Fear From Fiction

I was raised on R-rated horror movies. I've been watching them for as long as I can remember. Alien, Aliens, Poltergeist, Nightmare on Elm Street, The Shining. I could go on. What do those movies I just listed have in common? I saw them all before I was 10 years old. As a result, I'm very desensitized to horror, both in film and books. I enjoy horror, yes, but it doesn't really scare me. There are only two movies I can think of that can scare me: The Shining (specifically, the naked dead woman that Jack Nicholson made out with) and Signs. The Shining still scares me because I always revert back to the quivering 7-year-old boy lying on the family room floor in the basement of my house in Cole Harbour. Signs scares me because it's a masterfully made suspense movie that touches on fears that resonate just right with me.

Some video games can scare me, but that's because they're interactive and pull me in more than any book or movie can.

So here I am, going through life watching horror movies and reading dozens of Stephen King books, not even flinching at the horrors inside. Then, last week, I bought a book: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre: the Best of H.P. Lovecraft. Stephen King recommends him. Lovecraft is basically the father of modern horror. Since I'm an aspiring author who sometimes dabbles in writing horror, I figured I'd read some of his work. As a general rule, I hate early 20th century fiction, and when I started reading the first story ("The Rats in the Wall"), I figured that this was going to be no exception. However, once I got into the meat of the story, I realized that H.P. Lovecraft is seriously effed up. I loved the story. It disturbed me in a delightful way. I read a couple of other stories, but then decided to skip ahead to read "The Call of Cthulhu", one of his most famous stories. I finished reading it last night. I put it down, intending to go to bed, but there was just one problem: the thought of going to bed, alone (Avril and the boys are out of town), in my dark bedroom terrified me. I couldn't get the image of Cthulhu out of my head. Here's a picture of him:

Note the tiny man falling from his claws, and the dead guys on the rock in the foreground. I was sure that I would be haunted by the giant, octopus-headed ancient alien in my sleep. So I stayed up for another hour or two distracting myself with the Mo-Board. When I finally went to sleep, instead of Cthulhu, I dreamt about Star Wars.

My Bookmarks

Here is a list and descriptions of the websites that I visit on a daily basis:

Cracked.com "America's Only Humor & Video Site, Since 1958"

For years, Cracked magazine was the most successful Mad magazine clone on the market. Cracked magazine is no longer in print, and really, is Mad really going to be that far behind? Are there still people out there who find the Mad-style of humor funny? No, I didn't think so. Cracked decided to focus all of its efforts into its website, which is a million times more funny than the magazine ever was. Part of the reason that I like it might be because the writers are predominantly men who are close to my age and have similar interests that I do. Nerdish interests. They specialize in list-based articles (they also specialize in dick jokes). For example:

8 Customers Everyone Hates
7 Commandments All Video Games Should Obey
7 Classic Disney Movies That Taught Us Terrible Lessons
The 20 Most Ridiculous Batman Comics Ever Released
The 7 Dumbest Things Ever Done by Airport Security

There are also six full-time bloggers on staff. My favourite two of these bloggers are Daniel O'Brien and Michael Swaim. Michael Swaim is also the host of Cracked TV, an online series of short videos which is really just more list-based humor.


The Mo-Board "A place for Mo-Mos, Non-Mos, Ex-Mos, and even Anti-Mos to make friends and chat."

While the Mo-Board isn't the birth of hyperferrianism (that would be bolt.com), it is his current place of residence. One of the many, many message boards on bolt.com was the Mormonism/LDS board. As time went on, and bolt rapidly became a place that was unbearable to be (I'm not just being an ass; the place no longer exists), one regular frequenter of the Mormonism/LDS board saw fit to venture over to Proboards and create The Mormon Board, which eventually became the Mo-Board. There was a mass exodus of the regulars of bolt's Mormonism/LDS board to Andrew's new Mo-Board, a place free of the many, many, many ills of bolt.com. We're a very tight-knit group, and I consider most of them real friends, not the lesser breed of online acquaintances. Several of the members of the board have met in real life. Personally, the only two members of the board that I've met are the two that I knew in real life before the Mo-Board existed, but I plan to change that someday.

Facebook

You all know how I feel about Facebook.

Mary's Attempt at a Blog

This is my younger sister's blog. She blogs and posts pictures of herself and her family.

The Emily Needs to Take More Pictures Blog

This is my youngest sister's blog, which she doesn't update nearly often enough.

Pat's Photo A Day "A scrapbooking grandmother's pictorial journey through life, one day at a time."

This is my mother's blog. She uses it to post pictures and talk about grandmotherly things. It is also the source of most of the family news that comes my way.

