, the word "monkey" is said more times, I think, than in any other movie ever. And "monkey" is a great word. More movies should say it more often.

Today feels like a Friday.

Yesterday I was going to write a big long blog entry about taking a stand in matters, but then it got late and I got tired and it just wasn't worth it. Which is an ironic thing for me to say, because that is a big part of what the (hypothetical) entry was about. When do you stand up for things and when is it not worth it?
Oddly, as I age, I find that it's "not worth it" as much as I used to. Or maybe I'm just more cowardly as I get older. [shrug] I don't even know if I'm making sense.

In other news completely, Blogger still hates me. Frickin' Blogger. Lying to me every single day about the betaversion. Oh well. Some day, I suppose.

Eh. I feel like I'm forgetting something semi-important but the chord just isnt' being struck right now, so I guess it's not that vital.

In conclusion, monkey!!

Those were the good old days

I really was funnier in the past. Archives are quite underrated.

um...no.

Disturbed (or is it there no "e", I forget? Disturbd? I could wiki it up, but it's not worth it. The band sucks regardless of how they spell it.) has made a cover of Genesis' "Land of Confusion".

Just...no.

And now I just saw a trailer for a remake of Charlotte's Web that appears to be very CGI-influenced.

There are rumors (or maybe it's fact now) of:
Indiana Jones 4 (mixed feelings on that one)
A Battlestar Galactica prequel series (I haven't even watched the current series! Why go and make a prequel??)
A "next generation" type of series for V. (My inner child really liked V, but I suspect that a) it woldn't hold up to viewings now and b) that an updated series is not really needed)


And definitely on the way (but by no means necessary):

A 5th (6th?? I lost count) Rocky movie.
Oceans 13 (didn't Oceans 12 bomb??)
A 4th Die Hard movie (Die Hard, Die Harder, Die Hardest, Die Hard infinity!)

Interactive time! What remakes/sequels/prequels are you currently dreading/fearing/shaking your head in disbelief over?

null/void

First, the whiny section:
My back hurts.
I have a canker sore right now.
I can't find the remote control.
I have to work tomorrow.
It's both too hot and too cold in this house.
I don't have anything interesting to blog about, and there are still 11 days left in this month.I wonder if taking a month and NOT blogging would be simpler. I may have to try that in December.

And now the rest:

We went ice skating today at the Fiesta Hotel and Casino's ice skating rink. Kinda weird to be driving around in late November to go ice skating and requiring the air conditioning in the van. Eh, it's Vegas weather, whatchya gonna do?
Saren really enjoyed the skating. Steph snapped a few pictures of her and I skating, so I bet if you ask nicely, she'll post them.

Next week is a short work week. So, that's a plus. We're planning on playing Risk with Steph's brothers on Sunday, which should be fun. I always enjoy Risk, but it takes so long to play, and the girls are still a little too young to really get into it (plus Irina would totally disrupt any game that we might have on the floor), so I'm very much looking forward to Sunday night.

2 great tastes...

My newest million dollar idea:

Cookie burgers.

It's a regular cheeseburger, but instead of buns, you have chocolate chip cookies.

I'm lovin' it!

I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave.

I had a big long post about stuff, but ...now I don't.

Question for the P@riots reading this - what are your thoughts on malevolent spirits? People can be influenced by negative energy, can machinery? Does it become a sort of feedback loop where it just builds and builds? Is there a way out of such a cycle? (Short of a baseball bat to the harddrive, or some other violent and expensive release of pressure?)
What about exorcism? Or exercise, maybe? Mabye that's what I need. Work off some of this stress that seems to have built up in me for whatever reason. Who knows? (The Shadow knows.)

Or maybe I just need to be able to laugh at something. It's been a while (read: at least three hours) since I've found anything really funny.

museless

(and other thoughts)

I think my muse (or is it my Muse? Is Muse supposed to be capitalized? even if you are not talking about the band?) has left me. I wonder why that is. (hee! I'm musing why I don't have my muse.)
I bet it's from nto sleeping enough.

CSI type shows have been on television for years -decades, really, if you go back and include mystery shows like Columbo and Murder She Wrote- and you've got to wonder how the writers manage to week after week think up different ways of homicides being committed. If I were the real police, I think I'd keep a very close eye on those writer types. Or make sure to stay on their good side, if you know what I mean.

So glad tomorrow is friday.

One week from tdoay is Gro...Thanksgiving. (Yes, I was originally going to type out Groundhog Day.) I still marvel at how quickly time goes by now.

Um.

Sleep time! To cycle this back around to the topic at the beginning (and in an effort to get mroe comments) - what is your muse? What inspires you? How can i get my (groove) back?

ymoyl

Huh. I thought I'd blogged already today. Good thing I checked twice, eh?

I did not run over any alien fox babies today. (Unless I did.)

I did have an idea for something to talk about earlier today, but now that I'm sitting in front of the white screen of death (heh), I am much much less compelled to type about it. It's been brewing in my head off and on for a while now, so I'm sure eventually it'll make it's way into the world wide web for all to enjoy and/or mock.

Here's one way that life is disappointingly NOT like a video game: There's no awesome catchy 8-bit music accompanying us as we go about our adventures.
Another way - when people fail, there's no big GAME OVER that appears.

I think the Universe might be out of line somehow right now due to the fact that it is a Wednesday - in Sweeps, no less - and there is NOT a new Lost on.

I can't stand your product, but your commercials are amazing.

Said at Target today:
"Something crazy needs to happen so that I have something to blog about."

Nothing did, though.

Maybe tomorrow I'll find an abandonded baby or run over a marmot fox or be visited by aliens who will deliver the following message to humanity: "WHAT THE FUCK, HUMANS?!?" or something.

I'll let you know.

8 hrs

man, what i wiulodn't give 4 that aniunt if sleep right ow,

i promiused the story of yesterday yesterday, but it's nit wirthj it. or i'm 2 tiredm,

long story short- we didn't have the last 10 minytes of a movie we were syioosed to air that night. i got caalled. i had to go down 2 the station to help remedy rhe situation. doimng such things is whuy i gaet paid the big bucks, thouygh, right? right??? ha ha ha.

anyway. dince it'as minbday againb, i'm mr. lack fo sleep huy. and we are supposed 2 watch deadwood in a few minutera.

this wntry more or less sucked.

I'm not even supposed to be here today!

Two schools of thought here. I can either blog about how my entire day was interrupted by work, and explain the whole sordid mess, and get restressed out about it (I'm STILL very upset over the goingson of the day, and it was more or less over 2 and a half hours ago).
Or, I can just let it go, realizing that it's not the worth the energy and thought that I've already devoted to it and try to enjoy the remainder of my weekend.

I'm going to go with option 2. Because lord knows that I'm going to have to deal with enough bullshit tomorrow when I go in to work. And because I need practice at dealing with stress in positive ways. (I have done a lot of deep breathing during the writing of this. It's... not really helping.)

