Fish!!

Yep, Brian now has an aquarium.  He also has three black-fin sharks.  We filled the tank yesterday and the fish are going home now.  I’ll put pictures up once he takes them.

The Underground Space Station Should Not

Be handled by women that are pregnant or may become pregnant. Also you shouldn’t swim within half an hour of reading any of this.

Campfire Stories

…is my next project.  People telling scary stories around a campfire.  First part, patients in a loony bin escape, woman driving home, sees someone with blood on his head in a blue loony bin suit on the side of the road.  She doesn’t realize he’s a guard, and one of the loonies is in her car.  Obviously she never played Spot the Loony.  This is the only one really developed so far.

Archaic Humour

Just had a thought that I fear Brian will never understand.  If there are so many ham radio operators out there, how come you never hear about any cheese radio operators?  There was also a thought path that had ham operators being better than pro dj’s because they’re used to hamming it up, but it thankfully died on the design board.

Why Wet Kids Reflect The Inevitable Zombie Apocalypse

Tuesdays and Thursdays are swimming days at Brian’s camp.   They cart all the kids to a high school ten minutes from camp.  Now, Brian, being my son, has his own diving mask and snorkel.  (I HAD a snorkel until I…somebody stepped on it.)  So, Tuesdays I always go and swim with the kids.  I bring MY mask.  At least once, every one of the kids over five asks me and Brian if they can use the mask, or tell us to give them the mask, or whine that they want the mask, or whine they don’t have a mask or a cool daddy who comes swimming.  (That’s happened twice.)

Brian’s like me–occasionally generous to a fault.  He lets his pseudogirlfriends Sally and Olivia use his mask, his snorkel, his towel, get rides on my back–up to a point.  He lets his few guy friends, since there really aren’t that many guys, use his stuff–up to a point.  Then, here’s where he shows more spine than I give him credit for,  he starts taking stuff back.  Nicely if people are nice, just taking the stuff if they’re not.  If there were zombies in the water, he’d do the same thing more than likely–help those who’re not nasty and leaving the ones destined to become zombies themselves.

Then there are those who are just bad news.  Whiny, demanding, pushy, whiny–and that’s just the people that WORK there!  No, I jest.  No, those kids, Brian has no patience for.  He’ll let them get away with it once, then anything they ask, NO, GET LOST, YOU’RE NOT GETTING IT!  So, when the escape transports are getting full, I’d trust my kid to let the good ones on and leave before it got too bad.

So, when the Z’s show up, look to your kids.  Especially if there’s a pool nearby.

Stuff that makes it worthwhile

Officially today was Brian’s last day of first grade, they cleaned out their offices, (THEY’RE DESKS, PEOPLE!!  NOT OFFICES!!)  and tomorrow most of the school’s going to Dorney Park.  Brian’s not going since we’re going later in the summer.  So, he tells Stace after I’m on my way to work tonight he doesn’t want to go tomorrow so that he and I can have a special day together.

A Return To My Acting Background

I’ve done a bunch of acting.  One might say that I’ve been doing it since my parents bought Luke Skywalker and a landspeeder in ‘77.  One might, but one would get looked at funny and the subject would be changed to the weather as the group quickly moved away from one whilst security was called.

Anyway, for a couple years in elementary school, I went to New York twice a week for auditions.  Then, when I got into high school, I got into an acting class, met the girl of my dreams, and then–oh, wait, went through that in another post.  Did the college acting thing.  Helped produce that abomination of the boards, A Knight of British Comedy.   I’m still surprised Chapman’s ghost didn’t come and hit all of us with Mr. Gumby’s bricks after that one. 

Now, Saturday night, I once more tread the boards with my son.  I play a crow that gets phasered to death in Brian’s end of school play.  It was going to be squirt guns, but my squirt guns are quite big and wet, the ones I could find anyway, so we’re going to use phasers.

Most kids have college funds.  I’m starting Brian a therapy fund.

Self Importance and Self Impotents

First off, let me preface this by saying that, unlike a certain well-known Trek fan film forum, I don’t care if you stick with this or any other topic when responding.  I like the organic flow of a conversation rather than being forced into narrow constraints of whatever original post may have been written months or years ago by people unknown.  The first one to post TOPIC here in orange letters will be flogged with cold spaghetti until they cry. 

Thst said, I have to laugh at people who repeatedly cause impacts to the epidermis of an expired equine(how’s THAT for a fifteen point alliteration?)  by repeating things that have already been said upthread.  This is what I feel and so on and so forth and even though this has been said by a hundred other people I have to have it attached to my name and demonstrate that either I have remarkable typing skills or really poor spelling skills by posting the fact that I agree or disagree in excruciating detail and it ends up just running on and on and getting repetitive and not actually advancing the interaction more than saying, “Me, too!” and running on and on and getting repetitive and blah blah blah….

Some of the people that post things like these impassioned overworded posts from heck occasionally react with astonishment that there could be any disagreement since their opinions were delivered to them directly from God’s Shipping Department on Gold Leaves(MUST get a hold of THAT tree, by the way) with postage due and any other opinion is the rankest heresy that’s not even worth month old used Kleenex.  There is so much passion in these posts, and yet, in the cases of conversations about actual problems, there are so many loud people with opinions and yet nothing gets done.  If your ideas are so marvy, get OFF the darn computer and go DO something about the problem!!!

Horror

Watching the first Alien VS Predator right now.  I’m the first to admit, when I saw the second Predator with the alien skull hanging on the wall, I thought THAT would be a fight.   This movie, that I just turned off, doesn’t come close to be as scary as the trailers for the other movies.  That’s right, I said the trailers.  One of the things that worked in both of the original movies, you didn’t know anything.  You couldn’t SEE anything.  Even in Giger’s Necronomicon IV, there’s more in shadow than shown, your fear fills in the blanks.  Some things are never meant to be shown playing in all their glory except as a hey, look what I can do in After Effects! sequences.  Some ideas that sound cool around the coffee table at a party, like my assembled zombie idea, need to much visualization to really be frightening.  Also, once it’s seen, it’s known, oh look, it’s a xenomorph and it has two mouths and what’s on the other channel? 

Is horror really just a grown-up game of peek a boo?

Cosmic Thinking

The person with a closed soul will look out a window at the world and wonder if there’s something higher, why isn’t there any evidence?   The person with the open soul will look out a window at the world and see the evidence in the same view.