Meeting the Mayor of Crazytown

Sometimes, there are drawbacks to being an ordinary, decent human being.

F'rinstance, let's say you want to go out to have a few drinks and a good time with some friends. So you go to a bar and sit down to the right of a perfect stranger who, without warning, begins to rave and gibber at you about how everyone's out to get her, how her plate of ribs was too expensive ("Thirteen bucks! Can you believe that? I don't have that kind of money!"), how her husband is a stupid fat lying jerk keeping her from her children, how her roommate (a Dutch-Indonesian "bulldyge") called her a whore and wants to kick her ass for no apparent reason, how she was once a "Hollywood actress" and was going to get back into acting if her stupid fat lying jerk husband wasn't sabotaging things, how she just got a job as a schoolteacher, how she spent all day in the hot sun selling flowers on the street (the schoolteacher job doesn't provide enough cash for ribs and beer, apparently), how she's smarter than everyone, how beautiful her son is but she doesn't have any pictures because her stupid fat lying jerk husband put them in storage and made her pay for the rent, how beautiful she still is at 45 ("Did I tell you I was 45?"), etc. until you want to take her by the shoulders, shake her as hard as you possibly can, and scream at the top of your lungs, "LISTEN HERE, LADY: YOUR HUSBAND DIDN'T KICK YOU OUT OF THE HOUSE AND GET A RESTRAINING ORDER AGAINST YOU BECAUSE HE'S JUST A BIG, STUPID JERK! HE DID THAT BECAUSE YOU'RE A BUG-EYED, BATSHIT CRAZY FUCKING BITCH! YOU. ARE. INSANE! AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH! SHUT THE HELL UP AND LEAVE ME ALONE!"

But instead, you simply smile a wan little smile, nod at her, and say things like, "Oh, really?" and, "Ah, I see," or, "Is that so?" Because you're an ordinary, decent human being.

God, it sucks to be an ordinary, decent human being sometimes.

My Halloweens Were Sometimes Like Rob Zombie's*

PART ONE

As everyone knows or doesn't know, Halloween is my favorite day out of the year. I love everything about it - the costumes, the candy (well, most of it), the decorations, the music, the horror movies, the slight chill in the air (unless Mother Nature NC decides to shit all over my Halloween experience and makes it too warm), the piles of Jack O'Lantern pumpkins they sell out front of that church on College Road. I smile all day long on Halloween, even if I don't have plans and end up just lying on the couch (see: last two years).

The only thing that could make Halloween better is if they found a way to combine it with Christmas (walking around the Wall-Mark today, I see that the Wal-Mart scientific wizards are attempting this very thing, at least as far as intermingling decorations on store shelves goes). Can you imagine how cool a vampire or werewolf or zombie Santa would be? I could imagine that. I'm imagining that right now.

"Be sure and leave a plate of brains and intestines by the fireplace for Santa, Tommy. You don't want him coming into your room when you're asleep and he's hungry."

Anyway, this month is pretty much going to be Halloween Month here at TBIFOW. I'll be remembering some past Halloween experiences, both good and bad, and talking about other Halloween-related stuff. Hopefully people will post in the comments and share their own Halloween stories as this goes along, because I like reading that stuff.

So, I'll start at the beginning, my earliest Halloween memory, which just happens to be the worst costume I ever wore:

"Hello, I'm Kevin. I'm a human being with the poorly-proportioned head of a shark, and a picture of myself about to eat a naked girl on my shirt. Although I have eyes on the sides of my face, I actually see through two holes in my mouth. I can survive out of water, but not without candy, so make with the trick or treat bucket and let's rock."

Yeah, I was Jaws. If you haven't guessed by now, I am sort of fixated on that movie. Regardless of the fact that the movie f*cked my shit up all Summer long, and freaked me right the hell out in front of a bunch of elderly black fishermen, I wanted that costume. I think I may have been disappointed that there was no little Quint hanging out of the mouth of the mask when I got it.

