Well, of course there's various Halloweenish things one can do on the Neopets website. Like today I did this bobbing for apples thing, for the first time ever. Also, something I've been planning for awhile, I started a Halloween section of my gallery on Neopets, though you can only see it if you're logged into your own Neopets account... so if you don't have one, none of this means anything to you, of course. Anyway, it's not a great or expansive section of the gallery. Maybe I'll add to it in the future. I dunno. Well, that's all I have to say for now...
Later that day... well, I just watched an episode of Warehouse 13 online, since I don't currently have Syfy. The ep they put on this week is from September, but it had zombies in it, sort of. So I think it's appropriate for this week.
October 26
Tonight's episode of Suburgatory was George and Tessa's first Halloween in Chatswin. They wanted to put up a bunch of scary decorations on their lawn, including a guillotine, but the neighborhood association or whatever had rules against anything too scary. So George spent some time trying to convince Dallas that being scared can be fun. Meanwhile, Tessa learned that her bedroom once belonged to a girl named Misty, who was now dead. That kinda freaked her out... but not quite as much as it did Lisa, who thought Tessa was being possessed by Misty's spirit. So she got Malik to help her try to exorcise the ghost. Anyways, it wasn't a bad episode.
October 27
I've mentioned that I don't currently get the CW, nor Syfy. I also don't currently get USA Network. So, last night I watched last week's episode of Psych online. The episode that actually aired last night was a Halloween episode, but I won't see it til next week. Today I watched last week's episode of The Secret Circle (which is about a group of witches). I started watching online, but the player on the website didn't let me get all the way through the episode before skipping to the previous episode. I hate when that happens. So I downloaded the ep, finished watching it, then deleted it. Again, the ep that airs tonight will be a Halloween episode, but I won't see it til next week. I suppose I could download episodes any time, like a day or so after they air, instead of waiting a week, but... I prefer to wait, do things right. As long as the networks' websites do things right. Besides, any excuse to extend my holiday journal past the holiday, right?
Later... I've been trying to learn about this subgenre of electronica called "Witch-house" (aka "drag"). But what I've heard so far, while kinda creepy, isn't quite creepy enough for me to think of it as Halloween music, I'm afraid. Meanwhile, I have added a couple things to my Halloween links page, including Angry Orchard hard cider under "drinks," which I haven't tried yet but really want to. And under "music" I added Midnight Syndicate, which I'm sure I'd heard of before but had never really listened to. But now I'm thinking I'll really have to get some of their CDs, sometime. Definitely some perfectly creepy stuff. Under "shopping" I added HalloweenCostumes.com, which is a site I came across awhile ago and suddenly remembered it.
Also tonight there was an episode of Big Bang Theory which was set near Halloween. Penny was buying candy. And more importantly, Howard, Raj, and Leonard scared Sheldon with some pranks, and he tried to get them back. Though the main part of the episode was something totally unrelated to Halloween, and even the other parts were sort of only peripherally related. Whatever. I guess that's all to say for now....
October 28
So, I just watched last night's episode of Community, in which Britta had gotten results of tests she and the group had all taken awhile ago for her psych class. It turned out that someone in the group showed warning signs for potentially being a homicidal maniac. Or whatever. So she decided to have everyone in the group tell scary stories, in an attempt to evaluate them, to determine which one was potentially crazy. Every one of the stories was, of course, hilariously in keeping with the personality of the teller, but it didn't really help. Anyway, the episode was awesome, as always.
Later... watched last week's Supernatural online. It was a fun ep, with guest stars James Marsters and Charisma Carpenter (who, of course, are both "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" alums). Later still, I watched the series premiere of Grimm, which wasn't as good as I hoped, but it has potential. Maybe. It better improve quickly, though. Anyway, that's it for today...
