Soundtrack

The night before last I had two dreams.

1.) Zombie apocalypse. In addition to zombies, there were strange oozing, cubes with pulsing runes on them here and there, and other more cthuluesque creatures. Seemed more like an opened-a-gateway-to-hell ala Mist (movie) or Doom (game) than just a zombie issue. But really vivid, lots of death, and a despair vibe.

2.) Little girl slips into the river and slides to the bottom (after being told to stay away from the slippery stone at the edge). The edges of the river were smooth stone, laid there like a canal of some sort, and the girl (whom I don't know) just ignored the advice of the adults nearby and slipped in, with barely a sound, and down the rocks at the bottom of the river toward the mud and immediately down river. I dove in to save her and, despite the crystal clarity of the water when looking in from above, it was disturbingly difficult to see once under the surface.

I'm not too concerned about the meaning of the dreams. I've had maze dreams (of which number 1 is an example) since I was about six. What I'm concerned about is that the soundtrack for both dreams was Dancin' from Xanadu. Although it certainly took the edge off the seriousness of both episodes. I think it speaks of a mental illness lurking in my pysche. Horrible, flesh-eating, apocalyptic end times - fine. Little girls drowning - fine. Dancin' while both of these things are underway - really not fine.

Here...maybe you can add it to your dream soundtrack tonight: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ts9GdyGD5e4

Special Hugs for Dogs

Because I was interested, I went searching and read this answer as to why female dogs hump their stuffed animals:

Dogs (both female and male) use the "Humping" to establish dominance over other dogs and usually has nothing to do with sex. If the dog is doing this to inanimate objects, it's usually because it's the only thing around that it feels superior to, especially if it is the dog's toy and it is around it alot, or if a new stuffed animal toy is presented it may start this right away to establish possesion. This is not an uncommon behavior and is quite normal, however weird or unattractive it may seem to humans.

Which is all fine and good. But then, as usual, I went a bit too far on the web and click into a subsequent link below the fold that answered a completely different question:

Why does your 4 year son old hump stuffed animals? Because YOU let him. This is unwanted behavior, you should stop your son from doing this behavior.

[Added later by another person: My son does this with great enthusiasm. Since he is not in any situation where he could be abused, we checked with a developmental pediatrician on how "appropriate" it was and whether we should be concerned. 1. He said not to be concerned, it's normal for some children. 2. Don't make the child feel guilty about it, even if you ask them not to do it. 3. (What we ended up doing.) Set boundaries. We told our son "special hugs" are only for stuffed animals when he's alone in his bedroom. This worked-- it's still odd-- but it worked.]

Nutbuster: The Ballet!

I haven't been willing to post about this for several days, because I just don't know what to say about it. In the City Pages, there was an advertisement for Nutbuster! The Ballet at the Bryant Lake Bowl. This seemed to be one of those things that would amuse me. After all, the idea that Drosselmeyer is some sort of drunk ruminating on the holidays and having a Nutcrackeresque fantasy - it's all in his mind, not Clara's - is an idea that I feel could be ripe for interesting commentary. Eryn disagreed. She was a bit disgusted with me for thinking that might be fun, although she wanted to know all the details after I went.

But there was no interesting commentary. Rather, after talking Kyle into going with me, we watched a late 40's to early 50's guy dance around the stage for over 30 minutes. Sometimes with a little girl's doll. Sometimes with a bottle of vodka (Kyle and I discussed the similarities to his infamous vodka + knife + phonebook + cement floor incident when we lived at Riverside Plaza. If you look at the picture in that link, we were on the top floor, close to middle, of the building facing you in the photo). Sometimes with a nutcracker. Sometimes with a blow up doll (although he stabbed her at one point and she deflated - I don't remember that scene in The Nutcracker). The only talking was over the pa system at the beginning of the Nutbuster during which John Munger (playing Drosselmeyer) discussed his inspiration for Nutbuster, which evolved out of a lonely Christmas where he wrapped himself three presents, hung out with his cat, and then went to see Dune at the local theater. Given that Dune was released in 1984, I'm going to up my guess of his age to mid-50's.

To capture the feeling of this one man play, I'd have to go with, you know when you see something that's so sad, it becomes funny? And then it becomes sad again? And then you have a moment of disbelief that you're still sitting there watching it, so it becomes sad for you, then sad for them again, and then the whole thing is funny because it's all so sad. But not really in a good way. That feeling. Sort of A Clockwork Orange with your eyes toothpicked open feeling, but more melancholy before the uncontrollable laughter sets in.