The ebay listing I found one of the above pictures on (I bid on it, by the way, but I wasn't going to pay more than $20 for it and it's already at $21) states that it was produced in 1975, so I would have been six. A six year old shark cruising for candy in the neighborhood ocean of Myrtle Grove Road.

I remember two things about that mask. See those eyeholes? Well, they were sharp around the edges. In fact, the whole mask was nothing but sharp edges. I think the Collegeville Costume people were a bunch of sadists who secretly wanted to disfigure the children of America, because I cut myself a couple of times on that mask. Basically, the shark kept biting my face. My Mom wanted me to stop wearing it, but I pitched a fit over how stupid the costume would look without the mask, so she took some tape or something and softened up the edges around the eyeholes.

The second thing that I remember is that it was hot. No breathing holes that I can recall, and if there were they weren't providing adequate ventilation, so five minutes with that thing over your mug and you were a sweaty mess with a muffled out-of-breath voice.

I wore it two places. Trick or treating, of course, where just about everyone made variations on the following comment to my Mom:

"Children shouldn't wear things like that. That's too adult for a child. Why didn't you dress him up as a ghost or Frankenstein or something nice?"

There were a bunch of busybody old people in the neighborhood back then. I didn't care, because I still got the candy, and I don't think my Mom cared much either because it was none of their f*cking business what she dressed me up as. Did I ever tell you how much I love my Mom? Well, a lot.

The other place I wore it led to my second public freak-out of 1975.

There was a "Haunted House" at the elementary school that year, and my Mom took me there. That's something going the way of the Dodo at schools, right along with Christmas celebrations. Nice job raising your kids to all be as bland and generic and inoffensive as possible, America. The "Haunted House" was the auditorium stage area dressed up with curtains and cobwebs and blacklights and fake smoke and spaghetti guts and peeled grape eyeballs in bowls and older kids dressed up as monsters. We were waiting in line, me with the Jaws mask resting on top of my head (I had given up on never taking it off after smelling my own hot breath reflected back at me all evening), and I noticed a kid wearing a Flash (DC comic book superhero whose power is running at the speed of light, for those normal human beings out there) costume, homemade. It was awesome, a head-to-toe outfit his Mom had sewn for him. I was still debating whether or not Jaws could eat the Flash when we went inside.

I was okay through most of it, put my mask back on, imaginary shark fin on my back breaking through the water, hunting swimmers, and then some kid dressed as a vampire folded his cape over me and scratched the back of my neck with a pin or something, and I nearly sh!t myself.

I couldn't stop screaming. I don't know why, I guess the combination of my imagination and the shark mask and not paying attention to what was going on all combined to catch me at the right moment and I let rip. A shrieking shark. After a few seconds my Mom lifted up my mask and clamped a hand over my mouth, then led me quickly through the rest of the tour, and the second I got outside I was fine. The kid playing the vampire came out and apologized to my Mom, but she told him not to worry about it. She asked me what made me carry on like that, but I had no explanation. I wasn't even really that scared during the whole thing - I just couldn't stop screaming once I'd started.

Yeah, Jaws and me flipping out seem to go together like Peanut Butter and Jelly. Or Pam Beesly and Jim.

*they sucked. Boy, did Rob Zombie ever not get what made Halloween cool.

First Zombies, Now Renegade Ninja Chicks

First THIS HAPPENS, and now Ninja Chicks are robbing gas stations. The world is either turning into a video game, or a Golan-Globus movie from 1985.





I love the astute observation from Police Chief Robert Amann at the end:

"Those, uh, swords, uh, daggers, uh, whatever they may have been carrying, they can be used to seriously harm our victim, so, uh, it's a very serious crime."

Thanks, Columbo!

Podcasting: Now the Whole World Can Hear You Mouthbreathe

So we're trying to do a freakStomp podcast.

