hanging in

yo, doods. thanks for keepin' the faith. i haven't been online much lately because we're having to ration power. we've been leeching off the doods next door, but people are starting to run low on propane for the gennies. i'm not sure what will happen to us after it's all gone. we're still stuck under this stoopid dome, and nothing the government has tried so far has worked.

they're letting friends and relatives come to the dome on thursday for thanksgiving, but all we'll be able to do is look at them--and them at us. it's good to see dad, but it sucks that he can't really be here...or that we can't really be there, on the outside with him. if we ever get out from under this dome, i hope my folks decide to move away from here because i'm getting majorly sick of this stoopid town.

don't want to be a buzz kill folks, but i only have a few minutes of juice here and i wanted to say hey to everyone who has been staying in touch and asking questions and sh!t like that. i'll try to get back witcha again after the visit.

how do you spell optimistic?

there seems to be a lot of activity among the head honcho doods in town today. i'm not really sure what's going on. my buddy dale barbie isn't saying much. he's spending a lot of time on his cell phone. he has this number he keeps calling that is in area code 000 and that is just weird. creepy weird.

my other buddy, steve ranconteur, is what you might call an eternal optimist. he's decided that we're going to get out of here one of these days, and he was hired to work on the town's web site, and that's just what he's going to do. he's got a good generator at his place, so he still has enough power for his computer and he can access the web servers. today he updated some new content on the chester's mill web site, so you might want to check those pages out. i admire a guy who takes a job like that seriously even though we have all this other sh!t going on.

i heard that a bunch of famous reporters are holed up in castle rock, hoping to cover the story, but the army is still keeping them away.

sorry i haven't been around much

doods and doodettes, i'm here. still alive, which is more than i can say for some people. but i can't get into that too much. let's just say that things have been getting a little crazy around here...as if they weren't crazy to begin with. there have been some accidents and the doctors here aren't always equipped to handle the injuries. it's not like someone can be airlifted down to one of the big medical centers, ya dig? plus some people just keeled over--stress, i guess, natural causes, sh!t like that. a couple of people even cracked under the pressure and did terrible things. but, like i said, i can't get into that too much. my mom says that we should keep the town's bizness private. it's about the only thing we really have.

some folks are really starting to get worried about provisions. needless to say, we don't have much by way of fresh fruit. a lot of people have gardens and farms, so there are certain vegetables, but is there enough? and for how long? lots of frozen food -- burpee's has this immense storage warehouse and i'm scared to think how long some of that sh!t has been in there. some of it doesn't even have expiration dates on it, and that's not good. but we're all doing what we can.

the days are all starting to run into one another. people are working at important jobs to make sure the town keeps running, but a lot of other people are just doing nothing. i mean, what good's an income if there's really nothing to spend it on? it's crazy, that's for sure. and there's a lot of political wrangling going on, too. they try to keep us kids out of it, but i hear things. the president and the military wanted to appoint one guy the leader in town, but they had no way to force that to happen, and other people in town think they should be running things. kinda ugly. reminds me of the lord of the flies, big time.

the internet isn't working all the time any more, and even when it is, we use it to stay in touch with dad and to find out what's going on in the rest of the world. i'm goofin' around with the web server at the middle school, so if you're reading this and playing along, stay tooned for some new fun things to do there. helps keep my mind off things.

what do we know, really? nothing more than on that day last month when we got locked away from the rest of the world. we can look out, but we can't touch, and people can look in but not touch, too. everything they've tried so far has failed. it's a big frickin' mystery, and i'm still determined to be the person who solves it. it's not that i want to be a hero or anything. i just want things to go back to being normal again. ya know?

failure to launch

doods...and doodettes! i wrote a long blog post about the military experiments and the whole thing got ganked. by THE MAN of course. guess they don't want the world to know the details of what they're working on here. double dratsabs! so, i guess for now i'll have to stay away from subjects like b0mbs and m!ss!les and sh!t like that! ;)

i remembered that i still had the login information for the school web site, so i went in this morning and left you a new message. (attention military types: no, it's not something you need to worry your helmeted little heads over.)

of course, we're all pretty frazzled around here because of the stress and the shortages and the (b0mbs) and sh!t, so i totally spazzed and messed up the first time. so, if you're one of those clever clogs who goes poking around and finding stuff on your own -- phthththt! try again! anyhow, my bad, and i got it right now. do the math, that's all i'm saying.

i still owe you doods a story about the halloween party and ... wait for it ... my first kiss. but i got newspapers to deliver and conspiracies to participate in, so it'll have to wait until later. rock on, doods--and keep us in your thoughts. we are officially out of lettuce.

hail caesar

the internet has been off a lot lately. i guess the military got nervous when they saw us all getting together for our halloween party on saturday. maybe they thought we were going to stage another protest. dratsabs! the whole world seems to be passing us by when we don't even have the 'net. can't talk to dad, can't follow the world series. sux big time.

the halloween party was a blast, but i don't have time to write more about that now. i will soon -- promise. the military has been doing some pretty freaky stuff outside the dome. bombs and missiles and all kinds of sh!t. so far, no joy. i've been hanging around a lot with this cool dood named dale barbara (barbie to his friends). he was in iraq, would you believe it, only to end up here in chester's mill, trapped like the rest of us. worst thing for him, he was on his way out of town the day the dome appeared. almost made it, too.

anyhow, gotta run because we're setting up a computer camera to monitor a military test and i'm helping out with the live feed to the rest of the town.

some doods from a place over in england called hodder and stoughton asked me if i would deliver a secret message for them. i figured, why not, though i can't make any sense out of it. if you've been playing along at home, you know the drill:

'Patm'l matm lfhdx?' Ptgwt tldxw lnwwxger, ihbgmbgz ghkmaxtlm, mhptkw 119. 'B whg'm dghp,' ax ltbw. 'Wbw fr fhmaxk-bg-etp ytkm?' Mabl vktvdxw abf ni tgw ax lmtkmxw etnzabgz. Ptgwt Wxuxv kxtebsxw lax atw ybgteer atw xghnza. Mabl vetkbybxw max phkew tgw axk ynmnkx bg t ptr matm ptl tefhlm ftzbvte. Lax ptl mnkgbgz mh abf, max phkwl B ptgm t wbohkvx hg max mbi

boo!

hey there, doods and doodettes! happy hollow weenie! it's cold and raining--outside the dome. in here, it's nice enough, though seeing all that rain dripping off the sky around us is mondo weirdo. the force field is getting a little bit grotty. i guess there's some pollution getting it dirty like the windows my dad made me wash a few weeks ago. man, that seems like forever ago. anyhow, you can see where the rain hits and runs off. it leaves streaks in the sky. seriously, majorly weird sh!t.

the upside -- the halloween party in the commons can't get rained out. we're lucky that romeo burpee ordered his halloween supplies early this year. either that or he's dragging stuff out of the warehouse from last year. e-yew if that's right. stuff'll probably end up being stale.

