Happy Halloween!

The only holiday where the ritualized terrorization of children is not only condoned its encouraged! Boo!

Gather your friends and go visit a haunted house. Not a real one you dummy! Ghosts don’t really exist, but many fine businesses that specialize in scaring the shit out of their customers surely do. Go here for a list of haunted houses, and if you happen to be in the Dallas area I would highly recommend “Thrillvania.” They have a gargoyle that sits on the roof of their house and spits fire sixty feet into the air. How can you not love that?

Go here and here to see some creative jack ‘o lanterns, or go here to make your own.

Now, go forth and consume large amounts of crappy candy! Journey forward and cause grammar school children to pee themselves! Get blasted and visit one of those “moral haunted houses” that show the dangers of sex and drugs; giggle and laugh annoyingly in the back of the group. And if a religious wingnut gets up in your face and starts screaming that Halloween is a holiday of witchcraft, then you look that puritanical buzzikill in the eye, unwrap a tootsie roll, pop it in your mouth and slowly explain that if God let you dress up like a pirate and eat inordinate amounts of candy you wouldn’t have to worship Satan. Pester them to give you a plausible explanation of why God hates candy and pirates. WHY GOD WHY?

Don’t let’em ruin your fun. And if you eat too much candy, for God’s sake don’t vomit on your friend. It’s just not polite.

I think I’m getting old. Leigh and I saw Def Leppard tonight, and I thought the volume was just a tad too loud. I enjoyed it and all, but it could have been a little less loud and I would have enjoyed it a bit more. Leigh and I had the privilege of sitting next to “aging rock couple.” He had beautiful flowing hair much like Kip Winger, and she looked biker chic in her leather jacket and midriff shirt. They were both hair glam glorious, and only her pudgy stomach and his gray streaked hair betrayed their youthful illusion and devil may care attitude. I’m kicking myself for not getting a photo of them.

I’m starting to get concerned because middle aged folks are beginning to outnumber the youngsters at the concerts we go to. In all fairness, there were quite a large number of young people at the Def Leppard concert tonight. The Van Halen concert was a different story, though. That one was like a nursing home outing. I couldn’t tell what was louder: Eddie Van Halen’s wailing guitar licks, or the constricting sound of thousands of arteries hardening simultaneously.

I want 80’s fashions to return. Ahhh, the days of Aqua Net and denim; when down boys wore more lipstick and eye-shadow than women, and no one laughed at you if you wore long, dangling earrings (yeah my holes are grown up but one little push would remedy that).

Alas, those days are gone. I sold my 1980 Trans Am years ago, and Leigh would kill me if started wearing ripped blue jeans again. Plus, as the ringing in my ears so eloquently reveals, I don’t think my body could take the wear and tear a rock and roll lifestyle would inflict. My heart and soul may still scream “I WANNA ROCK!” but my mind and body whisper “How about a nice nap?”

I’m a big fan of comic books but not such a big fan of the comics’ page in the newspaper. The only writer/artist left who I think has any talent whatsoever is Scott Adams, but I can read his strip on the internet. Incidentally, Scott has recently begun an extremely funny blog, which I find far funnier than “Dilbert.” He can print strips the newspapers won’t allow, like these two.

I can tell you the exact date I stopped reading comics in the newspaper. It was December 31st 2005. That was the last day Calvin and Hobbes appeared in any newspaper. By that point Gary Larsen and Berke Breathed had stopped writing, and when Watterson pulled out comics simply died for me (Our newspaper didn’t carry Breathed’s “Outland”)

Today I discovered that Berke Breathed has entered the strip world again, and in 2003 began publishing “Opus” in the Washington Post. Since I only read Post articles on the internet I wasn’t aware of this.

As much as I missed Opus, I think I missed the supporting cast just as much: Steve, Milo, Binkely, Oliver, Hodge-Podge, Portnoy, Cutter John, Bobbi, Loloa, Rosebud, Milquetoast, and last and quite likely dead, Bill the Cat. Here’s this week’s strip on Breathed’s web site.