I went out and bought a book, Podcasting For Dummies, which ought to have the words WHY DID YOU BUY THIS $16 BOOK WHEN ALL THIS INFORMATION IS AVAILABLE FREE ON THE INTERNET YOU F*CKTARD at the top of every page next to the page number.

I also bought the cheapest USB headset I could find, for the most passable sound quality I could get without spending any actual money.

I also downloaded the freeware program Audacity for sound editing.

I also scoured every "How-to Podcast" site I could find for information.

The one thing I forgot to buy or download during all this was some KNOW WHAT THE F*CK YOU'RE DOING.

I post on this video game message board, the only board I really ever post on regularly. It's a small community, friendly, not much douchebaggery to speak of. They'd been talking about making a podcast off and on for a while now. So I figured I'd kill two birds with one stone: I could set up a podcast with some of the forum members, and that would allow me to practice recording and editing so I'd be tech hip when we got around to recording the freakStomp podcast, and it would also give the video game guys the podcast they desired.

Simple. Ha. Ha.

A couple of people suggested I look into something called Ventrilo, which is a chat program people use while playing PC video games (most games do not support in-game voice chat). I wanted to use Skype, since it's simple, but everyone said Skype sucks, so I ruled it out.

I set up this "ready to go" ventrilo server through an online service for $32 for the entire year, ten "talk slots" available at once. That means ten people could conference chat at one time.

I figured I'd just set up Ventrilo and record a chat session for editing practice.

Simple. Ha. Ha.

The first thing I found out is that Audacity can't record from two sources at once. It would only record from my mic, or what I was hearing through my headset, but never both at the same time. I'd need a second sound card to do that. Ventrilo has a built-in recording function, but it saves the recorded chat session as something called a "VRF" file, and there are no file converters for that format. So I had to take that VRF file, play it back, and record it in Audacity while it was playing. Basically, I had to record the session twice.

There were other problems. The sound was a bit laggy, so there was a lot of overlap. Some of the people were using desk mics, and those hiss and pop and generally sound like sh!t. A USB headset is a must, because mine came through crystal clear according to everyone listening. USB = Digital, therefore no analog hiss.

Then I somehow messed up my settings in Audacity and couldn't record anything but my mic no matter what I did. So I spent most of early Sunday trying to figure out what I had screwed up and fix that.

Then I checked into some of the podcast message boards, and found out that most people use Skype to record conference calls. Which is what I wanted to use to begin with, but everyone had said Skype sucks, and I had made the mistake of listening to everyone. The Video Game Show (a podcast I regularly listen to) uses Skype, and it sounds all right to me. There are a ton of easy-to-use programs out there to record Skype calls.

The other alternative? Well, everyone would have to download Audacity, record their end of the conversation through their mics as we chatted on Ventrilo, and then send me the files afterwards, where I would have to mix and sync five or more separate vocal tracks together. Which would take me approximately two years to do.

F*ck. A. Bunch. Of. That. Noise.

So we'll have to go with Skype, and will probably have to settle for sound quality that isn't anywhere near studio-level. And I paid for a ventrilo server that will just sit there, unless we turn it into some sort of free freakStomp chat room for our friends. Since there's only two of us doing the freakStomp podcast, I could maybe do the mixing for two recorded vocal tracks, but I don't think I could handle any more than that.

Unless someone out there knows a better way to do it which doesn't involve actual money, and can clue me in.

I need to reiterate how completely worthless Podcasting for Dummies is if you're doing a cast with more than one person. Save your money if that's the case.

Kneel before Zod!

At last! A presidential candidate worthy of my obeisance.

