Al & Mel

I'm not sure what I can say, other that that (a) I think this is probably the funniest thing I've ever written, and (b) I must have re-read it a dozen times, and it still makes me laugh.

What can I say.  I amuse myself.

Zaravorkal the grad student sorcerer discussing fatherhood with his best friend, former roommate, and current DARPA Dark Projects employee, Melchior the lich...

“I’m telling, you, Mel,” he said. “I love her more than life itself, but I’m not sure I can take much more of the pooping.”

“Wait,” said Mel. “Is this about Betty? Because that’s way TMI.”

Al punched Mel in the shoulder. “No! It’s Grace. She’s a freaking little poop machine. She just started walking, too.” He shuddered. “So now she’s cute little walking, cooing, poop generator.”

Mel shrugged. “That’s kids for you, man. How bad is it, though? Really?”

Al started at him. “It. Is. Vile. Amazingly vile. Sometimes, the smell is… ugh.” He gulped. “I get nauseous just thinking about it.”

“Seriously?” said Mel. “Didn’t you have to visit the slime pits of Maduphari as part of a graduate seminar?”

“Yeah,” Al said. “I had to wade through the sewers of Calcutta just to get to the pits. This is worse. She kicks when you change her.” He reached over and grabbed Mel’s shoulder. “She kicks. Mel, she gets it everywhere when she kicks.” He shook Mel. “Everywhere. Everywhere. WHICH INCLUDES IN MY MOUTH.”

Mel opened his mouth, then closed it again. After a moment, he spoke. “Al. Al. I am animated skeleton. I completely lack a digestive system. Despite the fact that it is absolutely physically impossible, I am pretty sure that I just threw up in my mouth a little bit.”

There Are Holes In Our Reality

The things that you come up with when you're sitting by the fire late at night...

(Sung to the tune of "There's a Hole at the Bottom of the Sea")

There are holes in our reality.
There are holes in our reality.
There are holes,
Squamous holes,
There are holes in our reality.

Oooh-wooo!

There's a universe beyond the holes in our reality.
There's a universe beyond the holes in our reality.
There's a universe,
It's the worst,
There's a universe beyond the holes in our reality.

Oooh-wooo!

There's a sun in the universe beyond the holes in our reality.
There's a sun in the universe beyond the holes in our reality.
A sun that's really old,
With fusion burning cold,
There's a sun in the universe beyond the holes in our reality.

Oooh-wooo!

There's a world near the sun in the universe beyond the holes in our reality.
There's a world near the sun in the universe beyond the holes in our reality.
Ancient and dry,
Where Things go to die,
There's a world near the sun in the universe beyond the holes in our reality.

Oooh-wooo!

There's a sea on the world near the sun in the universe beyond the holes in our reality.
There's a sea on the world near the sun in the universe beyond the holes in our reality.
It's calm and green,
With an oily sheen,
There's a sea on the world near the sun in the universe beyond the holes in our reality.

Oooh-wooo!

There's a city under the sea on the world near the sun in the universe beyond the holes in our reality.
There's a city under the sea on the world near the sun in the universe beyond the holes in our reality.
The angles are all wrong,
You can't look at them too long,
There's a city under the sea on the world near the sun in the universe beyond the holes in our reality.

Oooh-wooo!

There's a thing in the city under the sea on the world near the sun in the universe beyond the holes in our reality.
There's a thing in the city under the sea on the world near the sun in the universe beyond the holes in our reality.
Not dead which eternal lies,
Showing even death may die,
There's a thing in the city under the sea on the world near the sun in the universe beyond the holes in our reality.

C'thu-loooo!

There's a dream in the head of the thing in the city under the sea on the world near the sun in the universe beyond the holes in our reality.
There's a dream in the head of the thing in the city under the sea on the world near the sun in the universe beyond the holes in our reality.
It's good it dreams so slow,
Trust me - YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW!
There's a dream in the head of the thing in the city under the sea on the world near the sun in the universe beyond the holes in our reality.

Oooh-wooo!

Because I Didn't Have Enough To Worry About

Sometimes toes spontaneously fall off and nobody knows why.

The word of the day is “autoamputation.” It means a limb—usually a toe—has decided to slowly amputate itself... 

The process can take years. There’s no treatment other than hacking off the toe at the start in order to save pain and time. No one has any idea why it happens. 

Linked List

Glanced at briefly, filed away for future reading, and presented here for your edutainment.

