| FYI,....Journal switch. |
[May. 7th, 2007|02:38 pm] |
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I dunno who still stumbles across this page,....
well, perhaps those who go to the Ghostbsuters page still do but I digress,....
I now, (for those who may care), post over at the E-blogger site.
You can find it here,....
http://fightingirishman.blogspot.com/
Thanks! |
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| Where the Hell does the time go? |
[Apr. 8th, 2005|04:47 pm] |
I really have to start updating this thing more.
Here's a weird question, but bear with me,...
Is it just me or are a lot of you out there having weirder and weirder dreams.
My dreams, as of late, have been so bizzare I finally started a dream journal.
I'm talking prophetic, disturbing, apocolyptic, and startlingly vivd dreams and in fact, sometimes they feel more like a vision than a dream.
Am I the only one experiencing this "dreamland quickening" or is anyone else having nutty night time dreams? |
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| Hauntings and other high strangeness. |
[Sep. 26th, 2004|04:46 pm] |
Hiya folks,...been a while and assuming there are people who still check back from time to time, I thought this was the perfect venue for this subject matter. Now, aside from the obvious,(ie: this website and all it's content), I have a voracious appetite for the creepy and unexplained. My bookshelf looks like required reading for HP Lovecraft University and I can assure you, if there was such a thing as SPATES CATALOG and TOBIN'S SPIRIT GUIDE, (so richly referenced in Ghostbusters), I would have first edition, hard bound copies.
I have TWO ghost stories for you this evening. So turn down the lights, light a candle, put on some mood music and sit by the light of the monitor as I weave this tale for you.
Just make sure to check behind you every so often...;)
The first of my tales started about three months ago when my girlfriend, who had just finished tearing apart and renovating he bathroom, began having toilet paper issues.
By this I mean,...strange things began happening with the toilet paper.
She awoke one morning, stumbled into the bathroom to heed natures call, and to her confusion,...found the toilet paper roll completely unspooled to the cardboard, and the tissue collected in a neat little pile right underneath it.
Strange to be sure right? But nothing one cannot dismiss away as a one time occurrence,....filing it away under the, "Huh! That was weird." category and moving along.
Until it happens a second time.
The second incident, which occurred a short time later, found the roll completely taken OFF of the holder and placed ever so neatly underneath it.
Now there was some question and a bit of alarm. After trying to figure out how this had happened, the leaps we needed to make to justify the forces of gravity and physics accomplishing this task seemed lees absurd that there was a possible supernatural explanation.
The third incident occurred last night, and I was the one to find it. All the doors were closed and Cynthia and I slept soundly through the night. I got up at roughly six thirty and upon entering the bathroom, discovered that not only had the roll of toilet tissue been taken off the holder and placed on the floor again,...but what was left of the old one had been tossed into the hall.
This is definately a situation that need monitoring. What I find most interesting is the escalation of activity each and every time. Both of us are a little trepedatious about what's to come next and while I will say that there is no bad energy to be felt,...no forboding or fear,...it is a wee bit disconcerting.
Should be interesting, to say the least.
The second story of the night centers around my Ecto-1 replica. I have long believed that the car is haunted or at the very least, surrounded by an interesting energy. There've been times when I'm driving it when I can feel eyes on me, or it feels as if there's somebody there in the cab with me. The car never does anything it doesn't want to do and to say it can be unpredictable is a bit of an understatement.
Doors will spontaneously close and not be able to be reopened etc. Little things.
I have three pictures of the Ecto as it was being renovated and in the photos, clearly visible to the naked eye, are tons of, what has come to be known as, orbs floating around it. Now before you,(or I for that matter), dismiss it as dust on the lens or in the air, I want to make it clear I didn't use a flash, and that I took about a dozen photos. If the shop was that dusty, it's more than likely I would have gotten similar artifacts in all of the photos but it is only in three.
While that matter could be debated till the end of time, I got curious to take a closer look at the photos after the incident at my girlfriends. It's funny, I'm so nuts about all this stuff yet when I got shots of my own with possible supernatural activity I barely gave the shots a second look.
Until today,...
And what I found was extraordinary. thanks to photoshop, I was able to zoom in close on the orbs for closer inspection and on the largest ones I found the most curious of phenomenons,...
Faces.
Or, at the very least,...the IMPRESSION of faces. It could just be the artist in me making shapes from shapelessness, it could be the same mechanism in the mind that handles ink blot tests the same way,...but I'll be darned if I don't think I see SOMETHING in several of them.
Well,...why don't you see for yourself?
Th original photos...
There's a LOT of apparent activity in these shots,....take a look at the closeups though!
This one looks like a yelling face in the center
another possible face with bulging eyes
...and I think this is the most extraordinary one. To me it looks like a woman gazing up with either a head scarf on or long hair.
