Horny Horsies and Pokey Ponies

Hey, you guys remember how I said that we bought a new car, a little 98 Honda Civic that got great gas mileage and was a pretty little black beast to boot?

I totalled it!

Yep, you read that right. I wasn't even doing anything dumb at the time. (Not that I do anyway: ask anyone who knows me, I drive like an old lady.) On my way to work last night, on a lonely stretch of county road, I was tooling along, even doing the damned speed limit fer crissakes, when suddenly there is a dog standing-- standing!-- in the middle of the lane. Well, I slammed on the brakes and the car drifted to the right, off the road and BANG! into an orange tree, conveniently placed so that I wouldn't have plowed harmlessly into a field.

Fortunately, I wasn't hurt. I was wearing my seatbelt and the airbags deployed. At least I don't think I was hurt. I may be drifting, Twilight-Zone-like, through purgatory without realizing it just yet (a notion reinforced by the fact that I watched The Gregory Horror Show this morning: damn, but they must have some really good weed in Japan!). But the good news is, the dog got away unscathed. Yay.

We didn't even have the @#$%*&ing thing six weeks. Ah, well, at least the insurance will cover it. And then immediately spike my premiums.

Now if you'll excuse me, there's a serious-looking man soliloquizing about me in the corner of the room.

Sweet holy jeebus! Has it really been almost four months since my last entry? Man, do I suck at this whole keeping-in-touch-with-the-outside-world thing, or what?

So what has been happening lately with the Tan Man? Well, not a whole helluvalot. Some highlights:

I had to turn in the Tanmobile since they were going to start having 24 hour security at my workplace, and so needed the security vehicle to reside there instead of my driveway. So that meant I would have no way to effectively get to work. That was bad.

So my boss gave me a $2000 bonus to use as a down-payment on a car, and a raise to cover the payments and gas. That was good.

We bought a cute little black used Honda Civic EX. I would post pics for you except it's all dusty right now and I don't want to be like the people who post what they think are sexy photos but have dirty laundry and toddler's toys in the background.

In May, darklilith69 and I went to Detroit with the Hobb's Grove posse to Hauntcon, the annual professional haunter's convention. We talked to a lot of friends and otherwise weird folks who also love the whole Hallowe'en thing, learned a few things, got to see Erebus, which, speaking as someone who has been a professional haunter for over a decade, was probably the best Haunt I've ever seen, and Raven's Grin Inn, which was hokey and lame and perfect, one of the funnest Haunts I've been to. A good time was had by all.

That trip has had me toying with the idea of creating a new Haunted Attraction here in the Fresno area as a sort of sister attraction to Hobb's Grove. I have this crazy idea of buying a 200ft x 60ft steel building and filling it full of Hallowe'eny goodness. Mmmm. Hallowe'eny goodness...

I've also been really into lolcats, since I am a meme whore like everyone else on teh intarwebs. And since I am such a whore, and since I also read Wil Wheaton's Blog, I had to do a few loltreks to get them out of my system.



So take that! I will post more of these in my blog unless I receive ONE MILLION LINDEN DOLLARS!

I'm going to try to keep up with this beast a little better in the future. And judging be my past record, I'm sure you know you can take that to the bank, and get a bag full of dye packs for your trouble.

Hey, chrissawyer, have you seen this yet?

Dan Radcliff (More like "Dayum" Radcliff!) NSFW

Our little Harry's all grown up. And how!

Working with a tablet definitely takes some getting used to, but I am beginning to see why so many artists swear by them.

( Semi-horsey nudity, but still safe for work. )

To celebrate the tenth anniversary of Dr. Sagan's ultimate exploration of entropy, I thought I would share a tip for all you would-be impressionists to improve your Carl Sagan.

Like George Carlin's Ed Sullivan impression, it's not so much the voice, but what you say. Forget the "Billions and billions" thing, it's been done to death. The key to a truly memorable Carl Sagan is the Comparison.

Remember how he would try to make these incomprehensibly vast sizes and distances a little more comprehensible, and somehow would just make them incomprehensible on a smaller scale? That's how you do a good Carl Sagan. For example:

"Imagine, if you will, that you could compress the Earth into the size of a basketball. Our sun, then, would be the size of a ten-story building, and would be twenty-one miles away."