General Zod 2008

I especially like that he's thought of the children. From his Kids Page:

Fun with math
1. Mommy and Daddy did not give General Zod all of their worldly possessions, so they were sentenced to 5000 days in prison. How many years is this? (Hint: There are 365 days in a year)
2. Non drops a man from a height of 20,000 feet. If the man falls at 200 feet per second, how many seconds will it take for him to hit the ground?
3. An uprising occurs in a city with 100,000 people and one percent of them are jailed. If 100 people can be re-educated in one month, how long will it take before everybody is free again?
4. If a country's gross national product (the value of all the goods and services it produces) is $100 million and all of it is given in tribute to General Zod, how much interest will General Zod make in one year if General Zod sets a 60% interest rate?
5. If each person on the Planet Houston knows five informants, and it takes ten minutes to relay a report, how quickly will General Zod learn about his picture being defaced in a town of 500 people?

It's A Charo Monday

At least the weather forecast didn't include flavored rain

The local Fox station had a super-newsworthy report on tonight's Ten O'clock News on...Tay Zonday. And no, I'm not kidding. Tomorrow night's exposé on the "All Your Base Are Belong To Us" controversy should prove to be even more hard-hitting.

Bear in mind that the station's promos for this newscast talk about how they get stories "the other guys can't...or are afraid to." Yeah.

and then the midget shit himself

I'm feeling under the weather and needed some entertainment. So I turned to R. Kelly. Just a little something beautiful I thought I'd share with you.



Then Bridget bust in the kitchen with a double barrel
sayin "james i can't let you do this" Then he looks at her and says what?
You shoot me for this fuckin midget?
she says "I love him" The midget say No, Bridget!

Oh, R. Kelly, you crazy child molester, you. If we didn't know better, we might think you were trying for an insanity defense at your next trial.

Hope you enjoyed this as much as I did. Look on YouTube for the latest chapters. I don't want to watch them because I'm afraid they just won't live up to the magnum opus of Chapter 10.

Yeah, I know it's old...

...but this thing still cracks me up.

(By the way, if you don't get it, that's a good thing. It means you're not anywhere near as colossal a dork as I am.)

It's A Sideshow World...

I'm not gonna make a habit out of hyping my own stuff on here, but this is special, and some of it will be humor-related (there's dark humor laced throughout all of it, really).

The freakStomp Novelties official blog, The Barker's Blog, launches today:

http://sideshowbarker.blogspot.com/

Every Monday through Friday, there'll be something entertaining posted there. Behind the Scenes artwork, freaky facts and trivia, magic tricks, weird stories, comic strips, contests, and "friends of freakStomp" which will spotlight any photos you send in of yourselves wearing or holding freakStomp merchandise. Our weekly featurette, Freak of the Week, featuring real-life human oddities illustrated by Rick Eller (RelleR) and Leo daWolf, launches the festivities. It's hosted by The Barker, and that guy, well...he's out there in the out there.

This Friday there'll be something of particular interest to fans of Golden Age comics and corny humor, so be sure and check that out.

So go and tell The Barker hello, and remember to keep checking it out Monday through Friday. Add it to your blogroll or link section or whatever. Have fun!

Oh, yeah, as soon as we figure out what the hell we're doing technically and find the time, our podcast, the freakStomp Novelties Revival Tent, will be hitting the airwaves.

/crass commercialism

The Zombie Apocalypse Has Begun

Link - Dead Man Wakes Up During Autopsy

A VENEZUELAN man who had been declared dead woke up in the morgue in excruciating pain after medical examiners began their autopsy.

"I woke up because the pain was unbearable," Mr Camejo told newspaper El Universal.

And you know the only thing that can ease their "pain," right? Brains.

I'd suggest everyone start stocking up on water, dried goods, and simple weapons. Prepare to go mobile. If your relatives start acting weird, you're gonna have to put em down. I'll see you in the mountains.

I would make an "Agony of De Feet" joke...

...but that would be pretty friggin' lame.

Suffice it to say, if you have an orifice you wish to have filled, or wish to fill an orifice yourself, some enterprising business out there probably has you covered on the silicone front.

So if you have a spare $105 and you're a goddamned freak, you might want to check this out.

