Sighinide

Today I did some more thinking about the pregnancy issue.

I was wrong when I said that maybe it’s just something to do with some unresolved emotional issues. After reviewing some photos of Megan Fox and Leighton Meester when they were very pregnant, it’s obvious that pregnant women are just profoundly unsexual to me. To be frank, the pictures looked gross.

Not saying that pregnancy isn’t a wonderful thing, of course. It is. But it does kill my fantasies dead faster than literally anything else I can think of. And motherhood doesn’t do it for me, either. I won’t bother to list the obvious reasons why.

So, that settles that. Permanently.

The insight that I had in my previous essay was interesting, though. Maybe I am running away from something deep in myself when I completely excommunicate my old exes. I’ll bet so, and I’m glad I stumbled upon that thought. I’ll think about that further, on my own, as the years go by.

Just a few more random thoughts that I collected throughout the day.

For this, I’ll compare Anne to a younger girl, like Kira Kosarin (just to pick a name out of the hat).

Anne and I were sort of equals in our relationship. When things started between us, wayyyyy back then, she was obviously the important one. I was just an unemployed college grad with nothing to my name. I was a geek, a dork, a nobody. No girl, or anyone else for that matter, would give me a second thought back then.

And she was… Anne Hathaway, movie star. She was famous and rich and unbelievably talented and powerful. I mean, she starred in Disney movies! She knew how to sing! She was in magazines! She had websites devoted to her! She was my dream girl, an unattainable idol. I wanted her because she was someone I knew for sure I could never actually get.

But then… she fell into my lap. In all honesty, I never expected any of this. I trained myself through the years to communicate telepathically with people, but it was mostly something that I just did. I mean, most of the time I was doing my training I didn’t even realize what it was that I was actually doing. I was just doing what came natural to me. It was only later that I put the pieces together and realized how all of this was done. I mean, it was almost accidental. Kinda. Well, not really. I did put in many, many years of practice. I mean, like 6 hours a day, every day, for twenty years, starting at the age of 4 kind of practice. But for a very long time it was done unconsciously.

So, after I became a fan, I just fantasized about her. About the two of us being together. About how she should do things if she wanted to be successful. And I kept it up, over and over again, day after day after day.

And then it happened. Anne Hathaway, movie star, just fell into my lap. It was crazy. Absolutely nuts. I couldn’t believe it at first. It was like I was living a dream. No, it was crazier than a mere dream. It was indescribable.

To compare how I felt about things, say, ten years ago, with how I feel about them now is to see two totally different worlds. Ten years ago, if you would have told me that I would actually be in a real relationship with Anne Hathaway, and that I would be the one leaving HER, I would have tried to have you committed. I mean, no way could that ever happen on this Earth. No fucking way.

But it did. Unbelievably, it did.

And then… my star continued to rise to the point where she is now far beneath me in stature. This is just shocking to think about. It still seems kinda impossible, to be honest, but… it isn’t. This is the true world that we live in.

Wow.

So… Anne and I are equals. She was more powerful then, and I’m more powerful now. So, we’re on equal footing from my perspective.

This is also the same group that someone like Jessica Alba would be in. And Elisha Cuthbert, Britney Spears and Mandy Moore.

I think that this might help to explain some of the confusion. I look at my original favorites much differently than I look at someone like Kosarin, because of how things were back then.

It must seem odd to some to see me swear off someone like Anne. I mean, I’m one of the most powerful men in the world. What could I possibly be concened about?

Well, Anne still looks, I hate to say this, but… vaguely unattainable to me. Yes, even now, especially when I see her pictures from the early 2000’s. Those pictures remind me so much of the old me. The me that the people reading this never knew.

So I guess in a way this is me saying goodbye to my old self.

But… IDK. As usual, I’ll need to investigate if this is truly healthy for me. In breaking things off with Alba and Hathaway, am I trying to run away from myself? From something inside of me? Something I don’t want to confront? From my very normal, verrrry unglamourous and unpopular and deeply nerdy past?

IDK. I really hope not.

I’ll need to think about this later. Much much later, hopefully.

Back to the topic at hand.

