Not-So-Scary Halloween Costumes

I'm a mechanic!

I'm a baker!

The Scariest Costumes of All

Politicians. A few weeks ago, there was a knock on my door. I jumped - I jump at sudden noises. Tiff grabbed our illegal cat and fled to a darkened closet. I opened the door to find my friendly State Delegate, or maybe here in Virginia, Commonwealth Delegate. He told me what he stands for - he's against illegal immigration. He told me what his challenger stands for -she's for illegal immigration. He even gave me shiny flyers as he showed his shiny teeth. I told him I would vote for him.

Yesterday, there was a knock on my door. Tiff grabbed our illegal cat, fleeing to a dark closet. I opened the door to find my friendly State Delegate's friendly challenger and her assistant. I knew the second one was an assistant because she had a clipboard and didn't talk, or even make eye contact. I asked them if they wanted to watch Smallville, we're on Season 5. The challenger told me what she stands for - she's against immigration. She told me what her challenger stands for - he's for immigration. She showed me pictures of her family; I don't know why. I told her I would vote for her even though she didn't want to watch any Smallville.

I live in Prince William County, VA. They've started cracking down on illegal immigration. Apparently, it's a pretty big deal here. If I'm against illegal immigration, it's just because it's illegal. Otherwise, how'd this become the major issue.

I want to buy a house. If either one of them had lied and said, "Once in the State House, or well, Commonwealth House, I will see to it that you own a house," I would vote for them.

Even if they had to tax pumpkins to do it. When all else fails, tax the pumpkins.

Using my Head

Hey look!

I'm a caryatid! well, except I'm a man... details.

Sales Pitch

It wasn't too long ago that Tiff and I finally put our name on the no-call list and the phone more-or-less stopped ringing. The no-call list is great. Our phone rings so little now that sometimes I'm even inclined to answer it. It isn't fool-proof though, and with this being a political season, we've been getting quite a few calls lately. I don't mind surveys or even automated campaign calls, as long as they're not asking for money, they're alright with me.

Last night, however, the Fraternal Order of Police called reminding me to buckle up for safety. Then they said they were going to send me a window-sticker boasting of my support for the Fraternal Order of Police. Then they asked for fifty dollars.

Now, I'm all for buckling up. I think safety belts are great. So are the police. But are there any other organizations out there cold-calling folks for donations? I understand the need to support the police and I am in no way undermining the bravery and citizenship of police officers everywhere. Maybe I'm out of line, but I don't think that equals some moral impetus to give them money.

I don't want to say flat-out "I do not support your cause" because that wouldn't be true. I give him my brief line about how it's a good foundation but I don't have any money to give away right now, and like a good salesman, he pushes on, not for the last time. He tries $35.

In the end, despite all my efforts to be polite and hear him out I just hung up on the guy. I wasn't sure what else to do. I've also been getting a lot of calls from my bank offering me accidental death insurance. I have to fight these off too, explaining that I've already got something similar... a tip jar on the right. Clang, clang. It's my own Fraternal Order of John Duffy. Clang, clang.

I had a different sales encounter recently, too.

Shout Out

End to Batteries!

I made a twenty-five dollar investment yesterday morning at Tuesday Morning. I bought a rechargable battery recharger. It comes with both AA and AAA batteries! Not only am I personally saving the world from Global Warming, but I will never have to buy batteries ever again!

That's right. I will never buy batteries again!

A Better Waste of Time

Just in case anyone else is bored of Bounce Out - I have pushed my high score up to 235,268 - here's another game that's twice as interesting. Desktop Tower Defense 1.5 is 100% strategy... making it 50% fun and 50% frustrating. I will admit there is an end to it, so once you figure it out, it's not quite as exciting. Unlike Bounce Out however, you can see how your score stacks up against other bored dorks.

Desktop Tower Defense is by far the best game that I've tried from the website, but it boasts that there are 1,879 free games to play. It's a site where game developers can put their games online, I believe for free, and share in the ad revenue. It's kind of a cool idea. Maybe not as cool as my block market idea, but genius isn't found everyday.

