So once there was this storm system.
The Storm of the Century, they called it.
Thanks to the wonders of modern meteorology, luckily, nobody was caught off-guard by the storm, but still its impact was staggering as it made its path across the United States.
As it went thru the major agricultural states of the plains, and lower MidWest, it generated tremendous updrafts, lifting entire farms into it's belly.
A Flour Mill in Kansas, Whoosh! Gone.
A dairy farm in Tennessee. Swept away.
65% of the egg-production capability of a small town in Ohio was lost when a poultry farm was sucked up.

The storm swept onward, across Pennsylvania and into New York and New England, dropping record amounts of precipitation on the region.
Headlines in all the papers afterward read the same:

Monster Storm System Batters Northeast!

YeeHaw! NASCAR Season Starts up This Weekend, Ain'T?
This strange ritual of watching people drive in circles is one more reason for me to feel intellectually superior to 97% of the residents of my county. I don't get it. One of the main attractions is the crashes right? Yet Heaven forbid a driver people like gets injured or killed in a crash.

3/4 of NASCAR fandom have somehow canonized Dale Earnhardt, Sr. I believe his first miracle was driving in a circle. The Second miracle of Dale was stopping a really fast car with nothing but his right foot.
The Third Miracle of Dale involved causing wine to spew forth on the masses gathered within a fabled "Winner's Circle". The other 1/4 of Nascar fandom have performed their own miracle. They have made an unlicensed character produce water simply by placing the number 3 next to it.

NASCAR. A Bunch of hicks driving in a continuous Left Turn, and not a one of them uses the left turn signal. Ironic isn't it? You put a bunch of Hicks on a long, straight stretch of Highway, and you can't get them to turn the damned left turn signal OFF!

So I started thinking about this while seeing the ads for the upcoming "SUBWAY 400" event. THis struck me as strange. Sure, Subway shops have spread faster than Starbucks outlets, particularly in the locales that have strong NASCAR fanbases. But does anybody care about NASCAR in cities where there actually is a real subway?
"Subway" sponsoring a NASCAR event is also ironic in that Auto Racing began as a competition between auto-makers, to determine who could build the better cars. Thus Auto-racing became a way to boost automobile sales, and get more cars on the roads, causing more traffic. The subway, however, was introduced to reduce the number of cars on the road, and provide relief from traffic.

It's all silly, just as is this entry. I guess I'll just never be a gearhead.

Have you seen the new Black & White M&Ms yet?

Of course you have. I first spotted these while i was doing the last rounds of my Christmas shopping, and bought a few bags. I'm tempted to play Go or Othello with 'em.

I bet Steve Ditko would love them. (That's a joke about his worldview concerning good & evil as stark absolutes, with no shades of gray.)

You could tell fortunes with 'em, or play a kind of "She loves me, She Loves me Not". Just pick a yes-or-no question you want answered, or a decision you need to make, and let the color of the last M&M in the bag be your guide. White for yes, Black for No, or vice versa if you would feel ethnic guilt associating black with a negative.

I even like the commercial for these. The one where Dorothy Gale wakes up at the end of "The Wizard of Oz", and all the M&M characters are in her bedroom, in Black & White. "...Oh Aunt M (funny funny!), i had the strangest dream, and you were there, and you , and you, abd you were all in color!..."

I almost did a spit-take the first time i saw it, when she called the one "Aunt M".

But last week I went to a movie, and had a pack of these in my pocket.

I was sitting in the theater munching on the M&Ms, when it hit me. Sitting there in the dark, eating my Black and White M&Ms, I realized that they taste the same as the colored ones. They'd also taste the same if they were in shades of gray. The flavor's not in the shell or the color. It's the chocolate and/or the peanut or peanut butter inside! That's what really matters.

I wondered if blind people care what color their M&Ms are. I wonder if anybody that ever did concert prep for Van Halen, and had to provide those bowls of M&Ms with all the orange, yellow, and brown ones removed, ever considered saving those unwanted candies for the next Ray Charles or Stevie Wonder concert. To a blind person, I bet all the M&Ms taste the same, except for that occasional one with a rotten peanut.