Kira Kosarin is young, so young that for as long as she’s been in the industry she’s heard about me, and it shows. She can never be my equal, because she has always been beneath me on the totem pole. She’s a great friend and girlfriend but… she’s a kid who grew up in my shadow.

And… it’s clear that she isn’t as smart as me. I do like how the Hollywood of today communicates directly to it’s fans via social media, but there was something about the old way of being aloof that created mystery. I’m not sure that someone like me can be created in an environment like the one of today, where everyone can judge others so accurately and plainly. I used to imagine that Anne Hathaway and Jessica Alba were 180 I.Q. super geniuses, for example. Now I can see that they’re not. They’re both very smart, to be sure, but they’re not like I was sure they were, back then.

Things are just so different now. It’s a different world. A different universe.

I’ve nothing against Anne. Nothing at all, and certainly not if I look at things in the long term perspective. I might not be here without her.

Just some thoughts.

Congrats again, Anne. And- thanks for the inspiration.

Question: Are my relationships transient?

They’re hard to classify.

They last a long, long time by today’s standards, but they have no material foundation.

There’s a lot of emotion and give and take in my relationships when they’re firing on all cylinders. So, they’re certainly powerful while they last. I’m thinking of Swifty in general, and Anne back in the day.

By “in the day” with Anne, I mean from 2002-2013. So a little more than a decade.

Surely, a decade long intense sexual relationship couldn’t be called transient, but… it just formally ended today, without so much as a whisper between us.

I don’t know.

The give and take in my relationships tends to be intellectual and emotional, rather than… IDK, “physical”. As in, Anne and I reached out to each other indirectly, through little emotional cues and leadings rather than direct contact.

I think I’ve gotten my abilities to “read” instagram pictures and paparazzi sets down to a science. I see everything, even the stuff that the celebrities themselves miss.

Does this mean that my relationships have a firm, physical foundation or not?

I’m thinking now of the tail end of my relationship with Anne. We both made significant attempts to jump start things between us to no avail. For me, see a few of my previous blog posts regarding me with married celebs. I tried very hard to create friction and drama between us, to reignite the spark we once had. And I did other things- I downloaded all of her Instagram pictures, for example, to try to shoehorn her into the Disneygram culture I am so fond of. I mean, she’s a Disney chick too, right? She was in The Princess Diaries!

And I tried a few other things, too, like downloading her very early photoshoot sets, just to give myself more material. Because who knows, maybe there’s something amazing that I missed!

But… none of that really worked. It was frusterating.

And Anne tried too. Those bikini pictures from August were a clear signal from her that she wanted things to keep going with me, like they had in the past. Come to think of it… if Daily Mail is to be trusted, and Anne really is 4 or 5 months pregnant, she was pregnant in those bikini pictures! They might have been her attempt to keep things with me on life support through her pregnancy, or whatever. Could be.

You know… something was “off” in those pictures, like she wasn’t 100% into it, like her mind was elsewhere. It was as if she was distracted, or worried, or something. Even back then I could see that something was amiss, although I couldn’t put my finger on just what it was. So the pictures didn’t take with me. I think I used them once, out of a sense of duty, but that was it.

So, we both tried.

And now it’s over.

So… transient or not?

Judging from what I’ve just written, I guess… not.

is pregnant, apparently.

Good for her.

I’m glad. I’m sure that she’ll make a fantastic mom.

For me, I’m happy too. As usual, these things arrive at the most opportune times. I needed this, I think.

Now, I can finally leave her without guilt. I’ve been needing to so much, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do so. I think it was because of the memories. I mean, I don’t see her very much anymore, like at all, really, but… mentally, I just couldn’t break it off. I was still thinking of myself as “with her”, kind of, even though my heart really wasn’t in it and hers wasn’t either.

As usual, our relationship soured and became boring around the time when she really started to want a kid. It’s funny how that happens.

I’ll always treasure the memories I have with her. I was with her for, I don’t know, seven years at least, and maybe as much as fifteen. I don’t know. So it’s sad, I’m not going to lie, but… it really is necessary for us both to move on. It’s something that must happen for both our sakes.

*Whew*. Wow. It’s over. It’s really and truly over, this time.

Wow. What a rush.

Farewell, Ms. Hathaway. What we had during it’s prime will never be equaled.

