Tips for being safe on Halloween

1. Don't drink any nightshade tea.


2. Always wear a reinforced steel neck brace when travelling in the forest alone at night.


3. Have spaghetti for dinner ...and don't forget the garlic bread! (And don't brush your teeth after dinner!!!)


4. Don't assume that's a mask they're wearing...


5. Don't light any black-flame candles (unless you're not a vigin, then you can knock yourself out)


6. Check your pumpkin juice for veritaserum.


7. Don't use a metal detector to find your candy.


8. Don't go to any death-day parties. They're not worth your time and the food's rotten (literally)


9. Pumpkins aren't the only scary vegetables


10. Avoid anybody named Jack. (Just trust me on this one...)


11. When trick-or-treating, avoid dentists' houses (unless you really want a toothbrush).


12. Be wary of all creatures of the night (wolves, werewolves, bats, vampire bats, ninja squirrels, and, most of all, were-rabbits. Be especially careful of were-rabbits).


13. Avoid swampy areas.


14. Don't mess around with Jim (or tug on Superman's cape, or spit into the wind, or pull the mask off the ol' lone ranger...)


15. If you start to hear foreboding music in the background, don't run away -- that always makes everything ten times worse.


16. Wear night-vision goggles


17. As an extra precaution carry one or more of these items on your person:
    
    • wooden stake
    
    
    • gun loaded with silver bullets (note the plural bullets. carrying only one around is just plain dumb).
    
    
    • cross or crucifix
    
    
    • maglight
    
    
    • garlic (salt or powder would be preferable, as they're more practical in combat, but cloves will work well as defense mechanisms)
    
    
    • sword or sharp stick (these don't need to be reloaded)
    
    
    • any sort of silver charm
    
    
18. Keep a torch and/or pitchfork by your door, just in case.


19. If you find yourself in a situation where you're staring down the end of a wand, all I've got to say is that I sure hope you've got a really good insurance policy...


20. No matter what the TV news people say, dress yourself all in black. Sure, it decreases others' ability to see you, but that can be a good thing...


21. And when all else fails, you can always try calling the cops. Maybe they'll act out of character and actually believe you.

interesting...

i just took a test that is supposed to determine if you're more masuline or feminine. apparently i'm 65% masculine and 35% feminine: i'm sex-role transcendent: People who are sex-role transcendent have both low masculine and low feminine qualities indicating that gender is not a category that is critical to their sense of self. In other words, sex-role transcendent people develop and maintain their sense of self through roles that are not tied to gender stereotypes. also, i'm less of a sports fan than men and women on average, in between the two averages when it comes to decision making, really low on the scale as far as leadership goes (lower than both averages), and fairly high when it comes to aggression (higher than both averages). I'm just as analytical as men are on average, and slightly more of a principled individualist than men on average, both being higher than women on average. now, those were all considered traditionally masculine traits, when it comes to traditionally feminine traits i'm really really low on the cheerful scale, slighlt less low on the gentle scale, and the least low on the compassionate scale, but still pretty damn low. i'm more understanding than men on average, but less than women (closer, however, to the men's average). on the scale to determine how timid i am, i'm higher than both averages. the last bit is trusting: i'm higher than men, but lower than women, closer to the women's average and almost exactly in the middle of the scale.

interesting...

so cool!!

okay, so i'm writing this five page paper i have due this evening when i get bored and decide to slack off for a bit. since i've already checked my email and read my usual webcomics today, i decided to google myself. turns out there are alot more people out there with the last name yankus than i thought. after i did that, i decided to google my blog's name -- i never did find a link to my actual blog on the list, there were ALOT of other sites that had "everybody is somebody's weirdo" listed on them somewhere. you'd think i'd be higher up the list being that it's my blog's name and not just found in the text. whatever... anyway, after that i decided to google "animetion express" (in quotes for more accurate results) and there were alot of links. but the really cool thing is that they were all links TO MY SITE located in various directories! a few of them had a mini-screen shot of the main page of each website next to the link and sure enough, there's my splash page miniturized. now there's a good birthday present for me: my website is actually known! (because i know i didn't add my link to those directories!) oh so cool, this makes me so happy.


because friday's my only day off!

just because i felt like writing another one

hmm, yes, well the entire point of this post is because i felt like writing another person of the moment. my only problem was coming up with a person! then it hit me:


previous persons: Inaba of Urusei Yatsura - Ryuunosuke Fujinami of Urusei Yatsura
Kikyo of Inuyasha - Maggie Mui of R.O.D. the TV - Shinji Ikari of Neon Genesis Evangelion
Miaka Yuki of Fushigi Yuugi - Gene Starwind of Outlaw Star - Jakotsu of Inuyasha
Sousuke Sagara of Full Metal Panic

