Random thoughts and links, part 114

Well, well, well, it HAS been a long time, hasn't it? Last time we had a chat I was still bloody and freaked out after an SUV nearly ran over me in my own place of employment.

But I healed up nicely. The cuts on my forehead are gone and the cuts on my ankle are getting there. I lost a few trinkets that once decorated my desk, not to mention a good pair of knee highs, but I can deal with that better than my body being crushed and broken.

Speaking of broken, they're finishing up the repair work on our building. We have windows again. The outside masonry doesn't look too hot now but that repair is also in the works. We're still waiting on replacement computers. My iMac at work has a soft LCD screen, and it sure has a purdy texture now, what with all the glass bits that went slashing across it. I have a hole about 1/16" of dead pixels that makes working in Photoshop a real bitch, but I'm managing.

In the meantime, I had a blast watching the Inauguration today via CNN/Facebook. It's nice to know that the rest of the planet doesn't hate out guts anymore.

Yes, you read that right. I said, "Facebook." I know, I know, I swore I wasn't gonna join any more web communities, but peer pressure from a select few wore me down. Plus, MySpace is getting so juvenile. If the assinign survey don't make me feel old, the overpowering flash ads keep crashing my browser.

I've hooked up with old Spymac pals from a couple years ago on Facegroup. (For those of you Spymac Old-Timers who didn't know, there is a Spymac Old Skool group there). And some other people from my very distant past have reached out across the lines.

Facebook has become addictive. So if you're looking for me, you know where to start.

And I have a plethora of goofy links:

I personally thought this stuff tasted like crap, but damn, the bottle is so fucking cool.

First is was the lolcats, then came the loldogs. Finally, there is... oh dear god no...

What to do when the escalator is broken (turn down your speakers... music NFSW).

And you thought that cat had problems? This dog is defective as well.

Best recycling ever. Soylent Pencils is people!

Guess what you bitches are getting from me next year?

Poetry for everyman, alive or (un)dead.

Ok, folks, everybody sing along!

Forget Prada, Chanel or whatever scent Liz Taylor is hawking these days. This is the fragrance to drive your man wild.

I know this late, but you can still enjoy a little creepy Christmas all year long.

Attention spooky people. Go here, big fun.

The most charming, dainty and sweet-natured ladies you'll ever meet. They've become my new heros.

And you think YOUR Monday was bad?

Today didn't seem too unusual, nor too terribly awful. I woke up with a full and slightly hurting head from the Ohio Valley Plague, but it wasn't enough to keep me home. After two Day-Quil I was off to work.

The Spouse was nice enough to take me to lunch (since he's off this week) and I had returned to work afterwards with a full, happy belly.

It was a slow day, being the time between the December holidays, so I was just sitting in my chair, surfing the web (actually uploading photos to FaceBook) when from my left

BOOM!

I scream. Loud. My body tensed. I'm aware that something is on me, covering me. I open my eyes briefly to see a thick fog of dust. I blink and notice the cloud is dissipating and I stand up. Whatever is covering me slithers off. I look to my right and see male co-worker #1 walking away from me quickly. As I walk away from whatever just boomed I notice female co-worker on the floor in a combat crawl.

I'm still not aware of what has happened.

Male co-worker #2 comes up to me and asks, "Are you ok?" I do a quick mental inventory and note that I'm not in pain nor is my thinking muddled. I say yes and look to my left, where the boom came from.

There's a car in the window. Aimed right at me (or at least where I was sitting). The bumper is on the floor just inches from my desk. Two whole windows are gone, the metal frames badly bent. The corner column (including a shelf that held a lot of my stuff - candy dish, Chinese good fortune cat, clip art book, font books) is a disaster. The interior portion is gone. I mean GONE. The outside portion is missing about 1/3 of its bricks and cement. There're ducts and chunks of wall all over.

There are (summoning Carl Sagan) billions and billions of miniscule bits of glass everywhere. As far as 30 feet away.

My workstation is covered with shrapnel.

A couple of customer service folks come over to me to see if I'm ok. One of them says, "You better get to the bathroom. Your forehead is bleeding."

As they say this I'm aware of a warm, wet sensation on my left ankle. I look down and see multiple holes in my black hose one both feet and spot the blood on my left ankle.

"You might want to take that shirt off. You're covered in glass."

"Yeah, you'll want to take your hair down, too. You have glass in your hair."

I reach up and feel a bunch of small glass chunks on my carefully braided hair.

Fuck. What the hell just happened?

I shuffle off to the bathroom with one of the customer service gals. That's when I notice my shoes are full. Of glass. I have to dump them out on the floor before I can go anywhere.