I’ll always think good things about you, and I hope that you’ll do the same for me.

Good luck!

Liberals are caught in an epic, horrific bind.

It has to do with their prophecies. Specifically, the one I talked about yesterday. The prophecy of The Great Changes of 2050.

As I see it, the problem started a long time ago, when liberals began to think that their ideas represented “progress” to some celestial destiny. As in, their ideals, once implemented, were somehow immutable and immune to history. They seemed to have gotten it into their heads that they were on a Mission From God to enact certain policies.

Liberals act as if they believe themselves above things like self-examination. They don’t doubt themselves, not ever, for any reason. Any setback they have in the march to The Great Changes of 2050 isn’t a cause for self-reflection, but an obstacle placed in front of them to test their faith. You know, like how God imposed tests upon the prophets of the Old Testament.

Thus, the rise of Trump and anti-immigrationism isn’t taken as a learning experience. It’s taken as a problem that must be overcome if The Prophecy is to be fulfilled. And the same holds for many other recent phenomena- the rise of white consciousness online, white anger at black crime, my own rebellion against the system, Putin’s masterful strategies against the diversity army, Obama’s absolute failure to help the US economy during the last seven years, the catastrophe that is Obamacare, the general and comprehensive loss of faith in all mainstream institutions in young white males, the failure to enact any kind of gun control at all, the enormous and powerful international resistance to Obama’s trade pacts like the TPP, and everything else… all of these, are tests. Nothing is to be learned from any of these things, because what is there to learn, really? After all, isn’t this present time just a trial run for The Great Changes of 2050?

So… they never change. They never budge and never even learn from their mistakes, even in the face of devastating, catastrophic failure. It’s nuts.

Well… perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself, a bit. They do change in one way. They get angry when they fail. Not at themselves, but at others, and working class white men in particular. Always, when they fail, the issue isn’t anything that they did. No, it is always something that we did, or didn’t do, for them. As if we have some kind of moral obligation to live our lives solely so they can realize their fantasies.

It’s nuts.

It’s also unfortunate. The left today is a grotesque parody of its former self. They now openly embrace tyranny and thought suppression with both hands. They gleefully boast about their status and wealth, and freely and publicly spit upon those of lesser social status, with, again, working class white men receiving the brunt of the abuse. They also purposely push for and enact policies that cause grotesque economic inequalities, and they do with a laugh in others’ faces. And they do all of this with absolute confidence, because The Great Changes of 2050 means that they have been ordained to rule forever, so who the fuck cares about what these plebeians think, really? They’ll be irrelevant once The Prophecy has been fulfilled. So fuck them.

It’s craziness.

Pure, undiluted craziness.

The issue with all of this is that The Prophecy likely isn’t going to come true (see my previous post), so now, with the future unfolding, they’re stuck. They’ve gone all in on The Prophecy. Everything they have is at stake here, since they’ve burned all their other bridges. Obvious case in point- young white men, who are way too far gone for them to ever reach again. So… I don’t know what they’re thinking, except to say that these days they also seem afraid and confused.

I think that fear is actually what is behind much of their recent actions, from Ferguson to Mizzou To Paris. It’s all about control, now. Control of the internet, control of encryption, control of cell phones and even the in-person conversations held by the public. The multiculturalists are desperately afraid, because they have no backup plan, and it’s too late to make one at this point.

It’s kind of scary, to see them flailing about and thrashing around like they are. But, this is the situation they’ve put themselves in. They can’t be dumped in the trashcan of history fast enough, IMHO.

Que sera, sera.

I think I’ll do a quick one of these. I’m feeling inspired, and I haven’t done one of these in a while, sooooo here goes.

Today I went to the monthly dept. meeting at work. This month’s theme was diversity. The company I work for is in pharmaceuticals, and prides itself in being counted amongst America’s most “multicultural” and “diverse” companies. Meaning, it has within it a huge mass of raceless people who all think identically and do the same things.

It has always struck me as interesting how diversity never fails to bring with it conformity, boredom and lack of creativity. You would think it would turn out otherwise, but it never does. Back in the early 1900’s, when my company was new and staffed entirely by white men save the secretaries, it was renowned for it’s vitality and energy. It was a legendarily nimble company who innovated and created across the board, and contributed to the development of many industries. It was primarily a pharmaceutical company, yes, but it was also leader in areas ranging from pesticide creation to golf club production.