today's person of the moment is Lars from Girl Genius. Lars is my first person of the moment who isn't an anime character (he's just a regular comic book character :P ) We first meet Lars when he finds Agatha (the comic's heroine) hiding from Zeetha (who is set on training Agatha in the Skifander warrior tradition). Both Lars and Zeetha are members of Master Payne's Circus of Adventure, which is also a traveling Heterodyne show. In the Heterodyne plays, Lars plays the part of Bill Heterodyne, who, incidentally, is Agatha's father (thought Lars didn't know that at the time). Funnily enough, Agatha is cast as her own mother, Lucrezia Mongfish, and plays opposite of Lars. This is how Lars becomes interested in Agatha initially. He really falls for her after he finds out it was she who told the Jagermonsters Maxim, Dimo, and Ognian to go and save him from the weird monsters the circus was being attacked by. I've figured Lars to be somewhere between 23- and 27-years old, as he tells Agatha that ditched his cheesmaker's apprenticeship ten years ago to join the circus. I suppose he could be older, but I just can't see it. Lars's most interesting personality trait is that he's a big fat chicken. He completely loses it at any sign of danger, yet he somehow finds it in him to confront such dangers when he believes Agatha is in trouble. It's really quite sweet. Unfortunately, I have a feeling that Agatha is going to choose her other romantic interest, Gilgamesh Wulfenbach, not only because Agatha met Gil first (rule of shoujo (or any other plot involving romance for that matter) #3, see SUCCESS!!), but also because Lars isn't listed among the main characters on the Girl Genius website, and then there's the fact that Lars isn't a spark (a mad scientist or sorts) like Agatha or Gil. Poor Lars...

on a completely different note, i'll be twenty years old in six days, four hours, and twenty-nine minutes.

in the mood for something new

yea, the light blue just didn't seem appropriate for the current dark and sinister season (oh, i love halloween!). i guess making all those halloween cakes and cupcakes and using those halloween sprinkles on those caramel apples (those were fun to make ^_^) put me in the mood. and besides, i like dark colors way better any time of the year. originally i kinda wanted to put up an exclusively halloween layout, but i couldn't find a picture i liked, so i settled for somehing just plain dark. and this way i don't have to take it down when november rolls around.

this is going to prove difficult

yea, so i'm reading over everyone's critiques of my story and it's really weird how varied the responses are. i'm getting completely contradicting results! ..........come to think of it.... there's got to be some people who didn't give me reviews... what the hell?!

anyway... some examples of what i'm talking about is in the paragraph where rita is reading the old obituaries. one person said they liked it, another said it was too lengthy, confusing, and unnecessary. and some of the comments they put are rather dumb. no, seriously. i'm not being judgemental because they're criticizing my work, that's what they're supposed to do. there's this one guy who pretty much said i need to get rid of all my signature comical elements (the asides... much like this one... and several lines that were ment to be funny that he edited to be serious and plain). he also said i should change the dialogue in the scene where rita's mother is telling her to clean off the dining room table. obviously, this guy hasn't been around teenagers in a while. i originally wrote:

"Okay, Ree, now, I'm going to have my boss over for dinner tonight, so I'm going to need you to help me clean up the house."
"Mhmm..."
"Rita? Did you hear me?"
"Mhmm..."
Rita's mother poked her head out from inside the kitchen where she had been working, "RITA!"
"Huh? What?"

and here's what he changed:

"...help me clean up the house."
"Hhmmm?"
"Rita? Did you hear me?"
"WHAT?"
Rita's mother poked her head out from the kitchen where she had been working, "RITA!"
"Huh? What?"

kay, now the thing is rita isn't having trouble hearing her mother (and her mother isn't having trouble hearing her either, for that matter), they both can hear each other fine. rita's just not listening. everybody else picked up on that... plus there's the fact that it's completely redundant for her to yell "what" when her next response is "huh? what?" makes no sense, don't you think?

one person told me to change the kind of juice rita's drinking in one of the ending scenes. i have her drinking juicey juice. they said to change it to a specific juice (apple, grape, whatever). she's not drinking plain ol' apple juice or grape juice, dammit, she's drinking juicey juice! i also got the comment that rita sounded too young to be seventeen. "how could she not understand death? she sounds more like she's fourteen" okay, here's my problem with that: rita is a confidant individual. she demonstrates this when she shows no regard for authority and beats up her best friend in the middle of the school hallway. fourteen-year-olds aren't so sure of themselves and who they are, you know? there's that and the fact that they're giving seventeen-year-olds too much credit. just because you're seventeen doesn't mean you've dealt with death. you could probably live till your late 20s before anyone close to you dies (that you can remember anyway). living like that would make one extremely unaware of death and the repercussions that accompany it.

i also got some comments on giving more descriptions. i don't usually describe the characters' appearances or the setting much. why? i dunno, it just doesn't seem important. if they've got a feature that's important to the story, i'll introduce it. apparently no one likes to leave things up to the imagination anymore.

no one understood what "..." meant either..........

ah well, it was nice to get all that out. i needed a good rant. these people just aren't in touch with their inner child enough... a couple people said i'd be a good young adult fiction writer. i'm not going to argue the fact, because "young adult" fiction is come of my favorite stuff. it's more interesting than all the boring shit that happens in "adult" stories. i don't give a damn about some guy who's having an affair and meets his mistress in an apartment in the city where they get naked and scrub the tile floors together. seriously, what's the point there? a friend from my fiction class described my story as allowing for some great escapism. i can relate there. i like to read to escape, and i write what i want to read. reality is just so fucking boring.