Tell ya what. Tomorrow, after I've had the ability to cool down some - and we see what fallout occurs from today's screwup - I'll come back and relate the tale. Yay! That means tomorrow's blog entry is covered as well as today's! So, there's a positive spin on the whole thing.

pass

I'm blogging every day in November, except for the 11th.

mundane entry #5302

The problem is that I'm bored by my own thoughts - you know, because I live with them 17/7 - so I'm wondering why I should even bother transfering them to blogper. But, my thoughts are new to you (heh) and additionally, some day down the road I will have forgotten these thoughts and this will serve as a reminder. A snapshot of my brain at the time. Or something.

Of course, now that I've typed all that, I've forgotten what I originally was going to say.

Let's see. Finished reading The Husband today. I don't know why I bothered. 400 pages of ...Koontz.

I've more or less given up on NaNo. Emphasis on the more, actually. I've not written anything story-wise since Tuesday. Oh well. I think I'll just wait until I want to write, rather than having the goal enforced upon me. That being said, good luck to everyone else who is continuing to partake in the craziness of NaNo. And, hey, maybe the world of Wolf will someday call to me again, and if/when it does, I'll listen. I think the bigger problem is that I come up with these ideas, and I want someone else to do the writing for me.

If anybody wants to write Wolf, I'll tell you the gist of what I want to happen, and you can go from there. Really. I'll even forward on the 2000ish words I had written, but they're pretty bad.

Moving on.

So many aspects of our culture (or probably any culture, really) seem... crazy when you try and figure out where it began.
Case in point - circumcision. What the hell possessed the first human beings to say, "Hey, let's cut off some of our skin? And better yet, let's make it some of the skin from the most sensitive part of the body!"
And what's even crazier? The fact that it caught on. Other people were like, "Oh yeah! That mutilation thing is da bomb!"

I had some other idea for yet another story, but I have forgotten it now. Doesn't really matter, because I would have just wanted someone else to do the writing for me. [doh]

New Lost Theory

I think that Craphole Island might be Sunnydale, circa Season 7.

Some spoilers now, for S3 of Lost and S7 of Buffy, so highlight only if you've been watching, or don't care about such matters:


The Smoke Monster seems to be able to take the form of dead people (Yemi, Jack's Dad (?), Hurley's friend Dave (?), maybe Kate's horse), which makes it The First Evil.

The guy with the patch is Xander.

And last night's episode ("I Do") had Caleb (or Mal, if you watched that Firefly show). So Season 7 just keeps on intruding into the Lost world.

I had some other pieces of evidence to back me up, but I've forgotten it now.

In other news, I've decided that Dean Koontz wrote The Husband as a NaNovel. Because a) it certainly couldn't've been planned [the twists are just too...out there] and b) the dialouge is, in many instances, just filler.
It's a crappy book, but I can't stop reading it. Weird.

Come on down!!!

Apparently, Bob Barker has decided to retire. There has not (as far as I know) been word yet on who will be replacing him. (Or if they'll simply shut The Price Is Right down once he leaves. Honestly, can you imagine anyone else hosting it?? [and, yeah, I know that others have hosted it, but let's face it Bob Barker is TPIR])

I always imagined that I'd do pretty well on TPIR. Whenever I watch at home, I always play along (god, I spent so many of my summers as a young 'un watching Price is Right, Press Your Luck, and a slew of other daytime game shows), and I always do reasonably well. I'd want my game to be either Cliff Hangers (I love watching the little mountain climber yodel as he goes up. And I always morbidly laugh when he falls off.) or Pathfinder. Or, most appealing - Plinko. Man, Plinko is awesome. Plus, it's fun to say. "Plinko!"

I would NOT want to play That's Too Much!. Because the cheapass in me always yells, "That's too much!" at the first price that Bob says. Because it is.
I would also not really want to play one of Lucky Seven. Yeah, the prize on that is always a BRAND NEW CAR!!!, but it's just too difficult to win.

Of course, it's all pretty much moot now, unless I happen to get down to LA before June of '07. :(
Oh well. There's always Wheel of Fortune.

7th

I posted twice yesterday. Doesn't that let me off the hook for today? [/whine]

Oh, but, hey, look at that. I've done blogged again. Go team me.

And, since I have this open, I'll ramble a bit, eh?

Random thoughts:

How in the world could so many people have been involved with the making of Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties?? I swear the credits went on and on and on and on. I think more people were in the credits than actually saw the movie. It just amazes me whenever we watch a film to realize how much work goes into them.

Ducks, geese, and pigeons are all pretty crazy.

My knees ache. I swear that someone flipped the "old" switch in my body, because I am seriously getting all these pains just overnight. The old (er, that is, the 'young') me would have just shrugged these things off. Now, the healing takes a lot longer.

regurgitate

A few days back, Steph read some advice about NaNo that she read to me. It was (paraphrased) "The key to NaNo is to lower your expectations from 'best seller' to 'won't make someone vomit'.".

I think my Wolf story is a notch or two above the puke level. Or at least, I hope it is.

Today I wrote some 200, 250 words while at work. And then I lost it all. Talk about wanting to throw up.

And, yeah, 250 words isn't that much, but the slowness that Wolf has been coming, every word counts. At this point, I'm pretty much not gonna even try to hit 50,000. I just want to get the story out. (Although you got to wonder why I keep trying to force something that doesn't seem ready to be born. Hmmm.)

In other news, we just got back from the libe, where I picked up Ginger Snaps, An American Werewolf in London, Stephen King's Cycle of the Werewolf, Weezer's Make Believe CD, and The Husband by Dean Koontz.

And now, it's time for Heroes.

Oh, god, i'm old.

I did pushups (15), situps (5? 10?), squat thrusts (not many) and jumping jacks (I didn't count, but I went nonstop for nearly three minutes. I did a LOT of them.) yesterday.


I am in so much pain today it isn't even funny.


Last night during the Treehouse of Horror.... I fell asleep during the 3rd segment.

I also dozed off a couple of times during I ♥ Huckabees.

My back aches. And my hair is thinning.

Aging. Happens to the best of us.

This was totally not the post I was originally going to make. Maybe later.

Sunday School

A humourous take on the Book of Job:



See? I've said for years that the Bible is a goldmine of comedy, just waiting to be plucked for television. This type of thing should be a weekly series.

Title goes here

Blah.

Didn't work on my story today - I'm at 2000someodd words right now, which is way behind schedule, but still is 2000 more words than I had four days ago (although, really, the story is just not...great.) - and I almost didn't blog today either.

Harper slept for like 12 hours today and she also threw up when she was awake, and I wonder if I'm catching what she had, because I am just not feeling... active. In fact, I'm gonna go veg out watching some lame Jet Li movie for the rest of the night. Maybe tomorrow I'll be more mentally here. Or there.

synaptic rebounding

ugh. I have a headache.

