I keep seeing a bunch of posters for this new movie "Hoot". I can't walk past them without thinking:

Anyway at 10:30 the other night I go out into my yard and there's the Werzner kid looking up in the tree.
I said, "What are you looking for?" He said,
"I'm looking for my burrow owl."
I say, "Jumping Jesus on a pogo stick! Everybody knows that a burrow owl lives in a hole in the ground!
Why the hell do you think they call it a burrow owl, anyway?!"
Now Stuart, do you think a kid like that is gonna know what the queers are doing to the soil?

The Dead Milkmen, "Stuart"

Here we go again…

Accused Alberta killers likely met on vampire site

According to a friend who spoke to the Calgary Herald, the 12-year-old girl met Steinke online at a website that caters to "gothic industrial culture" and claims to have over 500,000 members.

The site features blogs and online journals by people with user names such as Suicide-OfLove, TeenageOddity and RottingNails who share feelings of depression, loneliness and anger mixed with gallows humour.

Entries include macabre descriptions of being raped, wanting to commit suicide and desires to kill others, along with more routine teenage entries describing schoolroom boredom and fretting over boys.

We got back from Penguicon around 6 tonight. I think I'm hooked on the whole "con" experience having been to a few now. And, well, I feel this need deep down to join a LUG. Linux seems to be filling that space in my life that used to be occupied by the C64. There's a proud community built around the OS, and people like to get together and tinker with it for fun, like the C64 scene used to. I don't get that with Commodore people anymore. It's just not the same as it used to be five years ago.

Anyway, back to Penguicon. Highlights for me were:

• Hearing that Eric Raymond complimented Amy on her Serenity t-shirt
• Watching Firefly eps with a hotel room full of browncoats
• Downloading & watching the extended Firefly gag reel with said browncoats
• Having Amy finally find out who Eric Raymond is (besides the guy who was on the pot legalization panel, that is)
• Finding out what's in the new Ubuntu beta (Dapper Drake)
• Learning that LUGs and SWRAP have more in common than I thought ("How did you become LUG president?" "I lost the coin flip.")
• Escorting Amy around in a purple corset
• Trying a "cream sherry" that lived up to the label's claim of being a "dessert wine". Cream sherry smoothies, anyone?
• Being drawn to a room party by a loud karaoke rendition of The Gothsicles' "Konami Code"
• Being around peers who I could talk to about things that interest me and having them not only understand what I was talking about, but understand my feelings and appreciate my insights
• Playing the Car Wars card game and not being overly impressed.
• Retiring to our hotel room after said cream sherry and pondering a much more fun hybrid of Car Wars and Mille Bornes
• Attending a panel about blogging and realizing how lame this more or less unread blog is
• Hearing Eric Raymond's wise words on…hot peppers and hot sauces! Unfortunately, my stomach was bugging me too much to go to the hot sauce tasting following the panel
• It was very frustrating to be without my own computer at a computer convention all week. The charger/AC adapter to my laptop gave out Friday — it wont work unless you hold the 110VAC cord a certain way, then it makes creepy electrical popping noises. I'll have to pick up a new charger before I sell it. And, of course, my new laptop wont be showing up until some time tomorrow.