.... Don't Let The Bedbugs Bite

This ought to give you the creeps when you tuck into bed tonight;

A man in Malaysia put centipedes and other bugs in his neighbor's bed after an argument they had.

Ewww!

That must've been some argument!

Well, sleep tight and don't let the bedbugs bite. Bwa-ha-ha-ha!!!!

--------------

In other news:

Happy Halloween to everyone!

Nothing to post about the holiday yet.

I stayed home from work today to bake cupcakes for a party Hotness and I are going to tonight.

Right now I'm about to get showered and shaved so I can get into my costume.

I'll have a report and pictures (maybe even video) of tonight's happenings this weekend.

Have a great Hallow's Eve.

Toilet Paper

Wow!

That's a crapload of toilet paper!

Question Answered: It Was The Chicken

It's an age-old question; "Which came first? The chicken or the egg?"

You can't have the one without the other, so you go round and round about which was first.

Well thanks to China and their lax regulations on food safety, it has now been determined that the chicken came first.

After all, you can't feed the egg toxins, you have to feed it to the chicken in order for it to lay contaminated eggs. Therefore the chicken HAD to come first.

I'm not going to go off on too much of a rant here. It's a troubling issue, to be sure.

However, when the U.S. and other nations were receiving contaminated pet food from China, this didn't seem like that big a deal to them. Oh sure, they were sorry and apologized and assured us it "would never happen again" because they were going to institute tighter control in their factories.

But then reports started coming out about melamine-tainted milk in China and the thousands of children who were sick from drinking it.

Then suddenly it became a safety issue they were concerned with.

I recently bought some Del Monte fruit cups to put in our lunches and I noticed that they were manufactured in China.

These were diced peaches, to be exact. The kind of fruit that grows naturally in the United States and what the state of Georgia is famous for.

But these were from China.

I wrote an email to customer affairs at Del Monte and asked; "Why would they import a food product that grows naturally here in the states. One that would keep jobs in the U.S. and wouldn't come from a country with 'suspect' food regulations and manufacturing processes?"

They 'assured' me that they enforce strict control in areas of the manufacturing process to maintain a high quality and safe product.

Blah blah blah... yeah sure. So how come this shit is STILL happening over there?

If everybody is enacting such "strict controls" on manufacturing in China, you'd think it would be the SAFEST place on the planet for products.

Don't Taze Me Bro

Luckily I didn't have to learn this first-hand, but some unlucky police officers in Dallas found out the hard way.

Tasers don't work on raccoons.

(Que the theme music from Benny Hill now)

After running around the house with police in hot pursuit, the raccoon turned and that's when they shot him with the taser probes. After which he run up the chimney with the probes still stuck in his back totally unfazed and made his escape.

This has happened before apparently, but doesn't seem to be in any of the police training manuals regarding when to use them effectively.

My Unofficial Poll

Well, my Three Stooges poll was a SMASHING success!
From it, I can tell that... uh, some dudes like the Three Stooges... and so do some girls.
But then some guys don't like 'em... and neither do girls.

But if I do some some math here.... Let's see... X / 15 + (-3 x Y) = ???

Hmmm....
It would appear that 150% of guys like the Three Stooges, as compared to 150% of guys who don't.
And it's a three-way tie among women viewers.



(Thanks to all of you who voted!)

Music Madness Monday

Just in time for Halloween this coming Friday....


Oh!
Did I mention there were SCREAMING GIRLS?

Faces Of Halloween Past

I loves me the Halloween!

I don't have any kids to take trick-or-treating and I live so far out in the sticks that we don't get any kids at our house.

That leaves me free to dress up and PAR-TAY when the call goes out for a Halloween get-together.

I recently dug out some photos of my previous costumes over the years.

With the big day only a week away, I thought I'd share them with ya'll to make fun of me enjoy.

(1996)


(2000)

(1994)

(1993?)


(1995)

(1992?)

Crunking You Can Believe In

My friends.... IT'S ON!!!!


Unbelievable McCain Vs. Obama Dance-Off - Watch more free videos

Hmmm... I may have to reconsider my vote now.



A shout out to Hotness for bringing this to my attention. Thanks sugar-pickle!