Mommy Moments "Tales of 3 great kids and their snap-happy Mom"

This is the blog of one of my older sisters. Like Mary, she uses it to blog and post pictures of herself and her family. She's also a professional photographer, so they're really nice pictures.

Edmonton Oilers - The Official Web Site

My favourite hockey team's official web site. It is a source of great joy, anger, and frustration. It's also a great resource for when I miss hockey games due to travel, Tree House, or Rock Band.

hyperblogianism "Jokes, social commentary, and other miscellaneous thoughts of my online persona, hyperferrianism"

I don't think a description for this one is necessary.

MiKenzie, Inc. "Established 1978. Mike MacKenzie, President; Avril MacKenzie, CEO; Kenneth MacKenzie, Jr. Vice President; Alexander MacKenzie, Not An Explorer"

My first blog. This is where I keep people updated on my family. MiKenzie, Inc. was coined by my former roommate, Zac Erickson, and is an amalgamation of "Mike" and "MacKenzie".

Jandrew Edits "a collection of humorously edited footage"

I was introduced to Jandrew Edits by cracked.com, which will often post links to sites that they enjoy. This guy takes existing footage (mostly from Star Trek: The Next Generation and, more recently, Back to the Future) and cleverly edits them for short, funny clips. My favourite one is called "Bridge Buffoonery"

Memories of the '90s "I'm either one of the youngest Gen X-ers or one of the oldest Gen Y-ers, depending on which text book you look in. I turned 12 in March of 1990, and these are my memories of being a teenager in the last decade of the 20th Century."

My third blog.

Avrilcakes

This is my wife's substitute for a blog. It's her Shutterfly page, where she posts pictures of her family life. It also has a journal feature, which she uses as a blog.

amywoolf

The blog of another one of my older sisters. Like Mary and Sara, she uses it to blog and post pictures of herself and her family.

White Ninja Comics

Another site that Cracked.com introduced me to. It's a comic strip that updates three times a week chronicling the adventures of White Ninja, a man with an unclear history whose age changes from strip to strip. Sometimes he has a wife and kids. Sometimes his kids are teenagers, and sometimes they're little. Sometimes he's a child. He's even a baby in one strip. It's hard to put a finger on why it's such a funny comic strip, but I absolutely love it. I'll post some of my favourite strips here.

Why Facebook Sucks

First of all, check out this video on YouTube: Facebook In Reality

Okay, now let's talk Facebook. I joined Facebook a couple of years ago after being pressured by my sisters to join. Despite my reluctance to join, I loved Facebook for about a month after I actually joined. It was a great way to keep in touch with my large family, and I was able to find friends I hadn't spoken to in years. High school friends, mission friends, and the like. We got to share pictures of our children and our activities. I was also a big fan of the various apps that had trivia: flixter, Smallville, The Simpsons. I was working at a motel, and I had a lot of spare time on my hands, and it was the perfect way to keep myself occupied. However, I soon tired of trivia, mostly because the questions were written by the users of the features, and we all know that most people are stupid and can't string together a coherent sentence, much less a viable multiple choice question.

Here is what Facebook is good for:

1. Wishing my sisters happy birthday without having to phone them.

2. Looking at pictures of my nieces and nephews that haven't already been posted on a blog that I follow.

3. Finding out where my old friends are.

Here is why I avoid going to Facebook:

1. Ads. "Dread Going Back To Work? Read how I make over $4500 every month part-time from home."

2. Requests. Friend requests I'm fine with. That's the purpose of Facebook. But I have received this request dozens of times: "Hey, I added you as my relative. Could you do me a favor and add this application, then add your relatives too? This way I can see who on facebook I am related to..." You know what? I added this application last year. But even more annoying are things like this: "[name removed] sent a request using (Lil) Blue Cove: Here is a Frenchfry fish for your (Lil) Blue Cove. Could you help me by sending a fish back? Together we can fight Global Warming!" What the hell? Listen, I love the aunt who sent this to me, but seriously, what the hell? None of that makes any damn sense! Really, look at that quote and think about it. And how does sending made-up fish to pretend (Lil) Blue Coves help fight Global Warming. Also, interesting use of parentheses and capitalization.

3. Apps. Or applications, for you old fogies who aren't techno-savvy. The only thing these worthless, mind-numbing things are good for is cluttering up your profile. I especially hate apps that won't let you do anything without sending requests to 20 friends first.

4. Join my group! There are a few groups that would be worth joining. An example of a group that I like is the one for people who served in the Philippines Tacloban Mission. If there's one thing I like to do, it's reminisce, and what better thing to reminisce about than my mission. Most groups, however, are pointless and often humorously specific. Hey, join my group for males born between March 18 and March 22 who like to keep their hair cut short and part it in the middle!