NOT. SAFE. FOR. WORK.

Plus, you only get one. What a rip.

Although, if I were visiting relatives out of town this holiday season and I had money to burn, I would totally buy one of those and make sure it fell out of a pocket or a bag right in front of everyone about five minutes after I got there. Or maybe I'd save it until everyone sat down for dinner, and let it drop on the table as I reached for some candied yams or something. I like my holidays to be filled with awkward silences.

The decline and fall of Western Civilization: drugstore edition

So, my mom went to the local CVS the other day, where she picked up various items which cost $21.48. She handed the cashier exactly twenty-two bucks in good old American greenbacks. The girl behind the register, apparently baffled by this non-exact-change transaction had to go find a calculator to figure out the correct change, and in my dear old mother's words, "she had trouble with the calculator, too." I honestly have no idea why the cash register didn't tell her that she had to dish out 52 cents.

Anyway, I would like to welcome our new alien, Morlock, or Chinese overlords, whichever the case may be. Because we're totally screwed.

Meet Chris Crocker

. . . also known as "The ONLY Person in the United States Whose Heart Bleeds More for Britney Spears Right Now than Mine Does."



Millions of gallons of blood more, but, well, you know, I do what I can. Look, I'm only one person! Stop it! You stop picking on me an' Britney RIGHT NOW!

(Britney? Call me! We have to have a little heart-to-heart about them margaritas, girl. Tequila love is a cruel love. Believe me, I know.)

What kind of crazy, mixed-up world do we live in...

...where Paul Giamatti (he'll always be "Pig Vomit" to me) gets higher billing in a movie's credits than Monica Bellucci?

That's just wrong.

Separate the Weak from the Obsolete

So! East or West? Who's more arrogant?

While you're off answering that, I'll bore any non-American readers (we have those, right? I was explicitly told this gig was big time) by explaining briefly why California sucks:

. . . wait. I just did a little research, and it turns out, California doesn't suck. It's actually pretty nice there. Good weather. Nice landscape.

Californians, on the other hand, have much to answer for. My fellow bloggers Space considerations prevent me from detailing more than one item from this extensive list, so let's just focus on the most obnoxious one: The way Californians refuse to quit moving to everymotherfuckingplaceelse on the planet, while still maintaining that Cali es numero uno.

This is how people get shot, Californians.

I know you are a mellow and amiable people, much averse to abstract academic concepts like "logic," but put down the bong for just a second and ponder this, because I promise you, it will blow your mind in a way that no kind bud has ever done:

If your state is number one, why are you leaving it? If I have a Porsche 911 in the driveway--or in the garage, rather, where thugs can't be stealing it--I am for damn sure not trading it in for a Geo Metro, you know what I'm saying?

You ARE leaving, Californians. You've been leaving that number-one state since before Reagan was president, though you really picked up the pace of your collective stampede after you dropped Ronnie off at the White House ("here, you take him") and, well, who could blame you? I know Georgia gave us a damn peanut farmer, but Georgia at least had the excuse that it had absolutely nothing else to offer the nation. For such a number-one state you could have done a lot better there, California. I don't think you were really giving the country your best effort.

Now I find out you've all decided to invade Idaho. What did Idaho ever do to you, California? That was a perfectly harmless state full of potatoes, Mormons, and ski resorts, not necessarily in that exact order of quantity, and then you--all of a sudden you just--what? What got into you, Californians?

Was it Napoleon Dynamite? Dudes, Napoleon Dynamite was a MOVIE. Your state makes a lot of those, remember? Remember how they're pretend? Not real? Made up? I--oh now just stop that, they are not either "made of dreams." Didn't I tell you to put the bong down earlier? . . . right. Well, put it down again. This is serious!

Californians, the rest of the country is fed to the teeth with taking in your tirelessly cheerful, yet remarkably laid-back, pom-pom-waving-for-that-number-one-state-they're-fleeing, tanned, athletic, sunny little refugees.