Monster Squad

I'd remembered this show from when I was a little kid, but had forgotten what it was called.
I've described it to other people about the same age as me and usually I get a puzzled look from them (although a couple of folks seemed to recall it as well).

Quite by accident, I found out the name of the show was "Monster Squad" and it starred Fred "Gopher" Grandy as a night watchman in a wax museum.
He and the three famous monsters (Dracula, Frankenstein, and the wolfman) would go solve crimes each night when the museum closed down.

Here's the opening (with part of an episode):


Eh.... not quite the 'classic' I remember it being.

Pumpkin Carving

Test your skills at carving a virtual pumpkin.
All of the fun without the mess!


-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
*Update
Sorry!
The game wouldn't scale down when I tried to post it.
Here's the link instead:
PLAY PUMPKIN CARVE

Music Madness Monday

Hey! A double-feature this time, since Halloween is just around the corner!




FYI: These grrrrls ROCK!!
I had the pleasure of seeing them live in Tacoma a few years back and in Bremerton a couple years before that. Definitely a worthwhile show!
The Hell's Belles!

Friends & Costumes

It's been a rather nice weekend.

Hotness & I had plans to get together with friends for dinner and 'catching up' Saturday evening.
We all had a very enjoyable time eating dinner, talking, and playing with the kids.

Then around 8:00 p.m. we started to head towards home where we visited with our neighbor on the way and finished watching "Lonesome Dove". We'd been watching it over the past few weeks and finished the last episode last night.

Also, we both managed to cross-off something on our lists...... get Halloween costumes.
There will be pictures aplenty after Halloween, but for now I'm going to keep them a secret.
Let's just say that Hotness will be a geek's dream and I will embarrass myself for the sake of comedy. (Nothing new there!)
We both went through several costume ideas until we went shopping for them. Then suddenly, the right ones just spoke to us.
Well, actually that was the case for Hotness.
In my case it was more like, "Hah! What if I wore.... wait a minute! I think I WILL wear that!", and then set about looking to make it happen.

Hmmm.... guess there really isn't exciting to talk about.

Oh! Remember that stretch of road in California that was being repaved?
Well, it's getting a new home now. You can plan your vacations accordingly.

That's all for now. As you were.

The Power Of Music

I get a lot of flak from friends about my nebulous taste in music.
But my love for Tom Jones, Weird Al, and Van Halen knows no bounds and will not be stifled!



Today I find out that one of my other favorites has made the news by having the right beat for resuscitating people after a heart attack.

The Bee Gees song, "Stayin' Alive", has almost the exact rhythm for performing CPR.
It's even mentioned on the American Heart Association website.

Next thing you know they'll find out that listening to Alanis Morissette will cure infertility, Ozzy's music PREVENTS cruelty to animals, and DEVO can bring peace to the Middle East by disarming nuclear weapons by playing "Beautiful World".

It could happen.

Captain's Log: Stardate 101608

Heh heh heh! I said Captain's "log"!

I saw this last night while I was out shopping for incidentals on my way home.

It's a collector's set of PEZ dispensers of the Star Trek crew:

And you can't really see it too well, but the U.S.S. Enterprise is also a candy dispenser.

But you can pretend that instead of giving out PEZ, it's firing deadly photon torpedoes at your head.

Or not.

Three Cheese Macaroni

I typed up this recipe I made for a co-worker and though "Hey! I bet other people would like to try it out also!"
So here you go... my fancy macaroni & cheese recipe:

To make this macaroni & cheese recipe, you will need:
Butter
White flour
Milk (whole, 2 %, non-fat…. It’s all good)
Cheddar cheese (at least 3 cups of it grated)
Gruyere cheese (about 4 – 6 oz. ungrated)
Brie cheese (a small ‘wheel’ about the size of your palm. If you can’t find it in a round wheel, you can use the wedge type, just get two of them. You’ll want about 8 oz. total. I used goat’s milk brie, but there might be other types)
Noodles (your choice, but I like the elbow type or the small shells)

I don’t have an exact recipe for this, I kind of just work with it until I get the proportions right.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

You need to start with a basic white sauce:
1 Tbsp butter
1 Tbsp white flour
1 Cup milk
Salt & pepper

Melt butter over med heat in a saucepan and add salt and pepper to taste*. Then add flour after the butter is all melted.
Working quickly, stir the flour into the butter so that no lumps remain.
Keep stirring as you slowly add the milk.
Continue stirring over med heat until sauce thickens, usually about 10 mins or so.

