“The Danger of Halloween”

As originally seen in The Huffington Post.

Kimberly Daniels believes that Halloween is a very naughty sort of occasion. Some choice quotes from her piece on the subject:

During Halloween, time-released curses are always loosed. A time-released curse is a period that has been set aside to release demonic activity and to ensnare souls in great measure.

Those mini-Snickers you plan on handing out to the wee ones? Not only will they rot their teeth but also their soul!

During this period demons are assigned against those who participate in the rituals and festivities. These demons are automatically drawn to the fetishes that open doors for them to come into the lives of human beings. For example, most of the candy sold during this season has been dedicated and prayed over by witches.

And finally:

There is no doubt in my heart that God is not calling us to replace fall festivals and Halloween activities; rather, He wants us to utterly destroy the deeds of this season. If you or your family members have opened the door to any curses that are released during the demonic fall festivals, renounce them and repent. I already have. Then declare with me: “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord!”

I think Ms Daniels would not approve of the decorations out in front of the house. I’ll have a few more added to the Halloween gallery tomorrow, including the pumpkins in all their candlelight glory. Everything is courtesy of the demented mind of Tim, of course.

Only two days until NaNoWriMo!

I just like saying NaNoWriMo.

That would be National Novel Writing Month. I’m signed up and ready to pound out my 50,000+ word masterpiece* over the next 30 days, starting Sunday (no day of rest here).

I intend to keep writing here on a daily basis as well. Perhaps my novel will be about a guy struggling to find work who finds himself trapped in his own blog. It could be called The Blog but in big scary wiggly letters and 3D and stuff. You know.

* my definition may differ than yours…or the dictionary’s

That Facebook stuff

I don’t think I’m cut out for this fancy Facebook thing. I haven’t updated my status since my birthday on September 19th. Somehow I’ll pull through, though.

More on this possibly later!

Background midi files and animated gifs, how I shall miss thee — Geocities closing

Today marks the end of Geocities, perhaps the most popular service early on in the days of the World Wide Web to allow the masses to make their presence known on the Internet. And that presence was largely made through the heavy use of automatically-playing background midi music, epileptic seizure-inducing animated gifs and the liberal use of Comic Sans. The spirit of Geocities will never die, though, and not just because tripod.com still exists, as the whole thing has pretty much been transplanted into myspace.com.

Meanwhile, with pre-made templates and tighter control on design elements, personal blogs like WordPress and social networking sites like Facebook have largely reined in the more gaudy elements of those manyfold Geocities sites. In a way it makes me a little sad, in the same way that one witnesses the loss of innocence when a child stops believing in Santa. In another way is makes me glad because many of those sites provided compelling evidence that the average net-user had the taste and design chops of a moss-covered rock.

A pair of exercises: Wonky SF and a song given form

Writing exercises, that is.

The first is based on this premise: A pair of friends have just finished a lovely meal at a favorite restaurant, but things take a turn when one notices that the waiter has scribbled an unexpected—and startling—message on their bill.

The story I wrote for this comes in two flavors:

The End of the Meal (original)
A Slice of Life (more “sci-fi”)

The next exercise: Write a story or scene based on a song.

Laura (based on the song from Billy Joel’s album, The Nylon Curtain)

The new sappy, the old sappy, the weird sappy

UPDATE, August 25, 2022: LOL as the kids say--every video I linked to was removed or blocked. I may try to find alternate sources someday, but for now, marvel over what you might have seen!

SECOND UPDATE:  Ah hell, I went and found all of them again. No need to thank me!

When I was the operator of the Locarno Beach concession from 1996-98, I often chatted with the lifeguards there. The head lifeguard happened to be the brother of Terry Jacks, famous Canadian songsmith and he was mentioned from time to time, as his lifeguard brother Craig was also musically inclined and was known to pull out the acoustic guitar on occasion, adding a little extra color to the sandy shores.

Terry Jacks’ most famous recording is probably “Seasons in the Sun” which the wikipedia link reveals was originally meant to be a Beach Boys song. That might have been interesting. Instead, Jacks recorded the song himself and earned a place in the hall of fame for schmaltziest songs ever recorded. I’m pretty sure there is an embedded hidden message imploring the listener to parody the song.