October 29
Um... went to town for some shopping. Got some jasmine incense I look forward to trying. I hope it doesn't suck. I got it at a dollar store. Y'know, Bangor had a few good places to get good incense, but Caribou and Presque Isle? Not so much. Anyway, I think I've got two sticks left of the Vampire's Blood incense I bought back in Bangor, so I should use that on Halloween. At Kmart I bought a DVD, which contains "Species" and "Species II." I've never seen those movies, though I knew Natasha Henstridge is in at least the first one, and now she's on "The Secret Circle," so I thought hey, the DVD's five bucks, might as well pick it up and see some of her earlier work. Dunno when I'll watch it, though. Got some Angry Orchard hard cider, which I've been wanting to try. It was good. Had some while watching Kiki's Delivery Service. After the DVD, I watched SNL, which I haven't done in a long time, but I thought, they sometimes do Halloween stuf on that show. I think it was a repeat probably, and not really Halloweeny. Though I think Halloween might have been mentioned in a sketch or two. Vaguely. I forget. I was kinda sleepy by then anyway. Good cider. Oh, also, Dad gave me this little orange cackling skull thing. Maybe I'll take a pic later. I should also mention that when I was shopping, I saw some Guinness Black Lager, which is something I don't remember if I've ever seen or not. So I was torn about whether to get that instead of the draught cans I'd been planning on getting... but I went with my original plan. Definitely gonna have to try the other stuff sometime, though. Well, I hope I'm not forgetting anything remotely Halloweenish that may have happened today. Oh, tried a couple of the m+ms white chocolate candy corn stuff. Which is just meant to look... well, there are orange pieces, white pieces, and yellow pieces, so colletively it looks like candy corn. I don't think it's meant to taste like it. It basically just tastes like white chocolate. Anyway, it's okay, though I've never been a huge fan of white chocolate. Mom is, though.
October 30
Actually, I didn't write my review of Kiki's Delivery Service til this morning, or at least most of it. I did some introductory stuff yesterday before watching the movie. And I wrote yesterday's journal entry this morning as well. Um... oh, we got our first real snow overnight. Woke up to what looks like about half an inch on the ground. Nothing major. And I had some pumpkin coffee this morning. The bag's nearly empty, so I've been saving it for Halloween, but I thought it'd be okay to have some a day earlier. It tastes good, but... well, it can... um, never mind. What else? Tonight is Simpsons annual Treehouse of Horror, so I look forward to that. But watching it means I won't be watching "Once Upon a Time" tonight. I hate the idea of having to watch it online tomorrow, when I'd rather be doing other things. I suppose I'll also skip "Desperate Housewives" tonight to watch other stuff on Fox. So that's one more thing that'll be eating my time tomorrow. I also don't intend to watch tomorrow's episode of "Terra Nova," so it better be available online the next day. Probably won't be watching tomorrow's "Castle," either. Gah. This holiday is wreaking havoc with my TV-watching schedule, and the repercussions will extend... I dunno, a couple days or so. It's not a big deal. But I'm easily annoyed. Especially considering I have nothing else in my life. Except for writing. Oh well.
Later... there's this fiber optic pumpkin I got years ago. Today I thought maybe I'd try taking a video of it with my phone and upload it, which is something I've never really done before. It's not a very good phone, and I'm not at all pleased with the quality of the video, but whatever... what you whipper-snappers have to understand is, in my day, the only thing you could do with a phone is talk. And even that was something you had to do in one specific place, you couldn't just do it anywhere you felt like. So... whatever.
Um anyway... I also carved a jack-o-lantern tonight. It's not very good, because I have no skill at pumpkin-carving. I thought for about a minute of trying to carve Jiji from "Kiki's Delivery Service," but then I decided this isn't the time for delusions of grandeur, and also the pumpkin didn't seem tall enough. Maybe some other year. Instead, I went with a pretty standard jack-o-lantern face, though I did make one of the eyes upside down and the nose more an angle than a triangle. So whatever, here it is... but also, here's a pic of a skeleton figure I got some years ago. I put an electric pumpkin-shpaed candle on its platter; Mom got a pack of four of those things this year, they're kinda neat. One of them is in my pumpkin, but I might put in a real candle tomorrow night. In the same pic as the skeleton is that skull thing I mentioned before that Dad gave me. I discovered in addition to cackling and eyes lighting up, it also is supposed to dispense candy skulls.
