Pumpkin-flesh-eating pumpkin.

I will build up excitement with a before picture. The carving took place at my friend Shawn’s house. Notice the glass of kahlua milk. It was doled out to all carvers to loosen up their knife-hands.

This pumpkin is about to get gutted and he knows it.

If I lose this pumpkin-carving throw-down, it’s because I’m a crappy photographer. My camera died as I was trying to capture this terrifying scene. What’s going on here? Carnivorous right pumpkin took a bite out of left pumpkin and he’s munching on his brains. And his eye is dangling from its socket. Left pumpkin is visibly miffed at being chomped on and his brains are coming out of his head hole. I don’t know why I carved two one-eyed pumpkins. Much scarier without the flash, right?

I am also linking to Shawn’s pumpkin on the condition that she can’t win because she doesn’t have a blog. I should have had her take pictures of mine.

Essay Tuesday: please bury me with…

my size 10 AA hiking boots.* Here they are ready to go snow-shoeing.

And here they are just looking awesome.

These boots are my favorite possession for three reasons.**

1. They fit like they were made just for me by tiny shoe elves. They transform my absurdly long, narrow, flat feet into sturdy, athletic feet.

2. I move a lot and most of my stuff is just stuff I keep hauling around, but my boots don’t weigh me down. If my apartment was hit by the arson, I wouldn’t be too upset about losing everything as long as I was wearing my boots while I watched it burn.

3. I’ve had them for about 5 years and I have good memories of being in them.

*first photo taken by Haskell

**This week’s topic is “what’s your favorite possession,” not “what’s your favorite position” which is what I heard the first time. Now that I’m all excited about my boots, if I had to write about my favorite position I would probably take a picture of me in my bed with my boots on.

Mad Libs!

Are you ready for some fun? Try out my second php creation, madlibs! I got a little carried away and it’s kind of long, but if you put enough dirty words in there it might be funny.

My first PHP.

Look what I learned how to do on a Friday night. It’s for my computing class.

No contest.

I’m off to vote this guy for Iowa City Council. Not only does he have a well-designed blog full of smart, sensible ideas in candid-sounding prose, he’s the only candidate with any decent content on the web. I did not enjoy the flashing text on Matt Hayek’s crappy website. (One of the things Hayek lists as qualifying him to be my community leader is that he once saved a man’s life with CPR. That’s just melodramatic. I do have a fear of choking so he might have won me over with the Heimlich maneuver.)

AND on his issues page, other candidate Terry Smith includes both a link to the site that supports the initiative banning the under 21 crowd from bars and the site against it. Perhaps he just wants me to educate myself about this ballot thing before I vote, but I won’t stand for his flip-floppy tactics (nor teenagers in the bars).

So if you’re against crappy site design and you don’t mind intellectual freedom, libraries, or candid rhetoric, vote for Mike Wright!

Edited to add: