Don't worry, everything is going to be fine, probably.

Halloween is coming. This is a good time for a public service announcement;

If you are seeing ghosts, goblins, vampires, aliens, werewolves, headless horsemen, poltergeists, or presidential candidates don't be alarmed. They are probably only children dressed up as frightening specters of the netherworld. Except, of course, for the presidential candidates who are adults acting like children.

You are probably safe. A good method to test the safety of any situation is to ask your friend to go first. "Hey, Bob, how about checking out that group of deranged looking characters standing on the steps over there."

"Are you insane? That's the school building, and those are teachers! Remember the murderous, maniacal, wretched years we spent in school? I'm not going anywhere near them. Look at them, standing there armed with text books, and homework, pop quizzes, trips to the principals office, detention, and blinding, boundless hatred."*







"Oh yeah, you're right, lets cut through the graveyard, and across the freeway instead."

The lesson to be learned here is there are always alternatives, and sometimes you don't need to sacrifice your friend. But, don't get too close because sometimes the teachers demons can not be avoided.




*I have nothing but respect for teachers, I love them, all of them, even the ones with razor sharp yardsticks and venomous sarcasm, I guess that is all of them.

Our mistake, sorry about that.

Without thinking too much about it we may have started something fairly awful. There is an app for iPhone that will add a UFO (Unidentified Flying Objects), or aliens to photos. That sounded like a lot of fun, and it was less than a dollar. We jumped at the chance. Soon we were snapping photos, left and right, front and back, up, down, side to side, three, four, five dimensions (Darkness fears the dawning of the Age of Aquarius), sorry, we got a little caught up in the distant past there.  Soon, we had the whole city covered in eerie, menacing flying saucers, and creepy, malevolent aliens. It was a gas.

Soon, though, we realized we had been duped. The app we purchased was actually a portal leading to the far reaches of the universe. We had unwittingly unleashed a terrible alien army on our city. Our guilt was overwhelming, crushing.

Good people, and some who weren't probably all that good, were being carted off to an unimaginable fate. Perhaps they were being sold into slavery, or put in zoos, or made into housepets. Maybe they were made into servants, or used for bait, or put in mazes, and their paths were scrutinized, and recorded as part of a large, government funded experiment to find the best way to solve a maze. It really might not have been  so unimaginable, after all.

Blood curdling screams, filled with agony, and terror echoed from buildings. We felt awful.  Hiding in the basement, we covered the small, glass tile windows with foam insulation, cut from the countless ice chests that were abandoned down there. Well, we saved a few to keep the bologna, and beer cold, we aren't animals after all.

We sat there, with nothing but cold bologna (crackers, cheddar cheese, and spicy mustard, but those are staples) and beer for several days. Consumed by grief, torn apart by self loathing, filled with despair, we desperately sought a solution. We were running out of ice.

Then, out of nowhere, it hit us.  We emailed the App store and demanded a refund.  It took some bickering, and some threatening, but we got our 99 cents back.

Plus, it seems most of the commotion is finished outside. We assume everybody has been carted off, and the aliens have moved on to more populated places. This should really cut down on traffic, and lines in the supermarket. And, we have an extra buck to spend at the App store, and there is this cool ghost finder app, we can't wait.