Later still... 10pm. At 8 I watched Simpsons. There were some parodies of movies I haven't seen and stuff, though there was also a parody of Avatar, with Bart's mind being transferred into an alien what looked like Kang and Kodos. I dunno though, the whole episode was... not something I'm gonna remember probably. Or whatever. Then the series premiere of "Allen Gregory," which I didn't particularly like. And it wasn't at all Halloweeny. Then "Family Guy," which wasn't exactly Halloweeny, though the date was mentioned at one point, so we know it was set around Halloween. And there was a murder in the end. Then an episode of The Cleveland Show, which was the only thing on FOX besides Simpsons that actually was Halloweeny. There was a thing about Rollo not being brave enough for a sleepover, and later Cleveland had the same problem, so Donna makes them stay in a supposedly haunted house. And there was a crazy guy who wanted to kill Cleveland. Meanwhile, Roberta met a couple guys who she thought were a vampire and a werewolf who were both into her. Except they weren't. Not monsters, and not into her. Eh. Not a great night of television, but it was okay. Now... maybe I should go to bed. Can you believe how much damh writing I've already done about pretty much nothing of interest, and Halloween hasn't even started yet? Now that's scary....
October 31
So this is it, the actual day. Had some more pumpkin coffee, out of a pumpkin mug. Watched last night's episode of Desperate Housewives. The most important aspect of the episode, part of this season's major storyline, is that Bree, Gaby, and Lynette had to go into the woods to dig up a dead body. Not going to spoil anything about that for you, though. Um... also, Susan has been taking this art class, and her teacher forced her to take care of his kid for the weekend while he was working on a painting. But of course Susan forces him to go trick-or-treating with his son, and with her and MJ. Also, Lynette tried making a costume for Penny (in an effort to compete with... a character played by Andrea Parker, who it's nice to see again, since I liked her so much on "The Pretender," years ago). But instead of making it, she ends up ordering a costume from a friend of Renee's, and when it arrives... it turns out to be inappropriately sexy for a 13-year-old. Meanwhile, Renee takes some kind of love potion she got in Chinatown, in preparation for her "first time" with Ben, but it makes her have a scary allergic reaction. Also, Carlos continues to deal with his recent drinking problem. Anyway, a fairly good episode. Then I watched last night's episode of "Once Upon a Time," which was quite good, and parts of it were somewhat scary, I guess. Definitely think this is gonna be a good series.
Well, here's another video I made with my phone. This is a flying bat with glowing red eyes, which I got a few years or so back.
Later... worked a bit on notes and such for my books... including figuring out a bit about something... I sorta knew would happen in my second book, but didn't have any idea of what it actually was. I decided that this incident would be set on Samhain, anyway. Just because I was working it out today, on Halloween. Yay. Then I watched a DVD of The Canterville Ghost, which was fun. Then watched an episode of How I Met Your Mother. Back in 2005, the first season featured a Halloween episode in which we learned that ted had been trying to meet "the Slutty Pumpkin" since 2001. Well now, in 2011, he finally met her. So he'd been waiting for it for 10 years, while us viewers had only been waiting six years. Either way... it's cool they finally connected. Even if... it didn't go as Ted hoped, exactly. Not gonna give any details about that, nor bother mentioning any of the other plotlines of tonight's episode. But whatever. Um... I had a can of Guinness, and now I'm having a Black & Orange. I can't recall if I mentioned that. It's Guinness mixed with Pumpkinhead. Um... also I doubt I've mentioned doing Halloween type stuff on Farmville. Not because I haven't done anything, but just because... I don't care about it. Anyway, I suppose I haven't done everything I would have liked to, today. I did play a bit of Plants vs. Zombies. No Dragon Age, though, and I was thinking of reading a Dollhouse comic book, but I guess I won't get to that. It's 10:16pm. I need to watch another DVD... something actually potentially scary. But I haven't even picked one yet. So... wait, I forgot to say I got a card from Grandma. Let me open that now. It has a cute knock-knock joke. "Who's there?" "Vampire." ... "Aren't you going to say vampire who?" "Nope, doesn't matter who- I'm not opening the door for any vampire." Ha. Also there was $10 inside. Now, where was I? Right.. I'm going to save this page for now, pick a DVD, watch it, write a review if I'm not too drunk, and then post a link to the review here. Either tonight or tomorrow. Though technically even if it's tonight, it'll be tomorrow....
