Being that it is the Halloween season, I decided to take a little pole here at work to see what everyone thinks is the best scary movie. Personally, I had a hard time answering this question. I wouldn?t put The 6th Sense on the list at all. Not because I didn?t think it was good, but because I don?t consider it a scary movie. But some people did.

For me, it?s a close race. Conceptually speaking, I think nothing can top the Blair Witch Project. The marketing on that movie was so good, that 90% of the people that went and saw it actually thought it was a true story. That?s damn good marketing. I also love the fact that a $60,000.00 movie is the 138th top grossing movie of all time, making $140,530,114 worldwide. That wasn?t all though. I love the fact that through the entire movie, you never saw what it was that was causing all of their grief. The movie left the ?killer? entirely up to your imagination. No movie studio could make anything as scary as you can in your mind. Everyone?s interpretation of what is scary is different, so they left it up to us to dream up what it was chasing Heather, Josh and Mike. I love that idea. I cringe when people say that the movie sucked because you never saw the killer in the end. That was the point! I always said that people that didn?t like that movie, didn?t get it. When I hear things like that, it affirms that thought.

The other movie that I?m considering is Exorcist III. The entire movie had eerie parts, like the old people on the ceiling in the hospital, but this movie tops the list for one scene in particular. The scene where the nurse is doing here rounds and checking the rooms, and the Gemini killer, covered in a hospital sheet, comes flying out of the room she was just in, with the bone shears. That scene alone is worth watching this movie. The way it was shot was fantastic. Dead silence, to a loud shriek and fast moving camera. I remember rewinding that scene over and over again the first time we watched it. If you haven?t seen it, rent it, it?s worth it.

With these in mind, I?m going to give my vote to The Blair Witch Project. Nothing was ever done like it before, and nothing since.

Here is how everyone at work voted:

Texas Chainsaw Massacre ? The Original
Evil Dead 2 votes
The 6th Sense 2 votes
Nightmare on Elm Street 2 votes
Texas Chainsaw Massacre ? New One 2 votes
The Exorcist
The Exorcist III
The Ring
Salem?s Lot
Stephen Kings It
Hellraiser

Everyone has different tastes. There are some on this list that I don?t agree with at all, but hey, who am I to say what you think is scary? Please feel free to post a reply with your pics.

For comparison sake, here is the IMDB’s top ten horror flicks:

1. Psycho (1960)
2. Silence of the Lambs, The (1991)
3. Alien (1979)
4. Jaws (1975)
5. Faust (1926)
6. Aliens (1986)
7. Shining, The (1980)
8. Diaboliques, Les (1955)
9. Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
10. Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922)

I’ve never had a job where I had to flyer cars. Well tonight, that changes.

I thought that a great place to drop flyers for the haunted house, would be the movies. There are so many cars at Forum 30 on Friday nights, that we should have someone put flyers on them. So, I asked one of the hourly employees if he would do it. He told me no. He didn’t want to. He’s put in enough time there, that he shouldn’t have to flyer cars. Someone else should do it. Okay, fine. I’ll do it. It’s not going to cost us anything extra for me to do it. So tonight I will not be at the haunted house. I will be out putting flyers on cars, everywhere I can think of. Anyone want to go with me? I’m going to be really bored by myself.

Also, Tony has the night off. He has a hotnotbars.com party going on tonight. So that means that Billy is running check-in, and Steve is running the actors. There is a good chance that some people are going to get fired tonight.

One more thing, did I mention that I fired that asshole that told me he wouldn’t flyer cars?

I just got into a discussion here at work about whether or not Troy was eastside or westside. Personally I think Troy is Eastside. The dividing line being Woodward. See, Eastside and Westside stand for the postion of the city in relation to the position of Detroit. We’re not talking east or west of the state here. If that were the case, we would all be eastide. I had someone tell me that they didn’t know the roads in this area, because they were from the westside. When I asked where they grew up, I was shocked to hear them say Troy. I responded with, sorry, that’s eastside, and it grew into this discussion.

My point is, according to their logic, then right now I’m on the westside. Since my company is on the west side of Dequinder. That’s ridiculous. Am I way off here? What do you guys think?

Man, I love HiDef. When I’m looking for something to watch, I always check the HiDef channels first.

One of my favorite shows on TV is the Daily Show, and Comedy Central is not in HiDef. That blows. I love the Daily Show. Actually, this 11-12 line up Comedy Central has going is pretty good. Daily Show followed by Tough Crowd. Anyway, I wish Comedy Central would get on the ball, and start broadcasting in HD. Once you watch an HD show, it’s hard to watch regular TV. Looks like crap.

Man, Rosey Parez is on the Daily Show right now, and damn is it funny. They’re talking about the Daily Shows book entitled America:The Book. Rosey said that there were pictures of the supreme court justices naked in there. She said that “whatever the white woman with the grey hairs name is, you have her titties out like blam!” to which Jon Stewart replied “with supreme court justices you should really show some respect and call them breasts”. It was damn funny. I think I want that book. Those writers are damn good.