This call for a celebration!

Over at Dave Anaxagoras’ blog “Man Bytes Hollywood,” Dave posted an entry detailing why he’s a film fan and not a film buff. He says, “To me, “film buff” implied a broad affinity for film in general — a wide ranging appetite for celluloid, be it Hollywood blockbuster, experimental, silent or new wave. “Film buffs” seem to love it all, almost indiscriminately. I’m not indiscriminate. I like what I like.”

Later, he suspects a lot of studio execs pretend to have seen “important” films like “lit majors who pretend to have read Paradise Lost or Moby Dick.”

Dave’s more right than he knows. I can’t count the number of times I’ve admitted to not reading some “seminal” work, and then being looked at like I just admitted to molesting goats. Do I recognize that chicano/chicana literature or Puritan literature are important literary genres worthy of academic study? Yes I do. Do I feel the need to familiarize myself with those genres? Not in the least. Should I be ashamed of that? Judging by the looks I’ve received I would say some people think I should.

I have a hard time working with texts that I just don’t like. I guess that makes me a poor academic. Intellectually, I know that simply “liking” a text has no academic value, and I should possess the ability to shut that part of my brain off and judge the text on merits above my own sensibilities. But as a reader I just can’t ignore the fact that some texts simply bore the hell out of me.

This makes my brain hurt. I’m gonna go read a Spider-man comic.

As you can see, I’m drowning in bookmarked pages. Finally, I have time for a quick leftover post and then it’s back to the ‘ole literary grind for me.

The Religious Policeman-“The diary of a Saudi man living in the United Kingdom, where the religious policemen no longer trouble him for the moment.” As inflammatory towards the Saudis as this guy writes I wouldn’t be surprised if a car accident awaits him the near future, which would be a shame because I find his blog entertaining as hell.

Go here to read an interview about blogging with Wil Wheaton that appeared over at the Forbes web site. Nothing really revealing in that article, but since Wil was nice enough to find this video for me, I thought I’d give him a little link. As if he needs my help.

I’m pretty sure that this web site is extremely racist, but I’m not real sure if white people or black people are the target of the racism. I tend to think it portrays white people as a bunch of condescending, racist asses. Regardless, the site’s funny, check it out.

November is National Novel Writing Month. Write a novel which meets or exceeds 50,000 words in the span of a month and you’ll win…ummm…well…I can’t really find what you win but you’ve written a novel. So there’s that.

The blogger over at “moleskinerie” submitted his blog and found it worth $175,571.94. Ha-Ha. What an amateur. As we all know, my blog’s worth was incalculable.

WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!!!!!!!!!! Well, since the apocalypse seems quite near and inevitable, I think I’m going to start the looting and the drinking a bit early to avoid the rush.

The Music Genome Project has created a music application called Pandora. You enter in a song you feel represents music you would like to hear more of, and Pandora will find other songs and bands with the same musical “feel” to them. You can listen to each selection Pandora chooses or scroll through them to find out what you like. Enter in “Tenacious D” and it pulls up some pretty decent tunes. So does Loreena McKennit as an entry. I could play with this damn thing all day.

“The Author’s Letter To His Soon To Be Ex-Wife”

ePodunk maps out geographically where folks subjected to a diaspora reside within the United States. They even have a page which maps the diaspora of Louisiana citizens after Katrina.

Were you addicted to Super Mario Bros. when it first arrived on the NES? I know I was. This site shows you how to create a Super Mario World out of cardboard boxes. Looks like fun. I’d jump up and punch one of the boxes.

This guy seems to think that blogging as a form has already peaked, and that anyone with anything important to say doesn’t post it publicly anymore. He says all blogs do now are trade inconsequential links and spout off nonsense. Personally, I think he’s an idiot. Now, back to the jackassery.