anyhow, that's only part of the fun. people are cooking up stuff and bringing it like a big pot luck dinner and everyone's supposed to get in costume, even my mom. she said that big jim rennie should come dressed up like the devil, except that wouldn't really be a costume. i don't know the whole story there, but she doesn't like our famous used car salesman all that much.

pete freeman from the democrat will probably be taking pictures for the next special edition. guess they're all special these days.

it's been ten whole days since we got trapped and we're no closer to getting out of here than we were on day one. i don't think everyone's heart is in having a party tonight, especially not one with ghosts and witches and other scary things. lots of people are starting to wonder what will happen to us if we don't get out of here in a week, or two, or three. what happens when we start running out of important things? it could get bad. it's a little bit like that book we read in school, lord of the flies. will we start dividing up into groups of us vs them?

scary thoughts for a halloween afternoon. time to forget about all that and go have a good time. i can't wait to see what norrie dresses up like. lately i've been having different thoughts about her. she's not just one of the boys any more, if you know what i mean. i get nervous when i talk to her. i think what it might be like to kiss her, and that's never happened before. everything's turning upside down. i don't think the world will ever be the same again, even if we get out of here.

it seemed like a good idea at the time

first off, let me say that it wasn't my idea. seriously. it did sound like a good idea at the time. boy, was i wrong!

my homies and i got together last night to deliver the democrat. we all have baskets on our bikes, except norrie just has a carrier, but it works. after we picked up the papers from miz shumway we went off to the town common to plan our strategy.

that was when norrie pulled out the cigarettes. they belonged to her dad. apparently he quit a year or two ago, and she found them in the closet. they were all bent and croggled and stale, and there was even dust on the package, but we thought they'd be okay.

it was benny who said that we'd be like indians doing a ceremony to ask the gods for support before we went to work. see. not my idea at all. norrie said she didn't pray to god, but she'd pray to her favorite goddess: wonder woman. benny teased her about that, saying he would pray to gi joe. what a maroon!

norrie was the one who lit the cigarettes, too. i stopped her when she tried to light benny's, because three on a match is bad luck. not that i'm superstitious, but with the weird sh!t that's been happening around here, you can't be too careful.

who ever thought smoking was a good idea? i just don't get it. the stuff tasted like stale panther sh!t. it made me woozy and queasy and i almost passed out. passing out in norrie's lap, that might have been okay, but still def not cool. norrie looked totally awesome with a cigarette in her mouth, almost grown up. but we all decided afterwards that it had been a bad idea.

chalk it up to a failed experiment, like a science fair idea gone bad. good thing no one caught us. my mom would have grounded me until new years if she found out. of course, it's sorta like the whole town is grounded right now.

the only good thing that happened yesterday was the baseball game, and i couldn't even see that. it was just so awesome to hear that the yankees went down in flames. i was even thinking about using that as my halloween costume. a new york yankee with fake flames stuck all over him. ha!

scary

halloween is just a few days away. some doods suggested canceling it this year, but then some other doods said that we needed something to take our minds off what was happening and that's how things turned out. so, there's going to be a big halloween party in the town square on saturday night. everyone's going to bring whatever treats they had so we won't have to go traipsing all over town trick or treating. i guess that's okay. wandering around at night's half the fun, but i guess we all have to accept that things aren't exactly normal here in chester's mill these days. romeo burpee's going to set up his tent again and this time he says he won't charge for anything.

i guess a few of the local cops were out of town when this dome happened, so the cmpd is still recruiting new members. my uncle chuck was in town so maybe there's hope for him getting the job yet. some of the new ones they've already added aren't very nice doods.

helped miz shumway put together the next edition of the democrat last night and my posse and me are going to deliver it this evening. today's the normal day for delivery, so this won't be a special edition. miz shumway is so funny. the last time we went out delivering she told us the democrat hadn't used delivery boys (or girls, cuz norrie was there, too) in thirty years. "i don’t want to celebrate the reintroduction of the practice with one of you getting hit on the corner of Main or Prestile." ha! i told her that would most definitely be a bummer.

people aren't driving their cars as much any more, anyway. they're starting to get worried about pollution.

i'm going to try to follow the world series on twitter. go phillies!

global warming

it's funny in a twisted kinda way, but i think i have my next science fair project. you know how the scientists are always debating the green house effect and global warming and climate change and all that happy crappy? well, we have the perfect test model for it right here in chester's mill, maine, us of a. the force field is just like our very own private ozone layer. it's not solid (i think i said that before.) some air and water can get in and out, but not much more. the prestile stream is starting to run low. another day or two and it won't be anything more than a mudslick.

this force field is messing with the weather. of course, it can't rain or snow, and there's no wind to speak of. but it's also getting warmer. we're eleven degrees warmer than castle rock. we're usually exactly the same. people are starting to worry about what's going to happen when heating season starts in mid-november. people are mostly burning propane now, which is okay, i guess, but some people want to start fires in their wood stoves, and that means ash and smoke, and that stuff isn't going through the dome. this ex-military guy who works at sweetbriar rose did a puff test. air goes through, but nothing in the air.

so far, everyone's supplies seem to be holding up. a few things are running low. milk, for example. my mom says there's plenty of powdered milk. guess that comes from powdered cows? mooo. maybe my homies and i will have to raid dinsmore's farm to get some fresh from the tap!!

looks like miz shumway's going back to press with another special edition. she says this is the first time since the prestile flooded in '03 that she's done extra editions, and now there's two. a-may-zing.

this is why we have to fight THE MAN

doods! i'm back. hopefully for good, but u never know for sure.

we had our big protest out by the edge of town on saturday afternoon. it was a he-yuge success. i think almost everyone still in town was there. we had signs up all over main street -- not cheapo looking crap, either. pro jobs, if i do say so myself. people are frustrated, afraid and angry, and this demonstration gave everyone a chance to have his or her say. we were hoping there would be someone on the other side (we were hoping for wolf blitzer or anderson cooper or people from town like my dad) but it was just military doods who kept their backs to us the whole time. i know they could hear us. whatever this force field is, it lets some things through, but only a little. they pretended like we weren't there, but i know they heard us, and maybe one or two of 'em went home and wrote about it on facebook or on their blogs. that's what i hope.

romeo burpee had his big tent set up in dinsmore's field, selling hot dogs and lemonade. he said it was the biggest damn cookout and field-day this town has ever seen. there were a few religious types yelling out that this was the end of times and that were all paying for our sins. the same kinda sh-- that's always blaring out on wcik.

we could probably have charged people for our signs (dinsmore charged people to park!) but we just gave 'em away and i was proud to see people waving our placards. LET US OUT, DAMMIT was the most popular by far! some people brought their own signs, too.

norrie made up some chants and we handed out sheets and we all yelled them at the guards. someone, somewhere musta heard us. it was like fair day in fryeburg, except for the circumstances. people blew off some steam. the church folk sang hymns. there wasn't a cloud in the sky, but of course it could'a rained and it wouldn't have mattered to us. at the end of the day, we all went home, tired but feeling like we did the best we could.