You can pull the numbers out of air, as accuracy doesn't really matter so much as the sense of scale. This will help catapult your Carl Sagan impression from mediocre to adequate in no time!

Heya, guys! Sorry I haven't been posting a lot, I'm sure just scads of you have missed me sorely, clicking the "Friends" link with eager anticipation in the hopes that my sterling wisdom would be there to enrich your life with Unicorny goodness, and I can only imagine the crushing disappointment when you realized that no, Tanamin hasn't posted again. I know, it's something that can ruin your entire day.

Or not.

Anyway, I'm updating from a little internet cafe in Reedley, California on my brand new laptop! Yep, just waiting on the Tanmobile to be serviced, sipping a strawberry creme latte and munching a bagel, typing away on my little Gateway and pretending I'm J. K. Rowling. It's all very twenty-first century, and I'm just happy to be a part of it.

So I hear you asking yourself, "Self," you ask, "just what has Tanamin been up to that he's too damned busy to grace us with his LJ presence?" Well, I'm glad you asked. For the last week, I have been spending my evenings at Hobb's Grove working Christmas at the Grove. It's a traditional Christmas experience with light shows, sleigh rides (Okay, they're really hay rides, but you get the idea), carolers, costumed characters, hot chocolate, campfires, the works. I highly recommend it to anyone in the Central California area, it's a lot of fun. And even though it's Hobb's Grove, it's not scary at all. Just good family fun.

We have a number of folks who normally scare people at the Grove acting as charming, delightful Christmassy characters like Santa and Mrs. Claus, Raggedy Anne (played delightfully by my sweety, the lovely and talented darklilith69, giggly voice and all. She even gives out Jelly Belly candy canes: Mmmm... Buttered popcorn flavor...), Bruno the Bear (played by our roomy, the lovely and talented Ben), Solomon the Elf King, Amethyst the Sugarplum Fairy, Frosty the Snowman, and Ebenezer Scrooge. Which is where I come in: I play Fred, Scrooge's nephew. Scrooge is played by the lovely and talented glyndagoodwytch, aka My Hero Mitch from several entries back. He totally rocks as Scrooge, with grouchy and witty comments on anything and everything he sees during the event. He really is a natural for that character, and I hope he continues to play Scrooge for years to come. He and I have a good time and entertain the crowd by bouncing lines from the book off of one another. Then, because I am so much less talented than Mitch, I usually just make faces at him behind his back. I'm a comic genius, you know.

But a good time is had by all, and my evenings are shot to hell in one fell swoop. We do it because we simply adore the owner (and that is not sarcasm) and want to help her and her endeavor succeed in any way we can, whether that endeavor may be a Hallowe'en haunt or a Christmas attraction.

(And before you ask, yes, I am a Pagan, but there are worse people of whom to celebrate their birth than the J-man, and besides, anything that makes people not behave like their normal assholish selves, even for a single day, I'm all about, baby!)

Got to go, I hear an iced cappuccino calling me. I feel so trendy.

p.s. Megan! Why aren't you out here with us?

... in reading a furry novel I am writing? It's about half finished, and it's already about 130,000 words.

And it's not so much a novel, and a group of episodic chapters, kind of along the lines of Ted and Eileen Blasingame's Blue Horizon.

It's a science fiction story about a young lion who has trained his entire life to fight in the Great Tournament, a contest between three governments wherein diplomatic matters are decided through a tournament of unarmed combat. It's full of social and political intrigue (sort of), romance and action. But mostly it's kind of soap-opera-ey (Operesque? Operoid?) in that I tried to focus more on interpersonal relationships because I'm bent that way.

If anyone would like to read what I have so far, I can post the chapters in installments.

I just saw the latest X-Men movie, “The Last Stand”. And I have to say, I have mixed feelings about it.

( Spoilers Behind the Cut, in case you haven’t seen it yet. )

In other news, cats don’t like marshmallows. Just so you know.

Ladies and Gentleman, I give you...

Whores of Warcraft (Utterly NSFW!)

Oh, and you can bet I'm subscribing to this site, no matter how bad they are.