M&Ms aren't Skittles, after all. With Skittles, you can taste the rainbow. Blind people can taste the different skittles. Even the monochrome mint skittles, that are all different shades of blue, or green, have a subtle taste difference for each shade.

if they wanted to do Black & White Skittles, they'd have to take the flavors out, too. Maybe they could make the skittles Licorice and Vanilla for a limited time. Mmmm.

I wonder what Deaf and blind people think of Black and White M&Ms. Maybe they should explore a way to make the different colors of M&Ms make different sounds when you crunch them. They could vary the thickness of the shell, maybe. Or they could put that fizzpowder into the coating. It'd be funny if they could have random M&Ms make a fart noise when you bit them. Or a Howler Monkey or Kookaburra call.
Or the sounds of light sabers. George Lucas should have his FX wizards get to work now devising a way to make the M&Ms provide the sound effects for the next Star Wars film.

That would really show up those folks at Hershey. M&M/Mars could finally make up for letting Reese's Pieces be "E.T.'s Favorite Candy"

Yeah. That would be SWEET.

So, will this be the year I finally send something in for the SPX anthology? I've been attending this convention for Small Press Comics artists since 1996, but I've never got around to submitting to their anthology. They have a theme this year of WAR.
That raises questions right away.
Do i do a pro-War Piece, and get ostracized by all the liberals in the arts community?
Do I presume that the editor is anti-war, and tailor my submission to try and get in the editor's graces?
Do I try and do a piece that has no tie to any current War situation, and avoid controversy?
Do i just say fuck-all! Damn The Torpedoes! and tell the story i want to, no matter its slant?

I'm probably leanig toward the last option. I have some ideas, but I don't know what kind of tone I'll take yet. Well, i have until June to work on it.

Sunday Snow.
falling, floating. blanket of white.
fog and rime on my window.
warm in here.
cold out there.
Falling pretty thick now.
It'd be pointless to shovel before the Game starts.
heh heh heh.


Once Again, it's MLK-Day Weekend, and it's snowing in PA. Racist's Delight. Nature making everything Whiter for MLK day. Did Somebody forget to send the memo to Gaea's Office?

We always get snow this weekend, and it's always more than the TV Weatherguy predicts. 1-2 inches they said. we had that much at lunchtime. We got that much last evening, but it changed over to rain overnight, and back to Snow around 10:30 this morning. Big Accreted flakes, falling straight down, with no wind.

I can tell it's been falling straight down without looking at the falling flakes. We have a 41-yr-old Maple Tree in our front yard, with large sprawling branches. There's a star pattern around the base of this tree, where the snow isn't as thick. When I first saw it today, I thought it was squirrel tracks, but then i noticed that the pattern has a spoke positioned directly under each branch of the tree. It's a snow shadow. Cool, in more ways than one.

We've already had one brief power interruption today, and it caused my system to reboot in mid-message, so I'm going to keep it short and power-down, and just enjoy football today.

I started a new project today. I'm going through all my CDs, playing them in RealPlayer, and saving my favorite tracks, if any into my Library. I figure if I do at least 3 CDs a day, I can get through my collection within a year. But the big question is, will I have enough room on my Drive to do it? Well, if alot of my collection is like the stuff I'm listening to today. Yeah.
I have a lot of records that were sent to me for review from 1995 thru 2000, or so, when I was doing the occasional reviews in my zines. But boy, do you get sent a lot of crap when you do reviews. Many of these records I filed away, and haven't listened to them since I reviewed them. I also have a lot of discs that I bought myself, and only listened to once or twice. Maybe I wanted a song for a mixtape or something, but thought the rest of the disc was crap (CIV comes to mind here.)