On a positive note, the beer and my dinner, three cheese tortellini with shrimp and lots of vegetables, were very good. I had enough Surly Furious to smooth over the strangeness of almost anything, and a good Anchor Porter thrown in the midst of some post-ballet drinking with Kyle made it all worthwhile.

Jabba the Snow Hut

I think my back still hurts from shoveling snow. I have a snowblower, but it's of dubious value until I get it fixed or get a new one, so when the big storm came through I shoveled. Perhaps five times, I lost count, if you don't count the shoveling I did at my sister's house on Christmas Eve, or the two shovelings my Dad did while I was away from the house. My favorite was coming back Christmas Day to the plowed in end of the driveway that had a mixture of ice and water six feet by three feet by about twelve feet. Each shovel full was a forty pound effort that leaked water and salt all over my shoes as it poured through the crack in my plastic scoop.

I wonder if my boneless snowman at my sister's house managed to soak up enough water to freeze in place before they could remove him. He reminded me of Jabba the Hut. I should have found some little Leia-like critter to chain to him.

My Life is a Movie!

I've been issued a Bourne Ultimatum!

"The installation script has a minimal set of requirements:

o Bourne shell in /bin/sh (if your Bourne shell is not located there you

may need to edit the first line of the install file)."

Mystery Solved

When Pooteewheet got up at about 12:50 a.m., our power was out. We looked out the window, and it was the same, as near as we could tell, at every house up and down the block, and at the usually tree-lit houses we can see from our "Minnesota Room" across the back yard. When I got to work, I mentioned it out loud, and Brian, who pedaled the Bike Classic with me, pointed me at this piece of Darwinianism (WCCO).

Posted: Wednesday, 23 December 2009 6:51AM
Intruder Burned at Power Substation in Eagan

Police in Eagan are investigating an incident at a Dakota Electric substation in which a 33 year-old man was severely burned, early this morning. Officers were called to the substation in the 1700 block of Deerwood Drive around 12:30 am on a report of a man "on fire". He was transported to Regions Hospital with severe burns to the torso. At least one other person was taken in for questioning. Police are investigating the man's motive for entering the area -- including the possibility of attempted copper theft. The incident resulted in a power outage affecting thousands of homes, but electricity has since been restored.

41.09615

My birthday was a little over a month ago, and to celebrate I had the 40th birthday party I didn't have when I was 40. For those of you who are wondering "where the hell was my invitation?", it was a rather limited affair that was just a few people I work/worked with having fondue and ice cream cake from Ring Mountain around our new table and not bringing me presents. At least those were the instructions. I guess I could claim it was people who have worked with me since the Unity days or just after (e.g. about 10 years ago), but given how the last Unity joke I saw went over on Facebook, I'll just stay away from that as a descriptor. Even with the limited group, Pooteewheet and I ran out of nice silverware and china. We did manage to create two kinds of vegan fondue, which was something of an experiment given the rule many vegans insisted upon on the internets, "don't use vegan cheese!" We ended up using nuts for one and nutritional yeast for the other. Both were very good.

• Ming and family gave me a very cool black geocaching jacket with the official geocaching logo on it. I'll be the coolest guy covered in ticks.
• Klund and family gave me a dinosaur geobug. I believe Eli provided the dinosaur. I have yet to place it, because it's cold outside. I need to remember to take its picture and come up with some sort of goal. Perhaps I could ask each person who finds it to work toward the extinction of some species. That would be unique.
• My inlaws gave me a gift card to Best Buy. I used it to buy a replacement cord for the Wii which Luna ate shortly after we got her and which caused no end of Rock Band II and related Wii issues the night of the party. And I bought a Wii game called Mad World which is definitely something Eryn is not allowed near because there's constant swearing and smack talk, profanity laden theme music, and violent death by chainsaw, street sign, and spikes.
• My parents gave me a gift card to Surdyk's. We tried to get over there after our anniversary dinner, but failed. Soon, however, I'll have another two bottles of scotch I won't be able to drink because I'm not managing to even bike five hours, let alone any multiples of five, which is my new rule around drinking scotch. They also bought me a cool coffee table book about beer.
• Eryn and Pooteewheet bought me some Marvin the Martian collectibles, one made of porcelin and gold that someday I can sell to Cash 4 Gold if I lose my job, and one made out of metal. They're on display in the Marvin cookie jar and bank display case.
• Kyle bought me scotch. It's subject to the five hour rule, so I have yet to try it. But it's the first bottle I'll tackle once I've biked enough. Sank, who wants the game in the next bullet, is a scotch drinker, so I may have to bike five hours before I go to drop off the game.
• Mean Mr. Mustard and family gave me back the game I gave him for his birthday last year claiming it's just not his thing. Fortunately, Sank wants it and I was able to send Mr. Mustard a nice write up from BoardGameGeek where a guy mentioned his father smiled for the first time since his partner died when he got his copy of the Menorah game. I went with a completely different path for his gift this year based on that feedback, so if he doesn't like this birthday present (currently on back order) he has no one to blame but himself. Really - it's almost like I had nothing to do with it. He and his family did get me a Penzy's Hot Chocolate set as well, part of which is almost gone.
• She Says sent me a picture of her father and a friend or uncle with their bicycles. Black and white. Pooteewheet framed it for me and it's hanging from a prominent spot in our living room.