Partly due to haveing (yeah, I know it's misspelled. I'm too lazy to go back and correct it. But not too lazy to spend an extra however many words talking about it. I'm odd. And this is just a stream of conciousness type of entry anyway, so of course it'll be rambling and nonsensical and probably kind of boring and maybe have a nugget or two of real insight or wisdom or humor or whatever inside it. Point?? Oh! right, I was saying my headache is partly due to having) so many thoughts going on.

And partly due to too much television. (And it's political season. Again. Which at least means I'm not alone in my headache having.)

And partly due to lack of food.

And I think partly due to some sort of virus that's moved into our home within the past twenty-nine hours or so. Bah. Stupid sicknesses.

Things that are missing:
1) The latest cell phone card for my rechargeable phone. The units I have expire today, so I really need to find it.
2) The deodorant I bought a few days ago. I still have my old one, but it's running low, so finding the new stick would be helpful.
3) I ♥ Huckabees. It was next on our Netflix Q, and was supposed to have arrived on Wednesday. Apparently it got lost in the mail. :(
4) My ability to wrap this up with a witty conclusionary conclusion.

2

As in, the second day of the month.
And the 2nd attempt at Wolf(er, or maybe the 3rd, really, if you count the 'false start' from last month on my blog). The good news? I've written 600someodd words now! Hooray! And, while it's still rather cringeworthy, at least it's WAY better than the 176ish words I had written yesterday. That stuff was just... no.

And "2" also counts for the two writing projects (progects? no. projects) going on this month. Nano and Nablo. I'm going to try and do both. AND!! I'm going to see if Nablo can have 50000 words. Which means I'd have written between the two, 100000 words in 30 days. Okay, put in that light, it's kinda insane. But, I still suggest that those who are doing NaBlo should have the 50k word count goal. Just to see.

In other news, Saren is also attempting NaNo. She wants to write 300 words in her story, which so far is about spiders. Although she just said she wants to write something "that she knows more about". And then she disappeared into her room to start typing on the computer.

I'm rambling. I should be working on my story. Or eating. Man, all the time with the eating and needing of food. So inefficient.

Sigh. Lon.

So, I went ahead and added Battlestar Galactica to our Netflix Queueueueue. (Starting at position 149. [sigh]) I added Season 1, Season 2.0 and Season 2.5. I noticed there is also a miniseries. AND there is the 1 hour special "The Story So Far" (which I've already seen). My question to all the BSGers is do I need this miniseries thing? And if so, where does it fall in? Before Season 1 or after? Or not at all? Or if you watch the miniseries, do you need to see season one? Why'd they make a season AND a miniseries? And what are BSG fans called?

Okay, that's more than one question, but I usually like to ask a bunch of them. ;)

In other news, today is Day One of Nano. And it. just. ain't. happening.

Try as I might, I could NOT get into my writing today. Steph suggests I try writing a different scene, and I might do that, but really, my heart is just not into (fiction) writing today. Or right now, at least. [sigh] Where is that inspiration I had during all (or most) of October?? I guess the lesson to be learned from this is to write when you want to write, huh?
Maybe I'd be better off joining Annika in her blogging adventure that is NaBloPoMo.
We'll see.

October mileage

January - 730
February - 1357.8
March - 872.4
April - 1056.9
May - 278.3 (car, which is currently not running); 486.6 (minivan) --total for May is 764.9
June - car = 0.0; minivan = 1489.6
July - car = 0.0; minivan =1796.3
August - car = 0.0; minivan = 944.6
September - car = 0.1; minivan = 1725.3 - total for Sept. is 1725.4
October - car - 0.0; minivan - 1283.9


Year to date - 12,021.8

Some treats from BooTube

Here are some Halloween-ish videos from YouTube for your viewing enjoyment. Some of them may not be suitable for all ages.


Thriller^
"Souls don't exist. That's just something they made up to scare kids, like Michael Jackson and the Boogeyman."



Maximum Overdrive Trailer^
This movie actually scared me as a kid. To this day, whenever I walk around parking lots, I have a slight fear that the cars will come to life and back over me.


Montage- graphic! ^
This one is definetly NOT for kids. It's a bunch of clips from different horror movies, and made me squirm a little. Click at your own risk.


The full transformation scene from An American Werewolf in London. A) because it's awesome b) because it helps you (and me) get prepared for Wolf. Watch the above, and imagine it happening to a BUNCH of people at once. Bloodbath!!
It is pretty graphic, though, so, again, viewer discretion is advised. (heh)

I was going to include a bunch of others, but ran out of time. (Plus, finding good stuff on UTube lately has been difficult. Lousy copyright laws.)

Have a great Halloween, everyone!

Fire bad, tree pretty.

Brain guh.

Camping cold. Fun, though. Bad headache. Not much sleep. Cold. Pretty. Nights were cold, though.

Halloween tomorrow. !!!!!!

Now, starving. And tired. Time change messed with my head. Again. Need food. More later.

noise-quiet-noise

Hi.

I want to take this moment to just say thank you.

There's a lot of noise on the internet, so it means a lot that you are taking the time to decide to listen to some of my chatterings.
I feel the need to apologize for the poor quality of posts lately.
We are going out of town tomorrow for a few days - a chance for us to get away from the noise of Las Vegas - and I suspect (hope) that doing so will help me recharge my mental batteries and when I get back, I'll be more inspired. (Which will coincide nicely with the start of Nano)

I had more to say, but I can't seem to articulate it properly (too much mental noise going on right now) and I've really said it all already anyway. So, in conclusion, let me just say again, thanks for reading.

Church Sign Wisdom 8

About time. They've not changed it since August!

SIMON SAYS TO PETER:
WHEN THE ROOSTER CROWS
YOUR GOOSE IS COOKED

And then Homer says: Mmmmm. Cooked Goose.
And the cheerleaders say: How funky is your chicken? How loose is your goose?
And Alice in Chains says: They come to snuff the rooster.


Other side:
MANY FERTALIZE GRAPE
VINES WITH THE RUNOFF
OF UNTAMED TONGUES

My first reaction was "WHAT??", then I realized that it was a commercial for New Wild Tongues Fertalizer(TM) and was okay with it.
"Wild Tongues Fertalizer will make your grape vine grow like nothing else! And that's not BS." [/announcer voice]

belly empty, brain full

lots of stuff happened today. but can't you all just be telepathic and read my mind instead of me having to type it all out? It would save all of us a bunch of trouble.

Bah.

I'm too hungry to blog. Not too tired (although I am that). Not too bored (although I am that, too). I'm too hungry. That might be a first.

Oh, okay. I'll be brief:

Rememember that movie I blogged about a few weeks back with David Carradine (Future Force) [imagine I linked to that entry in the previous sentence]? Well, there was a sequel made. Future Zone. And we have it in our library. I watched it today. It's just as bad, although I got to give it points for having a marginally better plot.

We made the best Deal (or no deal (ha!)) EVER today. Somethign that was normally 150 dollars was purchased by us for 38. WOO!