4 Non Blondes is a group in the latter category. I think i ordered this to fulfill a BMG music service requirement. Hey, I liked their song "What's Up?" I even remember seeing a few strippers dance to it back in the early 90s. Hence this song has lots of great memories associated with it. But there are maybe two other tracks on the disc that I would be bothered to want to listen to again. So why don't I load them on the 'puter, and open up a slot on my CD rack?
22 Jacks is a band in the former category. They were pulled along in the wake of Reel Big Fish, and Cherry Poppin' Daddies, and Blink 182, and the rest of the Vans Warped Tour. I used to get alot of discs like this from SIDE1Dummy records. Well, they did get better on the second record they sent me. While i didn't find anything on the first release ("Overserved") that I wanted to save, I am enjoying some of the tracks on the second disc of theirs that i have. ("Going North")
I don't know. Maybe I just looked at this wall of my room literally full of CDs and tapes and albums, and decided I should work towards living more portably. Maybe I won't have the luxury of Mom and Dad's basement forever. Maybe a job offer will come thru that requires me to move to Nevada. A move to another state nearby i could do easily. I could move my stuff in just a few trips. But a move more than halfway across the country would require some drastic parting of me and my stuff. i am a packrat by nature, and i have too many collections.
So. The CDs must be culled. That's the easy part. then i have to tackle the videotapes, Pez Dispensers, Candy tins, happy meal prizes, T-Shirts, sheet music, lunchboxes, action figures, DVDs, and Comic books.
Or i could go the easier route, and just buy a trailer now. Then when it's time to move, I can just hitch my house to the back of the car.
I hear it's easier to pick up lonely divorcees in a trailer, too.

The Apprentice disgusts me. I sincerely hope that at some point in the show one of the losers will get mad and reach across the table and rip off Donald Trump's atrocious toupee. Why can't Trump afford a more Natural-Looking hairpiece? Somebody should venture that guy the capital to go down to Baltimore and visit Mr. Larry for a weave. Don't try to tell me it's not a hairpiece, either. There's no way a guy that wealthy would continue to patronize any barber or stylist that incompetent. Or is the secret to Trump's fortune that he does his own hair with a Flowbee?

So anyway, after a rather unsatiiiiiisfying episode of Friends tonight, I switched over to PBS and caught a documentary produced in Philly called Things That Aren't There Anymore. It was nostalgia for places like Connie Mack Stadium, and Willow Grove Amusement Park, and The Steel Pier, and Horn & Hardart, and Gimbel's etc.

It got me thinking about things from my own time that aren't there anymore. I can remember The Steel Pier in Atlantic City, too. But what I miss from old Atlantic City are Taber's Toys, The Planter's Peanut Store, and The Abracadabra Magic Shop. But I'm not going to wax nostalgic for those places, which I only visited twice while growing up. There are plenty of places here in my hometown of York, PA that aren't there anymore.

Wiiliam's Field was two little league baseball diamonds, tucked off of Roosevelt Avenue on the extreme western edge of York City, behind the Sylvania plant and the S&H Green Stamp Outlet, and The Acme Grocery Store. Those buildings are still there, But Sylvania is now OSRAM, The S&H store is now a Goodwill Outlet, and the Acme is now a drycleaner and a Runkle's Notary, Tag and Title service. But that magic place behind the buildings has been taken over by the quarry, and now houses an ash recycling facility whose tremendous mound of ash threatens the air quality of our neighborhood, and has become a bone of contention in recent elections.

Jacob L. Devers Elementary school, nestled snugly among the homes of York's Fireside and Continental Homes neighborhoods, was a benchmark for educational standards in the post-Eisenhour era. Many of the city's best and brightest students spent their K-5, or 6 years there. It had a paved playground that covered half an acre, adjoining a grass field with kickball/softball diamond that spread over another two thirds of an acre. As a 2nd grader, I can remember feeling tired by the time we trekked all the way out to the ball field, and then they expected us to play, too?
Once, at a recess back in 1969, a game of Comahead (similar to Bull Rush) got out of hand, and I got pushed head first into the brickwall of the schoolbuilding. The gash in my head required stitches, and I left my DNA sample on the pavement of the playground, right there by the corner of the library. For years, well into the mid-1990s, I could visit that spot on the playground and still pick out two small spots in the pavement where the stones were still colored red from my blood. But now they've expanded the classroom facilities, and the old paved playground has now been covered with new building. My marker has been dug up, and a patch of grass is planted there. That big ballfield has been cut back toless than half its old grandeur, to allow room for safe playground structures. I really don't feel a tie to this school anymore.
Another thing that isn't there anymore is the old empty field where all us neighborhood kids played. It stood on the south side of route 30, right on the edge of town, between Lancer Lane and Fairlane Dr. Much of the dirt excavated from the foundations of the Fireside neighborhood had been dumped in mounds on this field, and by the time I was old enough to ride a bike, these mounds had grown solid with brush and wild grasses, and some really cool bike trails wound all around the field, up and down the multiple hillocks. Often the boxes from large appliances installed in the Booming area of homes ended up in this field, the stuff of which many battleforts and clubhouses were made. Take a run across Fairlane to the dumpster behind Stan Stackhouse carpets, and you could find remnants to keep the dirt off your butt, and if you were lucky, you might get a big long cardboard tube that could become robot arms, or the muzzle of a tank, or what have you. Even the older kids enjoyed that field, if later at night, when the bushes along the Highway offered seclusion for making out.
Stan Stackhouse is still there, but in the 1980s somebody first graded the field flat and planted corn in that field for a few seasons. Then in 1985 they built a couple stripmalls, A Bob's Big Boy, and a KFC there.
Bob's is now a LoneStar Steakhouse, and most of the storefronts of the strip malls are on their third generation of tenants already.
Until a month ago i wondered where the kids in this neighborhood today went to make out. We found out on a snowy Sunday Morning in Early December. We were awakened by the Fire Engines. Apparently one of the abandoned homes on our street had become a party house, where teenagers were breaking in and meeting to drink, do drugs, and make out. It seems the kids got cold, and built a fire in the old abandoned fireplace, and left it smoldering after the party ended. At least we got our street plowed early so that the Fire Engines could get in, but that's one more place that isn't there anymore.