For those living under a rock or too drunk or stoned to care, Harriet Miers withdrew from the Supreme Court nomination. I guess even she thought she was unqualified. I would have just bullshitted my way as far as I could have gone if I had been in her shoes. Hell, how many times do you get nominated to the Supreme Court?

I’ve posted about the Flying Spaghetti Monster and the Pastafarians before, hell I’ve got a button for the web site on my side bar, but I thought you might like to see this photo set. Some Pastafarians from Missourissi State University saw a group of evangelical Christians protesting with signs claiming that the end was nigh, so they decided to do some proselytizing of their own. I gotta get me a pirate outfit.

A restaurant in NYC where your servers are ninjas. Brilliant. I’m booking a flight tomorrow. Unfortunately, no ninjas appear in the photographs. They’re all blending in to their surroundings in preparation to kill the photographer with a garrote.

Enjoy the leftovers. Be sure to tip your waiter or he’ll push a sword through your back.

I didn’t around to writing a “leftover” post tonight like I had planned. Studying took precedent over bloggery, so the big post will have to wait until tomorrow afternoon. There are really only so many things I can do with sleep-deprived, bloodshot eyes and a big “leftover” post isn’t one of them.

Until then, I would cordially like to invite you to enjoy “Survivor Toyland.”

I realize I may very well be the only person on the planet who simultaneously subscribes to Entertainment Weekly while maintaining a membership with the Modern Language Association. I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’m a multi-faceted nerd.

Anyway, since most folks I know don’t subscribe to that bastion of journalism Entertainment Weekly, I thought my readers should know that in the October 26th issue EW an article on “Watchmen” appears.

What? You’ve never heard of “Watchmen?”

In 1984 DC comics asked Alan Moore to reinvigorate a group of comic characters that hadn’t been popular in decades. They gave Alan Moore the creative freedom to do whatever he wanted with the characters, and the 12 issue story arc that followed, titled “Watchmen” written by Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons transformed the way readers viewed comics. The story was complex, political, and quite timely. Everything comics had never been before.

Frank Miller’s defining run on Batman had already appeared and was one of the first comics intentionally marketed for a mature audience, but Moore crafted a world much more complex and literary than Miller had ever dreamed of creating. In the interview in EW Dave Gibbons recalls that each issue script was over 150 pages. An average comic script clocks in at around 30-35 pages.

If you consider yourself reasonably well read but have always looked down on comics as inferior to canonized texts, I urge you to pick up “Watchmen” and discover Moore’s fully-realized, rich and complex world. You won’t believe how relevant the material in the comic is to our present political and social climate.

Another notch on my nerd belt: I bought the leather bound, gold embossed edition of the graphic novel. Not only does it include Moore’s script for issue #1, it also boasts several articles written by Moore, and character designs and sketches by Dave Gibbons. I think it’s out of print now, but you can probably find it on eBay. It’s a beautiful book:
Well, at least I’m not a Trekkie.

Waiting for class. The weather is agonizingly beautiful . And I’m about to be stuck indoors and subjected to insufferable drivel for 3 hours. What I wouldn’t give for a bell tower and an AK-47.

FYI- This took an idiotic amount of time to type out on a cell phone.

Sorry I haven’t blogged since Saturday. I began Friday night believing I could finish Moby Dick in two days, which I found to be an impossible task. Impossible not because the book boasts over six hundred pages (my edition does anyway) but more because whale-talk puts me to sleep faster than folks who try to apply Marxist readings to any and all subjects. I am happy to announce that I’m less than 150 pages away from the death of Ahab. My response to the “novel”?

They needed a bigger boat.

As I was looking through news stories this morning in an attempt to avoid Ishmael’s narrative, and I came across this Newsweek story wherein Anne Rice proclaims that from now on she will only write “for the Lord.” Her next book Christ the Lord opens with a seven year old Jesus, and will be the first book in her “Christ Trilogy” (okay I made that last thing up). Rice hopes to humanize Jesus and to do this she daringly writes in a first-person narrative.