I'm starving. STARVING!!!! (Yes, it's funny. But it's funnier when it happens to other people.)

Um. Other stuff must've happened too, but the lack of nutritents in my body is causing my mmory to fade. I'm going to go get something to eat.

Stop and smell the smoke

Didn't blog yesterday. Blogger was down for a good portion of the day, so it's not (completely) my fault. (They were also having problems on Friday, which explains the slowness I complained about. I guess they're systematically changing people over to the beta version (YAY!) but they haven't yet gotten to mine (BOO!).)

Anyway.

I'm now through May 2003 of my archives in the delete-o-rama. I don't know what I'm going to do when I get to 2005. That was, you may recall, the year that I attempted to blog 200,005 words within the year. There are many many really long (and really boring) posts in that year. Should I delete any of them? Because if I do, it will alter the word count. But, on the other hand, it will free up space on my blog (or, um, on Blogger's servers, I guess), plus, it's not like anyone really reads any of the archives anyway. But, I mean, do I really need to keep the list of 1,001 movies? Probably not.

I guess I'll decide when I start reading the 2005 entries and go from there.

yawn

too tired to blog, really.

even if i weren't, i have nothing to say right now.

tomorrow, the sun will come out. and hopefully i'll be in a more blogging mind-set.

My brain is working faster than the internet

And that's saying something.

The internet is being s-l-o-o-o-o-w right now especially blogger, but all sites have been sluggish.

It's taken nearly half an hour to get to the point where I could blog. But I did not give up! Go team persistence!

Anyway. Not a lot to say, but I did want to blog so as to continue my participation in Blogtober.

Miranda's youngest had her birthday party today, and so we all went down to the Las Vegas Mini Gran Prix, and had a pretty good time. There was something in the air, apparently, because first Steph got a big whoppin' case of deja vu, and then, once hers was over, about one minute later, I did. It was completely bizarre. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that we went there for Saren's 8th birthday party.

Or maybe we're time travellers.
Or maybe the Matrix was being altered heavily.
Or maybe we think alike and were on the same wavelength.

N-E-Way.

The party was fun - despite the fact that Steph's camera batteries were dead and Saren is now officially too big to drive the kiddie-sized go-carts (they let her go anyway, but this was the last time she'll ever get to) and the woman at the top of the jumbo slide tried to give us grief about me going down the slide with Harper. Despite all that, a good time was had by all.

PLUS!! Miranda's husband has his pilot's license and (I believe) his own private plane. I spent a good 45 minutes or so picking his brain and finding out a lot of really interesting information that will help my NaNovel have a more authentic feel to it. That was totally awesome. Hell, even if I don't use any of the stuff he told me, it was still neat to find out about. Sure, I could probably have just looked the stuff up online, but there's something just... better about learning things from a real live human being. (No offense, internet.)

Today was apparently my info gathering day, because in addition to the pilot-talk, I conversed with Jupe about a good many things, such as blood type and food and terroristic attacks. (Hi, government!!)

Now, hopefully, I'll actually move beyond the 'research' stage and actually do some writing.

devilstuff

There are certain things that, for whatever reason, just rub me the wrong way, and I will stubbornly refuse to have anything to do with them. Just because. They are generally quite popular, and I find that if I ever do cave in and actually try them, I enjoy them. (But then get upset at myself for caving.) But my dislike of these things results in me calling the item a "tool of the devil". Because it is. And people should just realize that, and agree with me and stop being dumb and life would be better.

Examples:

American Idol. Never seen an episode. Never want to. I could not identify anyone who has ever won this show, nor any of the winners "songs" or even tell you when it is on. (Other than the Bimpsons, I don't watch Fox at all anymore. Weird.) American Idol is a TV show of the devil.

Cell phones. Ugh. UGH!!! Cell phones are the freaking tool of the devil. They are so damn annoying. The people who use them are so damn annoying. The commercials are so damn annoying. I don't know how many times I've been in public and heard someone say, "Hey.", think they were talking to me, and turn to realize, "Oh, they're just on their goddamn cell phone."
And, of course, the idiots who use them while driving. It doesn't help matters that they're idiots before they begin talking on the phones. (Most people seriously don't know how to drive very well. I fall in this camp too.) Adding a cell phone into the mix, and my blood is just starting to boil already.

What makes them worse is that I have one now. I don't know when we bought it (I could check my archives and find out, I guess) but somewhere along the way we became one of the herd. And now I never go anywhere without it. I've become what I hated.
But cell phones are still the tool of the devil.

MySpace.com. Never been there. I'm sure that it's a great site and all (I mean, can 40392603468 gabillion people be wrong?) but even without having visited the thing, I just know that it's the fracking tool of the devil. Goddamn MySpace.

DVDs. Heh. Remember when I felt this way about DVDs and DVD players? Okay, I am a big enough person that I can admit when I am wrong. I may have been wrong about DVDs, and partly wrong on cell phones, but I'm not wrong on the other stuff. MySpace and American Idol can go to hell where they belong.

And many more!

Today is my blog's birthday. 4 years old. It started out at a different address (pshift2.blogspot.com) and with a different name (Patent Ambiguity) and with a different look (honestly, I don't remember, but for a long time it had blue lines...you can still check out pshift2 if you are really curious. I don't know why blogger hasn't deleted it off the internet.) but it's always had the same old writer.

If blogger ever gets around to making the beta version available to everyone, I'll be doing a major overhaul to my blog. As it is, I'm (slowly) going back and deleting old entries that are just boring nonsense. (I've deleted two so far. Woo!)

In other news, but still related to the title - today, supposedly, was the birthday of the 300 millionth United Statesian.
I say "supposedly" because I don't trust the accuracy of census...es. (Censi?) What about people who have gone missing? How long must a person be missing before they're considered dead? What about fake IDs? What about people who don't have Social Security numbers at all? What about people who were born at home and/or not in a hospital and have not gone "on the record"? (Granted, that's probably a very small number, but I know of at least one.)
What about people who lie to the census takers?
What about the people who drop off the grid altogether (by choice)? And what about undiscovered indigenous tribes (okay, there are probably NONE left in the US, and very very few anywhere in the world, but they do exist)?
All of those people who aren't being counted (or are being miscounted, maybe) means that we really don't know how many humans there are in the US or in the world, and we never will.

That being said, 300 million is a lot of people.

Oh, and courtesy of Anthropik's article on this matter, here's The Daily Show's take:

I'm afraid I did Nazi that movie.

I amuse myself greatly.

Anyway. Today's movie answered the question, "How do you make a boring movie about Nazis, secret Hitler plans, and conspiracies to infilitrate the White House?"
The answer is, you get Alan Thicke and um.. that one guy... oh, right, his name is Kyle MacLachlan to star in The Windsor Protocol.