Dear Santa... Dear Santa, This year I've been busy! In August I had a shoot-out with rival gang lords on the 5 near LA (-76 points). In October I committed genocide... Sorry about that, longtail (-5000 points). Last Sunday I pushed gabrielhorse in the mud (-17 points). In May I broke chrissawyer's X-Box (-12 points). In September I turned calydor in for littering (3 points). Overall, I've been naughty (-5102 points). For Christmas I deserve a spanking! Sincerely, tanamin

Write your letter to Santa! Enter your LJ username:

Maybe the Genocide thing was over the top, but dammit, those Amish have had it coming for a while.

So, anyone want to volunteer to give me that spanking?

I got the pictures from the Monster's Ball last Tuesday, as promised, so you can all see my handsome visage.

( Tan joins the Legions of the Fun-dead. )

I know, it's hard to be humble, but I try.

We brought darklilith69 from the horse piddle this morning, and she's doing fine. We just helped her have a nice shower, which she so desperately wanted, and now she's parked at her desk, hopefully to stay there for a while as her body recovers.

Apparently it was just the flu, but it dehydrated her so quickly that the best thing we could have done was put her in the horse piddle and get her on IV fluids for a couple of days while the illness ran its course.

It's good to have her home.

I recently found myself sitting and talking with two female friends, M and C, and we were talking about health stuff.

( Warning: conversation about girl things. )

Does anyone else find it a little bit disconcerting that I was able to not only just slip into a conversation like this, but actually know enough about the subject to contribute cogently? The whole situation was rather surreal.

( More . talk. )

I'm Tanamin Wingate, and I endorse this message.

The Monster's Ball at Hobb's Grove is a charity event, the first, we hope, of many to benefit Valley Children's Hospital and Nocturnum, our haunter's club / acting troupe, of which I am vice president. We came up with the idea of a Hallowe'en party at the Grove as a fund-raiser for Nocturnum a couple of years ago but never got a chance to knuckle down and do it. Then when the step-son of the owner of the Grove suffered a stroke (He was only sixteen. Go figure.), he was so wonderfully cared for by Valley Children's Hospital that we decided it might be nice to also give a little back to the Hospital.

( What it is )

( Hanging out )

( The Face )

( Bloody paperwork )

( Where did everybody go? )

( Mitch is my hero! )

( It's not easy being Green )

( Denouement )

More later.

As I write this, my sweetheart Kishma, known to most of you as darklilith69, is in the hospital after becoming severely ill. When last we called the hospital, she was doing much better, and would likely be coming home in the morning.

( Chamber of Chills )

( Kishma begins to feel a mite poorly. )

( 911: What is your emergency? )

Just wow.

Sick and sniffly, sore throat, tired and mildly feverish; that's me. It happens every year. We all get sick about the second week or so and just sort of doggedly finish the run out of sheer cussedness. I didn't get a flu shot this year, and it's a good thing I didn't, otherwise I'd have all of this crap on top of the flu. And I saved $25, so score!

In our last episode I reported to you of the various woes that we, the lovely and talented darklilith69 and myself, have been experiencing in the course of running the Haunted House at Hobb's Grove. Well, many of those problems have been addressed and resolved, and now the house is running pretty damn smoothly, all things considered.

(  Problem one solved. )

( Problem two solved. )

(  Haunted House ver. 2.0 )

( So we rewired it! )

All in all, everyone is much happier with the house.

(  The Patron from Hell. Caution: It's a long one. )

Four more days to go, and then on Monday Hobb's Grove takes a road trip to Bakersfield to visit Chamber of Chills, a haunt run by Dave, a scholar and a gentleman that we had met several times at various Haunt Conventions but had never had a chance to actually visit his haunt.

Then the next night, Hallowe'en night, is the Monster's Ball, a charity event that Hobb's is hosting! If you're in the Central California area, come on out! Pizza, a buffet, cash bar, a band, a DJ, costume contests, and the House opening for an hour for the partygoers. What more could you want for a Hallowe'en party?

Wait, don't answer that.

( Well, it's been a very hectic week again. Still. Something. )

( The PITA Actor of the Year Award goes to... )

( The Friday Night Flu )

( Men in Black )

Gotta go now and get some rest before I fall asleep at the keyboaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

World without end, Amen.

Got this one from darkhorseman

I'll put it behind a cut to preserve your sanity.

( More than you ever wanted to know about the Tan-Man )