Night Photography

 

Shot two videos for the auction company, so took off this past Monday. My brother wanted to know if I wanted to go out and shoot some photos Sunday night, so I was like sure.

We went somewhere called Sky Meadows. It's a wide open hilly park. We walked up the very large hill, stopping often. My brother was actually struggling way more than I was, which is surprising, as he does more exercise than I do. He goes on a lot of hikes, whereas I do nothing(and have also gained a bit of weight over the summer)

At the top we took some photos, some time lapse videos. Here's some from my iphone:

This is the beginning of the hill. You go up it, then to the left and up another hill.

These are two from my camera:

This one above is one from a time lapse I ran, but I haven't put it together yet. Sad part is, this was a new lens I'd gotten, and as it got a little darker, I adjusted it.

Problem being, apparently I hit the focus, so the other time lapses are blurry as shit. It's such a wide lens(14mm) that I didn't think it would put anything out of focus, but it did. It also has an infinity focus ring, which I hate.

(that's a ring that will spin and spin, either direction, it never ends even though the focus has gone as far as it can. I prefer one where I know where the focus ends on either side)

We grabbed a burger at a place my brother said was great--called Spelunker's, and yeah, that's a great fucking burger man. Wish there was one of them around here.

After that we thought we'd hit a cemetery that Mike saw near there. Problem being, it was locked and so close to houses that people would see us jumping the rock wall and hanging around, and we didn't want to get arrested in VA. This was the only pic I shot there:

So he said, wanna swing by Harpers Ferry? I'd never been there(if you don't count Fallout 76), but figured why not?

Town was DESERTED, man. It was only like 10pm when we got there, but there was nobody roaming the streets. All the stores were closed. We started shooting pics. Here's some I took:

Weirdest part of the night is when this couple who we'd run into up at that church came back up to us when we were down in the streets. They'd apparently locked their keys in their car and wanted to know if we had anything in our car that would break their window.

I always go out with my steel baton, so I said sure. I made sure it was HIS car--turned out to be a very nice SUV, like the $60K type. My brother asked the guy if he could videotape him breaking the window, and the guy's like sure.

So I hand him the baton, he smashes his window in. Then his girlfriend confides in us, "This is the third time we've had to do this..."

I'm like WTF? Might wanna invest the five bucks in one of those magnetic boxes to hide a key on your car...

Dude left a big pile of broken glass in the parking lot.

We left, and got home pretty late, like 2am. Next day I was pretty sore. Who'd have known that extreme exercise once a year could really take it out of you?

 

 

Buckling Down / Teeth

 

The past week was me finalizing everything I needed to on the back end for the book. Really, don't think anybody who hasn't published a book knows just how much work it is.

But hey, it's showed up on Azon now! https://bit.ly/octscreams

It's already up to like #34 on the anthology horror--might not be that impressive except there are literally THOUSANDS of horror antho's on there. I won't lie, if at some point I don't actually hit #1, I will be surprised and very disappointed. 

Have sent out a bunch of physical ARCs. Most people don't do it, cuz it's expensive AF. But people are starting to post pics of receiving their books and swag, and that's very cool.

I spent last night redesigning the store site I'm now going to be using for all my film/book stuff. It's up at https://kangas-kahn.square.site/

A pretty simple site, but I'm okay with it. Simple ends up being better, cuz it will load on pretty much any device. I'm going to offer free shipping for a while--we'll see how long before I tire of it. (cuz really, I don't wanna be packing up 50 items each week and shipping them out. I'd rather let people order from Amazon.

--

Did I mention I had a crown loose? Went in last week, they said they'd have to pop it and see what was up, but didn't have time for that during that appointment. Set up another for this week.

Went back. The dentist--a new lady, because they just sold the business--numbs my jaw. Like, big time. My tongue is numb and so is most of the right side of my face.

She tells me she's gonna cut through the crown and see what it looks like underneath, whether there's enough tooth left to put a new crown on, or whether they'd have to refer me to get the tooth pulled, and then get an implant.

I say, "Why don't I just pull it off? It's pretty loose." She tells me I couldn't do that if I tried, gave some excuse. I say, "You're telling me you don't think I can pull this off?" She says, "Nope, go ahead and try."

Obviously, I try. It's not too hard to pop it off. She looks at it and says, "Oh, that wasn't good. See how you pulled part of your tooth with it?"

I'm thinking, "Bitch, you just told me to try..." Anyway, they're going to definitely have to refer me to the surgeon to pull the tooth and get an implant. Weirdly, my wife had gone THAT SAME DAY to get her tooth pulled for a later implant. 

They'd told her it would be $200 out of pocket, but afterwards they told her it would be $1100. So guess that's gonna be coming my way too. Now I have a gaping hole on the one side of my mouth, and the problem is that the other side has another tooth that's now starting to ache. Don't know why it's all starting to go bad at one time...this is a tooth they'd done a root canal and a crown on also, so how can it hurt?

Since I was there--and they couldn't do anything(yeah, she ended up numbing my mouth for NOTHING)--she X-rayed the tooth on the other side. Said it look like there might be a mild infection in the root. Said they'd probably have to refer me to the oral surgeon to redo that root canal.