The movie is, like I said, about a document that Hitler supposedly drew up in his last days, placing a bunch of money in secret bank accounts. Given the name the Windsor Protocol. It was lost, then, 50 years later, rediscovered. And some Nazis (now old men) who have been waiting for it to show up, I guess, put their plan into motion. (Their plan has something to do with getting Alan Thicke - a senator - to move up the ranks of the US Administration.)
Agent Cooper (heh) is there to stop them.

It could have been interesting, but it wasn't. Just kind of... there. Oh well. At least Alan Thicke was getting work again. Or, you know, back in 1996 he was.

ANYWAY. This made me think of all the movies that have involved everyone's favorite villains, the Nazis. And, so, just like we did with nukes a few weeks back, now's the time when you list all the tv shows and movies that have had Nazis in them.
I'll get us started with the most obvious:
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Apt Pupil
The Rocketeer (The rock-a-who?)

dreamy

Yeah, I know, dream entries are boring. The rule of thumb is, "Dreams are boring unless I'm in them."
But. I just woke up, and so the memories of this one are pretty fresh (although they're fading as I type, of course) and it's been ages since I've blogged about a dream I've had. Hell, it's been ages since I can remember having a dream. Also, this dream was just intensely detailed.

The Tribe of Anthropik invited me, Steph, and the girls over to their house for dinner. !!!!
As we were walking to their incredibly nice home, we passed a lot of open desert where there was construction going on. A crew was sitting in a half-completed building that would eventually become a Wendy's. They watched us as we passed and said some stuff to us in Spanish that I did not understand. (Although my brain at the time knew that it was really Spanish and not just garbled language. Which makes me wonder if my brain really does on some unconcious level understand Spanish. Hmm.)

Anyway. We got to the place where Jason Godesky and Giulianna Lamanna were staying, and it's a beautiful, huge house that was semi-built into the surrounding trees, and even had a small stream running through the entrance way. I wish I could explain it better, but I don't really remember the details other than having an overwhelming sense of awe at the whole structure.

When we get in, we're told that they are "playing Buffy" and we are welcome to join if we want. I was pretty excited, so I said, "Sure." and was handed a samurai sword just as an overweight black woman stepped into the clearing. She had on a 'vamp' face just like the vampires from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and I think she may have had a weapon in her hand as well (some kind of short dagger).
She rushed me and I unsheathed the sword and began swinging it wildly in an attempt to defend myself.
Everyone else seemed to have vanished from the room, or were off on the sidelines watching.
At some point during the fight, I managed to slice the woman's arm, causing a large amount of blood to spray out and for her to scream in pain. As she was clutching her arm, I tackled her. When she was down on the ground, I jabbed the sword through her midsection, effectively pinning her to the floor. The entire time she was screaming at me, telling me how she was going to kill me when she got up and how I was in for a world of hurt.
Disturbing!

Even more disturbing, was that I just left her there. Jason called me (and everyone else) over so he could show off this... I don't know WHAT it was (although, again, I did at the time of the dream). It was some sort of folding sword weapon that when completely opened, looked like a Klingon weapon of some sort, but when you contracted the blades, fit nicely into the palm of your hand, and resembled a Swiss Army Knife.

There was a big long section of the dream where Steph and I talkd with Giulianna, but I don't remember any of hte details of that, sadly. We were talking about rewilding and unschooling and civilization in general, and I'm sure in real life it would've been very interesting (it was in the dream) but I just wish I could remember what was said.

As our discussion was finishing up, Miranda was there in the kitchen, offering to serve up ice cream. There was something about me speaking like Yoda and how the vanilla ice cream would help cure that. (Dreams are weird) and the girls were really excited to have dessert.

After that, we all walked outside and talked about the approaching construction. As we were walking, a bat flew overhead. It glided down toward us and landed on Saren's outstretched arm. Jason and Giulianna announced that Saren was [some term they used that I don't remember] and said that that meant that she was a very special person. Saren asked if we could keep the bat. We told her that it should live outside, and we'd come back so she coudl see it often, and as she let it go, I woke up.

I know that overall, the dream was just an amalgamation of events from the past few days, but it was still pretty cool. It's always odd to dream about Internet Weirdos that you've never really met in person. I mean, where is my brain getting information on how the Anthropik Tribe actually speak or live? (I'm sure that the house they really live in is nowhere near as elaborate as the one I dreamt about, but I can totally imagine them speaking in the way that they did in the dream.) And why? Does it have any deeper meaning, or was it just a bunch of thoughts that my brain strung together in an attempt to make a story? Who knows?

Water, water everywhere

I can not hear that phrase and NOT hear Homer's "So let's all take a drink" right after. Just another instance where the writers of the Simpsons have occupied some more memory from my brain.

Last night, into this morning, the rain storm from yesterday continued. Hard core. We lost power around 8am this morning, for about half an hour. There were at least two instances where the thunder was hard enough to cause the house to shake. The street we live on was essentially a river this morning, and when we went to drive out this afternoon after the storms had cleared away and the sun was shining, the streets were all covered with dirt and debris and looked semi-apocalyptic.

It's sprinkling outside now, but I think the majority of the storm has passed. It was pretty impressive while it lasted, though.

In other news... I don't think I have other news. Sorry folks. I guess to make it more interactive, I'll open up the floor to the P@riots out there to tell me about the weather where you are.

Sex chicken

Man, it has been a long freaking day.

Went to the ren faire. I wonder, sometimes, why we do that each year. It's interesting, but there are many many problems with it. Like 80 dollar cheeseburgers. Without fries! And bees. And everything costs more money than anyone who actually lived during the Renaissance ever saw.
But, anyway. Fun.

We didn't stick around for the entire time, though, because around 7 pm, it started raining. Sprinkling lightly at first, and then, in a matter of minutes, it began pouring. It's 9 now, and I think it just now let up. Crazy.

I had a more gimmicky type of entry planned for today, what with it being Friday the 13th and having gone back in time and all, but I'm too tired, so I'll save said gimmick for another day.

In conclusion, Have Fun Storming the Castle! HA HA HA HA.

unorganized

No real central topic, just a bunch of random thoughts.

I really do need a haircut.

Tomorrow is the Ren Faire. Huzzah! We're going for free! Huzzah!! My work is one of the sponsors and provided free tickets, which is pretty cool. Incidentally, my work is asking for volunteers to help man the booth that we will have set up there. I feel sorta bad about not signing up to help out, but, come on. I spend too many freaking hours there as it is. And I get paid for those. They want me to fritter away my precious few weekend hours doing work for them as well? And NOT get money in return? HA HA HA!!

I was going to post that Futurama episode, but I'm not really in the mindset to do that yet. Maybe I never will be.

Apparently, it's Bring A Weapon to School season here in the states. Seems like the past week or three, there's been a shooting and/or a person with a gun at a school somewhere in the country everyday. A few days back on the bus, some boys got on - they were probably jr. high students, maybe freshman in high school. Anyway, one of them mentioned that he heard (on the news?) that now teachers are thinking of bringing weapons to protect themselves.
Just another brick in the wall.