i guess THE MAN wasn't happy with our little protest, though, because the internet was cut off when we got home. b@st@rds! goes to show that it's probably them who are keeping our phone calls from going out, too. makes me wonder if they aren't somehow responsible for this after all. benny thinks it martians or lectroids from the eighth dimension, but i dunno.

of course, without the internet, i couldn't even see tweets about the game last night, and the yankees won. double b@st@rds! if i'd been able to follow the game, maybe things would have turned out differently. like the butterfly effect, you know?

anyhow, we're back for the time being, same as we were last week. hanging in there, but this is getting old. i miss my dad, and even a trip down to lewiston or oxford hills sounds like fun. chester's mill used to seem huge, but now it seems like a tiny little place. like a jail.

special delivery!

benny, norrie and i met up with miz shumway (some people in town call her nancy newspaper!) at the office of the chester's mill democrat this morning. she had the papers all printed, but we had to bundle them up so we could carry them around town on our bikes. pete freeman, the photographer, was trying to help bale, but he couldn't tie a knot to save his life. seriously. and then norrie steps up and says that her dad takes her fly fishing and she can tie five different knots. norrie saves the day. who knew? my dad says she looks like joan jett (i had to google that one, but it's true!) but she can tie knots like a sailor. her dad is pretty cool, too. she taught him how to ride a board!

anyhow, we got the papers loaded them onto our bikes. miz shumway told us to deliver one to every house and business on main and prestile streets, and to morin and st. anne avenue. if we had any left over, we were to do our best until 9 o'clock and then leave the rest on the street corners with rocks on top of them so people could pick up a copy if they hadn't gotten one already. mission accomplished! i felt like some kid in a old time movies, like from back in the 1960s.

the big demonstration is in just over an hour. i've still got to print up some more signs. at least we don't have to worry about rain. it can't rain, or snow, and there's no wind to speak of. i guess it hasn't really sunk in yet how weird this all is. we hope to get people talking more about the problem, though, to figure out a way to fix it. i mean, come on, doods, we can't just stay like this forever. sooner or later we're gonna start running out of sh--. i think a lot of people are going to turn up. after all, it's not like there's much else we can do. can't go down to castle rock for a football game or to oxford hills flea market.

the angels are with us

ok, first things first -- yay angels! thx to twitter, i was able to follow along with the game fairly well, at least the scores, and dood, you guys rocked. almost stopped my heart a coupla times, but yay! i smell comeback.

everything's pretty much the same around here today. it doesn't even seem like a friday. no school again, of course. math teacher's still sending out homework assignments, though. dood, chillax!

miss shumway's decided to publish the newspaper tonight. special edition. woohoo! usually the paper is printed down in castle rock and shipped back up here. she could still get it printed down there. she just sends 'em the files over the net, but there's no way to get the papers back into town. major bummer. she says she's going to crank it out on the industrial strength machines she has in the news office. my posse and i are going to deliver it first thing tomorrow.

she doesn't know this yet, and i doubt she's spending much time reading my little blog here with all the other sh-- going on, but she's going to have some more news to cover tomorrow. we're organizing a demonstration for tomorrow out on route 119 in the big field next to where the dome / force field cuts the road. we're gonna put up signs all over town and send out e-mails and get everyone out there. try to get some people to come from the other side, too, so they can see us. we're gonna make picket signs that should keep everyone happy, even the tinfoil hat doods. STOP THE EXPERIMENTS and FREE CHESTER'S MILL and stuff like that.

norrie came up with a great idea, too. she said the best way to get people out there was to have food. romeo burpee, the guy who runs burpees, said he'd set up his big tent, the one he uses for his summer blowout sale, and sell hot dogs and drinks. it'll seem like a picnic but it'll actually be a protest. totally rad, huh?

tomorrow's gonna be a busy day!

the force is with us

so far, the wifi network is staying up, so we can communicate with people. phones aren't working all that well. in town, everything's okay, but calls to anywhere outside chester's mill get dropped or don't go through. my dad is using a computer at the motel down in oxford hills to stay in touch with us. he said he was turned back by some guys in a military truck when he tried to come home.


still no power. the folks next door have a humungo generator and they let us tap a line into it to run the fridge so our food won't go bad. i know the number one thing on dad's to-do list when he gets back home. no more putting off getting a generator. there were a few at burpees, but they're all gone now. i hear there's lots of propane for the town's generators -- for the hospital and stuff like that. we have a gas stove for camping so we can cook food. cold water in the shower, though. brrr-friggin'-rrrr!


lots of activity over at the hospital, which is just around the bend from us. school was canceled but the math teacher e-mailed us homework. can you believe that?! dood, chillax. we can survive a day without algebra problems!


i've been doing some research into force fields. no one really knows what this "dome" is made of, but it makes sense that it has something to do with energy. i wanna get close to it so i can check it out, but mom doesn't want me to. we'll see. benny and i are gonna sneak off after lunch, i think. anyhow, it seems like there has been lots of research into force fields. the ones i read about use plasma and electrostatics. that means there must be power somewhere. all i have to do is find it, turn it off, and voila! problem solved. of course, if the power source is outside chester's mill, well...


biggest question: who's the dood behind all this? i'm sure people in town are pointing at each other, and the tinfoil hat gang is having a field day with their conspiracy theories. there were a bunch of people down at the food mart going on about how it was the government. in a way, they make sense. could be a military experiment gone bad, like in that movie the mist.

we're cut off!

i "went to visit" my best friend, benny drake tonight. (strangest thing -- at the same time, benny "came over to visit" me. works every time!) that gave us about an hour to snoop around town. it's not that big a town, so an hour is plenty.

people are still running around like decapitated chickens. it's the weirdest thing. seriously, like something off fringe. there's this wacked out force field surrounding chester's mill. some people are calling it a dome, but that's not right, because it's shaped the same as town. like a boot. no telling how far up it goes. far enough to knock a plane out of the sky. that's what they're saying, anyway. and that someone's pacemaker blew up, too, when he got close to the force field.

we eavesdropped on grown-ups as much as possible, but then deputy randolph chased us away. we didn't want to get in trouble with our folks, so we went home.

mom was finally able to get through to dad. he's stuck in a motel in oxford. no one can get in or out of town. we heard that a bunch of people were killed when this force field happened. some of them were cut in half, they're saying. yuck! no one can explain what's happening. i heard someone say they thought invaders from outer space were responsible. someone else said it was the government. ours or someone else's. who knows?

i'm not sure we're going to have school tomorrow. the power is still out. what a mess. hopefully mom will let us go exploring more tomorrow. what i wouldn't give to be the person who figured out what's going on. i'd be a hero!

sent home from school

weird stuff going down, doods. don't have the whole story yet. the power went out just before lunch. the school has a killer generator but mr. allnut, the janitor, didn't have it ready yet. after a while, the assistant principal came to the door and waved my english teacher out into the hall. a bunch of teachers were having a big confab in the hallway. looked pretty serious, whatever it was. then they called us all into the gym for an assembly. no one said much, some sort of emergency, blah, blah, blah, and then they sent us all home a couple of hours early -- yay!