She follows me into the bathroom and proceeds to groom me like a primate, picking off the larger, more visual chunks of glass from my head. I take off and discard my destroyed hose and take gander at my ankle. It looks like a pit bull chewed on it. Then I look in the mirror.

My forehead isn't that bad. I have about 4 or 5 very small cuts that are barely oozing blood. But I have a glittery hairstyle.

Someone had handed me an old workshirt to change into. My turtleneck and shawl are dusty with glass. My pants look awful. I roll up my pants legs to check for more wounds but don't see any more.

During this whole ordeal, I'm laughing. I'm shaken, hell, I'm freaked out, but I'm laughing. In a situaion like this, you haven't to make light of it somehow.

Once I get the old shirt on, I emerge from the bathroom to get see what the fuck just happened.

That's when I see my workstation.
Yeah, it's petty much covered with glass. But check this shit out. The iMac is still running!

But yeah, I was sitting right there. And you can see how close the car was.
See? There's the car. Now, like most people, I'm instantly picturing a drunk bastard, or some dingbat on a cellphone, or some moron strung out on drugs. But no, twas not the case. Male co-worker#2 ran out to check on the driver after checking on me. Apparently the poor bastard passed out behind the wheel. He claimed he remembers coughing real hard, and then he was in our building. Sounds like a stroke to me.

I sit down in a chair and someone brings me a paper towel for my bloody ankle. I'm dabbing my wound, cursing the whole time: "Fuck! Sonofabitch!"

You would cuss, too. Cars djust don't come flying thru your window every day. And it really starts to sink in how really fucking close this car was to mowing me down. If it had not been for the foot-and-a-half of concrete foundation around our building (which is 90% glass) I would be a lot flatter and not as pretty.

We were all walking around in a daze. People (even me) are pulling out their cell phones and taking pictures.

The police, fire and EMS were there in record time and they got that poor bastard strapped down to a gurney and hauled him outta there. They all interviewed me and my female co-worker (who whacked her bad knee on the way down to her combat crawl). I didn't need medical attention. Physically I was fine. My thinking was clear and I felt ok. I was pretty shaken, and I have a bloody ankle, but other than that I was all right.

I called the Spouse between interviews and told him the whole story. He must have said, "Holy Shit!!" a dozen times.

I get off the phone and now I wanna see the damage.
Hey, there's my workstation again, or what's left of it. See that pile of rubble on the floor? That's what hit me. There's a black chair left of center that has a black and white mass on it. That's my new hat and scarf (gift from Nicograph) and my coat, now buried under a mountain of glass.

My cell phone and iPod suvived. They found my keys, my tote bag and my purse. And one framed picture of the Spouse. I'm hoping the rest of my stuff is in there, somewhere.

I talked to a few more cops and EMTs, then filled out the workman's comp paperwork. After a comforting hug from several folks I packed up my glass-covered belonging to go home. Hell, might as well. It's not like I'm gonna get any work done today.

I have to call in tomorrow morning to see what the skinny is on me coming in. Our IT department is supposed to move our Macs to another area and set us up temporarily.

Every time I look at these photo, I get freaked out. I keep thinking how close that car was...

Shitty gifts

A week ago friend Kim sent me this link of “10 Gifts We Don’t Want.” She specifically wanted me to see number 3.

Now of course me being the weird, spooky person that I am, I nearly drooled over this fine piece of furniture (if only I had an extra $3500 laying around). And I realize that only someone like me could really appreciate the beauty of a coffin couch. So I can understand why most of the general populace wouldn’t be too keen on having a comfy coffin couch in the their family room to lounge on while watching tv.

But out of curiosity I went thru the rest of the unwanted gifts according to MSN and was baffled. Ok, sure, the Fundies are completely stupid and the gold pills are just down right ridiculous, but some of the other things intrigued me...

First off, the Life Gem. I know, I know, once again we’re dealing with something of a morbid nature. But honestly, why plant beloved Aunt Matilda in some field somewhere you have to drive to to visit, in an expensive, decorative box you’ll never see again, where her decaying hull (along with thousands of others) takes up land that could be used for farmland, housing, parks or roads; or keep her cremains in an urn sitting on top of your entertainment center where it could possibly get knocked off by a small child or the family pet, thereby spilling all over the carpet (and you know that no amount of rug shampooing will get that out).

(gawd, that was a long sentence)

Why do either of those things when you can keep part of Auntie Matilda with you forever, and maybe even pass on to generations after you. Call me goofy, but I kinda like the idea of the Life Gem.

"Say, that's a beautiful ring. What kind of stone is that?"