At work, we have somewhere around 300 movies in our library. For the past two and a half months (or so) I have been working on a complete overhaul of it. Each movie will eventually be put onto one 120 minute tape instead of being on two 60 minute tapes. And, each movie will be re-timed by yours truly. It's a truly daunting task, but I've done about 118 so far. Plus, I get to watch some really horrible movies in the process. yay!
Today's movie was another David A. Prior masterpiece, Raw Nerve. Traci Lords was in it, and sadly, was probably the best actress in the movie. However, I have to say that the "twist" ending wasn't what I expected. (I figured it would be the police chief doing the killings, which would've made more sense.)
Yesterday's movie was Little Kidnappers, a hokey TV movie with Charlton Heston and Bruce Greenwood (Nowhere Man) and people with Scottish accents. ("Ack. Don't ye know anything aboot beebies?", "I'm afeard!!") Not a bad movie, overall, but nothing really memorable, either.

I forget what else I was going to say.

Hey sexy mama, wanna kill all humans?

Man, Bender was smooth. That's the greatest pick-up line ever.

Speaking of Futurama, I need to get my thoughts together for a post that I've been meaning to make ever since the Conference in regard to a particular episode. I just need to find it online, and then determine exactly what I want to say.... (Probably tomorrow.)

In TV news, I watched (most) of my very first episode of Veronica Mars last night.
I... um.... fell asleep.

But in the show's defense, I was pretty tired. And, VM seems like the type of program that you need to watch from the beginning to enjoy fully. But the whole sociology class experiment, where the one guy went all control-freak in a matter of minutes? Didn't really buy it.
And Veronica's undercoverness getting into the sorority seemed... I don't know. Predictable?
Plus, the guy from Just Shoot Me kept bugging me because all I could think was, "Hey, it's that guy from Just Shoot Me!" everytime he was on.
Eh. Like I said, I was pretty tired. I should give it another chance. Although next week's previews don't look all that promising.

Um. I had a rant/anecdote (rantecdote?) about work, but it wasn't all that interesting, so nevermind.

10 10 day

Woo! Four years from now, it'll be 10/10/10. Oooh. Binaryesque.

Currently - 630pm - I am home alone. Woo! I'm gonna cause physical harm to would-be burglars Joe Pesci and that narrator from The Wonder Years, and then put aftershave on my face and scream comically. AND I'm gonna spawn 3 horrible sequels.

Oh. Um. SPOILER!! (Pretend I said that first.)

Okay then.

Oh, right. As I was saying, right now the rest of the family is out, having dinner with Miranda's family. So, I've got the house to myself. What do I do? Blog. I should totally be having a kegger right now, man. Alas, it is not to be. Maybe next time.
Instead, I think I'll just do some chores and straighten the place up a bit. That'll be a nice surprise for Steph to come home to. (The not so nice surprise she gets to come home to is the pile of freaking bills we got in the mail today. Jesus Christ, bill people - do you all have to demand money at the same time??)

You know what's weird? Three weeks from now it will be Halloween. Three! Er. I mean, weeks!! No, I mean, Halloween!!!
Dear Time,
stop going so damn quickly.
Thanks,
P@.

A few weeks back, I was thinkign to myself, "I wonder how different Harry Potter would be if Stephen King was the author."
The first major change I thought of was that there would be a lot higher death count.
Also, a lot more swearing.
And I bet Hogwarts would be in Maine somewhere.

Well, I should get to doing the cleaning if that's gonna happen. Before I go, I wanted to mention the movie I watched today (except for yesterday, I've watched at least one movie at work every [work]day in October so far. Yay!) - Future Force, which is by the same director of White Fury. (David A. Prior) Future Force was bad - nearly as bad as WF - but it was at least semi-enjoyable in that 'bad movie' type of way. It had David Carradine as a cop with a robotic arm in the future. (The future being 1993) The movie started with "In the year 1991, violence was out of control in America." Hee.
Anyway. The two awesomest parts
SPOILER!! (see, I'm learning)

were when David Carradine is bringing in a reporter who is under arrest for "treason" (she is being set up because she has an incriminating video [on a huge ass, ancient three quarter inch tape - lol] of the police chief) and she says, "I bet you think this is funny."
Carradine says, "So far, I haven't laughed once." and gives this look at the camera that totally lets you know he's in on how bad this movie is, but that he's at least having a good time.

The other great part was near the end with the robotic arm and a remote control. Carradine was fighting a thug and getting his butt kicked, when he pulled out the remote control for the robotic arm. Thug says, "What are you going to do with that? Change the channel on me?" (see, it's really bad dialouge)
He pushes a button, and the trunk of the car that has the box with the arm in it opens up.
He pushes the same button and the box holding the arm opens.
He pushes the SAME BUTTON and the arm levitates into the air.
He pushes the SAME BUTTON AGAIN and the arm rotates in mid-air.
Yet again, pushing the same button, and the arm begins to fly toward the thug.

The flying robotic arm begins to beat up the bad guy. (I'm assuming that David Carradine kept pushing that one magic button) When it was done, the hand formed the OK sign and then flew back into the box.
Hilarious shit.

Oh, and the end was great too. David Carradine and the woman get into his car and drive off. The camera sits in one location and just waits and watches as the car drives down the road, to a stop sign. The blinker comes on. The camera still sits there. Several other cars pass in front of it. Nearly 50 seconds pass, with Carradine's car just sitting at the intersection and nothing else going on. As he begins to turn, the credits finally roll.

Seeing really bad movies like that give me hope. Because if someone can get nonsense like THAT made, then I have a chance at getting something I create out there, too.

Okay. Now I really do need to get to cleaning.

Nothing much happened today.

When I was younger (12? 13? 14? somewhere around that age, I guess. Maybe even younger.) I kept a diary that I wrote in everyday.

I remember looking back at that diary several years later and being dismayed by how many entries were simply "Nothing much happened today." Day after day after day, that would be all I would write as a record of another passing of the precious few hours I have on earth. "Nothing much happened today." Gah. Something always happens. It's only how it's filtered through our perceptions as to whether or not it is of interest.

I kinda wish I still had that diary. It would be interesting to see how many of the days of my youth "nothing much happened" on, and also, what things I did report.

Anyway. I was reminded of this little factoid about my life when I sat down to blog today, because, really, nothing much happened today.

Except, of course, stuff DID happen. I just have to stop being boring so that I'll stop seeing things through a bored-filter perspective. Ya know?

The point I guess I'm trying to make is that I want to be able to rememeber more of my life, and to LIVE more of my life and ...um. Something. You'll have to forgive, me, I'm really very tired and not thinking clearly. So. Yeah.

It occurs to me that this entry doesn't really detail anything that DID happen, and it is kinda just a big long way of saying, "Nothing much happened today", but at least it is minimally LESS boring than that. Hopefully.