The Irish “boy” band (in quotes because they are all pushing 30, it seems) Westlife did a cover of the song and after stumbling across it, I felt compelled to watch to see if they could one-up Mr. Jacks. I believe they have. I present below the new, even schmaltzier version of “Seasons in the Sun”. By the way, if you’ve never heard of Westlife, that’s okay, as they appear to have had little success in North America while over in the UK they’d sold something like 10 billion albums. Different strokes and all that.

Don’t ask me how I came across the video. Just don’t.

Bonus time! A little more searching and I discovered that Nirvana also recorded “Seasons in the Sun” with, uh…alternative lyrics. Featuring Kurt Cobain on drums:

Ah, what the hell. Here is Jacks himself singing (well, lip-syncing) the song back in 1974. Dig the ‘burns and leather pants.

Okay, so apparently the Beach Boys did record the song and their version is the peppiest but it also adds a verse about a cheating wife and lovers, giving the song a distinctly creepy vibe. The video is a montage of still images. I’m also beginning to think there was a cottage industry in covering this song that I’ve somehow managed to miss for the last 36 years.

Out of touch

I have often cultivated tastes that are a bit out of the mainstream. I’m not saying my tastes are refined or cultured or anything, because my reading list will quickly prove otherwise, but I still manage to avoid by design or accident most of pop culture. To wit:

  • I have never read a Dan Brown novel
  • I have not seen either Transformers movies
  • I have no cable, so no TV — I’ve not seen an episode of House, Dexter or a billion other hip shows
  • I don’t know most of the top ten musical acts. I’ve heard of Lady Gaga because some things are unavoidable. 😛

This isn’t really good or bad, just a thing.

To complete this random post, the Robert Zemeckis-directed version of A Christmas Carol featuring Jim Carrey that’s out this holiday season looks really really bad. I mean, astonishingly bad.

Sprained calf: 1, Jogging: 0

In this seemingly innocent run I “tweaked” my right calf, a factor I noted in my next two runs. At the time I thought it unremarkable enough that I did not mention it at all. This past Monday I tried running and after half a lap the sensation in my right calf was setting off the proverbial alarm bells. I quit at that point and today went to the clinic. The doctor did a bit of squeezing and found the magic spot, as evidenced by my face going through interesting contortions. The verdict: I had sprained my calf and even more brilliantly, kept running on it, which risked making it much worse.

He wondered if I had extended medical through work that would cover physio-therapy. I explained that I did not and he offhandedly suggested checking the Internet for a little self-help there. He then outlined some measures to take after running: stretching, icing the calf and so on. Oh, and that I was not to do any running for at least the next four weeks.

This, in a word, sucks. I guess I’ll have more time to write now.

I’ve marked Monday November 23rd on my calendar with “I can run now!” My one consolation is the doctor could have recommended six weeks but felt (literally!) that four weeks should be good.

CRTC to big telecom: Don’t worry, I won’t bite. I have no teeth!

Today the CRTC revealed its new framework in regards to Internet usage.

“Canada is the first country to develop and implement a comprehensive approach to internet traffic management practices” — CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein

Here are the dramatic changes the CRTC is putting in place to make sure those big ol’ ISPs like Rogers, Bell, Telus and Shaw keep in line:

  • 30 days notice required before any “network management changes”
  • traffic-shaping (throttling) only as a “last resort” – but still A-OK!
  • charging “consumers rates based on how much bandwidth they use each month, or offer discounts during off-peak hours”

The ISPs can pretty much do everything they have been doing and on top of that have now been given the green light to soak subscribers with even higher fees based on some undefined standard of usage. The notion that they would offer discounts for off-peak hours is, of course, laughable.

This has to be one of the mushiest, dunderheaded set of regulations I have ever seen. Not surprisingly, all of the major telecom companies are pretty much fine with it.

You probably want to skip over the job offer…

…that has the company’s name and the word “scam” attached to it as the first suggestion in Google:

primerica-search

My resume on monster.ca shows that my experience is primarily in IT and tech support, so it makes sense that I’d be contacted by a direct marketer of financial services that works based on a recruitment plan that isn’t quite a pyramid scheme. Tempting but no!