Thank you to everyone!

Funny AND Stupid

Before we went to The Enchanted Toy Shop at the St. Paul Ballet today, I was bored and looking for stupid videos. Isn't that how everyone spends part of their Sunday afternoon? I was very pleased to find Esquire.com's 23 stupidest videos.

My favorites are Jesus Loves the Little, Stereotyped, Racist Puppet Children. I think it should be offensive to pretty much everyone I know, including the white people who thought it was a good idea.


And Jesus Died for Your Donuts, which is wrong on so many levels:

Flaming Ninja Nunchucks

This is for my nephew Ollie, who asked for flaming ninja nunchucks for his seventh birthday, and who got a mensa-approved board game and some Pokemon cards from me (and the rest of my family) instead. I have/had the nunchucks, I just didn't give them to you because they were so damn cool I wanted to keep them for myself.

Scarf

I've had this scarf since somewhere around 1984. I refuse to part with it, despite it looking like a scarf from the '80's, because it's just so damn warm compared to the new breed of thin scarves. So I was very surprised when I walked into soccer and saw a coworker who has a kid in Eryn's soccer class wearing the exact same scarf! My first suspicion was that he had pilfered mine from the corporate lost-and-found (although they don't ever have anything I've lost. they certainly don't have my ten-year old Caribou mug with the fingerprint in it because it was hand crafted), but having cleaned out the hat/scarf/mitten box only the day before, I knew with relative certainty (e.g. I knew it's absolute position, but it could have tricked me by having an unknown velocity) where the doppleganger I owned resided. I asked Jack about it and it was like watching me speak, "It's so old and I've had it so long, but it's so warm I refuse to get rid of it." If anyone ever asks me to part with my lovely snowflake monstrosity, I now have a story I can tell them until they roll their eyes and leave me and my scarf alone.

Tongue Thrust Graduation

Eryn officially graduated from tongue thrust class today. She's been attending to make sure her tongue stays in the right place so she's not worsening the gap between her two front teeth (it's probably inherited), and in the months since she's started the gap has significantly decreased. It's been incredibly difficult for her, because it involves watching her tongue placement and chewing during meals, holding little rubber bands in her mouth for up to an hour at a time (even during tubing), and all sorts of other exercises. Grandma Ellen can attest to how hard it is to stay on the schedule, as she and Eryn had a difficult time remembering during RAGBRAI. And big kudos to my wife who kept Eryn on target for so many months.

Chu Chi Face

Just a reminder for anyone who hasn't seen Chitty Chitty Bang Bang lately.... We were discussing Truly Scrumptious before the movie and Eryn laughed at her name. I mentioned she'd probably really enjoy James Bond movies when she got older if she thought Truly was funny. Then the opening credits reminded me that Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was written by Ian Fleming. Truly Scrumptious is a cousin of Pussy Galore (they both make at least one top ten least of film characters with the most suggestive names).

Chu-Chi Face

You're My Little Chu-Chi Face
my Coo-Chi, Coo-Chi, Woo-Chi Little Chu-Chi Face
every Time I Look At You I Sigh
and You're My Little Teddy Bear
my Lovey Lovey Dovey Little Teddy Bear
you're The Apfel Strudel Of Mine Eye
your Chu-Chi Woo-Chi Nose
your Chu-Chi Woo-Chi Eyes
they Set My Heart A Flutter
your Ooo-Chi Coo-Chi Ways
your Ooo-Chi Coo-Chi Gaze
wilts Me Down Like Meltings Butter
you're My Little Chu-Chi Face And You're My Teddy Bear
together We're A Chu-Chi Woo-Chi, Ooo-Chi Coo-Chi Pair
whatever You May Ask Becomes My Happy Task
i Only Live To Serve You
i Never Will Divine What Magic Made You Mine
i Only Know I Don't Deserve You
you're My Little Chu-Chi Face
and You're My Teddy Bear
together We're A Chu-Chi Woo-Chi, Ooo-Chi Coo-Chi
chu-Chi, Woo-Chi, Ooo-Chi, Coo-Chi Pair
chu-Chi
woo-Chi
ooo-Chi
coo-Chi Pair