* You can omit the salt and pepper totally, and only add it after you’ve made the sauce a few times to get a good idea of how much to use.
You can also get a little crazy and add things like garlic or other seasonings to give the sauce more flavor. For mac & cheese, though, I stick with just salt & pepper.
Also: this is the basic recipe for a thick white sauce.
Variations are :
1 Tbsp butter + 1 Tbsp flour + 2 Cups milk = thinner sauce
1 Tbsp butter + 1 Tbsp flour + 3 Cups milk = very thin sauce (almost like a light gravy)
You can double up the recipe and get the same results. You can also use a little more butter or milk, but the flour is what makes it thicken up so don’t use more than required.

Once you’ve got the sauce made, but keeping it on med-low heat and stirring occasionally, start boiling the noodles and pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees.
I never measure out the noodles, so I’m guessing on how much to use.
About ½ lb of noodles will cook up and fill an 11 x 8 x 2 casserole dish (more or less)
If you make too many noodles, you can add a little more milk to your white sauce and make enough to fill two smaller casserole dishes (freeze one and have it later).

While the noodles are boiling, grate up some cheddar and gruyere cheese (about 2 cups of cheddar and one cup of gruyere... or however much you get out of the amount you bought. More cheese won’t be a problem).
(FYI: Gruyere is a very soft “semi-soft” cheese. It has a very low melting point, so grate it while it’s cold to make it easier)
The Brie should be at room temp. and in fact the softer it is, the better.

Put about a cup of the grated cheddar (a little at a time) into the white sauce and stir well to get it melted.
Then put in all the gruyere (a little at a time) and do the same.
Cut the brie wheel in half and scoop out the soft cheese inside and put it into the white sauce, stirring with each addition.

Your sauce should be nice and thick at this point and your noodles should be done.
Drain the noodles and then dump them into the casserole dish and pour the sauce over them. Mix it all together and top it off with the last of the cheddar cheese. (You can also mix them up in a large bowl and then put the mixture into the casserole dish if you think you might make a mess the other way)
Put it in the oven for about 30 – 40 minutes. This melts the cheese on top and gets it all bubbly.

That’s it. It has a very mild flavor but is also very creamy tasting.

** Update 1:30 p.m.
I didn't think of it before, but I bet adding some bacon to this would make it even more fantastic.
I'll have to try that next time I make this.

Music Madness Monday

One of the most influential punk bands to ever walk the planet.
Being October and getting closer to Halloween, I think they deserve a post.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present:
The Plasmatics




R.I.P Wendy O. Williams (1998)

Worm Wranglin', Three Stooges... Etc.

It's been a while since I mentioned how it's coming along but I thought I'd update ya'll on my worm composting bin and how the little critters are doing.

I've been adding our leftover food scraps (banana peels, used tea leaves, and so forth...), making sure to bury it under the bedding with each new addition.
At first, the few worms I had were kind of scawny and not very plentiful.
Now that the weather has gotten colder recently, I wanted to see if the container was keeping them insulated enough or if they were dying off from the cold.
I opened the lid, pulled some if the bedding aside and lo and behold, there were many fat little worms wriggling around in the bin!
It looks like the cold hasn't affected them in the least and they seem to be loving the food, so things are going just great in the old composting bin. Huzzah!

At this rate, after Winter gets past I should have plenty of worms to spare if anybody is looking for some to start their own composting bin once Spring rolls around. (Ha ha! 'Spring rolls'!)
__________________________________

I recently saw on Amazon.com that you can now get all the Three Stooges shorts on DVD in four separate volumes.
Previously all I could ever find were a few of their most-played shorts repackaged on different DVD or VHS versions for around $15 to $20 a pop.
These new DVD releases not only have ALL the shorts, but they have them in chronological order which is kind of cool, I think.
So I was planning to order them (as they aren't expensive considering how many of the different Stooges shorts there are) after the next couple of paydays.

Then, on Friday night after work, I had to stop as Costco to pick up some incidentals and I was checking out the DVD's for sale and they had the same four volumes available. They were about the same price (AND I didn't have to pay for shipping, so really they were cheaper).
I got volume one, and later next week I'm going back to pick up the other 3 volumes.
So if you're a Stooges fan and you've been waiting to find them on DVD, well guess what? Now you can and pretty cheaply to boot!

I mention this because it's been my experience that only guys really like The Three Stooges. Girls just don't get into them that much. That's not to say I haven't met any women who did like them, but they've just been very few and far between.
So if you'll notice over to your right, near the top of the page, I've posted an informal survey.
It's been a while since I last did one of these, and I thought this would be a good excuse for another one.
I'd like to know.... do you like the Three Stooges or do you think they're lame?

Please notice that there are different responses based on whether or not you're a guy or a gal.
It's not to be sexist or anything, I'm just trying to see if it's true that guys get more of a kick out them or if I've been mistaken all these years.
Take a moment to do the survey and support unscientific research, won't you?
__________________________________

Well, other than that, I'm feeling much better.

I wasn't able to find a 'date' for the Joan Osborne concert until just yesterday, and then after I did... both shows were already sold out.
Oh well. Maybe I can catch her next time she's in town.

Not much else to say, so enjoy the end of your weekend and hopefully I'll have more interesting stuff to post soon.

Lights At Night

You might've seen this image before, but it's still pretty dang cool-looking.





From the Astronomy Picture of the Day website for October 5th, 2008.

--------------------------------------

And heck! Check out this solar flare from the day before!

It's Gotta Be The NyQuil

I don't usually have really vivid dreams and when I do they are few and far between. I mean, like months from each other happening.


Occasionally I'll have the odd one, where I wake up and remember it, but it just doesn't happen to often. Most of the time I fall asleep and then open my eyes to a new day with no remembrance of what transpired throughout the night in my head.


But not these last few days.

I have been having some wacky dreams, and weirder still is that I remember them when I get up in the morning. Unfortunately they start to get fuzzy right after I wake up and by noon I've forgotten almost all but a few of the details about them.


For instance:
Wednesday night I dreamed that my former employers (from like 15 years ago) were putting on an aquarium display exhibit with lots of custom designed tanks and even explosions to set the 'mood'.
Then last night, I was on a field trip with some of my co-workers and some of my high school classmates... in Florida, a state I've only been to once in my life. And for whatever reason I was leaving the 'tour' over something to do with a fork.


I thought that dreams were supposed to be your brain's way of processing stuff you've experienced during the day, but what's up with these?!?


I'm thinking maybe I'll dope up tonight on more NyQuil, some Tylenol PM and a shot of tequila.
THAT ought to make for some fun times in slumber land, don't you think?

Music Madness Special Birthday Edition

Happy Birthday Liz, this one is for you!

Still Slogging Along

Death hasn't yet gotten it's icy grip around my neck, so fortunately I'm still alive but also still sicker than I'd like to be after 3 days of this crap.

I made it into work today. Mostly because despite how I'm feeling, I still wanted to pick up comics tonight and I didn't think it would be fair to show up at the shop for my weekly 'fix' if I didn't even make it into work.
But also because the longer I'm away from work, the more crap I gotta deal with when I get back. I figured two days worth is about all I can muster the energy to battle to get caught up.
It's been kind of slow, so I'm mostly up-to-speed with everything on my desk now. Yippee.
I want to thank the generic DayQuil I'm dosed-up on for getting me this far today.

I guess my other goal is to spread my germs throughout the office. That way, all the naysayers who didn't think I was really sick will have a taste of my sweet, congested vengence.

While I was couch-ridden, I watched a bunch of movies.
In no particular order, this is what I saw as well as my personal reviews:

Pale Rider
I'm not a big 'western genre' movie fan, but every now and then I find one a really like. This is one of them. Is the Preacher an angel of vengence sent to help the poor miners, or is he a tired gunslinger who just happens along? Who cares! It's got Clint Eastwood with his steely eyes shooting up the bad guys.

The Notorious Bettie Page
I really liked this movie. If you are familiar with who Bettie was, then this is a great movie to get a little background on her. Some T&A, but tastefuly done.

