Sunday night with The Walking Dead

It's Sunday, so that means its time for The Walking Dead, everyone's favorite show about zombies and the food that walks among them.  I kind of have a love-hate relationship with the show and decided to attempt a live blog, because why not.  It's not like Downton Abbey is on.

This is that live blog. 

• The episode starts with zombies chasing Shane.  Zombie parade!  Shane is the grand marshal.

• The crows eating the teddy bear in the opening credits always make me laugh.  We all suffer during a zombiepocalypse, even the teddy bears and crows who eat them.

• Alright, back to the episode.  The car slows down at a crossroads.  The scene continues: 

RICK:  Hey Shane, let's talk.  At a literal crossroads.  Because we are at a metaphorical crossroads. 

SHANE: Why not?

RICK: Zombie gossip!  Shane, I heard you left a man for dead.  Wanna talk about it?  And by talk about it I mean I'm just going to talk at you.  No more dangerous, okay Shane?  

SHANE: Sure Rick.  But can I still be in love with your wife? 

ANNNND SCENE.  But seriously, Rick says he was all mad when he found out and Shane and Lori, and then Shane starts talking about how it all began.  OOOH, yes!  How did the zombiepocalyspe start?  I always enjoy it when the characters start talking about the start of the zombiepocalypse because it's still kinda a mystery.  Although Shane doesn't say anything we don't already know, and then calls Rick "brother."  Oh brother, this dialogue.  Yeesh.   

• Cut to Lori and Maggie in the kitchen.  More ladies doing ladies work and talking about men.  It's like an episode of Sex and the City.  Zombies in the City, am I right?  (I am so sorry.) 

• Back to Rick and Shane.  Rick says they need to be more careful about using their guns, so they should start using their knives more to save ammo and to keep from drawing attention to themselves.  NO DUUUHHH!  Why haven't you thought of this before?  Knives are a perfectly good zombie killing tool, and only require a sharp blade and working hand. 

• Rick starts babbling about cake.  God Rick, shut up about the cake.  If there's not any cake here in the car I don't want to hear about it.  

• He must've heard me because how he's blathering about snow and how maybe they can get a snowmobiles.  Snowmobiles?  In Georgia?  Sure Rick, whatever you say.  Ugh, start talking about cake again, please.  (I want some cake.) 

• Rick and Shane walk up to a fence and see a lone zombie.  (Ugh, why do I think Shane is so hot?)   Shane pulls out gun and Rick pulls out a knife.   That's not a knife, Shane.  This is a knife!  

• Rick cuts his finger with the knife.  Let's be blood brothers, Shane!  Wait, no, he's just killing zombies.  (You know, I wouldn't mind seeing Shane, Lori, and Rick all raise the kid together.  What is the nuclear family in a world filled with zombies?  Why can't it be the cop and the partner and the woman who loves/hates them?)

• The guys break a lock on the fence and start checking things out.  Shane calls Rick over to look at some dead bodies and says there's no bite marks.  Rick replies that they must've been scratched.  Hmm...no bites, probably scratches...why do I feel like this will be important?  Hmm...

• Back on the Hershel family farm, the secondary plot is revolving around the blonde woman whose name I don't know who had a nervous breakdown last week and is Maggie's sister, I guess.  She's understandably depressed, and Lori tries to give her a pep talk and suggests they go on a walk later.  Well that was nice.  BACK TO THE ZOMBIES!  

• Rick and Shane pull Randall out from the car and Randall begs Rick and Shane not to leave him.  He used to go on the internet and live with his mom, just like you!  And he knows MAGGIE!  Whoa, really?  Small world.  Randall then follows up with the very good point that they saved him, so why would they kill him now?  Rick decides he wants to take the night and mull this over.  Good grief, Rick.  Shane responds by trying to shoot Randall, and then him and Rick start fighting.  

• DAMN, Shane just headbutted Rick!  You can always count on Shane to do some crazy shit.  

• Commercial time!  OMG, MAD MEN!  YESSSSS.  That weekend is going to be amazing, what with The Hunger Games coming out that Friday and Mad Men coming back on Sunday.  BEST WEEKEND EVER.  

• Alright, back to the show.  More bro fighting, more Shane trying to kill everything.  Rick tells Shane he doesn't get to make the decision on whether or not Randall will live.  This isn't a zombiemocracy, Shane, it's a zombtatorship!  By the way guys, Randall is crawling away.  

• Again, Shane with the crazy shit and throwing a wrench at Rick.  The wrench goes through a window.  And here come the zombies!  

• Now Lori and Andrea are having a fight.  The men don't need your help, Andrea!  Get in the kitchen and make a damn sandwich already!  (Apparently feminism died in the zombiepocalypse. Shut up, Lori.)  Andrea does a MAJOR BURN on Lori about how she has a husband, son, fetus, AND a boyfriend, who Andrea banged in the Hyundai last season.  SO THERE, LORI! 

• Back to Rick and the gang.  Rick ends up on the ground and zombies start falling on top of him.  Zombie pile on Rick!  Tickle fight next! 

• Rick waits till he can get a good shot and kill all the zombies at once.  Alright, that was pretty cool.  Nice work, Rick!  

• Back to blonde woman and Maggie.  Apparently blonde woman is married to Jimmy?  Wait, who is Jimmy? 

• Who cares!  Back to Shane, who jumps on a bus and closes the door in the zombie's faces.  He looks down and sees some fingers.  Ew, who left their fingers on the bus?  

• Shane pulls out a knife and cuts his palm.  Dammit Shane, this isn't the time to become blood brothers with the zombies!  Oh, right.  The knife killing.  

• Shane is the chum in a zombie-shark frenzy. 