Lend A micro Hand

A few weeks ago, Bill Clinton was on Oprah talking about giving. I remember I was pretty impressed with the whole notion, but I keep thinking about a five minute segment towards the end about a microlending website. It took me some time to track it down, but I found it, Kiva.org. Here, you can put as little as $25 into an account and donate it to any of a number of poverty-stricken entrepreneurs from around the world. They have to pay it back and then you can donate your money to someone else. Maybe it's just my International Affairs degree speaking, but I think this is the coolest. And you should at least check it out.

For a long time, I've been saving up my change with the noble aspiration of donating a llama to someone through Heiffer International, but I think I like the idea of Kiva better. Despit the note:

Due to a recent surge in support ignited by viewers of the Oprah Winfrey Show, the Today Show, and readers of President Clinton's newly released book Giving, there is
currently a shortage of businesses in need of loans. The Kiva.org staff and our
Field Partners are working overtime to get more businesses on the website. In
the meantime, thank you for your patience!

I almost got out my credit card today, but luckily I checked my horoscope first: "Taurus - Take some time today to review your accounts and make sure you are prepared."

Good thing too, especially after the damn locksmith! They don't take anything less than $25 though, so if you got the urge to donate less, you should donate to the best website on the web on the sidebar. All my thoughts that's fit to print. Clink-clink-clink.

Last One, I Swear...

I didn't want to write anything else about the squirrels on the balcony, but right now I'm being serenaded by one angry momma. She's been satanically barking for over an hour. It's driving me nuts.

Last week, as the baby squirrels had grown big enough to do this:

I decided it was time to say goodbye. I cleaned up all their stuff while momma squirrel was out one day. The next day they had descended into the real world. No more luxury-balcony-tree-house anymore. I saw one of them yesterday on my way down the stairs... our eyes met and communicated what I can only assume was a nod of gratitude, a "thanks for letting me grow up on your balcony and destroy your cat's nervous system". It made me happy. I've done my part in the universe.

The babies haven't been back, but momma squirrel comes back every day to yell at me. It's frightening. If she were a person I'd have a restraining order by now. If you've ever actually heard an angry squirrel, you know what I mean.

At least someone else out there shares in my pain...

Dyn-o-mite!!

I'm trying to keep away from commenting on news articles, but this is my second in a row. The Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded today to this lady. I'm not quite sure who she is either.

The part about it that gets me is actually an article that I had copied-and-pasted and emailed to myself, but the link takes me to the same article so I can't link it... sorry. The article though is all about speculation on who will win. Ms. Doris Lessing was not a top pick. Bookies had three names of possible contenders.

This got me thinking, do people actually bet on the Nobel Prize? I think it fits in well with the spirit of the prize. I can just picture a bunch of British guys at a bar, "Hey Barkeep! Turn the channel, they're about to announce the winner." And then the nervous guy in the corner, "Come on Judy Blume. Come on Judy Blume."

Jungle Fever

Here's a crazy story about an orangutan who shows no interest for female orangutans but has got a thing for tattoed blondes. Monkeys make me laugh. Or apes... whatever.

It's not quite the same, but it reminds me of a wikipedia entry I once read. The Panda is having a modest resurgence in its population. Last year there were a record number of pandas being born under the watchful eye of researchers and zookeepers. Part of the reason is the use of a new technique to instigate the mating dance, showing the pandas videos of other pandas having sex. They may call them "educational" videos, but dim the light, cue Kenny G, and education gives way to natural instincts. Wikipedia even has an entry now titled panda pornography.

Somebody Save Somebody

With my blood. Bwa-ha-ha-ha-haaaa!! I figure it’s close enough to Halloween to pull out the scary laugh.

I gave blood yesterday for the first time in four or five years. If you haven’t done it in awhile I suggest you give it a shot as there have been some serious advances in blood-letting. After the initial interview and blood test, the lady asked me if I wanted to do the red cell retrieval method, which she claimed isn’t much different, just takes a bit longer, and it is a much bigger help to the Red Cross. I hadn’t told Tiff that I was going to give blood so I considered asking to go tell her where I was (we were at an art show together), but it’s for a good cause. I gave a typical non-committal “sure,” and she led me past the reclining cot-like chairs that I’m used to and introduced me to Alyx.

