Happy Hallowe'en! (or Samhain)

Did you get a mask? Nancy Grace did...

Oh wait. She ALWAYS looks like that.

This woman creeps me out. Seriously. I mean I-bet-she-has-a-cauldron-in-her-basement- filled-with-small-mammals creep me out. I hereby bestow upon her pride of place as the poster child for this holiday. Congrats, Nance!

I...AM...IN...LOVE...!!!

Super Fly Monkey is the Hottest Gift / Toy on the market! This flying monkey can soar as high as feet 50 in the air and screams as he flies! Watch the video to see this sling-shot super-fly-monkey in action!

I showed the video to The Kitten. Do you think it took more than 10 minutes for us to have a four-pack of these things being shipped to the office?! I cannot WAIT for them to show up. My life will be grossly incomplete until then.

Tick...tick...tick...

Not here yet.

Maybe we should have gotten the expedited shipping...

Today is a great news day

On Saturday, the opening day of Fright Fest at Six Flags Great America, guests will be given a chance to eat a cockroach on the Mission Stage in Southwest Territory. Successful eaters will be given four Fast Lane passes, which allow park guests to enter at the front of the line on thrill rides.

I am a rollercoaster fanatic. Unfortunately, so are a lot of other people. The best rides are almost always heavily populated and waiting for over an hour to go on a 90-second ride is commonplace. What would I do to by-pass all those "You are 90 minutes away from the ride at this point signs"?

First, I'd need some questions answered:

(1) Will these Fast Lane passes permit me to go to the front of the line multiple times or is it a one-shot deal per ride?

(2) Will the Madagascar hissing roach be alive or dead when it goes into my mouth? In either case, I would require that it be made to hiss at some point prior to ingestion.

(3) Is there a limit on how many people can compete in these contests? At some point, "going to the head of the line" will become a long wait in itself...and, I imagine, would really piss off the non-roach-eating patrons.

(4) Will I be provided a security detail to protect me from the crazed PETA protestors who think that eating roaches is "barbaric"? [This is one of the reasons I don't endorse PETA...any group that recognizes roaches as a class of animal to be protected is a little too zealous for me]

(5) Is there a secret cash prize that goes to the person who eats the biggest or most?

Provided I like the answers to these questions, I...oh, who am I kidding. I would never (possibly barring attempted survival after a nuclear war) put a roach (or any other insect} in my mouth. Eeeeewwwww!!! It's a ROACH for heaven's sake! They are made to consume waste. I don't even want to KNOW where that thing has been, never mind ingesting all those unnecessary germs and bacteriums it's carrying around!

But I bet I could get some guy to do it to try and impress me. And I would get the benefit of the free "You're cooler than hell" tix.

Note to self: Start looking for roach-eating sucker.

Also in today's news:

"When It Comes to Orgasm, Women Work Harder" in which former Playmate of the Year, Jenny McCarthy and sex therapist (on the down low, she's really a urologist), Laura Berman who is now hosting Showtime's new reality series, "Sexual Healing." (I hope Marvin Gaye is getting some sort of kickback for this), chat it up about...well, women achieving The Big O.

On a related note is "Spinal Device Yields Surprise Orgasm". (I'm going to let you use your imagination for the details on that one.)

And then there are the ABC News videos: "High heels to blame for a model spill on the catwalk in Paris" (3" heels = bad), "Bear gets drunk from eating too many fermented apples" (I wonder how a bear deals with a hangover), and "Woman is allegedly kidnapped by her parents to stop her from getting married" (she's pressing charges because her parents are obviously nuts).

For some reason, the spinal device story is not on videotape. I don't understand why not.

But the best story is actually the most serious one. "The Truth Behind Women's Brains." It's got some science-y stuff in it, shows pics of PET scans and sounds authoratative. It also has a quote that reinforces what we women already knew, "...the male amygdala, which also controls sexual thought, is twice as large as that of females. Fueled by testosterone, it triggers the typical teenage male brain to think about sex every 52 seconds [n.b., grown-up boys think about sex every 56 seconds], compared to a few times a day for teen girls."

I'm still trying to figure out how men get anything done if they're thinking about sex all the time. I have yet to meet one who could adequately explain this phenomenom to me.

But it works out to my benefit when I want to find someone who is willing to eat a roach for me, so I'm all for it.

Go testosterone!

Sometimes it isn't all about Me

I know, I find it difficult to believe as well. After all, I'm the most important person to me, so why shouldn't my life focus on me? And more importantly, why shouldn't everyone else's life focus on me? I guess this is one of those "pronoun trouble" questions Daffy and Bugs eternally debate about:

Elmer: Should I shoot him now or wait 'til I get home?
Daffy: Shoot him now! Shoot him now!
Bugs: You be quiet, he doesn't have to shoot you now.
Daffy: Well, I say he DOES have to shoot me now...so shoot me now!
[BANG]
Daffy: Let's try that again.
Bugs: Okay.
Daffy: Shoot him now, shoot him now.
Bugs: You be quiet, he doesn't have to shoot you now.
Daffy: AH HA! Pronoun trouble. It's not, "He doesn't have to shoot YOU now, it's he doesn't have to shoot ME now." But I say he does have to shoot me now! So shoot me now!
[BANG]

The lesson I take away from this is that I will end up being shot by a cartoon hunter for my vanity. So I've taken the lesson to heart and admit that sometimes it isn't all about Me.

(Admitting you have a problem is the first step.)

But back to the question at hand...

I got to work a little early this morning, so I took advantage of the few minutes of solitude and quiet to read the headlines of the NY Times online.

Hmmm...what have we got here? "Early Warning on Foley Cited by Former Aide." Boring. "City Considers Plan to Let Outsiders Run Schools." That's ridiculous. This outsourcing nonsense is really getting out of hand. Note to Self: read that article later. Ooh...what's this?! "Dead Bachelors in Remote China Still Find Wives." *

SHUT UP!!!

This is an A-number 1 primo click-thru bit of tastiness!

What we have here is a...quaint...tradition known as tradition known as "minghun" or "afterlife marriage." The people who spent years in school learning things from books that they should have learned out in the field speculate that the practice is rooted in the Chinese tradition of ancestor worship, which holds that people continue to exist after death and that the living are obligated to tend to their wants. Apparently an unmarried life is incomplete, which is why there is concern that an unmarried son may be an unhappy one.

Generally, the "wife" will be the recently deceased daughter of some grieving family, and they can go for a tidy sum...typically costing more than US$1,200...almost four years of income for the average farmer.

As one of my favorite lines in "Psycho" proclaims, "Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy away an awful lot of unhappiness!"

"Charming" little sidenotes:

(1) in some villages, a son is eligible for such a spouse if he is 12 or older when he dies

(2) "For girls, it doesn't matter about their minds, whether they are an idiot or not. They are still wanted as brides. Dead or alive."

(3) "A woman does not belong to her parents. She must marry and have children of her own before she has a place among her husband's lineage. A woman who dies unmarried has no place in this world."

(4) Minghun doesn't require that the bride also be dead. Living brides are sometimes purchased as well. (No indication of how that plays if the "widow" wants to marry someone else at some point down the road.)I actually find the whole concept more fascinating than macabre, but there is a little bit of that creepy deepy thing going on. Of course, seeing as how I haven't dated anyone in over a year, maybe I shouldn't be critical. Minghun may be the way I get my next husband.I'll tell Mom to start saving up.

* (that link will probably only work for a few days, but I'd be happy to send you a PDF. E-mail me at melody1204@mymelody.com)