October 30

Mischief Night
From Wikipedia.org, the free encyclopedia

Mischief Night is the night before Halloween in the Northeastern United States, October 30th (although it has been practiced on other nights close to Halloween or on it). On this night, teenagers traditionally preform minor acts of vandalism in their neighborhood. Usually, this activity is limited to toilet papering yards and buildings, egging cars, setting off consumer fireworks, and smashing pumpkins and jack-o'-lanterns. Occasionally though, the damage can escalate to include the spray-painting of buildings and homes, breaking windows, and smashing cars with baseball bats. Consequently, police surveillance is usually increased on Mischief Night in areas where this tradition is practiced. The mischief tends to be focused on the local schools and related areas, though nowhere is immune. If possible it is good practice to put cars into garages on this night, rather than leave them outside.
Mischief night is now becoming popular in Ireland, where teenagers get the week around Halloween off school. This means that many of the nights running up to October 31 are used by teenagers for acts of minor vandalism.
A similar holiday with the same name is celebrated in Yorkshire on November 4th.
Also see Halloween and Devil's Night

I'm In Cartoon Lust

Okay, I'm married. Happily.

But if I were single and a cartoon,

I'd go for Kill Face!

He is so cool!

Yeah he's the scourge of God with a plan to push the Earth into the sun but I'd forgive him. I mean, come on, the guy is big, white, with glowing red eyes and an accent. Did I mention he can benchpress 900 kilos. What's not to love?

P.S. And apparently he likes redheads. Yes!

Sexsomniacs?

"Sexsomniacs" puzzle medical researchers (ReutersLife!)
Oct 26, 2006

Researchers are struggling to understand a rare medical condition where sufferers unknowingly demand, or actually have, sex while asleep, New Scientist magazine reported on Wednesday.
Research into sexsomnia -- making sexual advances toward another person while asleep -- has been hampered as sufferers are so embarrassed by the problem they tend not to own up to it, while doctors do not ask about it.
As yet there is no cure for the condition, which often leads to difficulties in relationships.
"It really bothers me that I can't control it," Lisa Mahoney told the magazine. "It scares me because I don't think it has anything to do with the partner. I don't want this foolish condition to hurt us in the long run."
Most researchers view sexsomnia as a variant of sleepwalking, where sufferers are stuck between sleep and wakefulness, though sexsomniacs tend to stay in bed rather than get up and walk about.
While sleepwalking affects two to four percent of adults, sexsomnia is not thought to be as common a problem, according to Nik Trajanovic, a researcher at the sleep and alertness clinic at Canada's Toronto Western Hospital.
But an Internet survey of sexsomniacs carried out in 2005 that drew 219 reliable respondents concluded it was more prevalent than medical case reports alone might suggest.
"Most of the time sleep sex occurs between people who are already partners," Mark Pressman, a sleep specialist at Lankenan Hospital in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, told the New Scientist.
"Sometimes they hate it," added Pressman of the reactions of sexsomniacs' partners. "Sometimes they tolerate it. On rare occasions you have stories of people liking it better than waking sex."
With no cure, addressing triggering factors -- stress or sleep deprivation -- can help, while Michael Mangan, a psychologist at the University of New Hampshire in the U.S. has set up a Web site, www.sleepsex.org, to help sufferers.
Meanwhile Trajanovic is devising a procedure for diagnosing sexsomnia in legal cases where sufferers have been accused of sexual assault.

Ancient Brothel Restored in Pompeii

By Marta Falconi, The Associated Press

POMPEII, Italy — It was the jewel of Pompeii's libertines: a brothel decorated with frescoes of erotic figures believed to be the most popular in the ancient Roman city.
The Lupanare — which derives its name from the Latin word "lupa," or "prostitute" — was presented to the public again Thursday following a year-long, $253,000 restoration to clean up its frescoes and fix the structure.
Pompeii was destroyed in A.D. 79 by a cataclysmic eruption of Mount Vesuvius that killed thousands of people — and buried the city in 20 feet of volcanic ash, preserving Pompeii for 1,600 years and providing precious information on what life was like in the ancient world.
Among the buildings was the two-story brothel with 10 rooms — five on each floor — and a latrine. Each room on the ground floor bears a fresco of a different sex scene painted over its door — possibly suggesting the prostitute's specialty.
The upper floor was for higher-ranking clients. The stone beds were covered with mattresses and each room has names engraved in its walls — possibly those of the prostitutes and their clients.
The brothel — once centrally located near the city's forum and the market — is open to the public as part of the regular tour of the ruins of Pompeii, east of Naples.
"The legend that Pompeii was a lascivious city is true — and not true," said Pietro Giovanni Guzzo, the site's top archaeological official. "There was ample opportunity for sexual relations, but the prostitute in the technical sense was confined to one place."
The building was unearthed in 1862 and has undergone several restorations since, most recently in 1949, officials in Pompeii said. The latest restoration focused on fixing leaks in the building and restoring the frescoes, which had turned yellow and had faded in parts.
Libertine habits flourished in Pompeii, and considerable evidence testifies that the city's wealthy merchants and visiting sailors had a taste for eroticism.
The prostitutes were slaves and were usually of Greek or other foreign origin, and they commanded prices up to eight times the cost of a portion of wine, with revenues going to their owner or the manager of the brothel, officials said.

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press

I'm Proud to Be Black Ya'll

Black Cat Adoptions Banned On Halloween

By REBECCA BOONE, Associated Press

No black cat will cross your path this Halloween, not if a northern Idaho animal shelter can help it. Like many shelters around the country, the Kootenai Humane Society in Coeur d'Alene is prohibiting black cat adoptions from now to Nov. 2, fearing the animals could be mistreated in Halloween pranks — or worse, sacrificed in some satanic ritual.
The risk may be remote, said the shelter's executive director, Phil Morgan.
"It's kind of an urban legend. But in the humane industry it's pretty typical that shelters don't do adoptions of black cats or white bunnies because of the whole satanic sacrificial thing," Morgan said. "If we prevent one animal from getting hurt, then it serves its purpose."
Out of 97 cats at the shelter, 28 are black, Morgan said.
However, some animal experts say the practice does more to hurt animals than protect them.
"Black cats already suffer a stigma because of their color," said Gail Buchwald, vice president of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals shelter in New York City. "Why penalize them any more by limiting the times when they can be adopted?"
Black cats tend to be adopted less often than other felines, Buchwald said.
"Behaviorally, there's no difference from the color of the cat. It's tied into this whole mythology about the animal — don't let it cross your path or some foreboding or foreshadowing of evil — and that's an outdated superstition," she said.
It's not clear how many shelters still seasonally ban black cat adoptions, said Kim Intino, director of animal sheltering issues for the Humane Society of the United States, but the trend seems to be fading — along with the once-common bans on bunny adoptions around Easter or puppy adoptions as Christmas gifts.
"If there were people out there performing rituals with animals, then I would think that Halloween would be a time for that, but a good adoption process would tend to weed that out," Intino said. "There's going to be incidents of weird abuse that happen no matter what. The remedy is not banning black cat adoptions."

Music to !@#$%^&* To or Write About !@#$%^&*-ing To

Buckethead, Buckethead, Buckethead.

Masochist

I signed up for another tour on NanoWriMo. I'm a masochist.