All Saints Eve has never been my favorite holiday, and for several reasons:
1) I was raised so very non-Catholic, non-High Church, non-ritual/creed/early-centuries-traditional that All Saints Day was a total non-entity...not even on the radar. So why should its Eve be of any importance?
2) During my years in The Youth Ministry Daze, when I was earning grocery money by enhancing the spiritual upbringing of the next generation, I campaigned against the heathen, satanic, druid-inspired origins of many of the aspects of the modern celebration of Halloween...so it would have been hypocritical to send my offspring out in ghost-deceiving disguises, threatening to wreak havoc upon our neighbors if they weren't paid off with Milk Duds and Tootsie-Roll Pops.
[Of course, since that time, I've come to see the attitude of Halloween being a gateway drug to satanism and the occult as a twisted variant on "Keep Christ in Christmas."...and just as effective in terms of popular culture and advertising dollars.]
3) Truth be told...the biggest reason I've tended to avoid the celebration of Halloween is because it scares me spitless. Skeletons, spider webs, dripping blood, eerie music, things that go bump in the night...you name it, I'm pretty much afraid of it. Haunted houses give me hives. Carnival dark rides have been endured with my eyes closed and ears plugged. Even Snow White's Scary Adventure at Disney World was too creepy for my liking. (Of course, It's a Small World fits that description, too.)
As you might deduce then, October is not my favorite month for movies. I purposely avoid all forms of "entertainment" that include the undead, serial killers, exorcists, and/or Kristen Stewart. Some people thrive on zombies, arterial splatter, pea-soup vomit, and meaningless staring, but I prefer my good times with more smiles than sneers.
So, while some are enjoying themselves with viewings of Nightmare on Pine Tar Road and The Screaming Skull, I'll be making popcorn balls (sans razor blades) and watching The Passion of the Christ.
Wait...what?
Real Headlines. Almost Real Stories.
This...is Almost the News.
Bill Would Limit Members of Congress in Hiring Family
Atta boy, Bill!
Shooting Suspect Reward Up To $25K
The reward has jumped up by ten thousand dollars for anyone able to shoot the suspect, who still remains at large.
Man Gets One Year For Hiding Corpse
...but after that, we're going to come looking for it. ("Olly olly oxen free!")
FBI Takes New Look At Twin Cities Terror Ties
The possible Halloween addition to agents' attire include the "Nightmare (on Elm Street) Knot" and the "Exorcist Ascot".
August Apartment Building Dives
The grand, majestic Esther Williams Apartments successfully completed a Forward 2 1/2 Tuck in yesterday's competition.
DNR Rules Against Bear Researcher
Department of Natural Resources spokesperson, Ima Ranger, said, "Bears should be out eating fish and stealing pic-a-nic baskets, not cooped up in some research lab."
With inspiration from fellow blogger and former co-worker, Allissa Danielson, I hereby offer a primer on the way things are around this here piece of fluff called Almost the Truth.
AngelFace and ActorBoy - Our oldest child, and our only son, respectively. One is a perfectionist; one spent all of high school pulling the wool over our eyes. I'll let you figure out which is which.
Beloved and BuckEye - My wife, and our second daughter. Beloved and I have had our fair share of good times and decidedly not good times. A shared faith and a huge dose of stubbornness have kept us together. BuckEye is the only one of our four children who was born in Ohio...get it?
Church - More than an act of obedience or a socially-acceptable habit, church attendance is a great source of material for a humor blog.
Diet - Meat and potatoes; Pizza and pasta; CornNuts and Dr Pepper; When thinking of diet as a strict adherence to a particular menu for the purpose of losing weight, don't think of me.
Earworms - Those annoying little snippets of songs that keep replaying in your head. I used to publish a quarterly recap of earworms that appeared out of nowhere when I was waking up...then realized that the eclectic list of unexplainable melodic infestations was probably only interesting to me.
Farnsworth - Mild expletive, as in, "What the farnsworth is up with that?!?"