Alyx is not short for anything, I asked. It’s just to make the scary machine look friendlier. So they sit me down in the same sort of chair, smear iodine all over the better part of my arm, just as always, and they ask me to sign a death waiver. Seriously.

They explain a bit more before I sign my life away. Alyx takes blood out of the body, puts it through a centrifuge which divides the red blood cells from the rest of the stuff that’s in blood, and then it takes the red blood cells and gives me back the rest. The fact that they are putting stuff back into my body requires a death waiver. My thought process went something like, “Wait, there’s a centrifuge! Sign me up!”

They stick me with the needle and Alyx kicks on, and the little tube turns red just as always. It’s different than how I remember it though. It hurts. Afraid that I’ve grown into a wuss in the past few years, I don’t say anything, but when I grimace, the attendant, nurse?, explains that unlike the old system that just waits for your heart to pump the blood, Alyx pulls the blood out of you. As disturbing as that sounds, the knowledge that it was working properly was comforting at the time. At least nothing’s wrong, although I did sign that death waiver.

The centrifuge kicks in and sure enough blood filters into a darkening red bag and yellowing clear bag. Then the process gets reversed, the first of four times that Alyx pushes the good stuff back into my arm. The red tube turns yellow as I feel the pull dissipate, and it doesn’t hurt as bad. The nurse says, out of the blue, “it’s okay to ask for a blanket.” I said something to the effect of what, and she explained that the yellow stuff would be returning to my body at room temperature. I might feel a chill. Great, I thought, and I signed a death waiver.

About halfway through, my hand falls asleep. Usually when a body part falls asleep, you try to get blood to it to get some feeling back in it, but with a giant needle sucking all the blood out, there’s no relief. Soon, I start moving my fingers with concern. I have to watch myself do this because I cannot feel my fingers moving. Yep, I signed a death waiver.

On the last round of yellow stuff returning to my body, I start to shiver. It’s very odd though; I’m not cold, I’m just shivering uncontrollably. My teeth are chattering, my arms are shaking. Just as I’m starting to feel the cold, Alyx turns off, the needle comes out, and the nurse wraps a tourniquet around my arm to hold the cotton ball in place, and keep me from bleeding to death.

I spent my obligatory ten minutes drinking juice and eating the six cracker sandwich pack talking to a frightening one toothed lady who told me that this was her first time giving blood because every other time she tried they thought she was drunk. I wanted to get away from her, and I knew Tiff would be worried, so still a little woozy, I grabbed a water and another cracker pack and went back to find Tiff.

I told Tiff the above story without as much detail, then I start feeling pretty bad. I wish we had brought the camera, because Tiff says I’m turning blue. My lips, around my eyes. I feel cold, and the water and crackers are gone too quickly. I send Tiff off to find food, assuring her that I’ll be okay. She comes back empty handed, there’s no food that will work, stupid Vegetarian Challenge. She agrees to go to a grocery store that’s a good walk away.

While she’s gone, things get fuzzy. I get up from my chair and stumble over to a patch of grass where I sit down, lie down, start to sweat. I start feeling better and somebody comes by and gives me a flag of Annandale, the town we were in. Tiff returns with food and water. I eat and drink and get some color. Pretty soon I turn blue again and have to repeat the process on the grassy patch. As I’m lying down sweating, undoubtedly drawing in customers, little kids are watching, and Tiff suggests I go back to the Red Cross people. I walked away from the blood-thirsty phlebotomists feeling better, but under orders to get a good meal. “There’s six dollar ribs!” which I can’t eat, stupid Vegetarian Challenge, but that’s okay, and there’s nothing I can do, because I signed a death waiver.

