kurtmanner

Yeah, it was a pre order bonus when the record came out through select stores.

This is crazy long, but in the spirit of Halloween ghost stories are in order. I've never been on a ghost tour, but have gone ghost hunting plenty of times. We've had some interesting things happen, but only a couple that were really memorable. My mom lived in a haunted house in Maine for a few years but I never got the full story until I was in my teens because it's pretty unbelievable and she knew it just wouldn't have sat well with me as a kid. The stories I knew growing up were scary, but after having some years to think about it I still don't fully comprehend the whole of it. I'll start small and go big. It's kind of long, but I think it's worth reading. I put minimal effort into writing this but would really like to take my time and make a story of it some time. The house was built in the 1800's I believe, but this all took place over a few years in the early 1970's. The house was large so they rented part of it as an apartment which had it's own entry stairwell and whatnot. It was obvious that something was off in the house pretty early on. Everyone had such a strong sense of dread and being watched when passing the bottom of the stairs to get to the bathroom (in the main part of the house) that they had my grandfather cut a hallway through them so that no one would have to walk past the base. Small things would happen like doors silently opening or closing that were difficult for people to open or close normally (especially without noise) because of the frames being warped. They heard footsteps often, but the most memorable story my Mom has is of when she and some friends were sleeping in the spare room of the apartment and heard someone coming up the stairs right next to the room. They assumed it was her brother or some boys from the neighborhood trying to sneak in on them but as soon as they went to look no one was there. No one anywhere and no sound of someone having ever left the stairs. She still says there is no way it was a person. A tenant in the apartment one time approached my grandparents asking about a strange thing that kept happening. She said every night she'd be awake around 10-10:30 writing letters or reading in bed and it would start to vibrate, more like shaking some times. She asked if he was running machinery in the basement or anything of the sort. They knew it wasn't anything they could explain so my grandfather told her they lived on a fault line and the trucks on the road would shake the house sometimes. She bought it and didn't leave. My uncle is a tough guy from Maine (aka red neck) and won't ever talk about the house. My Mom has said he got some of the worst of it, though. One night he was in bed and heard what sounded like a person in the room. He felt someone sit on the edge of the bed and watched the mattress actually depress as if someone were on it. He also came out of his room in hysterics one night claiming he saw a face in his window. Everyone still seems to think that was just his imagination and I'm okay with sticking to that. The house was on a lake and just down the road from it was a public beach, so my grandparents let locals come into the house to change as they needed. One time my grandmother came home and realized someone was upstairs in the bathroom, but no one else was home otherwise. She called up and one of the neighborhood boys replied. He came running downstairs a few seconds later completely white and began asking if she had just gotten home and if anyone else was around. He became far more scared when she said she had just arrived and that no one else was nearby. Apparently he had heard someone yell upstairs before and he had held a conversation with them for a couple minutes all within minutes before she came home. The house was old and he certainly would have heard anyone coming or going, but didn't, someone just started talking to him. The last part here is going to sound like ridiculous, too perfect ghost story/movie sounding crap. I swear to you it is not. Both my Mom and my grandmother have told me about it before and have never faltered in their own belief of it, aside from it being hard to grasp. A woman and her young daughter showed up at their door one day asking about the apartment for rent. She said she had just moved from California and saw it listed in a local flyer. My family absolutely claims they had not ever listed the room for rent besides a sign outside and did not have the sign out at the time. The woman also said that she felt compelled to move their on a whim after hearing the name of the town in a dream. They let her move in, she found work, and things were going well for a while. At some point the girl told her mother that she had made a new friend and that he came to visit her sometimes. She said he was very lonely and wanted her to come with him. The mother of course had no idea what to think. She probably just dismissed it as her imagination. My grandmother refuses to talk about the next part in any detail because I believe she saw it happen. One day the daughter was playing outside, and I'm not sure of the reason, but she ran into the road. She was hit and immediately killed by a truck. No more paranormal events occurred in the house from that point on. After looking into town records my grandmother found that the owner of the house had hanged himself at the bottom of the stairs. A grave in the local cemetery for a girl by the same last name shows that she died a few months after birth and shortly after that date is when the man took his life. My grandmother's assumption is that it was his daughter, but was unable to get proper records to prove it.

I know we only ever hung out once so forgive me if I'm overstepping some boundaries, but dude, this is the girl for you. Sounds like a perfect match! Go for it!

There are still worse bands. Yes, it is possible.