Giant Step Theatre - I've been working with this children's theater that "exists to provide performance opportunities for youth and entertainment for families' for almost 15 years. I have been dressed in drag, painted blue, dragged across stage by 4th-graders, and had my head shaved. I've seen the necessity of having my grand choreograhic visions reduced to "Lean left, lean right." I've also been utterly amazed at how the little hambones can always seem to pull things together for opening night.
Hashtag - I've tried to get #FredBassetMustDie to become a Thing, but no one else seems to be as appalled by the utter lack of humor and/or redeeming social value in the waste-of-ink called Fred Basset. I'd rather newspapers just print reruns of Calvin and Hobbes. Farnsworth, I'd prefer a daily printing of nutritional facts from breakfast cereals to that stupi-er-unfunny cartoon canine!
Indiana Jones - The lead character in one of the three best movie trilogies of all time (Back to the Future and the original Star Wars being the other two) and one of the most-disappointing fourth episodes of a movie series ever. But the idea of having a full-length Muppet parody has merit.
Juan - As in, "Juan was such a nice guy," which is the catch phrase in one of the Stupid Stories™ I tell before Giant Step Theatre performances.
King Kong - The only movie in my DVD collection that starts with K, thereby helping me complete this alphabetical extravaganza. (And yes, we are talking about the 2005 Peter Jackson version, featuring Andy Serkis as the motion-captured behemoth AND a sailor named Lumpy who gets his head swallowed by a giant worm...nice.)
Let It Go - As of this writing, this song from Disney's Frozen is the subject of Almost the Truth's most-read post.
MisterSquishy - My youngest grandchild. There is also the oldest, SkittleKid, and the only granddaughter (so far), SweetCheeks.
News - Well...almost. A semi-regular feature here is to take real headlines and follow them up with twisted interpretations of said headlines.
Observed Absurdities™ - From time to time, an observant reader or co-worker or stranger will send along a picture or advertisement or thingamajig that strikes them as odd. If it strikes me that way as well, then you all get the pleasure of seeing it.
Pop Culture - Whether it's reacting to my Twitter feed, getting perplexed by the latest celebrity faux pas, or becoming a digital cartoonist, popular culture is always ripe for a bit-o-skewering.
Queen Ebola Hemlock - The character I portray in Giant Step Theatre's Snow White and the 7 or 8 Dwarfs. A perfect name for a perfect, egocentric villain. Find her on FaceBook.
Reality - What a concept! (Apologies to R. Williams)
Skyline Chili - The original Cincinnati style chili, served over spaghetti and covered with grated cheese. One man's poison is another man's Olympus-worthy nectar. Either you love it or you have dumpster detritus for taste buds.
Twitter - You can follow me (@deweyroth), or risk missing out on the 140-character events-of-the-moment.
UberFacts - One of the factoid feeds I follow on Twitter...the one that frustrates me to no end with their typos and incessant use of the word "actually," which makes them sound like junior high school girls from California.
Voiceovers - The tiniest, most-secret corner of the Almost the Truth universe. Consists mostly of non-profit work and my imagination.
World Wide Wackfest - Otherwise known as the Internet, the Web, or the Everlasting Online Information Highway.
Xamine
Your
Zipper
Made ya look.
Thanks, BitStrips, for making these musical moments possible.
The bell tolled
and so I was told
my underwear was under there.
"Under where?"
"Yes," the responder replied.
This, of course,
failed to spell out an appropriate course
for my undies-seeking horse
whose blanket was coarse.
(But who's going to yell about that till they're hoarse?)
And now I know
no way to weigh
the truth of what the speaker spoke:
"They're over there with their parents' grandchildren's parents."
In other words, they are alone with themselves.
To get her together,
it would take the arms (but what's the harm?)
of several occupied octopi.
I would have
if I could have
half that many manly charms.
Even when lucid,
I may lose it
if a child wrests his wrist
and forces me to loose it.
At which point, even a witch would rest...
though a wooden one wouldn't have won.