• Idaho's most expensive home goes up for auction.  $21.5 million, no minimum bid.  Time to crack open the piggy bank and hope that nobody else shows up.
• The IEEE talks about Lessons From a Decade of IT Failures.
• The nuclear black market is alive and well in Eastern Europe.  Paging Doc Brown...
• You'll soon be able to buy Fallout's Nuka-Cola.  Remember to save the bottle caps!
• Due to a gang war, the Yakuza have had to cancel Halloween.  Yes, those Yakuza.
• The Laws: If Jews Celebrated Halloween.  Religiously hilarious.
• I never played Tribes, but I hear it was pretty good.  And now it's free.
• China has ended their one-child policy.  They are also considering allowing citizens to laugh without government approval, but they don't want to just rush into these things.
• An interesting data visualization that shows how large Europe's immigration crisis really is. 
• Emperor Palpatine won an election to the Odessa, Ukraine city council.  No, really.
• Even more shocking: Chewbacca has gone over to the Dark Side, and was arrested for campaigning for him.
• Apparently those cookies really are that good.  (Seriously.  Check out that recipe.)
• A man showed up at a Virginia middle school, started singing Justin Bieber songs over the PA, and they put the whole school on lockdown.  Seems reasonable to me.
• Freefall discusses essential life skills for the serious AI.

The Murder That Wasn't

Just in time for Halloween, I came across a bizarre story from the Daily Mail in 2010:

Firefighters who responded to a hotel blaze stumbled upon a blood-spattered hotel room littered with bottles of alcohol and even a piece of a scalp. Police Chief J.R. Blyth, who was called in to investigate, described the discovery at the George Washington Hotel in Pittsburgh as 'the most grisly murder scene in his 35 years in law enforcement'.

Horrific! Except...

Detectives had spent eight hours of overtime on the investigation before Chief Blyth realised the blood wasn't real and that the murder scene was in fact the leftover set of a horror movie filmed two years ago with Corey Haim.

The film called New Terminal Hotel shot a scene in the hotel and the owner, Kyrk Pyros, decided to leave the room untouched in case the crew had to come back for re-shoots.

Now, this has all the trappings of a classic urban legend - especially including the fact that pretty much all the reporting of the incident seems to trace back to the above story. Seeing as this is in my neck of the woods, though, I decided to do a little digging.

After posting the above link on the Book of Face, an old friend who works with the Pittsburgh police pointed out that Pittsburgh records show that there has never been a police chief named Blyth on the force. That would seem to be a big red flag right there.

On top of that, the owner of the hotel that caught fire was reported as... Kyrk Pyros. Seriously. A fire in a hotel owned by Mr. Pyros? How... delightfully karmic.

Smelling more and more like an urban legend, isn't it?

Except...

The George Washington Hotel really does exists, but is not located in Pittsburgh - it is in Washington County, which is south of the city. Now, the Daily Mail is an ocean away, so I'll give 'em an A for effort. They managed to get the right area of the country, at least.

More importantly, while there has never been a Blyth as police chief in the city of Pittsburgh... well, we should be looking at Washington County, shouldn't we? Apparently the chief of police in Washington County from at least 2009 until 2012 was one James Roger Blyth.

What about the oh-so-conveniently named Mr. Pyros, though?

Turns out that he's not only a real person, he's a builder who specializes in restoration of historic structures. He did indeed buy the George Washington hotel in 2007 with an eye towards remodeling it. Said remodeling was derailed a bit in 2010 by a fire that started in one of the hotel's laundry rooms.

On top of that, IMDB says that yes, there was a horror movie titled "New Terminal Hotel" that was released in 2010, starring Corey Haim, and it was filmed in... Washington, PA. (Which is apparently the place to go if you want to film a low-budget horror movie for some reason...)

So the major characters, the events, and the timeline all seem to match up. At this point, I suppose that it could still be a very well-put together hoax. Take all the elements, toss in an unusual hook, and bingo! If someone pulled that off, I would honestly have to tip my hat to them; the details certainly seem to check out.

One of the benefits of this being a local story, though, is being able to stir up other people's memories. After doing the above digging, a friend of mine from college commented on Facebook, saying:

Sam, I worked for one of Kyrk's companies and kept an office at the GW circa 2011. This story was told to me a couple of times back then. Pretty sure it's true. The room was on a floor that hadn't been remodeled, yet.

I would say that's a pretty reliable source right there!

So, there you have it. The true story of a freakout over a false murder.

On The Perils Of Excessive Caffeine Ingestion

It's national Coffee Day!  Here in PA, we have a convenience store chain called Sheetz, and they decided that in honor of the day, they would launch their new, fresh-ground coffee blend... and give away free coffee all day!  W00t!

Srsly. Planning my route to work now. By the time I get there, I will be on the verge of merging with the Speed force. My name will become a Killing Word. Chuck Noris will make memes about me.

Update: Sheetz #2. Free coffee mug. Score!