You know this doesn't happen with any other states, don't you? No one moves from Arkansas to, say, Florida, and then saunters all over Miami twanging about how great the moonshine was jes' up north a' Fayetteville, or how much fun it was workin' in the Tyson chicken plant with Unca Jed, or how in Arkansas folks always did things this-a-way 'stead of that-a-way, and how this-a-way really was better, 'fraid to say, and all y'all here down in Florida, you might want to give doin' thangs how we done up in Arkansas a try sometime! Have a nice day!

No, Californians, you know this does not occur, not even in dreams. The former Arkansan keeps his scraggletoothed mouth shut in Miami, and while you know and I know and everyone knows that is because no one in his right mind admits to coming from Arkansas--what? Yes, yes, except that one guy who was President for a time, I know, I know, blue dress, semen, cigar, meaning of "is"--look, just forget it. Arkansas was maybe not the best example. In fact, Arkansans, you have a few things to answer for yourselves. Stop looking so smug; it doesn't go well with the rickets.

Californians, Idaho does not even border California. Then again, neither does Washington, and that never stopped you from swarming it either. Still, at least Washington's got a coastline. In some parts it's even got an economy. I know how important both those features are to you, Californians, because you never, ever shut up about California's coastline and California's economy. Even in flight, your relentless chirping boasts of stock options and dolphins, stock options and dolphins THAT YOU ARE LEAVING.

And now Idaho? This has gone too far, Californians. Pretty soon the rest of us will have no choice but to move up to Canada or down to Mexico just to get us some peace. You're getting to be like cockroaches after the lights have flipped on for the rest of us, Californians--none of us knows where to aim the shoe first anymore. We just close our eyes and swing and know we'll hit a few thousand of you.

And do you say, "Oops! Sorry! Didn't mean to make your property taxes skyrocket like that!" and slink away in shame like decent people would? You do not! You get all mad at US, as if it were our fault your state got to be just a little too number-one to actually live in!

"Aieee! I used to be a dot-commer!"

"Aieee! I lost my house in an earthquake!"

"Aieee! I was never able to afford a house in the first place! I'm sixty fucking years old!"

"Aieee! A buncha Bubbas from Enron just played my state's energy market like a poker chip!"

"Aieee! Landslides!"

"Aieee! Wildfires!"

"Aieee! Pollution!"

"Aieee! Governator!"

Oh, sure, that's a mighty fine number-one state you got there, Californians!

NOW STAY IN IT.

This has been a Public Service Announcement from the rest of the motherfucking country.

Popcorn: The Extremely Noisy Killer

Popcorn being sold in the shape of Death's Icy Grip

A pulmonary specialist at Denver's National Jewish Medical and Research Center has written to federal agencies to say doctors there believe they have the first case of a consumer who developed lung disease from the fumes of microwaving popcorn several times a day for years.

This is pretty much Exhibit A in my theory that everything will eventually try to kill you.

Orville Redenbacher could not be reached for comment because he's dead. Coincidence...?!?!?

FULL STORY HERE

***

Popcorn: The Extremely Noisy Killer

Popcorn being sold in the shape of Death's Icy Grip

A pulmonary specialist at Denver's National Jewish Medical and Research Center has written to federal agencies to say doctors there believe they have the first case of a consumer who developed lung disease from the fumes of microwaving popcorn several times a day for years.

This is pretty much Exhibit A in my theory that everything will eventually try to kill you.

Orville Redenbacher could not be reached for comment because he's dead. Coincidence...?!?!?

FULL STORY HERE

I understand Brian May was kinda pissed*

This being the internet and all, I'm sure everyone's already seen this 100 times, but in case you hadn't, here's Electric Six with their version of Radio Ga Ga by Queen:



Thanks to Rick for inflicting this on me.

*He does sort of look like a poodle in silhouette...