Super. I feel like this is going to a mechanic who keeps acting like he's fixed something, but you have to keep bringing the car back to work on the same thing.

 

Squirrel Update: Not the Ending Anyone Expected

 

Next morning I woke up at like 11am even though I didn't want to. The dogs wanted to go out, so I had to put on some shoes and go out with them to see if there were any squirrels on the ground.

I immediately saw one. I'm like, "Fuck", but he's alive. I run the dogs back in and go back to that squirrel. I pick him up with a paper towel and check the towel in the tree--it's empty. This one must be one of the ones I left up there. I put him back.

Then I see the other one at the bottom of the tree. He's alive too. I put him back.

I have a message from the lady who says she can take them as long as they're not "pinkies", meaning, not super young. I take a pic for her, which is this:
 

She says to go ahead and bring them in. This is the video I took of them before I put them in the box:

Off we went. Traffic wasn't great. Took about a half hour to get there. The lady was very nice, and told me about how they rehabilitate them and then release them when they're ready. Said she had two others that were very similar ages.

She took them in and put them in an incubator and came back out, said they had parasites so she dusted them with some sort of powder that kills those. Said I should throw the box and towel away, and wash my hands if I touched them. (I didn't)

Went home. Had a couple of hours before I was leaving to Zig's, so I let the dogs out after going around back to see if any other squirrels had fallen from the sky. I found none.

SO close to a happy ending, right?

I notice on my camera after about a half hour that my dogs aren't out front. I look out back and they're sitting under the shade of the tree. They don't look like they're doing anything.

Five minutes later I hear a truck out front parked across the street. It's loud. My dogs come running around the front, and I see the Nika--my girl dog--has something in her mouth.

I run outside to find out what it is, and what it is is a baby squirrel. WITH NO HEAD.

The little monster apparently found one and bit its head off. I cannot find the head anywhere, so I'm guessing she ate it. Now I gotta worry she's got parasites in her...jesus.

NOT how I wanted this all to end. I have to comfort myself with Meatloaf's immortal words from that song. "Two out of three ain't bad."

---

Went to Zig's later. We ate a weird concoction he made from a movie-inspired recipe book. 

Then we played a horror trivia game I'd gotten. I won, Zig came in 2nd, and Stewie came in third. 

---

Bookwise, I've sent out a dozen ARCs to some reviewers, so we'll see what they think. I'm super happy about the book, but clearly my taste has moved away from the mainstream in many respects, so who knows what people will think?

Fuck it, it's basically done other than the money I'm going to be spending on advertising. All in, it appears like it will have cost about $13K. More than either of my last two movies. 

Will I publish any more books? Who knows. It was certainly a lot of work...

 

 

 

 

 

Raining Squirrels

 

So, uh, this week I had another crown come loose. That's the fourth that has either come off or cracked. It's pretty fucking irritating, especially since the dentist can't take me until next Tuesday(8 days after I called them). 

I'm hoping the crown doesn't come out while I'm chewing and I swallow it.

Anyway, squirrels.

Wednesday I let my dogs in after they ran outside for an hour. (we also had Nanook, our boy dog, fixed last week so he's still recovering) I didn't notice anything out front when I let them in.

Couple of hours later I open the front door to let them out and see what looks like a big deal squirrel out front by the tree the dogs like the lounge under. I'd have noticed it if it was there when I let them in, right?

I go out without the dogs and check it out. The thing is stiff, so it didn't just fall from this little tree in my front yard and get stiff in a couple of hours...now I'm thinking my dogs must have found it out back and brought it around front.

I pick it up with the pooper scooper and put it in the trash.

Today...I let the dogs out early. I watch them on our front camera off and on to make sure they're not getting into any trouble, aka digging. All of a sudden I look over and don't see them. I go upstairs and see they're out back, but I can't see what they're doing.

I go out onto my screened-in back porch and immediately hear an animal's distressed squeaking. I hustle outside to find my dogs playing with a baby squirrel. It's very young, maybe 5 inches, with fur and a tiny fluffy tail, but it's eyes aren't opened.

It doesn't look injured, it's not bleeding anywhere, but it seems in real rough shape. I put my dogs inside and come back out with a small towel. I pick it up with that and move it to the junction of the tree that's like 5 feet off the ground--there's an area about a foot in diameter that's flat there, so I figure maybe the squirrel will be found by a parent--if the dead one I found isn't the parent--or the squirrel will die.

Hour later I come out, and the squirrel has moved itself deeper into the towel. Must feel comforting, like it's back with its parent or something, I think. Either way, I can let my dogs out now. They can't get to it.

I go out with my dogs, just to see what they're going to do around back. They sniff around, looking for where the squirrel was, but they can't find it. Cool.

EXCEPT

I hear something above me, and all of a sudden another baby squirrel plummets twenty feet out of the tree and hits the ground hard. It rolls on its back and then its leg straightens out and spasms super fast. It was gruesome. I'm thinking...this bad boy is dead.

I run my dogs back in and go back out with a paper towel. 

