Something About Inmates and an Asylum

Bob, Daniel, and Pete are now free to post to their hearts' content.

Check the "posted by" line before sending me any hate mail. ;-)

It was a Stark and Dormy Night

So you've all heard of the awards for bad literature inspired by the writer who wrote a book beginning "It was a dark and stormy night", right?

The 2003 contest results are here. There are several gems, but this is one of my (many) favorites:

He knew that, at most, he had five seconds left to live, one one-thousand, two one-thousand, the gun barrel pointing at his face like a scolding finger, three Mississippi, four Mississippi, the hired assassin Ricardo's grip tightening on the trigger, five white elephantsS SIX white elephants, and then a bright blast of light as he wondered which was really the most accurate way to count five seconds.

Aw, heck, here's another:

Detective Inspector Mike Norman slipped six fingers into his overcoat pocket, five of them clad in a latex glove and attached to his palm, while the sixth was wrapped in a plastic evidence bag and apparently belonged to the kidnapped pianist Ricardo Moore, or, as it now seemed likely, the kidnapped ex-pianist Ricardo Moore.

I'll stop now before I quote all of them.

Merry Christmas, Dear Friends

Happy Birthday!

Touched by an Anvil

You are Gonzo the Great.
You love everyone, and still you get shot out of a
cannon on a regular basis. Oh, and you are
completely insane and have a strange
fascination for chickens.

ALSO KNOWN AS:
The Great Gonzo, Gonzo the Great, Just Plain Weird
SPECIES:
Whatever

HOBBIES:
Tapdancing blindfolded on tapioca while balancing a
piano on his nose, backwards, five times fast.

FAVORITE MOVIE:
"From Here to Eternity...with no brakes."

FAVORITE TV SHOW:
"Touched By An Anvil"

QUOTE:
"No parachute? Wow! This is so cool!"


What Muppet are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

For Pixy

South Park Jen:

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. Enjoy your dinner.

President Bush had dinner already. That was nice, I think.

Why Can't I Get Interesting Trolls?

Other people get cool hate mail and hate comments. I get nonsense.

IP Address: 12.215.255.175

Name: Taylor

Email Address: cakeupnose68@netscape.net

URL: http://Maryland

Comments:

IT SUCKES I DONT CARE IF IT IS SPELLED WRONG BUT KISS MY LITTLE WHIT BUTT SWEETIE.DIE IN PAIN LOSER

It's not even SPAM.

Kids. I want twelve.

Gettin' Your Groove On

So...a friend of a friend is like 43 years old and finally lost his virginity a couple weeks ago. We'll call him...Tim.

Way to go, Tim!

Now Tim is looking for suggestions for "groove songs"...you know what I mean.

I suggested Nine Inch Nails' Closer, but that suggestion was met with some derision. So I look to you people for help.

What are your favorite "groove songs"?

Happy Halloween

I hope everyone has a fun and safe evening later on.

The kids in town went trick-or-treating last night, so I kind of feel like the holiday is over...but lucky for me, I'll be helping out at a Halloween party tonight. So I get a second serving of Halloween fun. :-)

No special post for the day...just enjoy yours.

Random Halloween Treats

Halloween is coming up fast, so here are a few assorted Halloweenish tidbits for you.

Since the seventh century, November 1 has been All Saint's Day in Europe. It was originally called All Hallow's Day, and October 31 was All Hallow's Eve. The Druids believed that on Halloween, the Lord of the Dead (Saman), would summon the souls of those who had died in the previous year. These souls would plot mischief against the people who would honor the saints the next day, taking the form of grotesque animals demanding gifts and threatening harm to those who refused. Trick-or-treaters are pretending to be one of Saman's resurrected souls.

The color black symbolizes mourning because our white ancestors believed ghosts would be hanging out at funerals, looking for a living body to invade. They would hide from the ghosts by painting their skin black...later, black clothing replaced the paint.

In very early times, tombstones were laid onto a grave to weigh down the soil and keep the spirit from escaping. In later years they considered the spirit escaping less of a risk, and tombstones were erected upright to alert passersby not to step on the grave and subsequently be defiled by the impure spirit held within.

