All Hallow's Creeps Near

Perhaps it is just me but I think that Halloween has lost all of its meaning. Over the years the great holiday has lost its roots, lost its tradition, and now is loosing its day. Halloween is still October 31st on the calendar, but somehow in past years the day when children go dressed up as monsters and princesses from door to door has fluctuated. When I was small Halloween was Halloween. It was on the 31st of October and you got dressed up and went trick-or-treating on that night. If it was a school night, my mother made us finish up at 8:30, 9 if we were lucky. But nowadays they can’t even consider letting them out on a school night! “Oh no, what if they have homework?” What 8 year old child has homework on Halloween?!!!?!!!? Halloween used to be one night a year around the country; you never had to check when you were allowed to go out. The day before Halloween was “Mischief night” and Halloween was Halloween. Now there are schedules. Some counties aren’t letting their children out until a certain time on a scheduled day. If you start trick-or-treating before then you could be fined! But who really cares, it’s not even on Halloween.

Since I was finally too old for trick-or-treating (and I was probably one of the reasons they have now limited the age you can be to trick-or-treat) I have noticed a change in the youth that is running around asking for candy. I was taught the tradition of “If you want the candy you have to say trick or treat.” But in past years as I am now the candy giver, so many children come up to the door and just hold out their bags. I have to stand there and ask what they want. There have been years where they just say “candy”. Have these kids no respect for traditions? No I shouldn’t blame them because no one taught them the trick-or-treating rules. Parents are the ones who made the mistake.

In conclusion, teach your kids the magic words “Trick-or-Treat” and help convince the government that they don’t have to change the day the holiday belongs on.

Feghoot of Love!

Up and coming this fall is a funky band by the name of Meat Rainbow. Lead by singer and guitarist Daniel J. the band’s style has morphed from silly fun parodies into a full scale flood of imagination and creative genius. The humble band began purely as a joke at the Upattinas school and resource center in Glenmoore, PA. The band soon flew off making a stunning debut album “Not Intended for the Public”. The album contained such songs as “Sauce” and “350lb. Stack’ O ’Love”. In those early days their songs were short and histerical, usually recorded live before an audience. The oddly mixed up lyrics of Daniel J. along with the astonishing guitar riffs of Zach Theis and the falsetto backups/off beat drumming of Sam Brams gave the band it’s first leg to stand on, and a pillar of fans to build on.

With the Debut of their second album, “Meat Rainbow Fights the IRS” The band tackled issues such as abusive band members (“Dan He Hurts Me All the Time”), sad Zombies as well as sad Robots, Stealing people’s women, the IRS and angsty teens. The band became a little more experimental in it’s style and more expressive in it’s lyrics, only making it’s fans love to hate them more. Recording “Meat Rainbow Fights the IRS” at House of Theis studios created a building pressure from fans for the new material. When it was finally released in February 2005 the flood gates opened and the band was shown they would have to continue putting out records to sate the growing appetite of fans.

Fooled once again into thinking the band would keep it’s word and release on it’s scheduled date the long awaited “Feghoot of Love”, in the making since the beginning of summer, has been postponed once again due to “pressing affairs” otherwise known as editing qualms. Even though, loyal fans still wait with anticipation furling on their brows, for the next installment of the Meat Rainbow saga. Teasing tidbits released onto the airways through their my space page (http://myspace.com/meat rainbow) reveal tantalizing new, louder lyrics, and an even more professional feel to the still unrefined humor that is Meat Rainbow.

ViVa la Revolution!!!!

Spam! Spam! Spam! What is with all the Spam on the internet? It appears in our e-mail, pops up on our screen when we look at websites, and now it’s invading our blogs! It’s a disease we can’t seem to cure. A long time ago, before TV or telephones, back in the days of the open air markets, Spam was screamed at you as you walked past. If you didn’t want to hear it you just went home. Then we created a system of sending messages, and it wasn’t long before “junk mail” came along. As our technology surpassed itself over and over we heard Spam in the form of commercials emerge on the radio, and later on TV. Then they started to call us at home, and if we pretended not to be there they came to our doors. Over the years our society has learned how to deal with these types of Spam, but how should we deal with someone posting about “nymphomaniac housewives” in our blogs? We can’t very well tell them to take us off their list, because the website browses them to us. All we can do is delete the comments. Well I say no! I will not suffer in silence while they attack my words! I will not become a living billboard for them to vandalize! I say RISE UP! And defeat our advertising foes with resistance! Let them know that we won’t take it any more!!!

Viva la Revolution!!!

Truthfully though, I’m sick and tired of it. And while I am lazy, I’m only lazy to a point, and the spamming of my blog, and other people’s has got me to that point. Even if a comment is deleted it says it was deleted, and everyone knows what it was. While this site has a lot of tools on it for our blogs, it doesn’t have anyway to notify others or the site in general about the spamming comments. Other sites I do know have such options, why doesn’t ours?

Rebel without a Pulse!