My New Year's Resolution is to try to post to this blog every day....Damn!

I am Back. If the setting changes worked this blog is now titled "The Secret Life of Nobody Famous, Dammit!"

If not, It's still "What Goes on in My Mind". Why the change? Well, I'm more like Walter Mitty than Lou Reed, and I wanted to also bring the title of this space more in synch with my website.

I've been away for awhile, trying to limit my time on-line each day while i nursed my left eye back to health. The sore eye also kept me from drawing many new comics.
If I spent too long staring at a white piece of paper, or a monitor my eye would get red and inflamed, and go all out of focus on me.

Have you ever seen MonsterBoy? With that big inflamed eyeball? that was me.

I'm going to start spewing random thoughts here to get caught up since it's been almost two months since I posted here.

The Movie PAYCHECK was a fun ride, but the internal logic was all fucked-up, as it seems to always end up anytime Hollywood tries to adapt Philip K. Dick.
Let's face it. Hollywood can't adapt DICK.

..and what's with all the scar tissue on Uma Thurman's left cheek? The One on her face, people. I might have liked the movie better if they gave us that close a look at her other left cheek.

BIG FISH, on the other hand, was incredible. This is definitely the best Tim Burton film to date. A wonderful film, full of wondrous characters, that almost made me cry at the end. Unlike other Burton films with "fantastic" characters, the ones here aren't overbearing and forced like Nicholson's Joker, or DeVito's Penguin, or PeeWee Herman, or Beetlejuice. In Big Fish, the Giant, the Loup G'Arou, the Mermaid, the Siamese Twins, etc. all have a certain endearing charm, more like Edward Scissorhands. Watching Burton's earlier films, i'd often feel that Tim had been traumatized at the circus as a child. If that's the case, this is a more mature Tim Burton who has had therapy to get over those childhood fears. The result is a sublime film.

Allison Lohman is perfect as a younger Jessica Lange, too. I'd do her. Both of them.

I'm listening to a playlist I made on RealPlayer now of Driving tunes. My nephew just turned 16, and I wanted to give him an appropriate mixdisc, and i still have the tunes grouped on file, and I'm replaying them now. "Brand New Cadillac" by Wayne Hancock is playing now. mmmmm. also just heard "VooDoo Cadillac" by Southern Culture on the Skids. I kinda did a "cadillac" set. I have to start loading in all my Halloween and Monster songs. it would make compiling the next few "Howl-O-Ween" mixes alot easier.

Madness are doing "Driving in My Car" now. Okay. I put some silly stuff on the list, too.

I'm gonna log out now, I'd like to get some work done on my site tonite while i still have the eyes.

Oh, by the way, i apologize for not blogging or updating my cartoons for awhile.