Well,...there you have it friends. Judge for yourself but as special agent Fox Mulder said,..."I want to believe." And so do I. I dunno what it is,...they say that the act of tearing into a place or an object can release energy that's attached to it. The Ecto is, after all, a torn up and altered hearse.
Y'know, I never felt like the car was "happy" being refinished like that. Maybe now I know why.
The festival of Samhain approaches! October is on the horizon and Halloween draws near! My time to shine and as the sun dips low in the sky and twilight takes to the heavens, the wind whistles in the trees outside, and here I sit,...comtemplating strange and interesting thoughts,...
and hopefully,...so do you. :)
That's all for now!
Sean |
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| Going home again,,,,, |
[Jul. 11th, 2004|04:01 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  nostalgic | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Joseph and the Amazing technicolor dreamcoat,(original ) | ] |
WOW! Man! it has BEEN a while hasn't it? Between my two message boards, work, my vacation and life overall in general, it's been a dog's age since I last updated this live journal. I'm not even sure how many people actually read it and I don't want to assume that my prattle is THAT interesting, but still,.. I feel compelled.
Vacation was good! I am in the middle of a much needed two month sabbatical from work and FINALLY, after five years of being together, I got to show my girlfriend the part of the country I'm from. we spent time in New York and then Home to Boston for a whirlwhind seven day tour of New England where we spent most of out time in the Witch city of Salem.
She even survived staying with my family! Now THAT is a feat,..believe me!
That being said, I'm sure you've heard the phrase "you can't go home again"
I've heard it countless times and sometimes I believe it,...and sometimes not.
More important to me than "going home again" is the notion of family.
My defenition of family had broadened considerably over the years. I believe that people have two types of families in their lives,...the family you're born with and the family you make. Sometimes the latter is even stronger than the former, and in my case,......
I've been blessed with an exraordinary extended family.
This "extended" family is that of my old high school friends whom I met in Drama club at Lynn English high school circa 1986.
I was always a "drama geek" and I wore that monniker,(all of us did in fact) with a certain amount of mystery and pride. As "Larry's Kids", called this after our drama director Larry Lowe, we basically had the run of the school. There was a span of time where I was a senior and some of the freshmen and sophomores were coming up that is commonly referred to as "the golden age" among those who were there at that magical time.
For about two or three years, the talent pool in that place was unmatched. A fair amount of the players from that period, have gone on to do extraordinary things in life and what we have achieved seperately, can be attributed in part to our experience together.
The most extraordinary thing about this group of people, about 20-30 give or take and all of us in out late twenties early thirties now, is that we haven't lost touch since high school. In fact, we seem to be possessed of an energy I've never encountered anywhere else.
The phenomena is as follows....I've heard it said that many people who are close can, after years of seperation, pick up where they left off as if not a day has passed since they last met. That is par for the course with our group. The stange thing is,...it seems distance strengthens the bond. In fact, every time we are together, we have somehow become closer when we were apart. Even if we haven't spoken for years.
This extraordinary bond draws up back to one another over miles and miles as often as we can, to be together, even if it's just for one night.
The ultimate expression of this was last month when, on June 28th, the "magic circle" re-convened for a 2004 drama club alumni revue at my old high school, on the old theater stage where we spent our teen years,(and a good portion of our young adult ones too).
None of us expected what happened.
To say this was "hastily planned" would be an understatement. We had absolutely NO idea how much we'd pull this one off by the skin of our teeth.
We were all adults now. All of us had jobs, some of us had families and we found out real quick that our schedules weren't as open as they were when we were 17. In fact, it seemed that there were never the same group of people at any one rehearsal. Up until production week, we had people FLYING IN to do one number just so they could participate. From the time I got home on vacation, we had THREE weeks to pull together a 20 number show, do some sets, rehearse skits, do publicity, programs, posters etc.
For a good portion of the time,...It was a nightmare. Many of us were having anxiety dreams. I, being the professional artist/designer, was given the task of the poster design and some of the printing. Thank Christ my friend Sarah is currently a stay at home mom and has photoshop because I would have been screwed.
We were all running around like headless chickens for two weeks but in between the mayhem,...that magic started to shine through. Every time we were all on stage together there was a certain vibration in the air and for a that moment, you believed that anything was possible, no matter how daunting.
Up until dress rehearsal, it was still real rough and we weren't at all sure that this had been a good idea but I should have known to trust in us. Because the night of the show,...it was flawless. The numbers went off without a hitch, the skits were funny, the songs were great, the dances were fantastic. With every laugh and burst of applause we gained more energy. We hit the audience with numbers form YOU'RE A GOOD MAN CHARLE BROWN, A CHORUS LINE, WIZARD OF OZ, MISS SAIGON, as well as a show stopping rendition of THE CELL BLOCK TANGO from CHICAGO. And on that stage,...a group of kids who met in high school, who forged a bond that transcended the years, and who came together again as young adults on their old stage, made magic once more.
And it was good.