"Grandma."

Then there’s the wall vase in the shape of a hand. It reminds me of the hand hooks from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Apparently there’s a whole line of hand decor. How cool is that? If the hand-shaped wall doohickies are a little out of your budget there’s always the smaller and more affordable finger hooks.

But my favorite is the Poo Pourri. I read about this stuff earlier this month in BUST magazine and the gals there really liked it.

Now I know what you’re thinking... I can already hear the eeeews. But really, think about this; how many times have you been out in public, or even worse, at someone’s house, and you really REALLY have to hit the bathroom. Last night’s chili cheese dog is not sitting well and is ready to leave the building. A courtesy flush can only mask the noise, not the smell. That’s when having a handy-dandy bottle of Poo Pourri in your purse can save the day. You spritz this stuff about 4 times in the water of the crapper before going. It supposedly creates a barrier on the surface of the water to keep the offending odor down while adding a pleasant aroma.

What a brilliant idea! Do you know how many times I wish I’d had something like this in the past? Well, no more.

I found their website. I ordered some. A lot. So guess what some of you peeps are getting this year?

I kept one bottle for myself and I tried it out at work the other day. It was a morning after a dinner of some of the Spouse’s soon-to-be-world-famous chili. Yeah, I know that’s gross but we all poop so deal with it and bear with me...

Zowie. No stink. Nice lemony scent. Amazing. I'm impressed.

So, what would you rather get? A fruitcake, an inflatable fruitcake, squirrel underpants, a coffin couch or some Poo Pourri? Yeah, I thought so...

Have Yourself an Evil Little Christmas

The other day my co-worker (not the dog-kicking, wife-slapping one referred to in the last post, but a younger, geekier one - and I mean geekier in the best sense of the word) asked me if I had heard of the Krampus or Krampusnacht.

I said no.

He was shocked and said, "You?! You've never heard of Krampus, the Christmas Demon?"

*blink blink* "The Christmas Demon... ?"

At this point I thought he was yanking my chain but he continued, "Go on. Google it."

And I did.

Wow.
Wow!
WOW!
HOLY SHIT!!
How could I, Hollygoyle, Queen of Halloween, fan of all that is spooky, collector of dark things, NOT know about the Krampus?!

Do you have any idea what this does for me as far as Christmas goes? Not that I dislike Christmas. I don't actually. I honestly kinda like the holiday season. Since I'm non-religious the whole Jesus thing doesn't appeal to me, but I can dig Winter Solstice and I love New Year's Eve.

But this... to quote Keanu Reeves... "Whoa." Christmas with a big, furry, horned demon. This might actually make listening to my third and final co-worker's endless tirade of Christmas music (5 days a week, 8 hours a day, Thanksgiving thru Christmas) tolerable.

No, I'm sorry. Scratch that. THAT is a whole different circle of hell. There is no salvation from that, except deafness.

But back to our lovely Krampus. He is, in a sense, the alter-ego of Saint Nicholas and hunts down and torments bad little children. He lives in Austria and Hungary and December 5 is his day (or night I should say). He often carries bells or chains to frighten people and a large stick or broom to 'birch' the ladies with.

Birching is basically a spanking.

I am not making this up. Go google it yourself if you don't believe me.

I don't know about yall, but I wanna party with this guy.

Why is this not a big thing here in the States yet? I read somewhere in my Krampus research that it's a dying tradition since some politically correct zealots feel it might scar the children.

And Santa Claus doesn't? Good gravy, how many photos have you seen with some precious little crotch fruit wailing and leaking out all kinds of facial fluids while being held prisoner on some old white man's lap.

Think about it... some old bearded white guy flying a bunch of reindeer (who probably eat a lot of fiber - now THERE'S a visual for ya) all night long, lurking around your family room at night while you're asleep, eating your cookies and drinking your milk (or whatever you left on the table). That's creepy. That will scar children.

Fuck the children. If they're spoiled little snipes that are misbehaving anyway they deserve a good scarring for good ol' Krampus. Krampusnacht should be for us adults. Zowie, the fun you could have! It'd be like a Mardi Gras/Halloween for December! Forget showing your boobs for beads. Wiggle you butt for a good birching! My god, I can see the T-shirt now...
Ok, that's it. NEXT year we are definitely having Krampus Night at our house. It'll be huge. Everybody's invited. We'll whip up some Gluhwein (we add Glogg, cinnamon sticks and mulling spices to ours - damn tasty) and some Christmas Crawdads, put on some horns and start swatting each other on the rump with brooms.

Sounds like a party to me. Yall coming?

