Mutterings of a Mad Woman

Chris Garneau - Dirty Night Clowns from ROCK*iT FiLMS on Vimeo.

Dirty Night Clowns is a wonderful tale of curiosity, danger and pursuit. Although its never known what the path ahead has in store, Chris takes a journey driven by his nervous curiosity to find the nefarious character who roamed about his house while he slept. What seems scary and evil from a distance might end up as something unexpected as a cast of characters lures Chris in for a special ending.

(via laughingsquid.com)

More images put together. This is the fireplace for 2010. Some of these items might be familiar from previous years. More images posted below.

At shows, people often assume my entire house is decorated with my artwork. Truth is, with the exception of large creatures I make for various themes, none of my pieces make it out of my office. And even if I took them out, they wouldn't take up much space.

I have a strict rule about my pieces: I'm allowed to keep one or two of a series. If I want a new one from the same series, I have to trade it out with one already on the shelf. It keeps my personal collection rather small.

There's one or two of you out there who actually own more pieces than I do.

Besides, I like the idea of having someone else's decorations up, especially when they have a vintage flair (I don't have a knack for that vintage style. At least, not at the moment. Maybe one day).

The plan for this Halloween was to go on a haunt crawl with a group, head downtown for a little martini or two, and then get home for the premiere of the Walking Dead on AMC.

Halloween morning showed the first signs of roadblocks. My cold, which has just been a nuisance up to this point, teamed up with a migraine (I blame the brief snowfall we had in the city) and knocked me out for 2 hours.

When I awoke, the migraine was better, but I was goopy. Coughing. Sniffling. A bit dizzy.

I was going nowhere.

A friend of mine came by to visit around 5, and left just as the sun was setting.

I called to Yetch who was relaxing after staying up drinking with friends at a party Saturday night (until 7 am). He'd gone past relaxing and into sleeping.

I tried to gently wake him a couple times but to no avail. I was on my own (insert awwwwwws here).

So I carved myself a companion who didn't care that I was sick and didn't mind staying in with me while I sneezed and coughed.

The doorbell only rang twice for trick or treaters (insert another awwwww here). I even bundled up at one point, shuffled out to the porch, and prominently displayed the pumpkin. But even though children pointed, parents weren't interested in crossing the street for the only house with a light on.

So my little jack o'lantern and I went back inside. I put on a movie during which we had a photo shoot (he posed on the table, I took most of the pictures below from my spot on the couch).

Quick, amusing story.

Yesterday I went to pick up a parcel at the post office. I'd missed the delivery and now had to bring my ticket to pick it up. The name on the ticket they left was G. Friday.

I paused, and scribbled something down on a piece of paper, laughing at myself for doing so, and slipped the paper in my pocket.

The lineup at the post-office was huge, and it seemed a comedy of errors was taking place before me. Ludicrous conflicts combined with a pleasant but not-so-bright postal employee makes for frustrations. I petted the paper in my pocket, thinking to myself again that it was silly and I wouldn't need it.

I get to the front of the line, take out my driver's license, and the woman retrieves my package. She looks to my license, to the package, and back to me. "How do you know...Ghoul Friday?"

I blink. Really? Really? You were expecting someone to produce I.D. with Ghoul Friday on it to pick this package up? I.D. which, of course, I don't have.

Now I have one of two options: I can try to explain to this person that she is my artist/pen name, and suffer the ridiculousness I'd witnessed in front of me that was suffered by earlier patrons, and hold up the line more, or...or I could pull out the piece of paper that's in my pocket.

I pulled out the piece of paper and put it on the counter.

It read "I give (insert my real name here) permission to pick up my parcel. G. Friday".

I hear myself say "We're business partners."

I watch the woman enter it into the computer and file away the paper.

So, according to the Canadian Postal Service, Ghoul Friday might be a Canadian citizen. And I'm allowed to pick up her mail.