on the way home, i saw a lot of cop cars and fire trucks tearing around, so there must have been a big accident somewhere. no one's saying much -- at least not to us kids. the power seems to be out all over town, not just at the school. just about everyone has a generator, though. everyone except the mcclatchey family, that is. that's one of those things my dad is always saying he's going to get around to doing but never does. for a guy who's so anal about some things, he can be forgetful sometimes, too. winter will come, we'll have a big storm, the power will go out and then he'll remember what he said he was going to do.

you know the dad in that movie christmas story that they show on tv every year, over and over again? the one about ralphie and the toy rifle and the lamp that's shaped like a leg? my dad's a little bit like that guy. always entering contests to win valuable prizes. i guess that's where i got the idea to play around here on my blog. who knows? someone clever might win a valuable prize, too! and it won't be a leg lamp, either! i won't say what it is, but it's gonna be rad.

now that i have this extra time off from school, i'll have more time to chill and hide things on the web. so, stay tooned, doods. i have a pile of batteries for my laptop, so i'm not going anywhere. besides, mr. allnut will do right by me if i need a recharge -- i've helped him out before with computer stuff.

don't forget to check out my twitter account, too. it must be getting a lot of use today -- a few times i had trouble connecting to it. cell phones aren't working so great, so i'll have to use the web interface most of the time.

i'm off to see what i can find out about what's happening.

tweet! tweet!

i decided to check out twitter. if you wanna follow along, check out @scarecrowjoe

once i figure out something worth tweeting, that is!

discordia? omg!

right after i started up the blog (back on september 10, if you wanna look it up), i wrote a little bit about args. you know, online games that people don't think of as games. ones where you're supposed to get into it, like it's real life, solve puzzles, figure stuff out.

well, it looks like the gang over at stephen king's website is going to do something like that at the end of november. it's called discordia and there's this kickin' awesome video trailer up on the main page right now. two whole minutes of some a-may-zing graphics.

i don't know much about the dark tower, which i guess is a series of books, so i don't get all the references -- the rose, sombra, stuff like that -- but if they do it right, you won't have to know. you can just play along. it has intrigue, and spies, and assassins, and this monster big gun with the funniest caption written next to it! check it out, doods -- it rocked my world.

makes the little fun i'm having around here (or really?) seem sorta lame.

yeah!

late posting today because the baseball game went into mondo extra innings. my dad and i watched the game together and we loved watching the angels hand the yankees their butts in a basket. i know, i know, last week the angels took out my team, but now they're our next best hope to send those bums packing.

it was a great game. any game where the yankees lose is a good one in my books.

it's almost here!

halloween, that is. two weeks from tomorrow. can't wait. i'm thinking of putting something together from one of brian k. vaughan's graphic novels. as far as i'm concerned, he's got major chops. maybe i can work on that this weekend. i also want to get my report on carrie finished, too. love to cross things off that list that i keep in my mind.

don't tell my mom, but i went into mill new and used books on main street last night and checked out the new issue of playboy. well, i didn't get very far, because it's wrapped in plastic and mr. towle, the guy who runs the place, kept giving me the stink eye. gotta figure out how to get a copy. maybe i can order one over the internet. of course, if it just showed up in the mailbox, i'd have some explaining to do. sometimes being thirteen sucks.

freeze

i don't really understand all the different kinds of cops there are. on tv, you have constables and lieutenants and sheriffs and deputies and detectives, and i'm probably leaving a bunch out. state troopers. there's one. i guess every department has its own way of doing things. here in chesters mill, we have chief perkins (everyone calls him duke) and a deputy chief, but everyone else is just an officer. no rank, no fancy title, just officer.

castle county has a sheriff, which i think would be cool. like in the old west. my dad doesn't like chief perkins. says he's getting a little long in the tooth for the job, which i guess means old. dad says his ticker isn't up to a high speed chase on tv let alone taking part in one. not that we ever have high speed chases around here.

my uncle chuck got a few calls from the cmpd. apparently he's been applying for the vacant position. a lot! a guess people are trying to help him out with his job search. some of the applications didn't get all of his details right, but i guess people have big hearts and just want to help out. it's almost like starting a petition. if uncle chuck applies a bunch of times, maybe they'll just give him the job? whatcha think?

social networking

what do you doods (and doodettes) use for social networking? how many tweeters and facebookers and myspacers? i've been thinking about signing up to one of them, but they seem like such time sucks and i have enough going on right now to keep me busy. my mom already gives a ----load of grief for the amount of time i spend on the pooter. i dunno. whatcha think?

finished carrie last night. made me decided one thing: i'm going to stay in middle school 4ever. either that or go straight to the end of high school and skip all of that stuff in between. prom's out, too. geez, what a nasty bunch of troglodytes. (neat word, huh? didn't even have to make it up. it's a little hard to say, but it types real easy!)

now i have to write about carrie. i have a few ideas of ways to approach it, but it's gotta be good. my teachers expect a lot from me, so i can't let 'em down.

18 more days!

so, now that baseball season is officially over (it is -- don't try to change my mind or tell me that there are still some teams playing -- it's over) and even the patriots lost this weekend, let's talk about something more important.

halloween!

and it's on a saturday night this year, which means the sky's the limit. start early, end late, spend all day sunday recovering. it's already getting cold at night, so whatever i dress up as, it's gotta be warm. can you believe it's going to be down in the 20s this week? my dad says that some years it snows before halloween, but i can't remember anything like that.

my homie benny says he wants to go as a transformer, and he's got all these tricked-out designs for something that looks like it'll take a gazillion dollars to make and it probably won't work anyway. that's benny. big dreams but a little short on the execution. he'll probably pull a pillowcase over his head at the last minute. i told him he should go as a character from his favorite web site, but he'd probably end up in jail if he did that. indecent exposure, dig?

i'm almost to the end of carrie. holy moly, what a prom. if mine's anything like that one, i'm gonna make other plans for that day. i'm at the point where she just got back to the house and is talking to her "momma."

a day of mourning

i've got nothing else to say:

oh, it's that day

every year around this time, that day comes along. does everyone have one of those days? maybe it's only when you live in a small town that has harsh winters.

that day starts with dad saying, "i think it's time to get the yard ready for winter." time to crawl into a hole and hide. major bummer. i just know that i'm not going to get anywhere on my board, won't be shooting any hoops, won't be hanging out with my homies. what i'll be doing is working. hard. real hard.

yesterday was that day.

we have this big red shed in the back yard, next to the trees. my dad built it himself. it's sort of like a garage, except it doesn't have room for a car. when you roll up the door, what you see is stuff. lots and lots of stuff. our camper trailer, our little motorboat and trailer, gardening tools. stuff.