5. Friend requests from complete strangers. I get a lot of these from Filipinos, for some reason. It's like they feel the need to be Facebook-friends with every white person who has set foot in the Philippines. On Facebook, I am only friends with people I know in real life or who I have known consistently online for several year.

6. The "People you may know" feature. I clicked on "see all", and they listed 27 people I may know. I knew who 11 of them were, and of those 11, I wouldn't be able to pick eight of them out of a line-up.

7. Searches. I had a friend when I was a kid named David Jones. Do a search on Facebook for David Jones and see how many results you get. Facebook has the most laughable advanced search parameters I've ever seen on the Internet.

8. Gifts. Gee, thanks for the picture of something cool I might like in real life.

9. Poke. It's not acceptable behaviour in real life, so why would it be acceptable behaviour online?

10. Blogs are better anyway.

Titles

There's an Internet meme that has been circulating for a few years now where you go to wikipedia and click on "random article" and use the titles of the articles to come up with your band name, title of your album, and song titles. I did it a couple of times, but then I decided that I would cut out the middle man and just come up with my own band name, album title, and song titles without the help of wikipedia. Here's what I came up with:

Band Name: Psychic Mind Twins
Album Title: Titles Are Hard
Tracks:

1) I Once Knew a Guy What Lost a Hand and an Eye Fishing With Dynamite
2) I Hope I Can Find a CIBC Closer Than Downtown Edmonton Since They Closed The One I Used To Go To
3) This Song Has Some Nice Male/Female Harmony (You'll Like It)
4) Nickelbackesque
5) Do These Pants Make My Ass Look Flat?
6) Everyone Calls Them Kleenex, But They're Really Facial Tissues
7) If You Ask For a Napkin In The Philippines, You'll Get Maxi-pads
8) This Song Would Make a Really Crappy Ring Tone
9) I Don't Really Have Eye Cancer; It Was Just a Joke
10) People Who Comment On YouTube Videos Are Jackasses

Memories of the 90s

Check out my new blog. It's probably my most interesting one. http://hyper90s.blogspot.com/

Names

This is the history of my online identities: I was introduced to the Internet in 1994, but I never actually used it until 1996 in my senior year at high school. I joined a chat room. I forget what it was called, but it seemed very popular. I needed to come up with a screen name, so I chose the main character from the novel I had floating in my head. The name was inspired by Noah. A year or two previously, he came up with the name Stormy Dexterous. The name always tickled me, but it was too out-there for the name of a story character in the type of novel I had in mind. So I changed it, simply, to Stormy D. and added my grandmother's maiden name, Logan. Stormy D. Logan. The D, at a later date, was determined to be short for Daryl. Thus, my original screen name was born. All hail Stormy D. Logan! Currently, he is the drummer in my Rock Band and Rock Band 2 band called Psychic Mind Twins. Fast forward to November 2000. I was recently returned from my mission, and Noah introduced me to bolt.com. When I joined, I was just going to use Stormy D. Logan. Noah told me that that was boring and that I need to make up a nonsense word (he was currently using the name "headolence"). I decided to stick to the roots of Stormy D. Logan. I took the word "dexterous" and transformed it into pneumodexterism. Thus, my second real screen name was born. Pneumodexterism was me. I wanted another persona that I could fool around with without ruining my reputation as pneumo. So I created another nonsense word: hyperferrianism. Originally, he was effeminate (hence the shoe) and air-headed. He didn't make much of an impact. Headolence had an angry, offensive alter-ego called I_Hate_Babies. He was overbearingly offensive, especially towards the Wiccans on bolt. It seemed like a lot of fun, so hyper made the drastic change from gay air-head to ultra-conservative, ultra-offensive Wicca-basher. He made a huge impact. I kept up that offensiveness for about a month. One day, one of the Wiccans (a girl named MoonCreature) decided to only reply to my insults by telling me, sarcastically, that she loved me. After she did this a few times, I thought it would be funny to return her love and make a 180 degree turn. Over night, instead of a Wicca-basher, I became a Wicca-lover. For years, I was a well-loved mainstay of the bolt Wicca board. Hyper became my real persona, and pneumo fell by the wayside. A list of the various trolls I had on bolt.com: joe_socks was stupid. His greatest moment on the Mormonism/LDS board at bolt was his post "morsanism" where he said DSL instead of LDS and wondered if we all sat around talking about polygamy and internet "conecshuns". I forget how I came up with the name. Magenta_Moon_Pants was a delightful girl. She was a very fluffy Wiccan. Her name was a spoof of the names Wiccans came up with for themselves. CaptainGrammar corrected grammar, and was devoted to wiping out Internet stupidity. His name is self-explanatory. ForgetNorway was an interesting fellow. On the surface, he seemed well-spoken and intelligent, but the subject matter of what he wrote about proved to be a little spacey. His name was based on an Internet cartoon called "Kenya" by a guy who called himself weebl. PayDayLoans was crude and offensive, and I'm ashamed that I ever created him. I came up with this name by looking out the window of Howard Johnson and seeing Pay Day Loans across the street. Nalibug was a stoner. People thought his name was nailbug, but those people need to work on their reading comprehension. Nalibug is Filipino for confused. hyperferrrianism (notice the three Rs) I created when the Mormon board was flooded with clones of all the regulars. No one cloned me, and I was jealous, so I cloned myself. Dr. Renticulus was a cartoonish villain. He was based on the following comic strip: http://angryflower.com/comesh.gif. Fun guy. antiwiccanistic. After hyperferrianism turned his back on his Wicca-bashing ways, I created antiwiccanistic to scratch the occasional itch to bash Wiccans without making my Wiccan friends mad at me. angrofoliac was an enigma to me. I never really got who exactly he was. He wasn't a nice guy, but his anger lacked focus, and he never made a name for himself. His name was a made-up word using "anger" as the root. sexaholism was a spoof of guys who are very crude and forward about soliciting cyber-sex.