From the oven, with love

So this co-worker and I have this running joke. Toward the end of the day, he’ll say, “Ya know, I think I’m gonna go home... kick the dog and smack the wife.”

To which I’ll reply, “Ya know, I think I’m gonna go home... kick the cat, smack the husband and say, ‘Bitch, fix me dinner.’”

Oh, don’t look at me like that. It’s a JOKE. We say this crap all the time. And our other co-workers giggle every time we do.

But, seriously, I would never kick the cat or smack to husband in order to get dinner. He loves being in the kitchen without me having to resort to violence. Seriously.

I tell, ya, there’s nothing sexier than a man in the kitchen fixing something tasty. Did I mention his sexy kitchen attire? His apron, chef and baker’s hats?

His chili is amazing. He makes a hearty chicken stew. His omelets are to die for. And he loves baking. (*eyes sparkles, eyelashes flutter*)

A few years ago I mentioned how much I loved gingerbread. This lit a fire in the Spouse’s heart that had us zipping over to a local cake and candy supply house looking for rolling pins, cookie cutters and a multitude of sprinkles.

In perusing the cookie cutters we found the traditional snowman and Christmas tree, star and reindeer. And then we found... the crawdad.

Now it could be a lobster. They both have the same shape, ya know. But considering it’s about 4 inches long, it leads one to think more of a crawdad.

We thought, why the hell not. It’s cute and different. We brought it home with the rest of our purchases and the Spouse got started baking what would soon be a much-desired traditional treat.

He found a damn skippy recipe for gingerbread cookies and the fever set in. Baking fever. And when the fever is on him, you can’t stop him. I don’t remember how many dozen he cranked out that first night. We had so many there was no way we were gonna eat them all. So we filled up a couple of food tubs each and took them to our respective places of employment.

And of course no one quite knew how to take the crawdad shaped cookies. That wasn’t a usual Christmas cookie design. We got some weird looks and a few questions. But that didn’t matter. Those cookies disappeared fast. Even the crawdads.

In years after, we stopped using the other cookie shapes. So now all gingerbread cookies that come out of our kitchen are crawdads. Christmas crawdads. And let me tell ya, these little gingerbread mudbugs are in high demand.

The week of Thanksgiving I already had a couple of co-workers ask, “Is your husband gonna make those Christmas crawdad cookies this year?”

And the good news is... yes! He’s already started. Last Wednesday night was “Ghost Hunters” night at our house and best friend Nicograph is always there. She happily got recruited into cookie decorating. The Spouse does the baking, I mix the icing and we all pitch in with sugar sprinkles, dragees and other colorful doo-dads to decorate those tasty bits of crawdad goodness.

I brought my usual food tub full of crawdads into work Monday. It was like watching a school of piranha skeletonize a cow.

But fret not, friends and neighbors, especially you local ones. The Spouse stocked up on all his ingredients before the Christmas baking droves swooped in at the grocery. There'll be plenty more crawdads coming soon.

Random thoughts and links, part 113

I'm loving this new Blogger Follower thing. I'm cyber-meeting some of the most interesting life-forms (and I mean that in the best sense of the term). It's a lot like the good ol' days of Spymac.

And I really enjoyed everyone's suggestions for horror films...

Stephen: I really liked The Sixth Sense, but I have to admit... I saw the ending coming about 30 minutes into the movie. *SPOILER ALERT* In the scene where Bruce Willis' character meets his wife for their anniversary, and she slaps down the ring and says, "Happy Anniversary" rather disgustedly, I thought, "He's dead. That's why she's acting he way she is. She can't see him because he's really dead. Only the kids can see him."

Realmcovet: Heh heh heh... Red Vines... good thing you weren't eating spaghetti.

Lakelady: I have not seen Crawlspace (altho the name alone is tripping me out) nor The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake, so I'll have to add those to my list of stuff to see.

Papa: I have seen both versions of Nosferatu and I love both of them. Even the silent version has a great visual element of creepiness to it. And I've seen both versions of the Ring. Excellent ghost story!

I'll have to wave the Hammer Collection under the Spouse's nose for future gift-giving ideas ;)

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In the meantime, I've been collecting a vast amount of web goodies, so here ya go...

If we don't already, we need one of these in the States.

Our wedding cake (complete with spider webs and skeleton couple topper) has nothing on these.

I love Adam and Jamie. Who else could do this is in 80 milliseconds.

This man is GENIUS!

I don't know any of these people, but after reading, you'll understand why they're here.

Great site to leave on a co-worker's desktop. Fun for the whole office!

Most user-friendly weather forecasting site EVER.

The world disasters the media WON'T be telling you about.

You know something is truly amazing when it has its own news website.