when that day comes along, it's time to swap stuff. stuff inside the shed comes out, and stuff outside goes in. the stuff that comes out includes the storm windows, which all have to be washed in soapy water and cleaned with windex and paper towels. then there's the shovels and plows and the snowblower, which all come out so they'll be the last things to go in. winter tires. the collapsible garage for the end of the driveway. except for the shovels, none of it is exactly light.

the stuff that goes in includes the picnic table, the swing set, the lawn mower, and all of the stuff that decorates our yard that could end up getting caught in the snowblower if we don't move it. again, none of it light.

because of my height (i'm 6'2", which explains the nickname) i get to help wash the windows on the house before we put on the storm windows. ugh. worst. job. ever. then i get to hold up the crosspieces on the collapsible garage while my dad screws them into place. the garage has a canvas roof, heavy like you wouldn't believe, and i get to nail it in all the way around, pulling it tight as i go. one year we had a big snowstorm and the collapsible garage lived up to its name. the roof collapsed and put a big dent in the roof of the car. it was a big joke around town. someone even used it in a skit in the talent show. sam's collapsible garage.

of course, getting everything to fit in the shed is like trying to solve a chinese puzzle. it'll only go in one way, and if we don't get it exactly right then we end up with something big left over and we have to start all over again.

boy, am i ever glad that's over and done with. at least until the snow is gone and we have to do the same thing all over again, except in reverse. today i'm so bushed i think i'm just going to hang out around the house, play around on the computer and read. tomorrow i'll hook up with my homies and let off some steam.

getting lost

let me see if i've got this right. if my dad gets lost while we're out driving some place, my mom rips him a new one and he's in the doghouse for the rest of the day. christopher columbus gets lost and we get a day off from school? not that i'm complaining, mind you.

was it just me, or did it seem like that lady on fringe last night was having a real good time while walter was experimenting on her? pretty cool seeing the old dude who was on star trek back in the stone ages on the show, too. i wonder if he was sucking on that oxygen for real, or if that was just part of the act. ;)

i'm saying nothing about the red sox today. nothing whatsoever. yesterday's game never happened, as far as i'm concerned.

i heard from my homie steve raconteur that a few of you have been applying yourself to the uncle chuck situation, and that's cool. the more the merrier, you know?

no job after all

i need to pay more attention to stuff around here. i was thinking i could deliver the chester's mill democrat on weekends but the paper only comes out on wednesdays. oops. ms shumway was tres cool about my goof, and showed me around her offices and explained how it all works. they don't print the paper there any more. she does all the layout on her computer and then transfers the files down to view printing in castle rock on tuesday night. the finished paper comes back up on wednesday morning. "just like magic," she said. so i guess people would be a little miffed if i didn't get around to delivering it until saturday. oh, well. she says that she might have some other things for me to do if i'm interested. we'll see. i told i'm pretty deadly with a computer, and she asked me if that was a good thing. hah!

she showed me the room where they used to print the paper. she still has this huge generator and a mega-big photocopier and a massive stack of paper. just in case, she said. she is attached to that newspaper like you wouldn't believe. even lives upstairs, with her old welsh corgi, horace. she told me she named the dog after the guy who said "go west, young man." gotta hit wiki to figure out who that is in case she quizzes me next time i see her!!

hmmmm

i just received a text from my new homie, steve raconteur, and he said that my uncle chuck still hasn't submitted an application for that job i mentioned before. what's up with that? apparently some other people are after the job, so he better get off his b()tt or he'll miss out.

all the print that's news to fit

i stopped by the democrat office after school last night to talk to the editor, but she had to go cover some breaking news. a new pothole on main street or someone double dipping at sweetbriar rose. small towns are just a hotbed of activity, doncha know. always something happening. guess i'll have to try her again today.

my dad thinks it's pretty funny that the newspaper is called the democrat since ms shumway is most definitely not "of that persuasion," he sez. she's a cagey lady, tho. knows everything that goes on in town, even the stuff that doesn't make it into the paper.

here's one of the bad things about living in a small town. last year, i took part in the christmas talent competition. i did this dance routine to redneck woman by gretchen wilson. sort of a napoleon dynamite gig. real laid back. folks really dug it, and i came in second. my mom says i stole the show and should have won. i heard my dad say to my mom that it was because of town politics. "the fix was in," he said, probably because the guy who won, dougie twitchell, is the town's third selectman's brother. i dunno -- dood did a pretty good act, juggling and singing moon river at the same time.

go down 19, initially

had no idea carrie was going have so much sex and swearing!
every chapter. i've learning several new words, though a
lot of them i won't be able to use except around my
pal benny.

carrie is a weird chick, but i sorta understand
how she turned out that way. i mean, other kids think she's
ugly and they're mean to her all the time and she's got this
crazy mom who puts her in the closet. whoa. one girl is
kinda nice to her, but even she is mean sometimes.

gotta finish the book in the next week or so if i
expect to get my paper in on time. i have until just before
thanksgiving, but it's extra credit so i need to fit it in with
all my other work.

julia shumway heard (love that small town gossip!) that i was
on the prowl for a job, so she asked me to drop
by the democrat office after school. stay tuned!

fun and games

i got a chance to work with steve raconteur last week. seriously rad dood. he works on web sites all over town and when i told him my idea, you know, the one i mentioned a while back, he thought it rawked and he said he could help me out. some of his ideas are toxic. look out world -- nothing is exactly what it seems. that's what my uncle chuck says, anyway.

i had to laugh at that part in carrie where the principal talks about the "mortimer snerds" in school. guess they had people like that even way back in the 1970s. people call me the king of the geeks, but i don't mind. i'm pretty good with computers and gadgets, and i have a way of making connections between things. you know, links from one thing to another. sometimes it's all about figuring out what information is important and what to do with it. it's totally rad when something like that comes together.

cops and robbers

the chester's mill police department is right next door to mills new & used books. when i was picking up my books the other night i noticed a sign in the window saying they're hiring new cops. that would be an awesome job, doncha think? my dad gave me all of his old hardy boy books a few years ago. they're a little old school, but they made me want to be a private detective for a while. that's almost the same as being a cop.

my uncle chuck--my dad's brother--is thinking about applying to the chester's mill police department. i don't know if he'll get the job, because he's never worked as a cop anywhere before, although he went to the maine criminal justice academy. maybe they'll give him credit for being a night security guard at the wal-mart over in lewiston. probably not such a good reference, though, 'cos he got fired for sleeping on the job. he hasn't applied to the cmpd yet, but mom and dad had him over for dinner a while ago and he said he'd been thinking about it for a while.

chuck is what they call the black sheep in the family. mom doesn't like him much, but he's family so she puts up with him when he comes up from boston. treats him okay even though he's been getting in trouble for years. he got suspended from castle rock high school for fighting and then got busted for shoplifting at burpee's department store. everyone in town knew about it. he wasn't really trying to steal something, he says. a bunch of his homies dared him to see if he could do it without getting caught. bummer that he did. had to go to court and everything, and ended up doing a bunch of community service. picking up trash on the side of the 117, stuff like that.