Heartland

Pooteewheet and I went to El Burrito Mercado for lunch, and then out to dinner at Heartland for our sixteenth anniversary, followed by the 2009 British Television Advertising Awards at the Walker, courtesy of some tickets I won from work (they're sponsoring the show). They're obviously sponsoring it for the R-folks, because that was a younger, hipper, crowd than I'm used to seeing at my place of employment.

Dinner at Heartland was positively delicious. If you don't include the two beers, courtesy appetizer (duck liver I believe), fancy breads (pepper rye and some sort of darker cherry), or sweet champagne (which they gave us for asking us to move to a smaller table as a group from Coherence was showing up), I ate the following, plus bits from Pooteewheet's wild acres farm free range chicken with organic broccoli, cranberry poultry glace and parsley root fondant, Wisconsin golden potato-leek cream soup with fried leeks, and Gateau marjolaine with red currant coulis, Aquavit sabayon and black current curd):

• Singerhouse Farm rabbit loin with cranberry-bacon compote, pain de mie toast and apple cider-shallot sauce
• Money Creek Ranch wild boar roast with caramelized onion potato purée and tart cherry glace de viande
• Autumn fruit galette with sorghum syrup gelato, a honey oat Florentine tuile and autumn fruit caramel

I think that means I ate duck, chicken, boar, rabbit and pig today. I'd be a horrible vegetarian, despite the variety of plants mixed into all of those dishes.

Happy Anniversary, Pooteewheet!

Just Desserts

I have been lax in putting new bulbs in the garage door opener. It's really my job, because I'm tallest. But I've been letting everyone walk to the house door in the dark and turn the full bank of overhead lights on to see.

So two days ago I got out of my car, walked around the back, and slammed into the passenger side mirror so hard I'm surprised I didn't rip it off the car. I didn't think much of it, but yesterday I was running around the building from admin to admin trying to find an overhead projector, and my leg kept cramping up, forcing me to come to a full stop before resuming my travels. Today I realized that my leg still hurt and that it's a very deep bruise on my left thigh where I ran into the car mirror.

Then this evening both of the outside garage lights burnt out. Last time that happened I ran into my inlaws' parked car. It's probably well past time to make the rounds before something mortal happens.

Fetishicist

I went to look up how to spell fetishist in Google and misspelled it. What came up was one of my own blog posts. And only one. That was the sole result of the search. I am almost responsible for a Googlewhack, although I don't think poor spelling counts if you're striving to be official. I believe the word has to be accurate.

But, if an international association of fetishcists' is ever created, or perhaps the international association of fetishists with poor spelling, I'm on the front lines, poised to make some real money.

Sci Fi - Top 20 of the Decade

Fimoculous linked to this list of the top 20 sci fi books of the decade, over at io9. They're on crack. There's no Scalzi. There's no Reynolds. There's a pile of fantasy mixed into the sci fi. There's no Gaiman. And the choices below...I haven't read all of them, but most of the ones I have read I have arguments with as to their place on a list of great books between 2000 and 2010.

The Execution Channel was thoroughly unmemorable and somewhat boring. I had to go back and look, but discovered I referred to it as "so-so". Glasshouse might be good, I don't know, but nothing I've read by Stross qualifies him as a writer of the decade, so I suspect this entry is no different. I do credit him with getting me to count binary on my fingers in his sexy fembot book. Iain Banks definitely writes memorable books, but I'd argue Look to Windward isn't his best work. I didn't finish Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. I got bored. Perdido Street Station I might agree with (I read it while at my sister's wedding in Australia), although I liked The Scar better. Vernor is a good writer, and I intend to read Rainbow's End. I don't believe the hype around The Time Traveler's Wife. Primarily because I wrote a similar story back in 2001 and if I can write it, it can't be that good. Pattern Recognition by Gibson was in no way ground breaking and common sense says there are better books. And World War Z. Really? I understand there's some sort of I want to have Brooks' zombie baby mania underway, and that he's personally responsible for the zombie renaissance, or so he'd have us believe, but there are plenty of short stories about zombies that are better written than World War Z.