Most of you have seen this by now, right? Well, now there's a full-length video. I think I just ruptured something.

And finally, no matter how bd you might feel, no matter how bad a day you might be having, if you go here, you will be wetting your pants laughing. Promise.

Where is Duranfan? In here. With us.

So, Halloween may be over for the masses, but for me it’s a year round thing. Hell, I still have two more weekends of Tarot Card readings at the Mansion for their Ghostly Sleepovers. And if you’ve ever seen our house, you would know I rule as Queen of Halloween, what with the gargoyles, skeletons and skulls all over the place, the various books on death, ghosts, witchcraft and other occult stuff, and the growing collection of horror films.

Love me some horror movies. I’m slowly building up my collection of old Hammer and American International movies, those wonderful classics starring Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee and Vincent Price. And I love the cheesy slasher flicks, too. If it has a silent, crazed, chainsaw wielding maniac, I’m all for it.

But for the most part, as much as I love these movies, they don’t scare me. I just don’t scare easily. Sure, if you sneak up behind me and yell “Boo!” I’ll probably jump and screech. I’m jumpy, just not easily scared.

So when other people say they can’t handle horror movies because they get too scared, I think to myself, “Huh. Lightweights.”

But honestly, out of all the scary movies I’ve seen (and we’re talking thousands) there’s only been three that freaked me out...

1. The Exorcist - I saw this for the first time ever when I was about 11 years old. Cut. I mean heavily edited for television. I could not sleep for weeks. I couldn’t handle being by myself and I nearly freaked out in the dark. It took me forever to get over it. It was several years later before I got to see the un-cut version. By then I was ‘cured.’ I’d gotten over my fear of the movie and could watch it repeatedly without losing it. The version we own now is the “Version You’ve Never Seen!,” complete with the infamous ‘spider walk.’ The Spouse and I love that scene so much we back it up and watch it 3 to 5 times before continuing on with the movie.
There is one aspect of the movie that does still kinda get me. It’s this face:
Damn. Yes, I know that’s the actress Eileen Dietz, but still. That face flashing on the screen for just a couple of frames is just whacked. I was so inspired by that face that I painted it on one entire wall of the Haunted House.
Yup, it’s still there, too.

2. Alien - This is one of those few movies I could watch every day for the rest of my life and never get tired of. I love the fact that it was written by Dan O’Bannon, the same guy who gave us “Return of the Dead” (“Braaaaaainssss!”) and that wonderfully bad sci-fi comedy, “Dark Star” (“Here boy, want your mouse? Nice mouse”).
When Dark Star, his pet project with fellow film student, John Carpenter, tanked, he said, “Well, if I can’t make them laugh, I’ll make them scream instead.” I don’t know about you, but I think he did a damn good job.

I saw Alien when I 10. Even at that young age I loved scary movies. I’d been watching them since I was 5 - no shit. My first horror movie was “The Sentinel,” but more on that later.

So there I was, a horror film-lovin’ 10-year-old that nearly leapt out of my seat and screamed for my parents to “TAKE ME HOME! I DON’T WANNA SEE THIS ANYMORE!!” when the famous chest-burster scene erupted on-screen.
Apparently, my reaction was very similar to the members of the cast when the scene was shot. Actor John Hurt and the crew were the only ones on set that day who know what was coming. The looks on the other actors’ faces? Those are genuine. And poor Veronica Cartwright had no clue that jet of blood was aimed right at her.
3. The Blair Witch Project - I know some people hated this film and didn’t find it scary at all. But it wigged me out something fierce. After seeing this movie opening weekend I went home by myself to my then world’s smallest 1-bedroom apartment. And every little sound got a little louder. And very little shadow got a little longer. I couldn’t sleep for several nights afterward.

So what got me in this movie that other movies don’t have? The fact that you never saw what got them. There was no chainsaw-wielding maniac, no crazed killer in a hockey mask, no diabolical torturer or spawn of Satan. All you saw was what “it” left for the victims to find and what happened to the last two survivors at the end. And even THAT is unclear.
That final scene still disturbs me. Even tho I know the actors are alive and well (and “Heather” went on to shoot a few commercials for Steak ‘N Shake) I still get weirded out those last few minutes.

Now back to my first ever horror movie. My parents took me to the drive-in to see “The Sentinel,” which is one of the many ‘demonic’ movies to come out during the 70s on the tails of “The Exorcist” and “The Omen.” The movie itself is very strange with several bizarre scenes and lots of disturbing imagery, but this scene is the one that’ll get ya.

I triple dog-dare you to watch that, by yourself, in the dark, and not wet your pants.