After a century of expansion, though, it fell into a doldrum. It lost it’s spark. It’s last great gasp of genius was to buy a particular smaller company for it’s patents- one of which became Humira, the world’s best selling prescription drug.

But, again, Humira wasn’t created in-house, because we don’t innovate much in-house anymore, despite the company’s alarmed attempts to “diversify” itself with an army of differently colored people who all think and behave the same.

It always baffles me how corporations in America do the opposite of what has worked in the past, when trying to achieve the results they used to get. It’s nuts. One would think that it would be obvious that to achieve the results of the past would require a set of conditions similar to those present in that era, and that this would especially be obvious to a pharmaceutical giant of all companies. I mean, pharma testing is all about recreating conditions. But apparently this isn’t obvious, for some reason.

So, this morning I sat and listened to a spiel. It was the usual stuff. Diversity brings “vibrance”, diversity is “progress”, diversity is the “way forward”, etc. etc. yadda yadda yadda.

We’ve all heard it a million times so I won’t bore people.

And the sales pitch was followed up, of course, with the usual stuff about “The Demographics Of The Future”. You know, the typical stuff about 2050. The dept heads basically all regurgitated the usual about how whites will be 50% of the population in 2050, and then laid out for us the rest of it, such as what percentage of the population then will be black, Mexican, Chinese, gay, atheist, Christian, and everything else. Needless to say, it was all very, very cultlike. Nothing was said this morning that differed in any way, even a little bit, from what you hear from every other official source regarding diversity. It is really creepy to continually hear the exact same phrases repeated over and over again from so many different mouths.

And as usual, the Diversity presentation this morning had not a little bit of religious fervor to it. Always, talk of The Great Changes Of 2050 seems like the stuff of fundamentalist prophesy, not history.

I mean, not once, all morning, was it mentioned by any of the speakers that mayyyyybe all of these predictions about The Great Changes of 2050 might not come to pass. I mean, they were talking about the year 2050, of all things. You would think they would at least try to hedge their bets a little, but no. The “statistics” and “facts” about our very distant future were presented to us as gospel, as if God himself presented them to the presenters this very morning on ornate stone tablets.

It was nuts to watch.

Always, it’s very disconcerting to hear this stuff, if only because it grates so horribly on my scientific mind. The distant future is of course absolutely unknowable. It is possible to make educated guesses about the very near future with some degree of accuracy, kind of, but any idea about what society will look like in 2050 is only a random guess. Honestly, they’re just pulling this stuff out of thin air. From today until 2050, a nearly infinite number of things will happen, and almost none of them will be expected. Wars will be fought. Empires will rise and fall. New ecomonies will be created and old ones will be destroyed. Innumerable new technologies will change everything in our lives. New diseases and unforeseen epidemics and natural disasters will change the world in ways nobody can possibly expect.

And yet, all of what I just mentioned will apparently not effect The Great Changes of 2050. Apparently nothing can effect The Great Changes of 2050. Yes, The Great Changes of 2050 are literally impossible to avoid.

Out of curiosity, I scanned the audience as the presentations went on. People were absorbed in rapt attention, as if receiving a religious sermon.

This was the moment that it all struck me. The stuff about the company’s scientific rut, I mean.

Obviously, there is no science at all behind predictions of The Great Changes of 2050. It’s just what the people with megaphones want to happen, so they’re trying to goad others into joining their visions and such. And with that being clear to those with a more scientific bent, it was truly disheartening to see so many people looking on as if enthralled. I mean, these were supposed to be scientists, for God’s sake! Where was the critical thought? Where were the doubting questions, after the presentation? Where was the affrontery to this insult to our collective intelligence?

It was nowhere, unfortunately. Afterwards, all I could gather from eavesdropping was how “enlightening” all of it was. I mean, it was as if they were relieved that someone figured out the future for them, so they didn’t have to bother with that difficult task of trying to figure it out themselves, or something.

Oy.

The thing is, is that all of this stuff is clearly just not going to happen. I don’t know what will happen, because nobody can, but I do know that to think that things will just proceed indefinitely, forever, in the direction of increasing diversity at the same rate that it is today is insanity.