I have an eye condition the doc calls UV-itis or something like that. all i know is about 14 years ago i had pinkeye in my left eye, and ever since then that eye gets tired before the right, and if I strain it too long, it gets inflamed. If I drive too long at night, or play playstation for too long a stretch, it'll get sore for a day or so. It really flares up maybe once every six years, and when it does that, it takes over a week to get back to normal, and only with lots of expensive prescription eyedrops.

I guess all that "research" into the Paris Hilton videotape was too much, on top of all the ebaying I've been doing. Hey, I've made close to $500 this month on Ebay, but for over a week now I've been walking around looking like Quasimodo with a concussion. One eye all bulging and pink, and dilated from the drops.

So for the last ten days or so, My eye would get too sore to spend much time on the computer, and the light reflecting off white paper on my drawing board hurt, too.
So I really haven't been able to draw for all that time. well today, the medicine seems to be clearing it up, so i should be getting back to schedule this weekend.
Right now, it's getting a little tired, though, so I'm going to shut down.

well, the pecan and pumpkin pies are baked.
I won't take credit or blame for them. I was supposed to be making them. Mom was just going to prep her crusts, and I'd do the fillings and baking. Then this evening I smelled stuff baking upstairs, and went to the kitchen to find Mom cooling two pecan pies, and getting ready to put the pumpkin in the oven.

She just can't stand somebody doing the work for her. And I was going to make cool little individual pecan tarts, and my extra special pumpkin pie. she just whipped up the recipe on the pumpkin can, and i have to be honest, it tastes storebought.

...anyway... i just finished cooking down the giblets to make stock for the stuffing and gravy. The Turkey is thawed, cleaned and prepped in its pan. This is the first year since I moved back to York that I'm doing the cooking, since My sister decided She's eating with her Boyfriend's family this year. It's just gonna be me and five senior citizens at our place.

I had to run out tonight to Wal-mart and get a meat thermometer. I can't believe my mom cooked for us for all those years and didn't have a meat Thermometer. Maybe all those bouts of diarhea growing up were really food poisoning.

All i need to do tomorrow is finish mixing the stuffing, stuff, oil, and lube the bird, and pop it in the oven before 9AM tomorrow.

then when the bird has about an hour to go, i mix up the baked corn, adjust the oven temp, and slide the pan in on the rack above the bird. I'll pop some Pilllsbury biscuits in the oven while i carve the turkey. I hope to be eating by 2:30ish.

My one aunt is bringing the orange-cranberry relish and the green-bean casserole. My other aunt is bringing the homemade pickles, and my Mom's friend Alma, who has no family, will probably bring enough sweet potatoes to feed sixty people, no matter how many times we tell her it's just the six of us.


My stuffing? cornbread base, with liver, sausage, onions, carrots, sage, roasted garlic, and diced dried plums.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Junior Pornographer's Roll Call
BenT? HERE!
Okay, because that thread about the Paris Hilton sextape over at SlushFactory has been generating over 100 hits an hour for the last few days, and because people clicking on the link in my signature when i made some sarcastic comments there has brought over 100 new people to my own site each day this weekend, and actually flooded my bandwidth last night... (lotta lonely guys looking for free porn action on a Saturday Night. Go Figure.)

So, "Because", I hustled over to my drawing board and knocked out my own comic interpretation of the awful tape. Hopefully it'll be hosted on slush as soon as BJacks nods approval, but until then, here it is at my beleaguered site.

One fine evening in a Hilton, In Paris

I'm a whore, too, I guess. Please visit my store and order a mini-comic while you are there.

A Cool Small Press Title to Check Out
I realize that most of the folks that probably read my blog are fellow small-press comics folk, and i might be preaching to the choir here, but just as I would appreciate anything that wouold help me expand my audience, I'll post this oin the odd chance that there are new readers out there in blogland.

I met Justin Madson at a couple small press shows, and really enjoyed his comic Happy Town. It's a moody, beautiful tale, and Justin has a sweet style that reminds me of a blend of James Kochalka and Linda Medley. He has a new issue out now, #8, and a really neat box set of the first seven issues. You can order all of his stuff easily thru PayPal at his website. Give it a look. Just Mad Books: The home of Happy Town Comics by Justin Madson

Recent Distractions
Here's what has been keeping me from drawing alot recently. If you need to limit your own productivity, and just distract yourself for some time, i recommend all of these.

