vovat | Haunt My House

I begin this post with a Slate article on Weird Al, which my dad sent me recently. The author attempts to explain Al's appeal, and comes to the conclusion that he's not really all that weird after all.

We now move on from our foremost musical parodist to haunted attractions, and I'm not even going to attempt to make a smooth transition between the two. Last night,

bethje and I went on a haunted hayride at a nearby church. We had actually tried to go on Friday night, but even though the Internet announcement said they closed at 10:30, they had already decided to close down half an hour before that. Why people think it's okay to close things down early is a mystery to me. They said no customers had been showing up, but aren't they neglecting the fact that a whole bunch of them could show up in the final half hour? They did give us a discount ($1 off for each of us) last night for our troubles the night before, but I noticed that our ride was the last one that night, even though we boarded well before 10.

I believe it was the first year of this particular hayride, so they probably hadn't worked everything out yet. You really couldn't get a good look at some of the scenery, and you'd think they'd want you to, after all the time and effort it took to set it up. As is the case with many haunted hayrides, especially lower-budget ones, there were a LOT of people with chainsaws.

At many haunted attractions (including last night's), there are kids who are scared of everything, and their parents and the players usually deal with it by explaining that they're just people in costumes. I remember when I walked on a haunted trail as a kid, and I was terrified. One guy took off his mask and explained that nothing was real, but I'm pretty sure I already knew that. I didn't honestly think I was going to have my brains eaten out by a cheap-looking zombie, yet I was still scared. I'm not going to pretend that my own experience holds true for all kids, but I will say that knowing it's fake doesn't always lessen the terror. Even rational adults have been known to have nightmares after watching horror movies, after all.

Speaking of haunted attractions, with the recent (okay, maybe not so recent at this point, but still RELATIVELY recent) trend of home makeover shows, is there a show where decorators turn your ordinary house into a HAUNTED house? It sounds like a good idea to me.

'What will your obituary say?' at QuizGalaxy.com

Well, it's pretty cool that Walker, Texas Ranger will miss me. I hope he randomly kicks some people at my funeral.

Oh, and speaking of meme and quiz results like this one, how come some of them mess up journal displays? I guess it's something weird in the code. It can usually be prevented by putting them under cuts, but I'll occasionally look at my friends page and a post with a meme/quiz result will result in the bottom of the page being moved to the top. Everybody makes mistakes every once in a while, but sometimes these errors will display for days. Don't people ever, like, look at their own journals to see whether they show up properly? Meh.