Update: Sheetz #3... Man, this is gooood coffee! :-)

Update: Sheetz #4. Don't recall ever seeing this one... Could have sworn it wasn't there yesterday.  Man, they put up new stores FAST!

Update: Sheetz #5. I'm a little lost... Think I took a wrong turn. It's OK, though, plenty of time to make it into the office.  This one is calling their coffee "Mrs. Todd's Wild Blend" :-)

Update: Sheetz #6! Had a nice chat with the cashier about their new color scheme. The purple & gold is nice.

Update: Just realized the guy at the last store was speaking Spanish... I don't speak Spanish...

Update: Sheetz #7? Or #8? Could have sworn I hit another one in there... Maybe I'm seeing double, heh! Gooooood coffee, though!

Update: Sheetz #9. Me and my (current!) coffee!

Yr Gentle Hoste

Except... I was sure I left home wearing a button down gray Oxford this morning...

Update: Sheetz #10. Well, She'TZ.  Are they rebranding to go with the new color scheme?  Huh.  Everyone in the store is all excited about last night's presidential debate. How did I miss that? And when did Virginia Montanez throw her hat into the ring?  Her Pigeon Eradication Plan for improving the economy sounds awesome!

Update: Shétes (neé Sheetz) #11.  An "upsale convenience space", apparently.  Tried to get one of their new Breakfast Stir Fry Fajita Stuffed Sausages, but the cashier said they don't take "Mon'ply paper". What idiot decided to put Simon Cameron on the  on the new bills?  Eh.  The coffee is still good, and still free!

Update: Sha-Tze #12. My caffeine levels cannot be expressed by mundane numbers. I am partially fused with infinity, doomed to wander the multiverse from Sheetz to She'TZ to Sha-Tze to Shétes.  Always hungry, always dependent on the kindness of strangers as I try to find my way home. President Montanez has said that she and Wendell the Manatee are working on a solution because my presence is causing a "potentially catastrophic strain on the fabric of the cosmos", or something.

Well... at least the coffee's still free!

And it's gooooood coffee, man ;-)

And Now I Feel Old

When did J-Pop and Metal get hitched?  And why wasn't I invited to the wedding?

Hold on.  I have some kids on my lawn that I need to go yell at now.

Pajama Boy Expands His Wardrobe

No.  Just... no.  Please, no.

Halloween Horror

Interrogative whiskey tango foxtrot?

There are clowns with wrenches in Seattle:

An intoxicated man with a heavily bleeding head wound told Seattle Police Department officers a man dressed as a clown hit him with a wrench at a house party Saturday night in Maple Leaf.

There are clowns with... other weapons... in Illinois:

Two men dressed as clowns and armed with purple sex toys allegedly accosted an Illinois woman and her teenage daughter as they attempted to buy tickets to a haunted house, according to a lawsuit.

There are clowns stalking people in California:

Residents in the California towns of Bakersfield and Wasco have recently been plagued by stalking, scary clowns. 

The clowns have appeared over the past few weeks, often at night. Sometimes people saw the clowns, staring at them silently from a street corner or darkened parking lot. Often, however, the clowns were photographed in front of various city landmarks, the images shared on social media. While most of the clowns held nothing more sinister than a creepy scowl and a handful of balloons, some have been seen photographed wielding large weapons such as machetes or baseball bats.

And the pièce de résistance, there are evil clowns terrorizing people in France:

A 14-year-old dressed as a clown was arrested on Monday near Paris for attempting to attack a woman, as a strange phenomenon of fake, evil clowns terrorising passers-by spreads in France. 

Complaints have poured in recently over "armed clowns" wreaking havoc in various parts of the country, and police have detained several people dressed as the pranksters - some carrying pistols, knives and baseball bats.

And, of course, the biggest clown of all:

Suddenly, all those other clowns don't seem nearly as scary.

So, You Think You Understand History?

Document Recovered From The Marianas Trench

I need to write this down, because I forget things sometimes, and I think what I heard today was important. Not to me, the time for me or almost anyone else alive on Earth today to make a difference has passed, but someone, somewhere might be able to make something of this, or at least find it helpful, or something. Once I'm done, I'm going to seal it up in a pipe, coat it in wax, and chuck it into the ravine. Maybe someday someone will read this, and try to put things together. If they're allowed to. 

I'd love to start at the beginning, but I'm honestly not sure when the world started to end. 

Who Ya Gonna Call?

Huh.  Apparently this is A Thing.

Professional Paranormal Investigations is a group of paranormal investigators who try to assist in the unexplained activity taking place in homes or businesses.

Really.  I guess if Seattle can have real-life super heroes, a bunch of guys in Indiana making a living as real-life Ghostbusters makes some sort of sense.