i overheard my mom ragging on him for telling me about that. "don't be like your uncle, go to college," she told me later. guess she's afraid i'll idolize him and turn to a life of crime. as if! i want to be the president of the united states, not a guy like uncle chuck. he's okay--he even volunteers at a soup kitchen down in boston, so he's not a total jake, but he spends most of his time playing football or going to the gym. getting buff, he says. looks gross to me. you wanna hear something funny, though? he's a member of the elks club. he gave me one of their weird horned hats when he came up to visit once. high-larious!

after he graduated from chester's mill high school, he went right into the army. i think my grandpa had something to do with that. i don't know where they sent him. he doesn't like to talk about it. someplace where they speak spanish, i think, because he's always goofin with me, trying to teach me some words. i told him i'm taking french, but he keeps talking to me in spanish anyway. kinda annoying.

first thing he did after he got out was get caught speeding, big time, and had his license suspended for 30 days. mom says that he let his best chance to go straight slip away when he got a divorce and moved out of state. that was five years ago, but he said he was planning to move back to chester's mill. i never know what to believe, though, because to tell the truth, uncle chuck is a bit of a nutjob. he says his ex-wife's new boyfriend threatened to beat him up, so he applied to get a concealed weapon permit last year. or maybe it has something to do with darla, the woman he's been living with since the divorce. mom always calls her "the other woman." i call her a bird brain, because she's wacko.

uncle chuck says he doesn't like boston, but it sounds more like maybe boston doesn't like him. i don't know what my mom thinks, but maybe he could get a job and make something of himself. there's worse things in the world than being a member of the chester's mill police department, dontcha think? it's freely radical.

what a deal!

i know i've said before that this is a small town. everyone knows everyone, except when the tourists are here and we're out numbered. you think you know every little corner and rock, and then something bites you on the butt and you realize maybe you've been asleep.

i was on my way to burpee's after school yesterday. it's on main street, right across from the newspaper office. i was also thinking about dropping in to see miss shumway, the lady that runs the paper, to find out if she needed anyone to deliver on the weekend.

something made me go into a place i've never been inside before. mom calls it an emporium galorium, whatever that is. sounds like something in a roald dahl story. anyway, its real name is "mill new & used books" and i always thought it was a dirty bookstore because the window is covered in dirt, and because of the pictures on the covers of the books in the window. all these ladies in tight dresses with their h00ters hanging out, and guys who look like they're only wearing underwear,  waving swords. mostly i think it was the sign, though. GET THE HOTS FOR DARK PLOTS. sounds kinda hinky.

turns out, it's a great place, a gold mine. there's a whole shelf full of used stephen king books, and other awesome things, too. i got carrie and the talisman for less than i would have paid for just one book at burpee's. i felt almost like i was stealing them, they were so cheap. i'm going to go be visiting that place a lot from now on!! i was so excited, i forgot to go see miss shumway.

world series -- here we come

okay, so we didn't win yesterday, but we still managed a wild card position. thank you los angeles. you were our angels! i think i see another world series in the future for the red sox.

i got away from school too late last night to get to burpee's, so i have to wait until tonight to get my copy of carrie. major bummer.

anyone here speak a second language? i know some of you must, since you come from different countries. must be weird, having english as a second language. i'm taking french, which only makes sense since we're so close to the canadian border. i was hoping my teacher would give us some good curse words to yell at those blue jays, but he's a little uptight about stuff like that. i know a couple, but they don't make much sense to me. they sound real good when you say them loud enough, though.

people are asking me what i'm going to do for the christmas talent competition this year. already. i'm, like, doods, it's not even halloween yet. i won second place last year, so i've gotta bring my a game next time.

keepin' on keepin' on

so i'm trying to get together with that mentor guy who's supposed to help me out with the web site, but he's one seriously busy dood, i guess.

great news -- my dad decided to advance my allowance, so now i can go back to burpee's after school and pick up carrie. i did mention that i picked that as the next book to read, right? i know i said that somewhere. too lazy to check back over my old posts -- lol! maybe i can get a discount. the guy that runs the place has a sign that says "every day is sale day at burpee's."

gotta get to my next class -- geometry. i love it. some of my homies are complaining about how hard it is, but i could do geometry all day long.

bzzzzzzzzz

hey, doods. how's it hangin? (that's a sk8tr term, by the way, so get your mind out of the gutter.)

i finished lord of the flies this weekend. sick book. when that navy dood showed up at the end, man, what a trip. would kids really act like that, you think? hard to believe, but maybe it's true. i mean, if people didn't believe it could happen, it wouldn't be a book they give us to read in school, after all.

my homie bennie came over on saturday and helped me with the yard work so we could hang out for the rest of the day. i owe him, big time. we shot some hoops, did some sweet tricks. survived the day without a scratch. i think bennie was disappointed. he'd like to get stitches some day to prove he's a ripper with steeze and not a sketchy poser.

found a copy of carrie over at burpee's department store on saturday. now all i have to do is save up some cash to buy it. i could check it out from the library, but the old lady who runs the checkout desk might not let me have it. i read the first coupla pages and there are naked girls in it. awesome!

tgif doods!

hey, everyone, it's fuh-fuh-friday at last! whatcha got goin' on for the weekend? i think my mom has a bunch of stuff for us to do around the yard. raking--why bother? there'll just be more leaves tomorrow? maybe i can invent something for my next science fair project that takes care of leaves when they fall. turns them into mulch on contact with the ground. that would be toxic.

i'm getting some help with the middle school web site. turns out someone heard all my barking and moaning. there's this dood steven raconteur who's gonna be my mentor. he knows a lot about web sites, but he's also good at getting people to deliver content. i mean, who listens to a kid? but an adult commands respect. it's not fair, but that's the way things are. sometimes you can "subvert the dominant paradigm" (i have a bumper sticker that says that. i love it because most people don't know what it means!!) and sometimes the dominant paradigm subverts you. the trick is to know the difference, right?

picking a stephen king book to read when i get finished with lord of the flies is hard. everyone's got a different suggestion. dood writes so many books! seriously. maybe i should start with his first one. it's about a teenager. a girl, but that's okay. some girls are chill. just don't ask me to name any names.

frost on the pumpkins

that's something my grandpa used to say when it got cold--there's gonna be frost on the pumpkins tonight.

cold weather helps the leaves turn color, they say (i'll have to look that up. maybe it's just an urban legend), and people around here love the fall leaves. that's what brings tourists, and tourists bring money and they leave some of it behind. (get it? "leave" it behind? hahaha)

i'm still thinking about what stephen king book to read for school. someone suggested the talisman, and it sounds really cool. a guy about my age goes on a quest across the country, like frodo. anyone else read that one? i'm working on lord of the flies for school right now. it's toxic.

one of the really neat things about the internet--you hear from people all over. i had a comment today from a guy in berlin, germany. that's awesome. he said something strange about my social studies teacher that i couldn't quite figure out though. maybe it got lost in the translation. the teacher is back today, by the way. wasn't swine flu. false alarm. someone got married, that's all.