The experts are wrong. They are always wrong. If you doubt this, just go back and read the common opinion of the experts at any time, on any subject ever.

My thoughts are still the same ones I explicated earlier in other essays. I believe that all of this stuff I just described in today’s presentation is a fad, and that a backlash is brewing. I think, in effect, that Donald Trump is just the tip of the iceberg. I believe that the near-distant future of the US is a country that is smaller and > 80% white. You know, similarly to how the super-multiracial Soviet Union broke up and became the Russia that is 80% Russian.

Well, I’ll talk more about this later. Maybe tomorrow or something. It’s 1:00 now and I’d like to go to bed.

*Yawn*…

They don’t get it.

The Millennials, I mean.

Sometimes, it’s like they don’t even try.

So… lately I’ve been YouTubing. You know, like everyone else. In my case it’s a great thing to do while lifting. It’s not too involving, so I don’t get distracted, but it gives enough of interest to pass the time. It’s perfect.

One my favorite topics on YouTube is of course gaming, and most especially classic gaming. I think this’ll change when I get my new laptop, but for now, it’s what I’m into. So I spend my time watching videos on classic PC FPS games and also on the masterworks of other platforms, like Arcade games and NES and SNES games.

The NES videos take me back, or at least, they did, before I saw too many of them and started replaying the games myself. But it was pretty shocking at first. Amazing, even. All those old games of my youth- those ones I played and played again, so many times, to memorize them because I was sure that I’d never get the chance to play them again when I was grown up- are all there, still alive and thriving, still acquiring fans, and still the topic of discussion. It’s pretty damn incredible. Sometimes, things turn out better in the future than you could even dream they would.

In fact, it’s turned out so well that it seems almost… strange to play NES games on an actual console! I tested this myself the other day by unpacking my old Nintendo, hooking it up to the old CRT in the basement, and loading up The Legend of Zelda. My saved games were still there, incredibly.

It was a rush to play. I’ve played Zelda occasionally in the last 10 years or so on various emulators, but to actually play it on the console itself again was a revelation. The controller was clunky and too small for my adult hands, and the graphics looked pixelated on the big screen, but it was a nostalgic trip unlike anything else.

I don’t think I’ll ever, ever forget playing Zelda for the first time.

I was 6, and it was my big Christmas gift that year. And it didn’t disappoint. It was a magical world within a little box.

What I don’t think Millennials understand about the NES was how it was unlike anything else that came before, or could even be imaged by consumers before its release. It was new. It was unique. It was the original- the first modern console. It was truly mind-blowing. There were consoles that preceded it, like the Atari ones, but they didn’t have the capability to do much beyond display some text, draw a few tiny screens and bleep a few basic sounds. The NES was the first console with the technical capabilities to allow for world building.

And Zelda was the first game to really try its hand at that. And it succeeded fantastically.

The Legend of Zelda was awe-inspiring, back then. Here was a game that was actually long, as in, a full playthrough literally required using a “save game” feature because to play from the start to the ultimate end would take you weeks, as opposed to half an hour. And it had an actual, real storyline. And a protagonist you could identify with.

It was awesome. Playing Zelda for the first time upon its release was an eye-opening experience. It was witnessing history. I was only 6 back then, but even then I knew that I was seeing one of those unique, watershed moments.

I didn’t get far the first time playing it. I only got through a couple of screens. But it in playing it the first time it was obvious that the game had actual depth to it. It was crazy- a video game with depth!

It got my mind racing, that Christmas morning. I started contemplating things, like about how much potential video games might have. About how video games could actually be art. About what they might be like ten, twenty, thirty years from then.

Owning a NES console back then was to have the best toy on the block, yes, but it was more than that. It was to be on the vanguard. It gave you a front row seat to a mile long list of firsts.

Everything was new. Almost every game broke new ground, somehow. Even the bad ones.

And, impossibly enough, they were all written in Assembly. Freaking ASSEMBLY! For those who don’t know what this means, Assembly computer languages are one step above pure binary, meaning 1’s and 0’s. Incredible.

The fact that Zelda was written in Assembly, and it is as long and bug-free as it is, is… IDK. The game belongs in the Louvre, along with a good 20-30 other NES games, probably.