The Newsweek article makes a big deal out of this whole thing, but anyone who’s read Memnoch the Devil shouldn’t be surprised very much. While not exactly adhering to Catholic doctrine, which Rice now promises to do, Rice’s Memnoch uses many early canonical and non-canonical Judeo-Christian myths as source material. In the novel she quite skillfully offers an explanation concerning how Sheol eventually morphs into Hell. Unfortunately for me, that book was the last of hers that I found at all interesting, but I’m so damn hard-headed I’ve read everything of hers since then. Maybe this new series will be good. It’s certainly not an original idea, but hopefully it will at least be readable…unlike Blackwood Farm. Bleh.

While I’m still leery about Rice’s book, I have the utmost confidence in recommending to you Christopher Moore’s Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal. Unlike Rice, Moore’s first person narrative comes not from Christ but from his best friend Biff. The book is as well-researched as it is funny. Here, read the opening paragraphs for yourself:

“You think you know how this story is going to end, but you don’t. Trust me, I was there. I know.

The first time I saw the man who would save the world he was sitting near the central well in Nazareth with a lizard hanging out of his mouth. Just the tail end and the hind legs were visible on the outside; the head and forelegs were halfway down the hatch. He was six, like me, and his beard had not come in fully, so he didn’t look much like the pictures you’ve seen of him. His eyes were like dark honey, and they smiled at me out of a mop of blue-black curls that framed his face. There was a light older than Moses in those eyes.

“Unclean! Unclean!” I screamed, pointing at the boy, so my mother would see that I knew the law, but she ignored me, as did all the other mothers who were filling their jars at the well.

“The boy took the lizard from his mouth and handed it to his younger brother, who sat beside him in the sand. The younger boy played with the lizard for a while, teasing it until it reared its little head as if to bite, then he picked up a rock and mashed the creatures head. Bewildered, he pushed the dead lizard around in the sand, and once assured that it wasn’t going anywhere on its own, he picked it up and handed it back to his older brother.

Into his mouth went the lizard, and before I could accuse, out it came again, squirming and alive and ready to bite once again. He handed it back to his younger brother, who smote it mightily with the rock, starting or ending the whole process again.

I watched the lizard die three more times before I said, “I want to do that too.”

The Savior removed the lizard from his mouth and said, “Which part?””

Like Anne Rice, Moore attempts to fill in the gaps of Jesus’ life the traditional gospels omit. But I’m willing to bet that Rice’s novel doesn’t contain any martial arts battles or explain why people associate rabbits with Easter. And I’ll also bet that when Rice gets around to writing about the resurrection of Simon Lazarus he’ll walk right out of the cave and praise Jesus. Not in Moore’s book. Jesus (who Moore insists on calling Joshua) demands that Simon Lazarus walk out of the cave, and this is what happens:

“But I’m…I’m all icky.”

“We’ve all seen icky before,” said Joshua. “Now come out into the light.”

“My skin is all green, like an unripe olive.”

[…]

Finally Joshua lowered his arms and stormed into the tomb. “I can’t believe that you bring a guy back from the dead and he doesn’t even have the courtesy to come out – WHOA! HOLY MOLY!” Joshua came backing out of the tomb, stiff-legged. Very calmly and quietly, he said, “We need clean clothes, and some water to wash with, and bandages, lot of bandages. I can heal him, but we have to sort of get all of his parts stuck back together first.”

Go buy Moore’s book immediately. You can thank me later.

You can go to this page for photos of Wilma whomping the hell out of Cancun/Cozumel (you have to scroll down quite a bit and you have to click on the links that have the .jpg extension to see the images). Fortunately, the Mexican government made sure everyone evacuated, but man does it look scary as hell:
I wonder why hurricanes hate freedom so much?