A few hours later, the color back in my face, we break down our tent, shows over. It’s usually not that tough, and it isn’t today, but I’m relegated to the sidelines, watching my young fiancé do all the heavy lifting, all the packing, and more or less all the work. So in the end, I didn’t die and didn’t even have to work. Plus, I saved a life, I hope, because it was not a fun process - somebody had better be saved.

Complete and Utter AdSense

Blogger allows you, or well me, to have ads on my site. through AdSense, which I think is because they have special powers to sense out of evil. Or maybe I've just been watching too much Smallville. What it does do is look over my sight from time to time to see what I'm writing about, then it puts up what it thinks are relative ads. Right now, it thinks this blog includes a lot about the Hurricane Katrina Fund, which it suddenly does.

So, I encourage everyone to make me a true sellout and visit whatever it is that I'm advertising for, even if it is little blue pills or specific-use pumps, and therefore make me rich beyond my wildest dreams! Actually, I mainly put it up there just to see what some computer program thinks I'm talking about.

And that's why: President Bush's live-bait helped propel the on-line gaming world of credit cards and virus protection software, while earning $700 a week from your living room!

Words are Fun

Upon suggestion from a fan, hey Ann!, I am changing the format of my word list. I have been putting the words into my own little sentences, perhaps as a way to help remember the word, but more just because it is kind of fun. Now, I will use the actual text and source it.

I think growing up the only regular homework that I was ever truly eager to do was something similar with our weekly vocabulary list straight off the pages of Wordly Wise. Each week we had to create a sentence for each of the twenty vocabulary words, and my memories of it are trying to come up with the strangest sentences possible that still made sense. At the beginning of the year, I would try to have the sentences go together as much as possible, but towards the end, my running internal monologue would award me extra points if I was able to make each sentence as unique in subject and tone as possible. I guess I never really thought about liking the homework, and it hadn't translated into reading yet. That year the class read a book with a pink cover about a kid on a farm. I didn't read it. I never even tried.

I just started reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy. It's an Oprah's Book Club book! I am not very far into it but I'm guessing that Mr. McCarthy name will be used quite a few times. I just saw a list of the greatest modern novels, from 1900 on. James Joyce tops the list with Ulysses. It is not an Oprah's Book Club book. I can only assume that reading it would be one hell of an odyssey, but it uses over 30,000 different words. I'm not sure what kind of sacrifice it would make, but reading it may be worth the challenge.

James Joyce also came in at number three on the list with A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which I was suppose to read for a class in college. Never even tried to read that one either. I was quite the student.

Cable's Out

A little over a year ago we signed up for cable, getting a good deal as part of the sign-up-now-bonus! package. After two-plus years of fighting bunny ears, we were paying what I saw as a fair price for television. The package included digital cable with a gazillion channels, plus HBO and Showtime.

The gazillion channels I could probably do without, but HBO and Showtime both have a surprising number of excellent shows. None of them ever look good from the previews, but about ten minutes watching any one of them and you are asking yourself simultaneously what the hell is going on? and how have I not been watching this?

Big Love is the spotlight winner for me. Polygamy has never looked so... I'm not sure what the right word is. I'm a bit new to these pay channel shows, but this is the only thing on TV I can think of that both draws you in and pushes you away at the same time - well, maybe VH1's reality shows. All the characters appear underhanded and somewhat evil at one point or another, yet it manages to engulf you into it's chaotic world. It is a pretty amazing feat of storytelling.

I can't say that polygamy ever really intrigued me before, but the show raises a lot of questions. Chief among them is how in the world could someone afford it. I can barely afford living on my own, let alone supporting three families. And with my up-coming nuptials, I kind of like the idea of keeping my options open. Of course, I should mention that Tiff's favorite show was probably Dexter, with it's serial killer protagonist -

I'm sure that has nothing to do with our approaching marriage though.

Our twelve month introductory rate recently expired. Our bill jumped a hundred dollars. Tiff and I decided we could live without these shows. Or at least wait till they are out on DVD.

We now have the "limited basic" package, which still has three times as many channels as we will ever need. Annoyingly though, we lost the "guide" ability and now we never know what's on. I guess we could check on-line but the computer's always way over there and we're way over here.