We had a pretty good weekend at the haunted house. We didn’t get rich and we all can’t retire, but we had more people than we thought we would get. Especially since the weather was so shitty Friday night. So tonight is payroll night. The actors have a 30 minute window to pick up their money. Between 5:30-6:00. At 6:00, we shut the door and leave. I’ll go back to the haunted house on Wednesday to start fixing the place up for the weekend. We had a couple of groups go through that blew out a bunch of walls running away from our actors, lol. We also had an actor get punched in the eye. Hey, people do wierd shit when they’re scared. All in all, it was a good weekend for us, and we’re looking forward to it just getting busier and busier.

The first night went exactly as expected. Just a trial run, to get the actors acclimated to their area. So they’re comfortable with where they are, and what they’re doing. That’s exactly what we did last night, and it worked fine. We had a couple of people not show up, which wouldn’t have been a surprise if it wasn’t people that we expected to be there. But it was, and they screwed us over.

But we’re good though, we will have the perfect amount of actors tonight, and we basically have our staff. No subs, no people running around trying to get placed, just our staff, in their post. Exactly what I wanted. It also looks like I should easily hit my budget for payroll.

What are the god damn chances? In 28 years I managed to never get strep throat. Right now marks the second time this year that I have it. What the hell? Great timing too. Right in the middle of the haunted house and everything. The worst part about having strep throat is feeling run down. I feel beat up. Since I’m somewhat of an expert on this sickness now, I have to say something about it. Everyone who says that they feel like shit, or are too sick to do anything, when they have strep throat, well they’re lying. For the second time, I don’t fell like shit at all. I feel a little tired, run down a bit, but that’s all. Just like last time, the only symptom I noticed was that my throat feels like I was stabbed in it, and it’s hard to swallow. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that strep, at least the versions I’ve had, doesn’t work that way. And 99% of the people that call in to work for that reason, are probably lying.

Can’t stop going though, no rest for me. I have too much shit going on. I’m going to try to get to the doctors office today to get some antibiotics. Hopefully I can swing over there at lunch or something, Ken is off this week, so I have to be here at Rayl as much as possible.

One Headlight - The Wallflowers on the iPod

The Carnival of Terror is officially opening this evening. I’m friggin tired. But it will be fun. We’re using tonight as a trial run, we know we’re not going to get any people there, we’re just going to see how it goes. Hopefully all will go well. It should. We have a pretty good staff.

I actually just got the phone call saying we passed inspection. Not that there was any doubt, we were literally the haunted house that the guidelines for the entire state were modeled after. Getting the nod was never a big concern.

Kepp your fingers crossed for us.

From time to time, I use internet acronyms in my posts. It was brought to my attention recently that not everyone knows what these letters mean. I’m not going to point fingers, or name names (Brian) but I’ve decided for you poor unfortunate few that don’t understand “net lingo” to post a list. Hopefully thwarting any further confusion when reading my site. You can imagine how embarrassing it is when I post “lol” to someone, and they think I’m saying “lots of love”. Especially to some of my guy friends who might have thought that (Clay). Who knows, maybe with this knowledge, in the future, you won’t surf the web totally clueless. My gift to you. This is in no way a complete list. Just ones that I sometimes use. To get you in the right mind set, think back to the days of junior high, and the acronyms in our year books. ASS meaning always stay sweet, that kind of thing.

So, without further ado, I bring to you my list of frequently used internet acronyms:
AFAIK - as far as I know
ATM - at the moment
BBL - be back later
BTW - by the way
CYM - check your mail
DIY - do it yourself
GTG or G2G - got to go
IIRC - if I remember correctly
IMO - in my opinion
IMHO - in my humble opinion
IRL - in real life
LMAO - laughing my ass off
LOL - laughed (or laughing) out loud
LMMFAO - laughing my mother fucking ass off
LMK - let me know
PITA - pain in the ass
ROFL - rolling on floor laughing
TTYL - talk to you later
TY - thank you
THX - thanks

These are just some of the ones I could think of. You might read a few of these here on this site, and there is a possibility that you may never see some of these again. One thing is for sure though, you can now comfortably communicate with all the perverts and pedophiles in those chatrooms that you lurk in. Enjoy.

Thanks Mike, for this one. Read the story, then click the link for the picture.

With all the news on TV lately about the hurricanes hitting the southern United
States and the mud slides in South America, along
with the dire predictions made by such films as The Day After Tomorrow, we
shouldn’t forget that Waterford MI has its share of devastating weather too.

Attached is a photo illustrating the damage caused to a friend’s home from a
storm that passed through a couple of weeks ago. It really makes you
cherish what you have, and reminds us not to take things for granted.

Local Damage