All Hallow's Evening Rambler for October 31, 2009

I'm not one of those people...

who are Really into Halloween. You know, those people...the ones who spend money and put up a whole lot of decorations in their front yard. Fake tombstones, fake bats, fake ghosts and the like. Or the adults who go to costume parties. Not that there's anything wrong with that, as long as it's all in good fun and you're keeping things in perspective.

It's just not all that big a deal to me. My Christian faith likely has something to do with it - I've never totally understood why people feel the need to turn the spotlight on the Enemy one evening of the year. Let me hasten to add though that I am Not on a crusade against trick-or-treating.

I think it's more my reserved temperament, I've never had much interest in costume parties or big crowds. Also the neighborhood I grew up in didn't have many kids, and the houses were on pretty big lots spaced kind of far apart. We would buy candy and turn on the front light, but even on our busiest Halloween, we only had 11 trick-or-treater's, and some years none at all.

Of course there was always candy left over for us, and that was usually the highlight of the day. All that said, I have some Halloween memories...

Punkins of the past

Yes, I know it's pumpkins. I just like saying punkins.

We'd usually buy a pumpkin, cut a hole in the top and empty out the seeds and wet stringy stuff (what impressed me the first time I did that was how cold all that gook was). Then I'd draw the face I wanted on my pumpkin, and when I was little, Mom would carve it. Later when I was trusted with a knife, I'd do that. My jack-o-lanterns had the typical triangular eyes and nose, and always a smiling mouth; usually with square teeth, but at least once with pointed teeth.

Once as an adult while working at a mapping company, I entered a pumpkin carving contest. I carved a pumpkin globe, the natural creases on the pumpkin made dandy longitude lines to help in spacing and figuring the shape of the continents.

Fun stuff all that...a temporary sculpture that doesn't have to be perfect. And as a bonus, you get to put a candle inside and set fire to it!

One thing I'd like to try, out in the middle of the yard of course, is to replace the candle with a sparkler, or a cone, or a roman candle. Can you imagine?

My last trick-or-treat outing

Earlier this week I recalled the last time I went trick-or-treating, when I was in Junior High (when I was a boy we didn't have "middle school").

First, let me set this up a bit. My best friend lived three blocks away, in a neighborhood with more kids; Halloween was a bigger deal over there. It seemed he could engineer and build anything, and his younger brother had quite a lot of artistic talent. I don't recall how many years they did this, but they would come up with really elaborate spook houses in their basement. The lights would be out, my friend would be the guide, and at some unexpected point his brother would jump out and like to scare the wits out of me.

So one day my friend said, "Robert, let's you and me make our own costumes and go trick-or-treating in the neighborhood". That sounded like fun, and we both agreed it was now or never. The next year we knew we probably wouldn't want to do that.

Our costumes weren't quite like the ordinary, which was the idea. His started out as an old sheet with eye holes, the basic homemade ghost outfit. His added touch was a battery powered blinking red light from Radio Shack, which he had on top of his head under the ghost sheet. Why a blinking light? Well, why not? It was neat.

I was a walking television set. My Dad had a glass face plate for an actual television, and I found a cardboard box big enough to cut a hole for that glass plate. I attached a couple of knobs on the front of the box for on-off and the channel selector, and I used half a Styrofoam ball and a couple of soda straws for the "rabbit ears" antenna on top.

Right after sunset on the 31st, we each grabbed a bag and started to make the rounds in his neighborhood. Once or twice we'd get the look - you know, "aren't you kids a bit big for this?" - but people were nice and we did get some candy.

More often than not people thought I was trying for a robot costume ("no, I'm a teevee"), and my friend's flashing light earned some puzzled looks. We got our picture taken at a house or two. Still a fond memory, to this day.

Trunk-or-treat

We went to "trunk-or-treat" for the first time this year, at our Church parking lot (they held it last year too, but this was a first for us this year). The weather cooperated, and there was quite a turnout. About two dozen cars and trucks parked, and some were decorated elaborately. We got out lawn chairs and sat down with our bucket of candy. A lot of kids came in from the neighborhood around the church, and everybody had a good time.

Next to our car was one of the Elders, who was dressed in an old fashioned black and white striped prisoner's uniform. Possibly the highlight of the evening for me was when a family came to our car with a nine year old (or maybe ten?) daughter dressed as a policewoman...an excellent costume. After my wife gave her some candy, I pointed over to our elder and said, "Officer! Arrest that man!". She and her whole family smiled at that.

(Well, my family's downstairs watching "The Nightmare Before Christmas" DVD. I'd better go down and see if there's any candy left.