DISCWORLD Novels by Terry Pratchett. I spent a good part of the weekend reading his latest, Monstrous Regiment. Great story. Introduces a new region of the disc, and a slew of new wacky characters. Wm DeWord, from Pratchett's earlier release, The Truth, makes a return appearance, and Commander Vimes and Sgt Angua of the Ankh-Moorpork Watch have small roles.

Mystic River. Saw this film this afternoon. Loved it. I see a lot of Oscar nods, particularly for Sean Penn, Laura Linney, and Clint Eastwood, for both score and direction. Maybe even Tim Robbins.

Thrift Store Record Shopping. Today I found a couple spoken word/advice records by Dr. Murray Banks. Funny stuff. Also records by Carl Reiner and mel Brooks, George Burns and Gracie Allen, a National Lampoon Radio Hour collection with Belushi and co., and a few other good finds.

New TV shows This year I'm watching more TV than the last couple seasons. I'm enjoying Arrested Development, Karen Sisco, Two-and-a-Half Men, Stan Hooper, and NOVA the most.

That, and I've been selling a buncha stuff on Ebay, and posting way too much to the message boards. I really need to turn off this computer and draw something.

okay, before i go, I'll give you another TOP TEN, because deep down, you're all comics geeks, and i know you drool over this stuff:

Top 10 Alternate Realities The Watcher Never Showed Us:
10) What If... Galactus was a Vegetarian?
9) What If... The GREEN Goblin, The SCARLET Witch, ThePURPLE Man, RED Raven, YELLOW Jacket, BLUE Beetle, CRIMSON Dynamo, and others didn't use a Color-Safe bleach?
8) What If ... Jerry "The Beaver" Mathers had been bitten by the Radioactive Spider?
7) What If... Dr. Strange did Birthday Parties?
6) What If... Kids could afford Comics again?
5) What If... Jefferson was America's 1st President? ...GEORGE Jefferson.
4) What If... Medusa had a Bad Hair Day?
3) What If... Team America drove for Domino's?
2) What If... Watchers weren't so Nosy?
and
1) What If... Nick Fury didn't have that Eyepatch, and could look at Steranko Backgrounds with Depth Perception?

Monday. The Silicon Chip inside my head gets switched to Overload.

Well, I'm hanging around, listening to the swinging sounds of WEIRDSVILLE's Exotica channel today. They've become one of my favorites recently, so much that my CDs are getting dusty. They also have a cool channel called "SWANK" and a few other types of webcast. You can check 'em out by going here:
Weirdsville! Web Radio: The Out Sound from Way In

I've some time to myself this evening because I managed to get out of Dinner at the local American Legion hall with Mom & Dad and my Aunt Helen. It used to be a big thing on Monday Night. That's when they have a slate of $3.95 specials, and we'd have eight to twelve people show up for a nice family get-together, but My one Aunt Died, a cousin moved away, My Brother and His family don't like the smoke in the place, My sister often works too late, and the one couple of my Dad's friends that came got sick of the bad food, while another of the couples has a member going senile, and his behavior has become unpredictable.

It 'd winnowed down to just me, My Folks, and Aunt Helen. And they've taken to eating on "Old People Time". In order to get a good close handicapped spot, my Mom insists on getting there before 4:30 PM. In order to have an appetite that early, I usually have to skip breakfast and lunch, which means I can get really cranky if there's something not right with my food. Even if the food is somehow edible, They'll mess it up by bringing out my main course before my soup has cooled, or before I get halfway through my salad. I get tired of telling the wait staff that perhaps they could consider WAITING just a little more. BUt no matter the service or the quality of the food, i can always count on Aunt Helen's chain-smoking to ruin my meal at some point. She usually lights up as soon as we sit down, and only takes a break while she's eating. the problem is that she usually eats less than half her meal, and gets a take home box for the rest. As soon as she's done eating, she'll light up and start chain-smoking again, regardless of whom at the table is still in the midst of a meal. The woman is 83, and sure, she's earned the right to chain smoke if she wants to, but i wish she'd learn manners and at least wait until I've cut my meat.

Well last week was the third in a row that I had to send my meal back for something or other. (Ziti overcooked to the point of Mush, hardly any pork in the Pork& Sauerkraut, steak undercooked, greasy and bloody, etc,) I decided I'm sick of it.
I told MOm & Dad that I'd gladly help them find another diner to go to, but I won't be joining them at the Legion anymore.