It's 12:56am. I burned some vampire blood incense and had some beer as well as my last bottle of hard cider since I only had five the other night. I feel not very drunk at all, but I still have some beer I could drink. I watched The Rocky Horror Picture Show, having started the review last year without watching the movie. Because of Glee. So now I finished the review. It's not long. Or good. But whatever, the review is done. Probably be years before I watch the movie again. But now... in spite of being kinda late for me, I think I'll start another movie. Halloween comes but once a year, after all, and it's still Halloween until the morning light, I say....
November 1
So, I watched Interview With the Vampire last night, and wrote a review this morning. That's all I have to say for now, but there'll be more later. Holiday ain't totally over for awhile yet....
November 2
I am not pleased. First of all, I think I mentioned that I couldn't watch this Monday's episode of Terra Nova... and now I realize it won't be online until next Tuesday. Which probably means from now on I'll be watching every episode online at least 8 days late, because chances are my DVR will refuse to record it. And obviously I'm not going to watch the next episode until after I watch the last. Whoever makes the decision to make an episode available after the next one airs... has no grasp of logic. Anyway, then I was looking on Hulu for episode 11 of Warehouse 13. They have several episodes, including 10 and 12, but not 11. Bizarre. So I just went to Syfy.com and watched episode 11. No big deal. I'll get around to watching episode 12 sometime soon. Probably tomorrow. Next I was going to watch last week's episode of Psych, which I believe I mentioned earlier is the Halloween episode, which is why I am bothering with this whole paragraph. But here's the thing about that: They put up the first two episodes of the season like 6 days after their air, but the rest of the season's episodes don't go online until a month after they air. Again, no logic. First of all, you should just pick a time frame and use it consistently. Either put them all online a day late, or a week late, or a month late, or whatever. Don't do some a week late and then make everyone wait for the rest. That serves no purpose whatever, except to irritate viewers. Secondly, if you are going to engage in the bizarre, inexplicable practice of intentionally irritating your viewers for no reason, the least you could do is wait until after a damn holiday episode before implementing the change. But of course, that would go against their general policy of pissing people off, so I guess, now that I think of it, means I'm the one being illogical. Why on Earth would I expect them to do something that makes the remotest hint of sense? Eh... maybe it's all part of their cunning plan to get people to subscribe to a more expensive cable or satellite package. Of course, the only problem with that plan is, if I could afford it, I'd be subscribing to it already. Wouldn't I? I'd almost rather they just not bother putting shows online at all, if they're gonna be like that.
November 4
As I believe I mentioned last week that I would be doing this week, this morning I watched last week's episode of "The Secret Circle" online. There was a Halloween party. And there were witch hunters who tried to kill the witches. Decent episode. That's about all I can say. Up next, I shall watch last week's episode of "Supernatural." And that should pretty much be and end of this year's Halloweenishness. You know, aside from continuing to eat Halloween candy for some time.
Later... so tonight I read a bit of "The Brothers Karamazov," which I actually started quite early in the year. I don't pick it up often I'm afraid, though I do love it. Anyway, it suddenly occurred to me, I think Lisa was reading that book to Homer in one of the Simpsons' Treehouse of Horror stories this year. Which I appreciated.
2012
ekt's Halloween page