Your baseball wish has come true

That is, the one about me writing about baseball playoffs. And I have dawdled over this task long enough to ensure that I can predict the winner of the World Series with at least 50 percent precision.

Or not. I'm not 100 percent sure if guessing the wrong team out of 2 would entitle one to 50 percent.

By now many people who live east of Dayton, Ohio are aware that Philadelphia and New York are in the World Series. New York of the Yankee kind, that is. As for the rest of us, we are aware that the Rams are really, historically bad. But I digress.

First the bad news: the Royals and the Cardinals have no chance of winning the World Series this year, though, St. Louis did get to play beyond the regular season. For about 23 minutes. The good news: the Cubs still have no idea what just happened.

Seriously, now. Murderer's Row has been reconstituted in New York and the Yankees led all the Major Leagues in home runs. They have the best closer in baseball history, Mariano Rivera, the defense is tight and the starting pitching has been serviceable.

The Phillies, last year's champs, are back to defend their crown and, though underdogs, have a decent shot at doing so, in my opinion. I like their pitching a wee bit better, they have a great offense, led by Missouri St. alum Ryan Howard, and the middle relief has been solid. Their closer, though, has been unreliable, and that weakness may be enough to give some games away late.

I'll say this will be a real battle of two fairly even teams with similar, slugging styles. Look for a lot of offense, I think. In the end, it will come down to the end and I think the Yankees closer will be the difference.

New York in seven.

MLB postseason 2009...Mike, any comments?

The playoffs are upon us, and this year it was a situation of "flyover country" need not apply. All four teams are from the coast, though I'm not sure how far the Philadelphia Phillies are from the Atlantic. Close enough for this casual fan, anyway.

Unfortunately, Mike's St. Louis Cardinals didn't advance to the championship game, and here I was all set to root for them. (And think of it this way Mike, it could have been worse...at least "The Team Who Will Not Be Named" isn't in the playoffs.)

I've not followed baseball that closely this year, so I'll admit my ignorance about the four teams in the hunt for World Series fame. My inclination is to root against the Yankees, that's an old rivalry here in K.C. But that would be more out of habit than anything, and certainly isn't based on any current knowledge on my part.

So this is a call to cousin Mike. Would you care to share your baseball insights here on the porch? Who do you think will meet in the Series, and who will go all the way? Now, for all I know the teams might be equally talented and evenly matched. So Mike, who do you want to be the Major League Baseball champion for 2009? Who deserves that honor?

This must be my week...

...to find strange animations, that is. Click on the link here, then select any of the ones shown. They're all fun, but I'd say #5 is my favorite.



Oh, and by all means have the volume up on your computer speakers. Gotta have the sounds.

Strange enough to post on The Porch? Why, yes!

Last night I was up late. I had a project to get ready for a presentation for our rocket club this afternoon (payloads for night launches). Daughter number two was home from college and everyone else was up late too; the family was watching "The Prince of Egypt" on DVD in the living room.

All that preamble to explain that I turned on the bedroom T.V. after midnight out of curiosity to see what was on, and I saw some really bizarre stop-action animation on 16-5. I watched long enough to appreciate the creativity, but I still had no idea what was going on, and closed captioning was hit and miss...it didn't help much.

My digital converter remote has a "tv guide" of sorts built in, so I pushed the appropriate button to find it was something called "The Legend of the Sky Kingdom" (click here for a trailer from Youtube). I searched for that on the internet, and Wikipedia had an entry. This is the first stop-action animation movie from Africa (Zimbabwe), and it was released in 2003. It's probably the lowest budget movie you've ever seen or ever will see, you might even say it was close to "no-budget". The characters (who I took to be robots at first) were all made from junk, as were the backgrounds - old broken computer keyboards in one scene. Apparently the camera they used was also home made from "junk" parts.

Maybe I should look around and see if it's available to rent so I can see the whole thing. I was entertained for the few minutes I watched, though I still can't say I get what was going on. It's impressive what you can make out of next to nothing when you put forth the creative effort.

Astronomy stuff, part 2: What's on Earth tonight?

This isn't what I'd planned to post for my second installment in the Astronomy stuff series, but I just came across this and I couldn't resist.

It has stars! It's a map! It ties into pop culture! It involves broadcasting! I suppose you could ask for more, but how much do you want in one place?


This is from a site I just discovered, called Strange Maps. If you go here, you'll see the image along with some comments below. As a couple of people noted, the power of TV broadcasts shrinks to next to nothing beyond our solar system. It might be possible to pick up one of our broadcasts on a planet around another star, but it would be exceedingly difficult and require Much patience.

Sure an interesting idea and a neat image, though.

Hey Mike, it might be fun to come up with a version based on the dates of famous baseball highlights.