Sunday, December 20, 2009

The Horror

It's a snow-covered world here in Harrisburg, much like so many other places in America today. Alexis and I trudged up to our friends' apartment a few blocks away and ended up snowed in all day, which was a lot of fun.

I am sorry to have missed another friends' party that had been scheduled for last night, but I had a nasty experience driving in the snow years ago. I was in Pittsburgh visiting my dear friends Marty and Kelly, and I was their ride home to State College. It started to snow lightly as we were leaving, and by the time we'd been on the road for forty minutes there were already several inches accumulated. It just got worse and worse. We rode along at 20 miles per hour and the car periodically would just lose control and spin out into any old direction. We slid off the road 5 times. It is only by the grace of God that we survived the harrowing trip. I can't recall many (if any) other points in my life where I felt so jarringly close to death. It was awful. The idea of driving yesterday kept sending me back to those horrible hours on the road in that snow. I will avoid it at all costs.

We stayed in and watched a couple of horror movies last night. First up was The Bad Seed. I've wanted to see that one for over ten years now, ever since I worked at the Video Center back in State College during my undergraduate days. Finally! My goodness, was it ever good. It was quite possibly one of the finest scary movies I have ever seen, and it wasn't really all that scary, just chilling. Next we watched Thankskilling, the story of a cursed killer turkey out for revenge. This one was just as bad as The Bad Seed was good. Bad horror films are, in their own strange way, a lot of fun. This one may have been the best of the worst. I've seen some awful, awful horror flicks in my day, and this one kind of takes the cake. It's so unbelievably terrible.

Saturday, December 12, 2009

Awkward Ball

Tonight Brianna, Jeremy, Alexis and I invented a ridiculous game. The sole purpose of the game is to create laughs. Here are the basic rules of "Awkward Ball."

All players stand in a closely clustered circle, a la hackeysack. The ball must be something awkward and misshapen. We used a stress squeezer thing. A kooshball might work nicely, too. Players can serve the ball normally with a soft toss or a volleyball-style bump. Once the ball is in play, however, players can only hit it with awkward parts of the body: elbows, stomach and butt.

We laughed a lot.

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Ray Bradbury Quote on Finding Inspiration

"Leap off the cliff and build your wings on the way down."

(thanks, AoM interview: So, You Want My Job: Ghostwriter)