And yes, the games were hard. Many were brutally difficult, and were engineered to demand precise timing, lots of practice, concentration, and patience. They weren’t cheap- meaning unfair- but they were unapologetically tough. The game creators wanted to give the players a sense of real accomplishment upon beating the games.

This carried over into the playground, of course. The kids who could beat Nintendo games were treated with respect by the other kids. In a way it established a pecking order. And kids who could handedly beat the toughest games, like Contra, Punch-Out!, Legacy of the Wizard, Mega Man, and Ninja Gaiden, were like wizards. It didn’t matter if the other kids had never seen the games themselves, because the games developed a reputation. If a dude could prove to someone that he beat Legacy of the Wizard, well, that really meant something.

I think that much of this is lost on the younger generation. I’ve seen recently a couple of react videos showing kids playing NES games on the console, and it was clear that they didn’t have a real understanding of the importance of the games. Like, they would play Punch Out! and comment negatively on the graphics, while not taking into account that it was the first popular sports game ever. It’s kind of like people of my generation looking at classic cars, or something. We weren’t there so we don’t get it. I mean, we can look at restored cars and admire them, but the context is lost.

That being the case… maybe this is just something that happens when you get older. You wonder about the kids and if they’ll ever really appreciate what came before them. I mean, in the way that they should.

Hmmm…

They can’t, though. They just can’t.

Well, maybe that’s just how it is, then. Time rolls on, unavoidably.

Tonight, I think I’ll pop in Legacy of the Wizard.

Just to see if I still have what it takes.

I wrote this Sunday night but didn’t post it because… I don’t know. I just didn’t… like a lot of things I’ve written. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll go back and post a few other things belatedly. Just because.

———————————————————-

Well, that was fun.

Like clockwork, another Halloween has come and gone.

This year, I handled candy duties. It kicked ass. I LOVE Halloween. I always have. It’s such a fun and cool holiday, though not as scary or intense as it used to be.

I love seeing the smiles on the kids’ faces as I dole out candies. It warms my cold, dead heart. Haha.

There weren’t as many kids this year as there have been in past years, owing, I’m guessing, to the poor, “Seeing Purple”-ish weather. I mean, it wasn’t as horrific as it was in my story, but it was indeed rainy and cold, so I think that a bunch of the smallest kids must have stayed home.

It was cool, though. I had the most fun with the “hot chick” demo, of course. This neighborhood has a small clique of mean girls, aged 13-14, and they went out this year as a troupe of sexy cats. When I saw them coming I jumped at the chance to run some game on them. Instead of just giving them the candy like everyone else, I instructed each one to say “Trick or Treat”, you know, like they’re supposed to, and criticized them when they didn’t open their bags wide enough, and I did all of this with a Tom-ish mischievous smirk. They ate it up, predictably. My mom thought I was being creepy, though (which I was, but that was obviously the point).

There were a few other hot girls, but not very many. I wish there had been more. I kind of pined for the days of the hookerwear and prostitots.

But other than all of that, it just wasn’t very interesting.

I don’t know. Is it just me, or has Halloween ceased to be a kids’ holiday? It seems that the people who love it most these days are adults and teens.

The little kids I saw this year looked happy to get candy, but otherwise bored.

TBH, I can’t really blame them. This neighborhood is just boring for Halloween. It sucks, frankly. Very few people, well, nobody, really, put up decorations this year. And I think that this neighborhood isn’t so alone in it’s attitude, unfortunately.

I remember when I was a kid, and Halloween was actually scary. I mean, legitimately so. Every house put up decorations, and they all tried to out-do each other for horror. God, did it fucking rule back then. When I was a kid, in the eighties, parents didn’t supervise kids as they went trick or treating. They stayed home to dole out candy and frighten children as best they could, and gave supervision duties to older kids, often to extremely detrimental effect.

It was this practice that made the holiday what it was. The older kids tasked with leading the younger kids back then were invariably bullies. I remember quite well much of the “advice” I was told by them as I collected candy, such as which candy companies were under investigation for putting cyanide in their product, which houses in other neighborhoods were owned by pedophiles and serial killers, and which candy bars were rumored to occasionally have small nails or razor blades.

