Sunbeams illuminating a coastal forest in Port Orford, Oregon

Chuggnutt!

Author: Jon

  • National Novel Writing Month

    Today is the first day of National Novel Writing Month. Write a 50,000-word (or more) novel in 30 days. I like the concept on this. And I’m tempted to take a crack at it, if for no other reason than cachet-factor. I’d post the efforts to the blog, of course, otherwise, where’s the love?

    Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

    Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It’s all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

    Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that’s a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.

  • Scooby sighting

    Scooby's at the front door - street sign

  • Gruesome

    Halloween blogging #5

    Here we go, courtesy of Simone, a picture of me dressed up as a vampire for the Halloween party Saturday night. If only I could look so good in real life!

    Jon dressed as a vampire

  • Emoticon pumpkins

    Halloween blogging #4

    Pumpkin carved with an emoticon faceBeing a computer geek, I wish I’d thought of this when carving pumpkins this year: carving an emoticon face instead of a traditional jack o’lantern. That’s just cool. The only question would be, which emoticon?

    The “mean” face, befitting the holiday: >:-(. Or, perhaps, the squiggly face: :-S. Or, just the good old standard: :).

    Something to remember for next year…

  • The Screamstress

    Halloween blogging #3

    I’ve really been liking what Rhys is doing over on The Screamstress blog. The Top 13 Worst Halloween Costumes posts are funny as hell, and the Top 13 Scariest Horror Movie Moments are—well, I don’t know what exactly, but I’ll just say that wow, this is a girl that knows horror movies like I know… beer, I guess. That’s kind of scary in itself. :)

  • Monsters in classic works of art

    Halloween blogging #2

    Scream mashup: the movie and the Munch paintingShamelessly lifted this link from Boing Boing, but it was too cool not to: Worth1000’s monsters/classic artwork photoshopping mashup contest. I’ve done some basic graphics munging here, producing such altered classics as Bayer Heroin, Jedi Master Kermit and the Nebraska State Quarter, but my image manipulation powers pale in comparison to what these guys have pulled off. There’s some serious image kung fu here. It’s brilliant and topical! They’re all really good, but I particularly like the “Scream” painting (which I excerpted) and “The Ring” riff.

  • Haunted Bend

    Halloween blogging #1

    The Fall 2005 issue of Bend Living (no link love, their site sucks and the “current” links point to other articles) has an article titled “Ghost Stories” that explores some of the supposedly haunted places in Bend and Central Oregon. And on the radio last week, they were asking for people to call in to name the haunted places we have around here, so I thought it’d be fun to blog it a bit.

    The Bend Living article mentions the Deschutes County Historical Society building, the old Reid School in downtown Bend. Supposedly the ghost of George Brosterhous, who died there in 1914, haunts the place.

    The Shadowlands Haunted Place Index for Oregon (which I can thank Rhys for mentioning, if I remember correctly) mentions five for Bend:

    The Congress House: This was mentioned on the radio, and is the subject of the only ghost story for Bend found in Ghosts and Strange Critters of Washington and Oregon. According to the Shadowlands site, “there have been a few families that have lived there that have either died or something tragic has happened to them due to living in the cursed house,” which is identified in the ghosts book as the McCann House. I don’t know about cursed; the book simply mentions that sometimes figures are seen in the upper story windows, and gives a short history of it.

    The O’Kane Building: Mentioned in the Bend Living article, too. There’s “ghostly smoke, weird lights, footsteps, and voices,” and occasionally a voice that calls out orders in the restaurant.

    Old Mt. View Hospital: I’m not sure where this is, the site says it’s now an apartment building next to Drake Park. Floor creaks have been reporting, like someone’s walking around.

    The Old Smoke Stacks: They must mean in the Old Mill District, which isn’t relevant anymore since they’re building it out… But it sounds like teenagers would sneak in there at night to see if the place was haunted.

    The Pilot Butte Cemetery: Also mentioned in Bend Living. Reports of ghostly blue orbs floating around.

    Independently of these sources, I’ve also heard the Lara House Bed and Breakfast is haunted. Ironically enough, it’s located on Congress Avenue… just like the Congress House mentioned above! (Cue cheesy horror music.)

    Other places mentioned in the Bend Living article include the Downing Hotel building in downtown Bend, current site of The Grove restaurant, Bronco Billy’s in Sisters (the old Hotel Sisters building), Sunriver Resort’s Great Hall, and the New Redmond Hotel in (you guessed it) Redmond.

    Shadowlands mentions Redmond, too. In addition to footsteps, there “have been pictures taken and in the pictures there are clearly orbs in the lobby hall. Feelings of a strange presence in the rooms in the middle of the night. Apparitions of a woman have been reported.”

    So, what else have we got around here? Anyone know of any haunted places I didn’t mention?

  • Scooby’s at the front door! (The Halloween party)

    Shannon blogged it first, I’m still waiting to see if Simone writes it up (or at least puts up the pictures)… I’m talking about the Halloween party we were all at last night. I hadn’t been to a Halloween party in I-don’t-remember-when, and it’s been even longer since I dressed up. I was a vampire, a classic one (not a goth one) with the black pants, white shirt, black cape, etc.

    Everyone dressed up, too, which was very cool—you always have these doubts, “will anyone else be dressed up? Am I gonna be the only one?”—but no, everyone who came was in costume. (Well, except for one guy, near the end.) The best costumes, in my opinion, can be seen here—the freakiest, too. Why the best/freakiest? The one on the right is a woman(!).

    I’ll say this—the hosts, Lance and Katherine, go all out for Halloween. Smoke machine, spooky sounds CD, spider candles, dry ice in the drinks, even cool touches that I wouldn’t have thought of like filling gutted pumpkins with dips (and a couple of large ones for the punch—alcoholic and non—with the dry ice dropped into them).

    And, of course, a giant, inflatable Scooby Doo at the front door, who kept trying to get in. So that’s gonna be the new tagline, I’m thinking. T-shirts, coffee mugs, bumper stickers, viral in a “All your base” kind of way. You’re gonna see it everywhere.

    Halloween rocks.

  • Johnny Carino’s sneak preview

    Last night we got a sneak preview dinner (along with about a zillion other people) at the new Johnny Carino’s at the north end of town. It was kind of their shakedown cruise to train and assess the staff and work out any glitches ahead of time; my wife had gotten an invite, so we went. (Everything except drinks was half off, too.)

    It was actually very, very good, except for the amount of time everything took—and this we attribute simply to being a preview, testing night—we were there for an hour and a half or so, most of that time waiting on the food. Otherwise, the drinks, the service, and the food were all excellent. I’d definitely go back again, but after a few weeks have passed to give them time to work out all the kinks.

  • Bend restaurants blog

    A new local weblog has popped up: Bend Oregon Restaurants. Found it when “BrENDa” (its author) left a couple comments here. Finally! A good restaurant review/guide blog for Bend, by someone who knows what they’re talking about.

    And you gotta love the honesty in her reviews: read the O’Kane’s review or the Bon Bien review to see what I mean. My favorite line: “Bon Bien is Non Bien.”