catching up!

okay...

hope you all had a nice long weekend and a romantic valentine's day...

at the new york comic con last weekend, there was this awesome booth where this both beautiful and creepy lady was selling those designer contact lenses that make your eyes look just absolutely freaky...and i was ready to get some! i don't know where i'd wear them except for, y'know, halloween, but there were some awesome styles there and they were reasonably priced...
unfortunately, after thinking about it overnight--i have to convince myself when it comes to something frivolous--once i'd made up my mind, of course, she had sold out of the style i wanted. she gave me a card with her website listed, but the prices were much higher online. so, i'm out...
maybe next year.
anyway, while browsing, i came upon these and thought that they were just freakin' awesome! not the ones i was thinking about, but pretty horrific just the same...




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as i've mentioned at other times here on the blog, i'm always on the prowl for stories of the weird and paranormal, and there's one place i always find a few good strange and creepy stories each month over on YOUR TRUE TALES at paranormal@about.com.
check this one out and then head on over and check out some of the others...


The Wailing Spirit
BY CHIBI
By Stephen Wagner, About.com

I live in Eastwood, Sydney, Australia and my home on the north side is where all these events have occurred starting in October of 2007 up to current day. We have lived here for two years, and during that time have experienced multiple strange occurrences and contact with what we believe to be spirits or entities.

It began a few months after we moved in when my husband was returning from work one night. It was dark and he was driving slowly down the dead-end road to where our home is situated at the end. We live in a valley and there is only one road in and out of our neighbourhood. His headlights caught a woman standing in the middle of the road, and he slowed to a crawl to allow her to cross. She stood still and stared straight at my husband, who noticed she was wearing very little clothing considering it was the dead of winter. After a moment she moved off again to the other side of the road, where she disappeared into nowhere.

He pulled into our drive and, slightly disorientated and concerned, called out to see if she was nearby. When no one answered, it occurred to him that she was crossing from the side of the road that was bordered directly by a fence shielding it from a steep embankment. Feeling now very disturbed, he went into the house and told me what he had seen.

I had a similar experience, except with a male figure, several months after that. I was in our garage with the roller door up, sorting through some boxes when the hairs suddenly pricked up on my neck. I looked down onto the street where a man was walking along, staring straight at me through the darkess. I immediately felt threatened for no valid reason, but could not stop staring. I averted my eyes while he turned into the street that stretches down the valley opposite our house. When I looked up again he was still staring, except with his head turned backward the wrong way yet still walking down the street. He was grinning as he zigzagged along the road, staring at me. I was in so much horror and shock I closed the roller door and called my husband, who was in the house to come down and get me.

Only a few weeks ago we both experienced something at once. We were asleep one night when at about 2:30 a.m. I was woken by strange wailing noise. I turned to my husband, who had also been woken up, and asked if he heard it. When he replied yes we both got up and moved about the house looking for the source of the noise. As I went into the front room, I realised it was coming from the field across from our house. A woman wearing little clothing was wandering in circles in the field, wailing. I called my husband, who went white with shock, saying it was the same woman he had seen crossing the road that day. When we flicked our porch light on, she was gone in an instant and the noise stopped.

We still hear the wailing, but we never get up now as we feel we should let her be.

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Mass Migration of Stingrays
Looking like giant leaves floating in the sea, thousands of Golden Rays are seen here gathering off the coast of Mexico . The spectacular scene was captured as the magnificent creatures made one of their biannual mass migrations to more agreeable waters.
Gliding silently beneath the waves, they turned vast areas of blue water to gold off the northern tip of the Yucatan Peninsula . Sandra Critelli, an amateur photographer, stumbled across the phenomenon while looking for whale sharks.
She said: 'It was an unreal image, very difficult to describe. The surface of the water was covered by warm and different shades of gold and looked like a bed of autumn leaves gently moved by the wind.'

'It's hard to say exactly how many there were, but in the range of a few thousand'

'We were surrounded by them without seeing the edge of the school and we could see many under the water surface too. I feel very fortunate I was there in the right place at the right time to experience nature at its best'
Measuring up to 7ft (2.1 meters) from wing-tip to wing-tip, Golden rays are also more prosaically known as Cow-Nose Rays.

They have long, pointed pectoral fins that separate into two lobes in front of their high-domed heads and give them a cow-like appearance. Despite having poisonous stingers, they are known to be shy and non-threatening when in large schools.
The population in the Gulf of Mexico migrates, in schools of as many as 10,000, clockwise from western Florida to the Yucatan .


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over on craig's blog he makes a point now and then of noting what he's watching, what he's listening to, etc. and though i've been putting some serious time into this play, here are a few that i've been up to...

listening to:
~ stephen king's duma key (audio--it's about 45 minutes to and from play rehearsal)
~ streamlink episodes of coast to coast a.m.--great webcasts of excellent shows about the paranormal and the unexplained. check it out!
~ the ipod with all my music on shuffle, with strong leanings to the ting tings, the flight of the conchords, and the grey's anatomy sndtrk, season one...

watching:
all thursday night comedies--earl, the office, 30 rock--grey's and er, and, of course, lost!!
and, as i've mentioned, sharon's got me hooked on the freakin' bachelor...!

reading:
~loved craig's captain america
~hellboy and bprd
~jonah hex
~and did you guys pick up and read jeff parker's more-fun-than-anything-i've-read-in-a-long-time, sentry miniseries? i dig alla jeff's stuff, but this is yet another reminder of how much fun comics can be! go get a few copies and give yourself a treat!

gotta run!
smell ya later!
todd