It's a shame I have to complain about this today, with tomorrow being Veteran's Day and all. Well, i salute all the guys and gals risking their necks for me overseas right now. And i thank the media for constantly keeping us up to date as one or two more soldiers are killed in Iraq, even though ten times that amount of Americans will die from slipping in the bathtub alone today. Some of them will even slip on bars of soap made by Foreigners, but we won't hear about this tragic killing of Americans on tonight's network news.

I'm gonna go now, get cleaned up and then in an hour or so go and eat with people closer to my demographic, and then come home and watch my auctions on ebay close, and get rich.

Ugh! I apologize to those of you who are wondering where my new cartoons are this week. I have been racking my brain to come up with a good palindrome about Noah and his son Ham, to continue Dr. Palindrome's look at Genesis. Right now I have two dictionaries and a Thesaurus open in front of me, as well as a Bible guide, a guide to names in Mythology, an on-line thesaurus, and an on-line dictionary.

I feel like I'm back in College on the night before a paper is due.

You might be familiar with the story where Noah got drunk, and fell asleep naked, and Ham saw him in this embarrassing state. When Noah Awakes, he puts a curse on the children of Ham, that Canaan and his descendants will be slaves to the descendants of Shem (aka the Semites).This is too good a part of the story of Noah not to try and include.

You'd think that "Canaan" would lend itself easily to a palindrome, But I have to put it near the center of the phrase ie: "....Canaan A C~..."
I also tried to build around the core "...SAW DAD WAS..." but no synonym i can find for "naked" fits around that. Unless there is some obscure language where "Mah" means "drunk and naked" , but if it was that easy, I'm sure somebody else would have already made up "Ham Saw Dad Was Mah." I even considered drawing Shem tattling to Joan (You know...Noah's Wife?) "Ma! He Dun Saw Dad Was Nude! Ham!" and make Shem into a Hillbilly. I may use that yet.

I could fall back and use "Mt Ararat M~" as my core and do a different aspect of Noah, but that would be taking the easy road. Besides, I'll need one for next week soon enough.

Does Jon Agee ever have days like this?

I don't even want to think about doing a f-ARTjoke right now.

As i read back over this entry, that Shem as a Hillbilly gag is starting to seem funny.

Every now and then I like to listen to some cheese. The best cheese on the internet can be heard at Luxuria. LuxuriaMusic.com :: Internet Radio: Latin Jazz, Groovy 60's Go-Go Soundtracks, Bollywood

They play all the stuff that I love to find when I go album hunting at the local thrift stores. The stuff that kids in my generation would find in the record racks of our swinging bachelor uncles.

Well, I finished up at the mill last night. I had a good time growling at folks for a little over a month. It was cathartic. On the one hand, I'm glad that it's over, but on the other hand, I kinda wish that I could do something like that year-round, and really get paid for it. Not that i didn't get any compensation.
Technically, the workers at the Haunted Mill are classified as "volunteers" since the large portion of the proceeds goes to charity. However, we did get a stipend the size of which depended on our attendance record, and how much we scared our victims. I must have been rather scary, as I got double what the average worker received. If you count the time I actually put into it, what I got amounts to less than 3 bucks an hour, but It's enough to keep my bills paid until the end of the month while I hit the bricks for another job.
I didn't really do it for the money, anyway. I went out there to help my mom's Friend Judy, and because it was something I could get off on. If it did really pay, I'd do it for the money, though.

I'm still waiting to hear on the Meteorology Positions with NOAA I put in for in September. The last time i checked, i was still in the running, but they hadn't made a selection. So in the meantime, I'm looking for anything local that i can make around $300 or more a week at. I put out a few retail applications this past week, and sent some resumes off for retail manager slots. Maybe I can pick up a Christmas season job until I hear from NOAA. Luckily, I was paying down most of my bills Until Papa John's canned me, and I only have about $400 a month in bills. Of course, I have the stigma of Living with Mom and Dad, and knowing that my penis atrophies daily from disuse.