• Acacia: the War with the Mein by David Anthony Durham
• Air, or Have Not Have by Geoff Ryman
• The Alchemy of Stone, by Ekaterina Sedia
• The Baroque Cycle, by Neal Stephenson
• Confessions of Max Tivoli, by Andrew Sean Greer
• Down And Out In the Magic Kingdom, by Cory Doctorow
• The Execution Channel, by Ken MacLeod
• Glasshouse, by Charles Stross (Ace)
• Harry Potter Series, by JK Rowling (Bloomsbury)
• Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke (Bloomsbury)
• Look to Windward, by Iain M. Banks (Orbit)
• The Mount, by Carol Emshwiller
• Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood
• Pattern Recognition, by William Gibson
• Perdido Street Station, by China Miéville
• Rainbows End, by Vernor Vinge
• Stories of Your Life And Others, by Ted Chiang (Orb)
• Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger
• Tooth and Claw, by Jo Walton
• World War Z, by Max Brooks

Scion

To the owner of the Scion at work. If I don't know you, I hate you. If I do know you, I don't hate you, but I am seriously perturbed by your actions, and you owe me some serious sucking up in the form of lots of beer or scotch before I'm willing to be friends with you again. Fortunately, I don't think I know anyone with a Scion, so we can assume I hate you with a relative level of purity.

I know it's cold outside. Very cold. It's Minnesota after all. And I know that we don't have a ramp for reasons only corporate and the City of Eagan really understand. That means if you get in late, you do indeed have to walk a considerable distance in subzero temperatures, or at least wait for the moderately heated corporate bus. That in no way excuses deciding that these factors absolve you when you stuff your Scion between my car and the big pickup that came after me and didn't bother to park in line with the car opposite. It makes you an even bigger ass when you leave yourself just enough room to squeeze out of your driver side door and put your passenger side door so close to my car that it's difficult to tell where your Scion ends and my SL2 begins. My six year old daughter wouldn't have fit in the crack available to me to enter my car (and my backpack didn't), although I suspect you could have fit another POS Scion in that limited space, or at least you would have tried had you arrived after the first Scion.

Fortunately, despite my advanced age, I'm still somewhat limber, I don't have to sit down to tie my shoes yet, and the guy on the other side of me, not to mention me, weren't such a*holes as to create a situation where I was parked in on both sides. I was able to unload my bags and crawl over the stick shift into my seat without breaking any brittle pieces on my car or myself. Do you know there are people who have worked at our company as long as I've been alive? I suspect they might not be so limber. But then, you probably knew it wasn't one of them. You seem so considerate. You were probably paying so much attention, rather than being self-involved and concerned with your own need for a hot cup of coffee at Caribou as soon as humanly possible.

Dick. It's apropos your car could be construed to mean son of a bitch or a graft jutting off the main trunk of human decency. Learn how to f*ing park and, more importantly, learn to be a considerate human being.

Favorite Quote of the Day

I get it, elegance. That's why people come to Yakov's Nubian Bling Explosion.

- 30 Rock, Dealbreakers Talk Show #0001

Snow Patrol

I don't get it. Why is Klund so obsessed with Snow Patrol. They're not that good. They look like the developer who sits two cubes down from me.

I should point out that I'm not yet this good at either of the Snow Patrol songs I'm trying to learn, although at least I've got my guitar out and I'm strumming chords once again.

Bits and Pieces

A couple of bits and pieces from my last week...

Eryn and I had breakfast at Junior's in Eagan. The waiter told Eryn she was sitting in a seat that had just been vacated by someone famous and let her think about it for a second before telling her the star in questions was...Tony Fly! Apparently he wasn't familiar with Eryn's terror of all individuals who look like Stone Cold Steve Austin (that's a blow up of Tony Fly in 2005, not Steve Austin).

A woman in my neighborhood has a vanity plate that reads "JAMGRL". That's not appropriate.

We "organizationally aligned" at work this week and my team grew about eight-fold. We're supposed to be "coding across the stack" (I think both of those phrases probably deserve quotes), and thus refer to the new groups as verticals. One of my leads decided to create a new email group in the format AT_VERTICAL_LASTNAME. He jokingly suggested I ask to have it standardized across all the managers, knowing full well that this would result in one manager having the email group AT_VERTICAL_DICK.