The squirrel has turned itself over and is crawling, while doing that sad squeak of help. I pick it up and take it over the other squirrel, and stick it in there. It seems fine with it, didn't freak out or squeak in terror.

It's like 4:30pm at this point. I call a wildlife rescue place but nobody answers. I leave a message that asks what I should do--it's not all that close to me, like 25 minutes away, but I tell them if the squirrels are still alive tomorrow I'll bring them out if that's okay. (they want you to call to make sure they have room for whatever animal it might be)

So that's where I am. Honestly, hoping they're dead by the morning so I don't have to go out of my way to save 'em. I'm not sure why I've always had a soft spot for animals. It's the one third of the serial killer triad I never really had. I'm guessing it's because my parents got us a cat when we were young, so maybe that stopped me from going full-on murderer.

 

Summer of 89

 

I sometimes fondly think back on this summer as one of the greatest summers I ever had. I had some other great summers in the 80's, but they sort of blur together, but this one is all tied together because of Batman the movie.

I was working at Chi Chi's that year. I was a glorified busboy--they called them SA's, which was short for service assistant. I was acknowledged as the king of the SAs because I was the fastest. I know, quite a dubious honor.

But what that meant was that I got the big section(called "The Main") of the restaurant every time I worked. I had told them I couldn't work Friday/Saturday, so I only worked days Sun-Thursday but I was bringing home a ton of cash. I got a percentage of the waiters tips, and because I cleaned tables fast, and as soon as they were empty, waiters loved me. I got the maximum number of tippers through their section every time.

People wondered why I didn't become a waiter, but the thing they didn't understand is that I was making WAY more than waiters. I got tips from EVERY waiter in the section, and there was typically 5-8 of them. Even on slow nights I tended to go home with a hundred bucks. Other nights, more than double that. Not bad for an 18 year old who just graduated high school.

One day we got a new SA, and she was HOT. Her name was Alison. Gorgeous face, giant rack. Honestly, she sometimes looked chunky because her shirt puffed out so much because of her chest, but she wasn't.

She was friends with someone who already worked there--I don't remember her name but let's call her Jeanine. 

So I trained Alison. Tried to be cool, but man was I into her. 

One night a bunch of us got drunk on the job--we were all underage. Basically, I'd have someone watch my section and then I'd use my fake ID to go get some beer. Then we'd each cover each other's sections while one at a time we'd go out and down a beer.

By the end of our shift we were all pretty good to go. Turns out that Batman premiered that night(think it was a Thursday), so like six of us decided to go, Alison and Jeanine among them.

I didn't end up sitting next to Alison, even though I wanted to. I was sat next to Jeanine. My memory of that night is foggy, but what I can tell you is that I ended up fingering Jeanine during the movie.

The next day, I didn't remember the movie for shit, and then I felt like I must have fucked it up with Alison since I was fucking around with her friend. (I saw Batman a second time, this time sober, over the weekend and loved it) 

Sometimes a bunch of SAs would go out after a shift and hang out and drink. About a week after Batman a bunch of us parked our cars behind the plaza and got drunk sitting on the hoods of our cars. At some point, I started making out with Alison and she was clearly into me.

I vaguely remember this part, but my older brother loves telling the story--I came home, ran downstairs where he was hanging out, and cranked up Love and Rockets "So Alive", and started jamming to it. Apparently I said, "I'm in love."

Prolly was my first bout of it. We got to know each other and were soon boyfriend girlfriend, but we kept it from most of the people at the restaurant. I had some fun when we decide to "go public", as some of the waiters would talk to me about how hot Alison was.

One day I said to one guy who was saying he wished he could bang her that I thought I could get her. He's like "bullshit!" I'm like, I'm gonna see if she'll go out with me. He's like, "She gonna blow you off."

So she comes in to to work later that night and I tell the guy, "Here goes." He laughs, thinks he's gonna see me crash and burn. Keep in mind that at this point, Alison and I were banging on a regular basis. (a whole other story though)

I go up to her and very quietly say, "Go along with me." She was a little confused, but I started prompting her, and then I said, "Nod your head and smile", and she did. Then I leaned in like I was gonna give her a hug, but I kissed her on the lips.

She was surprised--cuz we were keeping it on the down low--but she gave it back. I turned and walked away, smiling at my waiter buddy whose fucking jaw was on the ground. It was a beautiful moment.

---

Anyway, she was my first real girlfriend, at least measured by time and regular sex. I'd only had sex with one girl before her. 

Alison's family was rich. Their house was a mansion so big that I sometimes got a little lost. We'd come home late at night and lock ourselves in the TV room, and fool around. One time her dad, an intimidating guy, knocked on the door and wanted to know what we were doing, and THAT will kill an erection faster than anything.

That whole summer was a blur of drinking, parties, regular sex. I was living the dream, man. 

We stayed together for about six months before I tired of it for some reason. I sort of blew her off and stopped answering her calls. I was quite a dick.

Weird thing is, I ran into her years later at a bar in Annapolis. She was back from college for a holiday or something. We had some drinks, and her parents were out of town, so she invited me back to her house and we ended up in the shower.

Weirder thing is, years later she married a friend of mine from high school. THAT is a strange thing...