Ghost Rider
I liked this movie when it came out, and I still like it. Not much in the way of Oscar-winning performances but what do you really expect from a leather-clad skeleton with a flaming skull, riding a motorcycle and dispensing fiery justice on evildoers? Good movie for watching when you're sick on the couch.

Ninja Checkmate
A busboy learns the art of Chess Boxing to avenge his father's death at the hands of the Ghost Face Killer (yup! that's where the rapper got his name).
I'm not going to say it was the best kung-fu movie ever, but it did have it's moments. Plus it had a cameo of Siu Tien Yuen who was Jackie Chan's uncle / teacher in Drunken Master.

Hedwig and the Angry Inch
An young East German man has a botched sex-change operation so he can move to the U.S. with his American G.I. lover (hence the "angry inch"), only to have his lover leave him on the day the Berlin Wall came down.
He then forms a rock band.
Lots of poignant moments as Hedwig describes how he feels in the world as not being complete without someone to love, but not really knowing who he, himself, really is.
In a similar vein as Rocky Horror Picture Show, but not nearly as campy. Lots of good music and the story is well told.
I've seen the movie now 3 or 4 times and the stage production once. (It was playing in Calgary last year but I didn't get a chance to see it then)
It's hard to describe this movie and make it sound like you'd WANT to see it, but it really is good and the stage production was incredible. Worth watching at least once.

The Machine Girl
What's NOT to like about this movie?!?
An amputeed Japanese school-girl with a machine gun on her arm, shooting up Yakuza ninjas.
Lots of blood, lots of bad acting, lots of fighting scenes.
Unfortunately I fell asleesp about half-way through, but I've seen it once before so I knew how it ended.

Until next time......

Where's My Chips?

Oi! Excuse me!
Where're my chips?




Oh.

Feeling Like Poop

Ugh!
I knew something was going to happen when I got that 'scratchy' feeling in the back of my throat.
It always happens right before I come down with a cold, and sure enough it happened again.

I stayed home from work on Monday laid-out on the couch blowing my nose and watching movies all day.
Today I feel worse, so I'm home again doing more of the same (unless I can get a nap in somewhere).

Regular posting will resume when I feel better or if there is something I find blog-worthy.

Ferretnick out.

Music Madness Monday

Bat-Brewed Coffee

Being so goth and able to poop out bats and all that, I though this was a rather timely piece of news:

Iowa woman finds bat in coffee filter.

She apparently reported a bat in her house and then had gone to bed after setting up her automatic coffee maker for the next day.

When she awoke and after having her morning brew, she discovered the bat in the filter.

Mmmm-mmm! Yummy!

"Eye of newt, wing of bat, some toad warts for good measure...." Must've been some good java!

-------------------

You don't have to cook bats to enjoy your coffee, though.

Pick up a mug or even specially roasted blend coffee grounds to support bat research and conservation.

I'm So Goth

It's October (if you didn't already know) and I'm on kind of a 'Halloween' kick all month.

And by the way you can all call me:

Your Goth Name is:

Malice Absinthe

What's Your Goth Name?

(although, I'll also settle for Gothy McGoth)




-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Which is sort of ironic when you consider this:

You Are 20% Goth

Goth? No. Definitely not. You hardly even wear black clothing. And to be honest, dark, brooding goth types freak you out a little. To the extent that you have any goth interests, it's only because some goth stuff has become mainstream. There's no chance anyone's going to find you in a graveyard after dark, that's for sure!

Are You Goth?

New Browser Add-on

Thanks to my buddy Dug, I discovered a really sharp looking add-on browsing the web.

It's called Cooliris and it lets you look things up on your computer in a 3-D format.

It actually looks cooler than I could describe it, so here are some pictures from my computer that I took screenshots of.

First, I searched for "Ferretnick" in Google images. This is what came up:

Then when I used the Cooliris application, it gave me a huge wall of pictures that have either appeared on my website or are linked by it to other sites:

And when you use the scroll button at the bottom, it moves the wall to whichever side you're going to (in this case I was moving right):

It is funky and cool and just dang awesome.

I thought I'd mention it in case anybody else wanted to try it out.