• Rick decides to leave Shane and take Randall with him until he sees the two dead guys from earlier, who are sans bite marks, but possibly scratched.  Shane watches them run off, and then the Hyundai comes flying up out of nowhere with Rick hanging out the window shooting at Shane's new blood brothers.  BWHAHAHAHAHAHA, Rick to the rescue of course.  Meanwhile, Randall's neck is duct taped to the headrest and he gets off on the adrenaline rush. 

• Back to Maggie, who yells at Andrea, who left the blonde woman alone.  Blonde woman slit her wrists and Andrea says that since it wasn't deep, blonde woman has made her choice to live.  Maggie tells Andrea to GTFO.  

• We wrap up the episode with Rick and Shane putting a bag over Randall's head and shoving him in the back of the car.  COME ON, guys.  Either kill Randall or don't, but enough of this shit.  

•  Sneak preview of next week.  Apparently there's only 3 episodes left.  Huh.  Who knew?  Also, next week looks like it has lots of Daryl. Yay, Daryl!  This episode could've used more Daryl, but I do like how they didn't try to cram every character in the episode like they usually do, so that's good.  Not too shabby, Walking Dead.  

Night of the Living Gourds

One of my favorites things about fall is pumpkins.  Really, what's not to love?  They're bright, come in numerous shapes and sizes, they're tasty, and even the word "pumpkins" is the best.  Not only is it a fun word to say, it's one of those words that seems to perfectly describe the object that it represents.  A rose by any other name may smell just as sweet, but a pumpkin by any other name would just be wrong.  Or something.  Anyway, I had a day off from work earlier in the week, so I decided to carve up my pumpkins.  This year I decided to do two pumpkins: one regular and one with some bite.


But before we get to the pumpkin carving portion of the blog, I'd like to take a minute to talk to you all about pumpkin transportation safety.  Always be sure to properly secure all pumpkins when transporting them.  You don't want your pumpkins rolling around your vehicle and risk getting busted, do you?

Alright, to the carving!  I've been watching a lot of Martha Stewart lately and saw these pumpkins on her show.  Back in August or September I went to an outdoor showing of New Moon and they gave out these glow in the dark fangs to everyone in the audience.  I never got rid of them, and when I saw Martha's pumpkins I knew I'd have to make one and was super excited to actually get the chance to use the fangs again.

"Say it!"  "You're a, a, A PUMPKIN!"

It took me forever to decide what to do with my other pumpkin.  Last year I carved up an owl and it turned out pretty cute, but I didn't know if I wanted to do it again.  I briefly entertained the idea of doing a Ron Swanson pumpkin or a narwhal pumpkin with the stem acting as a horn, but I'm honestly not that skilled at carving.  So I figured I'd be boring and go with the owl again.  To aide in my carving I ended buying one of those pumpkin carving tool kits at Target.  Let me tell you, that was some of the best four dollars and change I've ever spent.  It really helped speed up the process, especially compared to the paring knife and ice pick combo I used last year.  Yeesh.  DO NOT RECOMMEND. 

So with the aide of my nifty new kit, I started scooping out the seeds and strings and goop, which is one of my favorite parts of pumpkin carving.  There's just something so fun about being elbow deep in some glop.  Kinda like when you were a kid and played in the mud; it's dirty, messy, and kinda gross, but that's part of the appeal.  After scraping all the guck out, I sketched the basic outline of what I wanted my owl to look like on the actual pumpkin, using the ridges as a guide.  I probably could've drawn it out on a piece of paper and then transferred it onto the pumpkin, but I kinda just wanted to start carving and see where it would go.     

Happy Owl-Ween!

What I really liked about this pumpkin was that it had a great round shape, a twisty stem, and these green stripes running down the sides.  The owl only adds to the pumpkin's greatness, in my opinion.

There's one more little pumpkin that I carved up, but instead of using gourd, I used felt.  You might not know this, but I LOVE felt and there are tons of really cool felt crafting books out there.  I bought this book not too long ago and decided to make one of the little felties out of it the other night when I was watching The Walking Dead, because I wanted to craft but also wanted to stay in theme.

To kill a Zomb-kin, rub with olive oil, salt and pepper, and cook at 350 degrees for 45 minutes.

He may be the rotting, re-animated rind of a pumpkin, but his goopy seed-brains are sequined and FABULOUS.  For some reason I kept loosing him that night and it amused me to imagine him running around the house terrorizing the produce.  ZEEEST! ZEEEST!  (That's pumpkin-zombie for brains.  Duh.) 

Happy Halloween! 

I love that this exists

Saw this at the library Friday...
I mean really, what's not to love? It's by R.L. Stine (because of course it is), the title is Calling All Creeps!, and as the cover depicts, it's about a kid that gets prank called by raptors.

Apparently it was creep day, because I also found this shoved in the back of another book:

In case you can't read that, these are the lyrics to "Zombie Dance Party." And the lyrics are:

Hear that sound, it's getting close,
A thousand shuffling feet?
The walking dead have come to town
For a Zombie Dance Party!

All we need are brains, sweet brains
And we're coming after yours.
You can try to run, that's half the fun
Of the Zombie Dance Party!

We're not very fast, or very smart
Be [Typo?] we've got a big head start.

So look out world, it's time to eat,
You call 'em "brains"--we call it "meat"!

It's a Zombie Dance Party!
A Zombie Dance Party!

It's a little "Thriller" mixed with The Cramps "Zombie Dance," but for kids! Never has the threat of death by zombie sounded so fun and festive. What's really funny about this is that I just watched my new favorite movie, Zombieland, on Tuesday. The only thing that would've made that movie better was if this song was included.

(By the way: does anyone else wonder why he didn't do sorta a pen name and go by "R.L. Stein?" Like Frankenstein? But how random is it that his name IS Stine, and he is "The Stephen King of children's literature?" Hmm...)