In conclusion, today I:
- rode a double-decker bus for the second time in my life
- conversed with a friend I haven't seen in about 3 months
- did NOT have any Pepsi, despite REALLY wanting to
- worried about the future of humanity
- thought about Wolf
- thought about a possible spin-off of Wolf (or maybe just a separate chapter or 5)
- washed a sinkload of dishes
- spent 9 hours of my life at a building I really didn't want to be at
- continued working on my pet project at work (the movie library overhaul)
- woke up way too early
- remembered that life is short, precious, and incredible, even when it can also drag, be annoying, and overabundant.

random thoughts

if i ever had a suitcase full of money, say a million dollars or more, and it was supposed to be given over to the mob, I'd steal 30 dollars out of there. Just to see if they'd count it all and notice.
Plus, with 30 dollars, I could totally go out to dinner.

I miss Ragu. He was a lizard that lived in my Geo Metro way back then. He was plastic, so technically he didn't live there, but I miss him nonetheless.

I need a haircut.

We are going to watch Kiss Kiss Bang Bang now now.

Where the devil is.

I've decided to rework Wolf, and have it be my NaNovel this year.

The idea of a werewolf epidemic came to me yesterday and it's been spinning in my brain ever since. This thing could be big, if I do it right. (So, um, maybe NaNo isn't the right format for it, but who knows.) I haven't been this excited about a story idea since my (nonfinshed) Perth story of years gone by.

But.

[own worst critic] I've noticed that 1) I do not give enough details. It's a huge flaw in my writing. Of course, the (start of the) story below is just a first draft, but last night (and this morning) all I could think was of ways to rework the paragraphs and sentences and make them...better. More detailed. More... alive. Or at least more detailed.
2) All my story ideas seem to be similar: Some supernatural crisis happens. People react and survive. Not that there's anything wrong with that, per se, but ...I don't know. Can't really pinpoint exactly what I'm trying to say. Maybe I'm just upset(ish) that I don't have the whole plot laid out. (I didn't with the Perth tale, either. It was more of a "Oooh. What would people do if this freaky thing happened?") Maybe I don't need to have the whole thing planned, but... I don't know.
3) Um. I forget. I think I need to stop worrying about if things will be good [on a side note, I obviously succeeded even with the rough draft, judging by Annika's comment. Wolf is going to be a very dark story, and hopefully will cause a few shivers along the way.] and just worry about it getting it out. I've found that when I was writing my Perth story, that when I told myself - "Don't worry about what others think, just write it." that I was pretty happy with the results. Just hard to keep that advice constatnly in mind, ya know?[/own worst critic]

In other news... er. I don't remember. There was something else I really wanted to blog about, and now it's completely gone. I just keep thinking about Wolf. [sigh]

Wolf

Wolf I am, Everything
in darkness Will be good
In light because Maheo
Wherever I search Protects us
Wherever I run Ea ea ea ho.
-- Song of a Cheyenne scout.


The thing was fast - they all were - but it was not fast enough to get out of the way of the Greyhound bus travelling to Las Vegas Nevada down I-15. The driver of the bus saw the animal mere seconds before his 45 foot bullet collided with it, producing a sickening squishing noise, and sending a jolt of adrenaline through Jason's veins. Many things happened at once, although to Jason's mind, time seemed to slow enough for them to take place sequentially.
1. Jason said, "Shit."
2. He stepped on the brakes.
3. He announced to the passengers, "Brace yourselves, everyone!"
4. He swerved in a last minute attempt to avoid the animal that had appeared out of nowhere in front of his path.
5. He glanced in the mirror to look back at his 28 men, women and children that he was responsible for.
6. He noticed that several (six, to be exact, some part of his brain realized and stored away) of the passengers seemed...ill.
7. He wondered if they had witnessed the animal he was just about to send to meet it's maker.
8. Squish. Thud. Crunch.

The bus was decelerating, and Jason was pumping the brakes and attempting to regain control of the bus and his rapidly beating heart. He was sweating and his mouth was very dry. Jason had been a driver for the past three years, and he had, until just now, had a spotless record. "Damn." he thought. As he pulled over to the shoulder, put on the emergency hazard lights and slowed the bus to a complete standstill, he was mentally going over the training he had gone through for just such an event. Rule #1 was to make sure that the passengers were safe. As he was turning around to get out of his coach-seat and ask how everyone was holding up, he heard screams.

What he saw would pale in comparison to the eventual nightmares he would witness, but at the time, it was the most horrific thing Jason Wolf had seen in his 33 years on earth.

The six passengers who had seemed sick while the bus slowed had all been replaced by beasts of some kind. Hairy, huge, snarling animals who were wearing the clothing that the humans who had been there just five minutes before. The people who had been seated near the transformed had been the ones who had screamed. Jason couldn't blame them. He felt like screaming himself, but found he was unable to do so. All he could do was stare in disbelief.

The creatures began to attack their surroundings. The animals seemed indiscriminate on what, exactly, they were battling. Human flesh, bus seats, empty air; it was all the same to them. They bit and scratched and snarled. The seat belts were - temporarily - restraining the beasts. Most of the remaining humans had removed themselves from their seats, and headed toward the front of the bus. Jason opened the door and began ushering people off quickly.

So Happy It's Thursday

It rained today. Resulting in a double rainbow visible on the way home from work. Neat. Steph took pictures, but she says her camera didn't really pick them up very well.

A good percentage of our Halloween costumes are all bought now, as well. It's been a while since I've really dressed up, so I'm pretty excited about this year. It'll be a good one. Saren looks great in her costume, too.

White Fury is one of the worst movies I have ever seen. Good thing we're running it at 2:00am, because if it were on at an hour when more people could actually be watching, they might tear down the station in angry protest.

Lost is back!

It looks like it's going to be a good season, too. I can get behind a season long arc of "There are four lights!"

At work, watched two semi-crap movies. Lying In Wait, with Rutger Hauer and Virgina Madsen, which was actually not bad. And Layover, which starred David Hasselhoff, which started off very intriguing, then ended incredibly stupidly.

Um. I was much more into blogging earlier, and I didn't, and now I'm all tired and nonthinkable. I know I keep promising that the next entry will be better, and then they keep...not being that way. But, hey, if I say it often enough, EVENTUALLY it will be true, no?

Take Take

The mediocre movie of the day was Double Take.
Not that Double Take.
This one.

It stared (starred? Gah. I hate when words look weird, and both spellings look odd to me.) Craig Sheffer, who has been in several of the movies we have in our library. Plus, he was on One Tree Hill (he may be still, I'm not paid to watch that drivel anymore, so I don't.) But I've always thought that he resembled David Boreanaz. (Heh. Apparently I'm not alone in thinking that.)
Anyway. In Double Take, his character's name is Connor. Hee! He even has the same hair as Angel's son. (er, sorta) And, at one point he hops onto a bus to escape. Never underestimate the power of coincidence.