some of you are doing a great job figuring out my little puzzle. i'm trying to drop a few clues to lend you a hand without giving too much away. here's my big clue for today--you have to look in places you don't normally look, and maybe click on things in your web browser that you don't usually click on. wysiwyg is cool, but it's not the rule, if you dig my meaning. by the way, what browser does everyone use? i have safari on my powerbook pro.

for those of you who solved the puzzle--remember how you did it. there's something you might need again later. that's all i'm sayin. you can shove needles under my fingernails and i'll never talk. (i'll scream and yell, but i won't talk!!!)

you're not trying very hard!

social studies teacher must have the swine flu. two days in a row she's been out sick. the sub is making us read a chapter out of the textbook about reconstruction. not like we couldn't read that at home. oh, well. gives me some spare time to surf the net. i'll bet my friend bennie is doing the same thing, even without a sub, checking out that page he's always going on and on about. ben-a-rino, the old hound dog.

so, anyone figure out the secret on the chester's mill middle school page yet? c'mon, gang, it's not rocket science! okay, so you have to do something you wouldn't normally do to a web page. pretend it's a car and look under the hood. check the oil. get your hands dirty, if you dig what i'm saying.

watcha watching on teevee this fall? i get to watch one show each night, so i have to choose carefully. i'd love to watch castle because nathan fillion rocks. firefly, anyone? it's on too late, though. maybe i can find it online somewhere.

webslave is more like it

i am so late today. i got tangled up with this webmaster job at school. the history teacher was sick and we had a sub so i got out of class to go work on the school's web page. well, try to work, that is. i officially hate being a webmaster. i mean, i got all these great ideas, but no one wants to give me any content, so all i did during my free period was run from one end of the school to the other and back again, looking for this dood and that dood.

long story short. i got one page done. big whoop.

anyhow, here it is: chester's mill middle school. impressive, no? none of the links work yet. maybe someday. like 2020 or 2030, which is when i figure those guys will get their frickin' act together. how hard can it be? really?

do i sound a little peeved? well, maybe i am. i did have a little bit of fun while i was at it, though. that's what happens if you give me free time and a computer! run your eyeballs over my old posts to find clues to the secret. couldn't make it too easy, though, so i switched things up a bit. take your best shot, doods!

petition

we, the undersigned, hereby petition the Chester's Mill selectmen, or congress or whoever is in charge of such things, to outlaw mondays. amen and hallelujah.

had a great weekend. played some ball, banged the board around the half-pipe, went to oxford speedway with my dad for the flea market. he let me pick out a new (used) bookcase for my room. he's going to refinish it, which is kinda like his hobby. keeps him out of trouble, my mom says. i thought i was gonna skate on the household chores, but mom came down on me like a hammer yesterday. when she stops calling me joey (no, you can't call me that--only she does) i know she's for real serious.

i've been hanging out over at stephen king's message board lately. today's his birthday, they say. i gotta read up some more about that dood. i mean, i like his books, but i know nothing about him at all, except he's from maine. who would guess that some big rich famous dood would live around here? i even read that someone wanted to make a movie out of one of his books here, bag of bones, but the state didn't cough up enough money so they're going somewhere else. major, major bummer. i coulda been an extra or something. my big chance, gone. anyhow, wikipedia, here i come.

i'm up, world. look out!

i'm not a morning person. not on weekends, for sure. my dad got me up at 11. i was having this dream, too. bummer. i can't write about it here, because it's kinda embarrassing, but it was toxic.

i'm trying to decide what to do for halloween this year. it's a big deal around here. there's always a parade and festival. we get a lot of people from away who come to town because of the fall leaves. folks are pretty cool about treats, too. my friend norrie doesn't even have to dress up. she could just go as her goth self. she took a faceload of stitches when she ledged out in oxford last year and it looked awesome. maybe i could just draw some stitches on my face and go as a board banger, but that would be sorta lame, doncha think?

i'm all set to play some bball with my homies, but my mom wants me to pick up my room, which is like the lamest job ever. i try to tell her i know where everything is, but she doesn't listen. bummer. catchya later, doods. and dood-ettes.

bball

i was varsity basketball last year, so i guess i had to go out again this year. i'm 6 foot 2 so i'm gonna be the center no matter what. just cuz i'm tall doesn't mean coach isn't going to bust my, um, basketballs, so i gotta work at it. i have this problem, tho. once i get good at something, i loose interest. i could beat my dad at chess by the time i was six. my mom took a couple of years longer. i need someone to challenge me. any takers?

i have to laugh at the tinfoil hat folks on fringe, but when you get right down to it, if you see a lot of horsesh-t then there's probably a pony somewhere in the neighborhood! i think it's a drag what happened to charlie, cuz you know he ain't ever gonna be right again. peter is cool--they throw all this weird-ass stuff at him and he just shrugs it off. i'm not sure what i'd do if something seriously weird like that ever happened to me. probably freak.

did you get the secret word spelled out in last night's episode?

secret messages

any of you guys watch fringe? i don't really dig all that secret government conspiracy sh-t, but i like this show. i surfed up some pretty cool info about it that i didn't know before. those funny fruits and veggies and flowers they show before commercials are really a secret code! i'm not goofin' witcha. each one stands for a different letter and if you put all the letters together each week, you get a word. one week, the code word was "codes." how awesome is that? you have to pay close attention, because there are dots and things that change which letter it means, but once you know the lookup table, it's easy as doing an ollie.

the old guy, walter, is pretty rad. he comes up with the trippiest things to say. and olivia, well, we all know what web site we'd like to see her on, right ben-arino?

small towns

i don't really like country music much, but people around here sure do. that and religious stuff, since we've got this monster radio transmitter out on a road whose name i'm not supposed to say cuz it has the word b*tch in it. that's pretty hilarious, don't you think? a church on a road with that address. it must drive the preacher bonkers to have to say it to people.

everyone's always talking about this song by this old dood james mcmurtry. i guess his dad's famous or something. anyhow, his song is supposed to describe what it's like to live in a place like this. i never lived anywhere else, so it's hard to say. it is small. we used to have a movie theater, but it closed. we don't have any golden arches or other places like that, but we do have sweetbriar rose on main street. lewiston isn't that far away if we need stuff or someone has to have one of those tight coffees everyone's always going on about. we even have a dirty book store. right, benny? right?