But deadlines are looming this month to register tables for the 2004 comic convention season. SPACE may be the only show I get a table at this year. APE is always a money-loser for me, what with the travel expense to fly to California, so that is probably out, and MOCCA and SPX will probably sell out of tables before i can raise the fees this year. I'll still attend those even if i don't have a table though, if just to drool over the big thick art books I can't afford, and which my colleagues won't trade me for. (Although maybe if I drool on a copy, i can get a discount?)

Well, I have to go now, and decide which of my body parts I can sell on Ebay this week for spending money. How much does a partially atrophied penis fetch nowadays?

Okay. It's Saturday, and I thought I'd do a quick update before Penn State gets their asses handed to them by Ohio State.

Halloween is past, and today the candy is on sale. Christmas decorations are going up already in the stores. It's like the Halloween Spooks have really Taken over Christmas a la Tim Burton. I still have two more nights at the Haunted Mill, but we're in the denouement now. I scared over 1000 people last night. ...and then i put my mask on. HA! I kill me.
I was a little concerned about the safety of my house last night, as this would be the first Trick-or-Treat night in years when nobody would be home. But we escaped un-egged, with no vandalism. In the last five years or so, there have only been maybe four or five houses on my block that do anything for the trick-or-treaters, so I guess by being dark last night, we were just one more party-pooper on the block.

When i was a kid, there would be maybe one or two houses in our entire neighborhood that were dark, the vast majority of the houses had kids, and were participating. Even the childless homes had stuff for the trick-or-treaters. You could easily fill a pilllowcase with candy just in the four blocks around my house. But back then, we knew all the neighbors, too. Not just the folks on my block, but the folks on all the streets around us. Nowadays, I only really know the folks in the houses on either side of me, and only because they are also holdouts from the original families of the old neighborhood. I know the new folks in the houses across the street, but only because I see them in passing every few days. If i go a few houses down the block on either direction, it's either new families I haven't met, or folk that have lived there for several years, but i still haven't met them. It's not like i hide in my house. I go out often for walks around my neighborhood, and i say Hi to folks as i pass, but paople aren't as friendly nowadays. I wish more of the folk in the hood would make an effort to meet everybody. This has always been one of the few neighborhoods in town where people feel safe leaving their doors unlocked. My new neighbor across the street has left for work several times in the last few weeks and left her garage door up all day. Nobody tries to steal from her, because The neighbors keep an eye out for each other. Safety and Security start with knowing your neighbors.

Enough of this. I'm going to leave you with another Comic Book Top-Ten, and then go be a hermit for a day.

Top Ten Ways To Get Kicked Out of Avengers Mansion
10) Allow Uncle Ultron to crash on the couch.
9) Raid Janet Van Dyne's wardrobe. Ask if she has anything smaller.
8) Accept collect calls from KANG
7) Steal Towels
6) "Borrow" Cap's Shield to go saucer-sliding in Central Park
5) Keep asking,. "How come we can't get a nifty Satellite like The Justice League?"
4) Tell Thor that your Hammer is bigger.
3) Repeatedly drop your trousers and shout, "I'm MOON Knight!"
2) Hide Iron Man's Naval Jelly.
1) Ask Jarvis to pass the Jelly when you know that it's Polaner All-Fruit.

Well it's Halloween, and i feel like dancin', and i feel like shinin', and I fell like lettin' loose.

Why can't each day be like halloween?

I wanna fuck, i wanna fuck the dead.

I was working in the lab, late one night.

You were a vampire, and I was the walking dead.

I believe in halloween.

It ain't no sin to take off your skin, and dance around in your bones.

Love is kinda crazy with a spooky little girl like you.

I told the witch doctor i was in love with you.

Those fingers in my hair, that sly come-hither stare, that strips my conscience bare, It's witchcraft.

I put a spell on you, because you're mine.

Looks like we're in for nasty weather.

How would you like to be scared right out of your socks, whether or not you're wearing socks?

I was struck by lightning, walking down the street. I was stopped by something I spied in my sleep.

I saw the thing coming outa the sky, it had one big horn, and one big eye.

I swear they was spooks, spooks, spooks, spooks!.


No costume, no candy.

(this post brought to you by my favorite Halloween tunes. I dedicate my Halloween fun to the memory of Sheb Wooley this year. {no these aren't all from Sheb's songs})