There's a great quote from Stephen King, spoken by Richard Dreyfuss, that is in the movie STAND BY ME and it goes something like this,....
"I never had any friends later in life like the ones I had when I was twelve....hell, does anybody?"
I know what he means.
And I look forward to whatever the next few years bring for those of us in the magic circle.
A circle who's stength, and numbers, is growing. |
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| Proton pack madness. |
[Feb. 3rd, 2004|10:31 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  distressed | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Star Trek the motion picture soundtrack | ] |
NOT FOR SALE!
I don't know what it is,....I don't know how this can be,...but as God is my witness I actually get e-mails from people asking me to GIVE them proton packs!
I never put this into my FAQ section of my website because I NEVER thought this would be an issue or a consideration but after my tenth e-mail asking me this I am forced to pay attention. I don't know how to say this without sounding like a jerk but come on folks,...be realistic. I am NOT going to GIVE you a proton pack, I'm not going to LEND you a proton pack, I am not going to PAY to ship a pack out to you.
I know you guys who ask this don't mean any harm and I'm trying to be as nice as possible when I address this issue but the notion that I would give someone a pack is just insane. To back up this claim, let me run some numbers by you okay? Just,...indulge me for a bit.
First of all,...It takes at LEAST seventy,...now that's SEVENTY man hours to put one of these things together from scratch and that doesn't include the electronics. It has also taken me years of searching to figure out where to acquire the found parts or their suitable equivalents. That's the first thing.
Second,...the custom electronics for the lights and synchronized sound are $800.00. My packs basically run off of a mini hard drive that controls the light sequence and sounds. There is an onboard driver and a mini-brick as well as a speaker and tweeter system. All of this is powered by a rechargable 12 volt battery that plugs into the wall so you never have to open up the pack or switch out the batteries.
Third,...whenever I have shipped my own packs for an event, which costs about $75-$100 per pack, something on them has ALWAYS broken. Since I built em' I can generally fix em. I doubt someone else would who was just receiving it from me and had never seen it before could. No matter how well you pad it or pack it, the mail machines are just brutal mother-effers who don't give a flaming rat turd about "this side up" labels. Neither, for that matter, do the ham handed delivery apes that fling the boxes off of the truck and kick it up your stairs a-la Ace Ventura. So there you have it. Put yourself in my shoes and then ask yourself again,....would YOU give a pack away? Would YOU lend one out? Would YOU pay for shipping?
I'm thinking your answer is no.
I know building is harder and more challenging but for Pete's sake guys, that's why this whole damn website and the illustrated plans exist! Please,....I beg of you, build your own. No matter how crappy you think it's gonna come out, beleive me, it will be infinately more satisfying. If you do still persist on e-mailing me to give you a proton pack I salute your attempt. You've got balls, you've got guts and while I will give you credit for your effort, I'm still not gonna give you a proton pack.
Sorry for the blunt and ugly truth.
I DO appreciate your interset but now go and build! :) |
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| Sunday fun! |
[Jan. 26th, 2004|11:59 pm] |
Y'know,....sometimes it's cool just to sit down for a day of mindless model building. I had the good fortune to run across the new 1701 Enterprise kit from Bandai this weekend. As I sat down to prepare for a day of intricate painting and detailing, I cracked the kit open and found to my simultaneous dismay and delight that all the work had been done for me! Not only was it laser etched, painted with pre-printed decals,...but it was a SNAP together! I was stunned! No self respecting modeler would ever let a snap together kit darken his workbench but seeing as I was $85 invested in it I decided to see it through. I built and wired that little bastard up in less than two hours and was completely STUNNED with the quality of the finished piece! Take a look at the pics below and you'll see what I mean! It's hard to believe when looking at this thing that the saucer section is only about 6 1/2 inches long! The nacelles are just about seven inches and I think all together the entire thing measures less than a foot!
A textbook case of something good coming in a small package!
I highly reccommend this kit to anyone who is a Trek fan or at the very least, a fan of the ships. The wiring may get a little tricky if you're a beginner but it's fairly easy. If you have $85 to part with it'll be the best money you ever spent for a model!
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| This new page! |
[Jan. 22nd, 2004|10:53 pm] |
Well! This is the new webpage! The urchin site statistics indicate that there is an alarming number of you all visiting the site! That is very very cool! I hope all of you enjoy the plans and pics. I just want you all to keep in mind that this is an ever evolving site and I am the only one producing content for it so please try to understand if I don't yet have EVERYTHING you may be looking for. There are always new plans in the works. I have plans for both the PKE and Ecto goggles in the works but they take me a while to produce. I am also working on an alternate molding and casting tutorial for the 2004 pack shell so be on the lookout for that sometime in march! I am also seeing about getting an mpeg video section of the Ecto up for you all to see but that is way waaaaaayyyy back burner! Check back here for periodic rantings and ravings! It may not be educational but it will definately be entertaining!
Glad you all found your way here!
:) |
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