Chester's Mill seems huge to me. it takes forever to get from our place out to food city on the other side of town, mostly because i like going off into the woods instead of taking the roads. the woods, man, i could just go on and  on forever out there. it's like being on another planet.

i know everybody in town, too, and i do mean everybody, which can be a bad thing, cuz they all know me, too, and if i get into trouble, well...

speaking of trouble, i better get off this computer or the teacher's going to skin me alive. sometimes the POWERS THAT BE must be obeyed.

bummer! nobody gets eaten

on my way to school this morning i stopped at the town common to check out the new story king is giving away at his website. i have to tell you, man, this free wifi is the real deal. it's blazing fast. much faster than the rinky dink dsl we had at home before WiMAX.

the cannibals is pretty cool, except i was disappointed nobody got eaten. i guess that comes later in the book, the part we're not allowed to see. a bunch of people get trapped in an apartment building. the doors won't open. that's not so bad at first, i guess, though folx are getting pretty antsy to leave for work. but imagine what it would be like if they were stuck in there for, like, days or even weeks?

one part i didn't understand -- they had to go upstairs to the super's office to make a call. in real life, everyone would just whip out their cell phones and blackberries and iphones, maybe even boot up their computers.

the babe at the end sounds pretty hot, but i'm guessin' that she's a prude or something on account of how she's always praying.

friendly people

so i signed up on stephen king's message board. i asked for suggestions about what i should read next of his so i can write about it for school and i got a bunch of answers already. guess his fans are friendly and not weird like my mom thinks they all are. i even got an e-mail from him -- well, not from him exactly, just a newsletter -- talking about part of an old novel that he's just giving away starting tomorrow. it sounds radical: the cannibals. how awesome is that? people chomping on each other. ya gotta love it.

speakin' of my mom (i was -- look it up), she's making some of her tight chop suey for supper tonight. favorite. meal. evah!

wklv lv d vhfuhw phvvdjh

anyone into codes? the title above is in caesar cipher, which is pretty easy to crack, i guess. i love books and movies that are about solving puzzles. things like national treasure. even the da vinci code, though people like to b*tch about what a terrible book it is. i would kill to have a cryptex like they had in the movie. you need a code word to open it, and if you get it wrong, zap, the secret message inside is dissolved in vinegar. i bet i could figure out how to do something like that on a web page, too. if you guess wrong, it tracks your ip address and you don't get to try any more. you could go to a different computer, i suppose, but it would be hard. i could even have it delete the code if someone guesses wrong, but there are nitboys out there who would probably mess with it just to spoil it for everyone else. scratch that plan.

ok, enough about that. here's the puzzle for the day -- and you don't get to answer, bennie. what do you call wonder woman? is she a superhero, or a superher-ette or what?

and here's some cool trivia my dad told me. did you know that octopuses eat off their own tentacles when their environment gets stressed? i can't imagine anything being bad enough to want to munch on my fingers, but i guess you never know, do you?

wolverine: logan

have you checked out wolverine: logan yet? i know it's like so last year, but i talked my dad into buying me a copy when we were passing through portland on the way to bar harbor last weekend. brian k. vaughan is like god to me. his take on young logan is pretty rad, imho and it's cool that it's set in japan, which is a place i gotta visit some day. and the burning shadow monster that comes out of the ground? awe-some.

bkv also used to write for lost, which is like the most excellent tv show ever. they're killing us making us wait until next year for new episodes. major bummer. if you are in agreement, slap me five.

programming

so i got the gig working on the school web site. i showed the guy in charge what i knew about html and php and javascript and flash and he seemed pretty impressed. it's easy money, and maybe i can do something, you know, subversive by hiding secret messages in the text. it'd be pretty cool if you read the first letter of each word in a sentence and it spelled out FIGHT THE POWERS THAT BE or something like that. i have that on a sticker on my backpack. other kids seem to like it. or if you dragged the cursor over what looked like white space and there was a hidden message there.

i told the guy we should code in some sort of game to make the site more interesting, but he didn't seem cool with that idea. i was thinking of some sort of alternate reality game like i love bees, the one they did for halo 2. man, i wish i coulda gotten into that one when it was running but i was only like eight years old back then.

i wonder how hard it would be to set one of those things up. i'll bet bennie and i could do something that would be pretty cool. get norrie into it, too, if i can peel her off the skateboard. i'd need to come up with some really cool idea to get it started. maybe i'll even send some prizes to whoever finishes first ;)

back to school...again

had a great extra long weekend with my folks down in bar harbor. the weather wasn't bad, and we didn't have to do boring stuff all that much. the park had a pretty good skateboard area, so i worked on my cement shooting. it would have been cool if bennie could have come, too, but his folks had other plans, i guess. i did a full pipe and a half pipe without getting any road rash at all. it was toxic.

i got to miss a day of school because we didn't get home until yesterday. not a biggie. my teachers wanted to push me ahead a grade last year and i could have handled it but my folks didn't want me getting ahead of my "peers," which is a fancy word for my homies, I guess. i'm almost caught up already.

i read cell by stephen king cover to cover on the trip. not sure that i'll use that one for school, though, cuz it's about zombies and i'm not sure the teacher'd be cool with that. still, it's about cell phones, so maybe i could put a spin on it like how people who drive and talk on the phone turn into zombies. you dig what i'm saying?

school stuff

so, they send us back to school and then turn around and give us a long weekend, like right away. whose bright idea was that? way to stick with the program. i think my parents want to go camping, maybe down to bar harbor. i know my dad just wants to check out a different bunch of flea markets. he's always looking for furniture to refurbish. if you don't hear from me for a few days (yeah, i'm looking at you bennie, and you too norrie) utter a prayer to the deity of your choice that the mosquitoes don't get me.

classes are pretty cool so far. i got into this debate with my english teacher about our reading list. i told her we should be reading stephen king. i read three of his books this summer (the shining, the dead zone and bag of bones) and i gotta read more. this dude is seriously creepy, but in a good way. she told me i could get special credit if i wrote a paper about one of his books. at least she didn't shut me down. what's really neat is that he's from maine.

computer class is the best, even though they never really teach you all the coolest stuff. the super secret sh-- you have to learn on your own. after he caught me disabling the parental controls on my computer, the teacher said i should probably volunteer to work on the school web site. seriously. volunteer? people get paid to do that. if i play my cards right, maybe they'll fork over enough so i can get my iphone that way. worth a try, right?

right!

wired!!

found out something awesome today. the entire town of chester's mill is now wired for free wifi access. that means i can go online anywhere -- at school, in the park, down by the river, in the backyard, anywhere. isn't that amazing? they're using this new technology called WiMAX so they didn't even need to run wires in town. never heard of it before, but my good buddy wiki has an article about it. how did people get along before wiki? must have been like the dark ages.

wish i could get an iphone, but my parents say they're too expensive. maybe i'll get a job delivering the newspaper to raise money. the lady who runs the democrat seems cool. i wouldn't mind getting up early, either.

back to school

summer's over? already? man, what happened? when i'm PRESIDENT, i'm gonna make summers longer. he can do that, can't he?

what sucks is the blog i started last year is gone. into the bit bucket. it was on the school server and they wiped it all out over the summer. no backup, either. so, this is me, starting from scratch. drag.

big question: do i play basketball this year? everyone expects me to, because i'm tall and all, but i dunno if i want to. so, tell me what you think, peeps. not you, bennie. i already know what you think. mostly about visiting biwp dot com, you dog.

hey, break's over, so i gotta zoom. english class. wonder what cool sh-- we'll be reading this year.

Later, doods.