A story from the 1560s might be the source of the black cat's reputation as unlucky. As it is told, a father and son were walking along a road in Lincolnshire when they were startled by a small, dark animal running across their path. They pelted it with stones and followed it to the home of a suspected witch. There they saw that the animal was a black cat. The next day the old woman had a bandaged arm, bruises, and a limp. The townspeople concluded the cat had been the witch out for a nightly prowl. Afterwards, all bad luck that befell the father and son were attributed to the witch crossing their path as a black cat.

Margaret James of Charlestown, Massachusetts was the first person convicted and executed for witchcraft in America. She was executed June 15, 1648...almost fifty years before the Salem witch trials.

13 is considered an unlucky number by the superstitious. A lot of people think this came from the Last Supper, which had thirteen attendants. This superstition predates Christ, however, and comes from Norse mythology. Balder, the favorite of gods, attended a banquet of 12 gods. An uninvited guest, Loki, arrived and killed Balder.

And now, a bit of a ghost story...
Chicago's Hull House devil baby: It is the stuff of local legend that on a crisp morning in 1913 a crying bundle was discovered on the Hull House stoop -- but the House's ladies recoiled in horror upon unwrapping the infant: the child had every appearance of being Satanically sired. A tail, skin patchy with scales, pointed ears, hands and feet with a cloven appearance -- the baby was a horror to behold. But Jane Addams soon felt her heart melting, and she resolved to care for the child, keeping him away from a world too cruel and too ignorant to tolerate his appearance. To the public, Addams denied the existence of the boy, allegedly keeping him in the attic for his own protection; though the child was never seen outside the walls of Hull-House, there would be many reports of a fearsome face staring down from the window. By all accounts the Devil Baby died young, having never left his attic lair... but passersby still regularly report seeing a terrifying face in the upper windows of Hull-House.

Who's a Big Winner?

This guy! He's a big winner!

(From AOL News) Rob Krueger, 31, of Toronto, was the winner - hands down - of the second International World Rock Paper Scissors Championship on Saturday night, taking home the $3,750 first prize.

Krueger, sporting a wild wig and wraparound shades, triumphed by throwing "paper" to finalist Marc Rigaux's "rock."

The big question...is he available?

And on the Sixth Day the Yankees Lost. And it was Good.

Okay, I didn't watch the World Series...the pain of the Cubs losing was too much. I did see about 20 seconds of it total while flipping channels. Otherwise, it was a World Series blackout in my world. And I realize this is a couple days late, but...

I have to say: HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA, take that, George Steinbrenner!

Because the next best thing to the Cubs winning is the Yankees losing.

That is all.

You Guys Suck Rock

Well, I'm kinda hurt that you would think you have to wait for me to leave to have a party here...but I'm nothing if not a good hostess, so have a good time. I left salsa and chips. BYOB. It's not that I'm cheap; it's just that we used up all the liquor last night.

Thanks everyone who has been sending in questions for me to Daniel. From what I hear, they are...interesting. Can't wait!

I Made It

I'm back in front of my computer and will have actual posts for you shortly. Just going to have dinner first.

In the meantime, the Queen of Suck (me) commands you to visit Kevin's Roundup of Suck.

Crazy Day

You still have time to submit questions for Blackfive. Please e-mail your questions by midnight central time today. His interview is scheduled to appear here Friday.

I am now opening up questions for Josh. Please e-mail your questions by midnight central time Thursday. Hopefully you'll see his interview on Monday.

As for new posts today, I plan to have them up but it'll be later than normal...probably early afternoon unless bad things happen.

In the meantime, talk amongst yourselves on the new message board. I am testing it out before deciding to buy it...so I apologize for the popup ads for now. If it gets used, I'll keep it. If it turns into Daniel, Reader Pete, and me as the only ones talking to each other it will go away.

If you don't feel like talking on the message board, you can exchange recipes in the comments. Thanksgiving is right around the corner!

Playing Around

I've been messing with the stylesheet again. Think I'm done (for today).

As always, if there are any problems with your retinas burning, let me know.

***Update: I think it's lovely. Shame no one with AOL can see it.

Hmph.

Well, I had a "Cubs Win!" post ready to go yesterday. Then they didn't. So I made my "Cubs Lose!" post just in case tonight. And they did.

Deleting the "Cubs Win!" post is very sad.

(sigh)

Oh yeah, and I don't care what Ted says...we still hate that 3rd base line guy. HATE HIM HATE HIM HATE HIM!!! And his little dog, too!