Hyper's a Dick

Last week, I felt that I was in great comedic form on the Mo-Board. Snappy remark after snappy remark. Also, I was a total dick. I didn't mean any of it, but sometimes when something strikes me funny, I'll say it even if I shouldn't. I only think I crossed the line once, though. Let's look at some examples of me sacrificing manners for humor. Post Title: 7 R****** Food Myths the Internet Thinks are Real I posted a link to an article on cracked.com that listed seven myths about food that are popularly believed largely in part due to the Internet and mass e-mail forwards. Funny, but nothing that I came up with on my own. Noah (aka Mr. Dubious) had this to say in response: "There are 3 things wrong with this topic: 1. They aren't r*******. 2. They aren't myths. 3. The Internet doesn't think. It knows." To which I replied: "All excellent points...that you can shove up your @$$!!!!!" Rude, but no big deal. Noah and I have a long history of being dicks to each other online. It's all in good fun, and makes us better friends in the real world. Post Title: Moon Base by 2010 One of the regular contributers to the Mo-Board posted this: "The U.S. is planning a permanent moon base. Schedule: Robot mission to scout sites in 2010, first set-up mission in 2020, permanent occupation by 2024." Probably true, and interesting to boot. My reply? Observe: "Yeah, I've read that sci-fi novel, too." Kind of rude, but it could be misunderstood as a misunderstanding. In response, she provided a link as a reference to back up what she was saying. Instead of leaving it at that, I said: "Ben Bova wrote it in 1987." I ignored her reference and told her who wrote the sci-fi novel I had referred to earlier. Getting ruder. She provided a longer, more detailed reference from the Library of Congress. This was my reply: I was stubbornly ignoring her credible sources and insisting that the whole thing was a Ben Bova novel. (Sidenote: at this point, a third party said "That might be in the Library of Congress, too" which made me chuckle.) My friend wasn't ready to go along with my joke (or maybe she didn't realize I was joking yet), so she said: "I gave you a credible source. You guys should just look it up yourself." To which I replied: "What? My source isn't credible? He's Ben Freaking Bova!" And then she said: "I'm not disputing the fact that some guy wrote a book." That made me laugh. Nicely said, woman-whose-name-I'm-not-using-without-her-permission. But I wasn't done: "Thank you, [NAME OMITTED], for admitting that you were wrong." Now that's being a dick! Post Title: Polytheism The Mo-Board keeps track of the number of posts each member has made and assigns a title based on the number of posts the person has made. Since the Mo-Board was founded as a Mormonism discussion forum, the titles are church-based: Primary child, Bishop, Stake President, etc. Once a member reaches 5000 posts, they are given the title "God", unless that person is a moderator, in which case their title is always "Moderator". I was the first non-moderator to achieve godhood. The second was the same woman from the above Moon Base discussion. When she was awarded the God title, I started a thread pointing out that there were two gods. A little background before I go on: woman-whose-name-I'm-not-using-without-her-permission (Wwninuwhp) has been divorced twice, and has recently been embroiled in custody battles for her son. Mr. Dubious replied: "I can fix this...They just need to get married, because THAT's Mormonism." I hesitated momentarily, but then decided that this was too funny to go unsaid: "Sure, okay. Hey, Wwninuwhp! WWNINUWHP! We're gettin' hitched. Third time's a charm, am I right? Ring's in the mail." Funny? Yes. Did I cross a line? Yes. I actually apologized to her for that one. So there you have it: hyperferrianism is a dick.