Well, the twenty-seventh is here. How do we feel about starting up the reading group again? I know a couple of our participants have either started or have already finished the book, but I’d like to hear where everyone is at so we’re all on the same page, so to speak.

Let me know in the comments and I’ll either assign a reading schedule, or we’ll start discussing the book.

And thanks to everyone for staying with me through the postponement, and special thanks to everyone that did some extra advertising for me.

• What Your Favorite Drink Says About You- via Cracked.com
  Just make sure if you order an Appletini that you have change. Otherwise you might pay $105 for one that’s light on the tini.

During my high school years I worked several seasons at a local haunted house. Through the month of October I worked every weekend and then the last week of the month we were open every night. I enjoyed the job, but more than scaring people I really enjoyed all the fucking crazies interesting people that I had the opportunity to meet.

We had one guy who had lost his leg in an accident and used a prosthetic to get around. When he had his jeans on you couldn’t even tell, so good was he at walking on that prosthetic. He would even take part in a little touch football before work time. It’s embarrassing to get schooled in football by a one-legged man. When it came time to work he unstrapped his good prosthetic and exchanged it for an old, shabby one. In the haunted house he sat on a stretcher and used an axe to hack away at his “leg,” all the while screaming like a lunatic. He was a hoot.

One guy liked to hide a little tape recorder in his room and record people’s screams. He would play his favorites back for you at the end of the night and give you play-by-play commentary on the screamers.

I remember a night when I began to notice a smoky smell accompanying the “smoke” in the haunted house. Machine-made smoke should not smell like actual smoke, you understand. Machine-made smoke is noxious and chemical smelling and sticks to your contacts; actual smoke smells like, well, it smells like smoke. So I got nervous and sent word that I thought we had a problem. Turns out the guy manning the smoke machine fell asleep with his foot on the mechanism and the smoke machine caught on fire. Ironic, no?

Here’s a news piece on the Museum of Horrors that I found on YouTube. This was produced long after I had worked there. Near the 1:40 mark you’ll see a room with glowing dots. That was my room. I wore a black jumpsuit and mask outfitted with the same dots on the wall, thereby making me nearly invisible unless I moved. I was a good Dotman. The guy in the video sucks.

Anyway…the fellow that owned the Museum of Horrors, John Anderson, was a pretty weird guy. Not weird as in satanic or occultish, but weird as in he liked to bang crack-head hookers on Faulkner lane and then joke about it. With his wife in the next room. And he expected you to laugh right along with him. And he smelled a bit like rancid hamburgers.

But anyway, I got to scare the shit out of people, so I put up with him.

Turns out in addition to banging crackheads John also likes to talk shit online. Unfortunately, John Anderson insulted the wrong guy. According to this Waco Tribune-Herald article, John called some dude a “nerd” on a message board. Apparently the fellow didn’t take kindly to being called a nerd, so he drove from Virginia to Waco, Texas, and burned John Anderson’s house down.

Real life scary is always scarier than make-believe scary. I talk shit online constantly. Not a day goes by that I don’t intentionally antagonize someone online. Guess I need to put up smoke detectors.

For an anti-porn PSA from the 60’s, this video is one of the hottest things I’ve ever seen, albeit unintentionally. George Putnam could made the phone book seem salacious and perverse.

In an effort to avoid all Harry Potter spoilers I’m going to eschew all my normal internet haunts this week. Unfortunately for my readers, that pretty much means I won’t be current on anything at all. So instead of simply not writing anything until I read the stupid book all posts from here on out will either fall under the Texaspecific or Jackassery categories.

Buckle up…it’s gonna be a bumpy ride.

First things first: I’m postponing our reading of Oryx and Crake. I’ve been out of town and away from a computer, and one of our members hasn’t received the book yet, so we’ll begin on the 27th. That gives you time to try and convince at least two or three more people to join the group.

I’ll be back home today, but don’t expect a lot of posts until the middle of next week. The new Harry Potter comes out tonight but since I know I won’t get around to reading it until Monday, I’m not risking a trip to the ‘ole information superhighway without discovering the end of the book on my own. I narrowly avoided having the end of Half-Blooded Prince ruined by the internets two years ago, and I’m damn sure not going to have this one ruin by some jagoff who wants some attention. So I’m avoiding the tubes.

And let me say this to you potential ending-revealers: Not all Potter fans are bespeckled and acne-ridden nerds. You start screaming the end of the book while I’m in line at B&N and you’d better be prepared to run your jokester-ass as fast as you can. Because if you can’t, that little yuk-yuk will cost you a hospital visit.

Oh, and I know this book is supposed to be much darker than the previous ones, but I was shocked when I saw this publicity still for the new book (The smiley face wasn’t in the original. I wanted to spare you the shock of seeing Potter’s “wand” unsheathed):

Good gracious! I can only assume that during the ultimate fight with Voldemort Harry’s clothes get burned off by a particularly strong spell and he is forced to make the long journey back to Hogwarts via horse, because the shock of the duel caused him to forget how to apparate.

• Harry Potter Disguise Dust Jackets
  Embarrassed to be seen reading the new Harry Potter books? Afraid Potter will eliminate all your man-cred? Then these printable dust jackets are for you. Be warned: these things ooze masculinity, and may offend the less masculine of us.

• Read A Book!
  The video.

As I announced several posts ago, our next book for group discussion will be Atwood’s Oryx and Crake. This one is a bit longer than our last book, so I’ll give us more time for reading. We’ll have an interim discussion on Friday the 20th, and then we’ll discuss the book as a whole on the 27th. I don’t want specifics on the 20th, but more just general impressions on the text.

Let me know if you need more time than that, and be sure to tell your friends about all the fun you had the first time around.