I just saw on facebook that Nightmares for a Week got added. I've seen them a few times and they are awesome live, plus they're excellent dudes. I know I've seen a couple people mention them on here before, but if you haven't heard of them here's this: http://www.myspace.com/nightmaresforaweek

Awesome band. Awesome dudes. This is pretty sad. I didn't really get into their last album that much, but Lafcadio was the best for a little while and then they put out the s/t and I was just totally blown away. I think the most notable thing about this band was their live shows. So good!

There's a decent cover of this by The Get Up Kids from a live set. It's pretty cool.

I made weed almond joy candy bars. The best!

This. Or a cassette adapter. Aux input will be the best quality for sound but will not provide any power to the ipod. The cassette apadter is next in quality and won't shit out like an fm transmitter. I had a $25 part/converter that I used to provide a direct line in with charging capabilities to the JVC head unit in my old Camry http://www.google.com/products/catalog?client=safari&rls=en&q=jvc+ipod+adapter&oe=UTF-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&cid=4938913441337991598&ei=4ReLTLSCNMO78gb95JDpCg&sa=X&oi=product_catalog_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCIQ8wIwAA#ps-sellers That's the best way to go if you have a compatible unit as I'm sure they make them for other companies, but otherwise I find that a cheap head unit with aux or a cassette adapter is definitely better than a transmitter.

I like the show, but I can't stand the dude. He's just an actor who likes to eat a lot.

From the synopsis it sounds like Dead Space in a Star Wars setting. In other words; TOALLY AWESOME. I don't know if it's technically canon, but it's set in context before A New Hope and according to wikipedia it will be heavily featured in Star Wars Galaxies.

QUICK! Don't let them build churches in places where people were slaughtered in the direct and pronounced name of Christianity!

Though it's not really a horror film, the most brutal French film, and the most brutal I've ever seen overall, is Irreversible. Frontier(s) and High Tension are awesome, but I definitely enjoy Frontier(s) more of the two. I still haven't seen Inside.

Spinnaker used to be a pretty cool record store. I haven't been in a bunch of years, but I got some sweet records at the one in Hyannis 7 or 8 years ago. I don't know how they are now, or if there's still the 2 or 3 of them around, but I would assume they're doing well with the popularity of vinyl.

I never thought about it like that before!

I don't understand where this dude comes up with all of this shit. The best explanation he could give were his shifty eyes. Awesome.

Needs more bacon.

Oh man a bunch of friends and I used to yell this all the time in high school hahaha. It's such an absurd song by a terrible band. I don't even know which of my friends would have even heard that song anywhere. Good times.

http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Jessi_Slaughter

This dude also clearly hates fat people!

Oh man! Awesome. I definitely like the variant more because I have a distaste for gold, however, it's not worth the extra $30 to me. If I was more into collecting prints I would fork it over, but to me the difference is more just about the color of ink than size of the run.

I just watched Irreversible a couple nights ago. I don't feel quite as strange about it now, but that movie was a trip. It is important that most people do not see this movie. I'm only kind of joking about that part. I did enjoy it overall, but I think I blacked out parts of the rape scene from my memory. I watched Dead Snow for the whatever number time last week and it is still so awesome. So awesome. If people still haven't seen Moon they need to get on that! Can't hurt to mention again that I think it's one of the best sci-fi films of all time. I only had to see it once to form that opinion and it has been better every time I've seen it since.

Brutal. I really like what this dude had to say about the reality of the situation and letting go. I had to this almost two years ago, about a week before my birthday, with my 14 year old dog. I wasn't that close with her, but that's compared how absurdly close I get to dogs normally. I was glad to be in the room with her because I know she was more relaxed having me there. That was really tough and now the one we still have, which I've been closest to, is also 14. He's in really excellent shape, especially for a Siberian Husky, but I know once they get to a certain age their health can deteriorate quickly. I just make sure to give him lots of love in the meantime!

Action and Action is definitely on my list. I saw this/it just came out recently and I was really blown away by it. It doesn't hurt that I think the song is awesome, but I feel like the video matched the song so well in it's odd balance of complexity and simplicity:

I have minimal interest (but massive appreciation) in most things comic book related, but I couldn't help but notice this and find it odd as well! As I said above, I'm not a comic book guy, but I know a bit about American Splendor and I really enjoyed his bit on No Reservations recently. It's always sad to see such a genuine person pass away with so many awful people being born every day.