In other news, ...I forget. There was something else I wanted to mention, but I really can't remember what. Eh. Maybe it'll come back to me so I'll have something to talk about tomorrow.

I'll add the title later

I just spent nearly twenty minutes trying to think of a title for this entry, rather than typing.
I was looking for an "anti-LOL" type of word. Like maybe MOL (Melancholic Out Loud) or something to describe this feeling I've had all day.
Oh. I know the word now. "Monday."

I started off the day eating a donut. Mmmm. Forbidden donut.
It was yummy, but donuts really should be shipped off to another planet or something. Because while they taste incredible, there is always a price to pay afterward.
Today, it seems, the price was to my mental well-being. All day long I've been feeling this ...glumness. This... Eeyoreosity.

Um. Blah.

I was going to blog about how I learned about Capital Gains Tax for the first time today, and how irritating it is. But, blah. Not worth it.

In other news today, there was possibly a shooting at a school in North Las Vegas and there definitey was a shooting at a school in Pennsylvania. Originally the reports on the tv were talking about the North Las Vegas shooting. That was then trumped by the Pennsylvania one. Later, the reports seemed to state that there wasn't a shooting here in Vegas, just a gun brought to school grounds, so I don't know what to believe, and I'm too lazy (and don't care enough) to google up the facts. The point is, during my darkest moments earlier today my thoughts on the matter were, "LOL, Columbine." (said in the same vein as "LOL, internets.", which is to say, extremely sarcastic.)
Um. I had some kind of point to make there, and I lost it. Actually, I don't think I did have a point about the shootings. Just that they are kind of a crap icing on a shit cake day.

Switching gears, I watched Grey Owl at work today. Not a bad movie. Not a great one, either, but I guess it's enjoyable enough that I'd recommend it. You know, if it's like, on tv or something.

The movie is based on actual events. The life of Archie Belany (played by Pierce Brosnan) is portrayed. He was an English-born guy who got adopted by the Ojibwa tribe(s?) in Canada and given the Native American name of Grey Owl. He began writing articles for a local magazine and eventually got noticed by a publisher who convinced him to write a book aboot life in the wild. All of this was taking place in the 1930s, btw.
Belany passed himself off as a half-breed to the world, including his wife. His book became super-popular and he went on a tour in England to promote it, and also to talk about conservation. Long before it was popular, he was pretty much one of the first environmentalists.
Meanwhile, in the movie, a reporter is investigating his life and eventually discovers that he is not what he is claiming to be. According to the movie, he holds off reporting the truth until after his death. Also according to the movie, the truth was printed the day after he died.
Sadly, once Grey Owl died, some of his books were no longer published and/or printed and his name became tarnished.

I'd never heard of him before, so it was cool to learn something new. But the movie also made me sad - or rather, I was still sad while watching it - because I knew that despite his best efforts and intentions, well...

Anyway. In conclusion, the day was meh but it's over now. Tomorrow will be better because it will be Tuesday, and because I won't have donuts for breakfast.

September Mileage

January - 730
February - 1357.8
March - 872.4
April - 1056.9
May - 278.3 (car, which is currently not running); 486.6 (minivan) --total for May is 764.9
June - car = 0.0; minivan = 1489.6
July - car = 0.0; minivan =1796.3
August - car = 0.0; minivan = 944.6
September - car = 0.1; minivan = 1725.3 - total for Sept. is 1725.4

Year to date - 10,737.9

And with that, I'm clear for today! Woohoo! Granted, it's not a very interesting entry, but when I agreed to blog everyday this month, I made no such promises. :)

,.,.,.,,,.

so tired, shouldn't even be blogging, ut;s not like i'v nethibg to say. but my brain was saying, "if yo don't blog, I'm gonna make you all antsy." and so i'm blogging. with nothing much to say. but the words are coming faster now. like streamish of conciousnessish.
ish.

And, ta da. Just like that, thery're turned off. And on again. It's like it's opposite world or something. As soon as I say one thing, the other takes place. Universe has a sense of humore.

I had soem psuedo-insight about the nature of the universe and god and ...god earlier, but it's slipped away. So, that was a pretty pointless sentence. Maybe it'll come back to me soonly. If it does, I'll be sure to sahre.

October is fast approaching. And I've signed up for ABally's blog challenge of blogging everyday that month. Hope I have more to say when that rolls around.
In the meantime, I rEALLY wish that blogger would get the new version released. Steph's blog ahs laready switched over, and it looks awesome, and everytime she blogs it makes me alll envious. Plus, there's another blog I'd like to get started and the new features will definitely hlep in that regard.
And now, I am going to publish post and eventually stumble into slumbo land.

Kablooie!! Nucleiod war!!

The TV Show "Jericho" premiered on Wednesday.
Premise: Smalltown in Kansas witnesses mushroom clouds off in the distance. Communication is cut off. Townsfolk deal with the possibility that the rest of the world might just be dead.
Yay! I [heart] post-apocalyptic stuff, so it's pretty compelling to see a series devoted to it.

The show itself was... well, there's potential. I'm still on the fence about it, and have decided to give it a few more episodes to determine whether it's a keeper or not.

But! Onto the fun, interactive part.

I've been thinking about all the movies and tv shows that have shown nuclear explosions.

Here's what I can think of, please add more!

Terminator 2: Judgement Day
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
"Battlestar Galactica" (new series. Not sure if the original 70s show dealt with nukes or not. I'm thinking no.)
Miracle Mile (late 80s movie with Anthony Edwards discovering there's one hour until LA gets nuked.)
Chain of Commmand - we have really crappy movies at my work. But, this movie DOES have a major city get nuked.
Independance Day (Um. I'm about 93% certain we see mushroom clouds in this. When the human resistance uses the nukes to fight back, right?)
The Day After
Beneath the Planet of the Apes - I believe, though, we don't really see a mushroom cloud as more of just a flash to white, but I'm including it anyway.
The season one ending of "Sledge Hammer!" ended with a nuclear explosion. (Season Two began retitling the show "Sledge Hammer!: The Early Years". Ha!!)
Certain episodes of "The Simpsons" and "Futurama" and "The Twilight Zone" have had mushroom clouds.


And this isn't even getting into novels that are all apocalyptic. Man, there's a lot of nukes in pop culture.
It's almost as though we've got a pre-occupation with the complete destruction of civilization or something...

Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's meal for me.

In honor of Talk Like A Pirate Day (September 19th), the Life Learners are having a get-together at Miranda's house where there will be much frolicking and feasting and fun.

Steph's been getting pirate garb together here and there for the girls (and herself) the past few days. They're gonna look really cool.

Today we went grocery shopping, and I started wondering what type of foods real pirates ate.
Here are some of the possibilities I came up with:

Fish.

Rum.

Pigs. (I don't know where they'd get 'em from, but when I think of pirates and food together, I imagine a roasted pig with an apple in it's mouth.)

Cap'n Crunch. (The official cereal of sea-faring folk)

Pop-Tarrrrts.