While I was in the coffee line this morning, I noticed a young, pneumatic, woman in a draped top waiting for her coffee at the secondary Caribou counter. While she had a few minutes, she was trying to attach her corporate badge to her top where the drape was. This was an enjoyable two minutes as she would clip it on, it would drag her top down a few inches, she'd snatch it off, adjust, try a new spot, have her top sink in a new place, repeat, repeat, repeat.

This morning, mid-shave, I went to tell Luna (the dog) "down" while she was bugging Eryn at the couch. As I stepped over the baby gate to keep her out of the computer room and cat's bathroom, I tripped and fell down. I thought Luna was rushing over to ensure I was ok, but instead she immediately started licking the shaving cream off the blade of my safety razor.

Someone at work accidentally sent an email to a group that was comprised of about 500+ coworkers. There was the usual flurry of "why am I getting this", "my email is filling up" and "don't send this to everyone!" replies to all, followed by some enjoyably snarky "I concur", "I concur too" and "I should have concurred too!" After it was over for about 30 minutes, a straggler sent yet another email complaining that people were filling up his box by replying to all. The very last email was an exact replica of that email. I think the mockery was probably lost of the second to last sender. NO MOCKIES!

I was behind two people at work, they seemed to be a couple despite a lack of rings, who spent several minutes discussing which one of them had the cutest laugh. Really? I wanted to yell, "I do!" and then laugh like an idiot, but I think I would have been violating the safe and respectful workplace rules.

Why I've Been Away for a Week

I found religion. Don't believe me? See. Bet you didn't know the arms on the outside crosses, flanking the true cross, went up last. That was revealed to me in my revelation. It's how you can tell it's authentic, because that wasn't revealed to anyone else. You can start tithing immediately.

B is for Beer

B is for Beer by Tom Robbins states on the cover "A Children's Book for Grown-ups" on the left and "A Grown-up Book for Children" on the right. A quick summary of this book, which takes about an hour to read, is, "Six year old girl gets drunk on a beer, throws up, and has visions of The Beer Fairy who takes her on a tour of the history of beer, the production of beer, and the esoteric, new-agish magic that is beer drinking." It was thoroughly amusing, although it needed another 120 pages to get the full Robbins feel to it and pull in a bit more humor and a bit more fact. There's plenty of beer humor out there that could stand an interpretation under Robbin's pen (see 14 fun facts about beer which includes, 'It was the accepted practice in Babylon 4,000 years ago that for a month after the wedding, the bride's father would supply his son-in law with all the mead he could drink. Mead is a honey beer, and because their calendar was lunar based, this period was called the "honey month", or what we know today as the "honeymoon"').

An extra tidbit, B is for Beer did provide me some fodder for an interesting discussion in my row at work today about the origins of beer being in Egypt or Iran/Mesopotamia. Robbins states beer really started in Egypt and that anything that came prior to that was really just muck, not craftsmanship.

And I can't find any online references to Vinegar Eels living in the sides of beer steins, but there is a reference to nematodes that live only in the mats upon which Germans set their beer.

The Battle of the Red Hot Pepper Weenies

On the way out of the book sale at Eryn's school, after we'd allowed her to buy a few books of her choice, I grabbed this book with the stipulation that it was mine to read to her. After all, how could I possibly pass up a book with a large wiener on the cover with two peppers in its holsters. Phallic! I wasn't sure what to expect, so it was something of a treat to find dozens of, if not particularly well written, somewhat creepy for a kid horror stories. The title story, "The Battle of the Red Hot Pepper Weenies" wasn't a horror story, and Eryn was disappointed that it didn't feature giant anthropomorphic [my word, not hers] weenies, but most of the others were, if not scary, at least disturbing. I think Eryn's favorites were:

"All the Rage", about a kid who swallows his rage (ala the advice given to Lisa on The Simpsons).

"Frankendance", about a dad who makes his daughter a date.

"Just Like Me", your stock, scary doll story.

"Braces", you don't want them, they'll steal your essence.

"Reel", with Perceptovision where you feel everything that happens in a movie. We talked about what it would feel like if you were on the other end of a crucio spell from Harry Potter.

"Smart Little Suckers", e.g. Flowers for Algernon. If you read the author notes, you find out he created an Atari 2600 game without enough quality assurance called "The Challenge of Nexar." Gamespot says if I enjoy that game I might also enjoy E.T., which has been referred to on G4 before as one of the worst games ever made.

"Put on Your Happy Face". Clowns are creepy, particularly if you want to be one.

We're moving on to one of Lubar's other Weenie collections next.