The hot new Zombie commoditie everyone should be looking forward to is nearly here. And I can barely contain myself. This coming fall the wrath of the zombie shall be released in the form of a video game. This games title is “Stubbs the Zombie: Rebel without a Pulse”. According to the official website (http://www.stubbsthezombie.com) Stubbs was a traveling salesman during the depression. He was brutally murdered and buried in rural PA (in the long line of zombie heritage that we have). 26 years later Stubbs returns from his grave to find that a futuristic city has been built on his burial site, and thus he begins to wreak havoc, feasting on brains and recruiting his zombie kin.

The game will be available on Xbox, PC, and Mac this fall and it is looking to be every zombie fans dream. In the game you play as Stubbs, the loveable carrion, and you find yourself with lots of fun activities. During game-play you can devour your victim’s brains and transform them into zombie minions, you can drive vehicles and run those pesky humans down, multiples at a time. You can even rip off your hand and control it similar to the hand, “Thing”, from the Adams family. Your roaming appendage can also be used to control humans to turn on each other, allowing you to use their weapons against them. And finally the last, and maybe greatest trick Stubbs has up his sleeve is a dandy little trick to rip out one of his organs and use it as a grenade against his foes, throwing and having it explode in a cloud of green gastric acid.

The cinema graphics are some of the best I have seen, although some say the actual game graphics seem a bit lacking. I say “P’SHAW” to them and remind you that it is not the graphics that make the game, it is the game-play itself and the enjoyment one can gain from it. All in all the game seems to be one worthy of great anticipation from the masses. If you are a zombie fan, as I avidly am, I suggest it become a staple of your Zombie game collection and should sit right next to your Resident Evil and House of the Dead Games on the shelf.

The Infection...

In my ever apparent love affair with everything zombie, I am proud that I now have a place to share this wonderful link with you. When I found this page last year, or rather when my friend Jen showed it to me in a class, I immediately fell in love with it. I just find it so enjoyable to watch the little pink dots panicking and getting eaten by the grey (or green) dots. That is why I want to share it with you, so that hopefully you will find yourself giggling maniacally to yourself as I did.


http://kevan.org/proce55ing/zombies/
http://www.hardcorepawn.com/zombie3/
http://www.sothisisacomic.com/Zombie/zomb3.html

The capacity for Evil

Very often I find myself wondering, wondering about the world, about life, about society. There will always be things in this world which will disturb us. No one can escape that fact of human nature. There will always be something that we hate about ourselves, whether it is war, politics, murder, violence, rape, etc. There will always be something there to make our stomachs turn because there is the ability for evil in all of us. Sometimes it takes a disaster to bring it out. Just today on the CNN website (www.cnn.com) you can find stories about looting in New Orleans, an astronauts son who plead guilty to possessing child porn, and more violence and suicide bombs in Iraq. It’s terrible to read, and yet as much as we hate it we love it. We are always willing to hear the scandals, the violence the tragedy, our country thrives on it. Just look at any new channel and you see it everyday. The only news program I’ve seen in a long time without any violence or horror stories is Sunday Morning on CBS. Although, take a look at their webpage and you’ll find that bane of our society rearing it’s head, racism. Claims that the color and poverty of those hardest hit by Katrina was the reason aid took so long. If it is true that had those people been white and upper class, there would have been no delay in their rescue. Then it goes on to say that not only was it their race and economical status that was cause for their discrimination, but their voting patterns too! The nerve of some cabinets. Ah but lets not forget how corrupt they can be, and usually are. Heck maybe the anarchy of New Orleans wasn’t that bad, other than the rioting and the violent looting. We can’t even all like anarchy because the strong often win. Human nature at it’s greatest, and we all want to hear more about it from the safety of our living rooms.

Bad news is everywhere and we have to deal with it, but do we have to be swamped in it?

this was me with green hair. Now it is purple.

The Zombie Shuffle: A Social Sattire

As I was walking to class this morning, watching my fellow students marching on their way to their classes, I found myself relating their movements to those of the B movie zombies that I love so much. The quiet shuffling of hundreds of feet, all dragging along in the early morning sun brought fond thoughts and images to my mind.

I am an avid zombie movie fan; some might even consider me a connoisseur or a purist. I have watched the zombie classics many times, as many of them as I can get my hands on. But as I was marching along in the lifeless crowd I was reminded of the social remark many of those films were trying to make; remarks on a commercially driven society. The movie Dawn of the Dead, by George A. Romero was a revolutionary movie which was filled with symbolism. In it the heroes found themselves taking refuge within a mall. Throughout the mall there were zombies, and in much of the movie the zombies are depicted acting as more primitive versions of humans.

In his newest film, Land of The Dead, Romero gives his lifeless zombies even more human qualities. It seems from the very beginning that the zombies are trying or pretending to be human. When I watched the movie a second time, and again as I was walking to class this morning, I was hit with the revelation that sometimes it seems that we humans, are merely pretending to be human.

A revolutionary class

So today was the beginning of classes for me. My first class was College composition with Prof. Barlow. I must admit that due to my boyfriend taking one of his classes last semester I was expecting to be writing in a more creative medium in this class. The extent to which, it has been revealed to me, is much more than I could have hoped for. It appears that this course will teach us effective means of communication by making us create and update an online blog. What you are currently reading, is that blog. We will be graded upon weekly updates to our blogs, as well as our comments on classmates blogs.

I feel that this will be a very useful experience for me, and I hope that it will prove to be so. If anything it should be interesting at least.