And I’ll never forget the annual vandalisms, either. Every year, at least one family was away on vacation during Halloween weekend, and they invariably left out a big bucket of candy for the kids, with a wish that such a bucket would let them escape punishment. It never worked. Whenever my group got to those house, we would steal all of the candy, I mean, every last little piece of it, and then vandalize the property somehow.

And of course we were merciless to the poor dolts who refused to participate. We punished as many of those houses as we could, even if all we could think to do was pee in their yards.

I remember one house that was filled with Christian fundamentalists who every year actually gave out Christian literature to unsuspecting kids. They would also lecture kids on how we were worshiping the devil and such by dressing up as ghouls and vampires. God, did we hate them. They were the house that got the toilet paper. Every. Single. Year. And we always egged the Muslim kids’ house, because they didn’t participate, of course, and because they were Muslim. And we occasionally vandalized the black kids’ house, too, because they were niggers.

Good times, I guess, though I was always the quiet kid that got kind of roped along. I’m not naturally outgoing and I certainly was not a natural bully, so it took some prodding and threats of violence to get me to participate, though I was usually glad I did, despite the inevitable regrets a week later.

Kids these days don’t travel very far at all past their houses, I think, and certainly not without parental supervision. One of the great things about the Halloweens of my youth was how us kids would just explore. We could and did travel wherever we wanted, and we always got candy as a reward. My legs were always sore the next day, but wow, was it fun.

And… I liked how we actually did Halloween at night. Not in the afternoon. That was always a treat by itself. And I liked the costumes, which we actually had to make ourselves. Always, we went for something hideous. I remember going out one year as an abomination. I was a hunchback covered head to toe in oozing, bloody sores. And one year I went as a spider attack victim, as in I was covered in blood, pock marks and plastic spiders. Always, we tried to be monsters. I mean, not superheros, or fucking Harry Potter, but actual monsters. God, it was fun.

Hmmmm… what else.

Every year before going out trick or treating as a kid, I would read a handful of stories from the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark book series, just to get myself in the mood. It was always effective, and how! Holy fuck, those illustrations freak me out even today.

I don’t think that kids these days have experiences anything like the ones I had, and I think they’re poorer for it.

You know… I think I’m going to download some PDFs of the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books. Just for the memories.

And the chills.

Today I decided to collect the last of Tay’s 1989 US tour pictures. And I decided to listen to Debbie Gibson of all artists while doing so.

And, for the first time, I checked out some of Debbie’s music videos on YouTube.

Wow. Absolutely mindblowing. Totally mindblowing. I didn’t realize until now how very similar the two really are.

You know, I had a massive crush on Debbie back in the day. I mean, it was massive.

She was my ideal girlfriend back in grade school. I loved her, as much as a ten year old boy can love a distant pop star. She was my version of the perfect girlfriend, and I used to wonder what it would take for me to score a girl as perfect for me as her.

And … I loved her music. Loved it. I loved rocking out in the car to her. This was before my teen years, so I could still get away with liking “girl music”.

I never bought her albums, of course. That would’ve been too “girly”. And I never collected her pictures. And I never saw even a single one of her music videos.

I’m glad I’m older. Now I can like more openly the stuff I really like, although even now it’s kind of tough sometimes.

It’s striking to me how much pop-Taylor was influenced by Debbie. I mean, they look so similar, and their vibe is so, so very similar. It’s… almost the same, really. It’s really interesting, and fulfilling to me, personally.

I remember the arguments my friends and I used to have during morning recess about Debbie, and what it would take to get a girl like her. I always lost those.

Guess my friends weren’t so smart after all.

Dragon?

Dragon.

…

Dragon.

Ok, NO.

People, this isn’t how it works.

See, I call myself a vampire because I actually AM a vampire. I mean, I can’t, you know, turn myself into a bat or anything, and I don’t suck peoples’ blood, but I can do essentially everything else. So it kinda fits.

But that whole “dragon” thing just isn’t going to work, Emily. I mean, unless you’re a 100 foot tall lizard with big-ass wings, who spends her time breathing fire on helpless villagers, or, at least, someone with at least 50% of those attributes, you can’t really be called “dragon”.

I mean, jeez.