Things That Go Bump, Mad Science Edition #2

Yes, that's cardboard and aluminum foil. Can I please get a research grant?

As you may recall from last week's blog, we were delving into what serious paranormal researchers call 'spooky stuff.'

Because A) it's cheap fun, and B) even I get tired of listening to me rattle on about writing.

So this week, we'll continue with the spooky stuff. First of all, I promised you a video of my experiment with ITC (Instrumental Trans Communications), and I'll (finally) post the link below. But first, a brief introduction, for any newcomers.

ITC is the practice of aiming a video camera at a video monitor and then feeding the camera's output right into the monitor. You get video feedback, which looks weird. Some people claim you can also capture images from the Great Beyond. 

Below is a photo of the setup I used:

Oops, no, that's what the neighbors do when they hear I've been messing with ghosts again. Wait, here's the ITC rig:

Simple, right? A humble video camera aimed at an old CRT television (with no antenna or other inputs).

Now, the question you're probably asking is this -- did you capture any ghostly faces? Apparitions? Free-form non-terminating repeating spectral vapors? Gozer the Gozerian?

Nah. Feel free to watch the video, but if you see any faces in that mess you've got better eyes than me. 

Here it is, in all its barely-edited glory:

http://www.franktuttle.com/ITC1.mp4

And here are a couple of typical screen-shots.

The Afterlife is NOT in HD.

Green is the new ectoplasm.

Meet Mister Screamy Face.

I do see why people believe they can see images in the visual noise. Heck, sitting down here alone in the middle of the night, I thought I saw things too.

But they vanished on playback. 

I certainly didn't capture anything like the image captured by the Scole Group, which I call Bubble Man.

But I'll keep trying.

Which brings us to the EVP portion of our program. I built two brand new toys to play with, both designed to capture EVPs. 

One is a Raudive microphone in a box with a built in audio amp. That's the first image I used, and yes, it is a box covered in aluminum foil. Because I didn't have a metal box handy, and the foil will act as an RF shield.

It works, too. I recorded a long session with it today, and got nothing but static. 

Now, if you'll look below the foil-covered box, you'll see an odd-looking dingus with a coil on one end.

What is that, you ask?

This is a germanium EMF mic. You need not Google it, because I made that up. 

I took a metal shaft and ran a length of copper wire through it. Insulation keeps the copper away from the steel. The business end of the copper wire sticks out, and is soldered to a 1N34A Germanium diode. The other end of the diode is soldered to the copper coil thingy, which returns to the steel casing and winds up soldered to that.

At the other end, a pair of wire leads connect to the steel shaft and the back end of the copper wire. The leads connect to a mono mic jack. That gets plugged into my voice recorder, or into the small battery-powered 200 milliwatt audio amp (the white box in one of the pics above).

Why the tube and the copper wire and the coil and so forth?

I wish I could say the design came to me in a mystical dream, but honestly those were the first things I grabbed in my junk drawer.

Look, that would be a Bad Idea if I was trying to build a working FM radio. But when one is building a microphone suited for use by ghosts or extradimensional entities, there is no design book. I figure random junk has as much chance to work as carefully-designed circuitry, because nobody has any idea how we might communicate with ghosts anyway, if they even exist.

Also, I thought it looked cool in an old-school B movie sort of way.

Why germanium? Why a 1N34A diode? Why not a Zener or a switching diode?

I don't have any of those.

I wasn't expecting much out of this, um, device. 

I waved it around at Karen. It picked up our cells phones buzzing and clicking.

I plugged it into my recorder, and then went to help feed Max and Fletcher. Fletcher is our diabetic dog, and he likes it when we both feed him. 

So the EMF mic and the recorder were out here in an empty room. 

I got two pretty good EVPs. The first says, at least to me, 'It's a trick.'

It sounds best with headphones, but here it is, looped so you can hear it better. Foljks, please, max out your volume on this one. Not joking, and I promise this isn't a prank!

http://www.franktuttle.com/podcast1/itsatrick.mp3

And here's the second one. I cannot make out the words, but I hear what sounds like a male voice mumble, and a female voice respond.

Reduce your volume to normal for this one!

http://www.franktuttle.com/podcast1/cowsee.mp3

Again, there was no one here when those voices were recorded.

I can't wait to take my EMF mic to a couple of the places I've gotten EVPs before. Maybe this week I'll have time.

By the way, if you want to try the EMF mic trick yourself, 1N34A germanium diodes can be had from Amazon for a buck. The mono mic jack is a Radio Shack product, which will set you back $3.19. The shaft and the copper coil is more decorative than anything; the diode is the heart of the thing.

WRITING NEWS

The new Markhat novel, THE FIVE FACES, went off to Samhain for their consideration last week. 

Which is big news, to me at least. 

I'll be perfectly honest with you. Every time I finish a book, I'm surprised. 

I am the laziest person alive. I kid you not. There are slime molds with more influential work ethics than me. My base state of being is that of reclining, preferably on a bed, while True TV airs another episode of 'World's Dumbest' and I watch by snoring my way through it.

But another novel has appeared. It's a good one, too. Markhat doesn't just get lucky this time. He fights his way through, and --

-- well, you'll have to wait for the book.

If there is a book, of course. The publisher might say no. It's always possible I've written a stinker and just don't know it.

I can't entertain that line of thought. Instead, I've started the new Mug and Meralda book, which will be entitled ALL THE TURNS OF LIGHT.

And I have a surprise for all you Meralda and Mug fans out there -- THEY LEAVE TIRLIN!

That's right, no more puttering around in the Royal Laboratory with holdstones and calculus. Meralda is on the road, baby, and hating every minute of it....

My plan it to get this one done and out before Christmas. If my courage holds, next week I will start posting weekly word counts, so that you, my friends, can brow-beat and guilt me into actually doing some work.

TECH NEWS

If I counted up the hours of my day and what I do with them, pounding away at a keyboard would doubtlessly marshal the majority of my time. 

The PC at which I work was built in late 2010, which means it's beginning to show its age. I've been collecting parts to build a new rig for months now, and I'm nearly done acquiring components.

When I am done, I'm going to build the new machine, piece by piece, in front of a camera. Karen has graciously agreed to film the build, and we hope that watching me build a new PC from scratch might help anyone else out there who wants a solid machine at a bargain-basement price. I'll post parts lists, suppliers, and technical notes, of course.

Building a machine isn't as hard as you might think. And oh, the money you can save! 

I'll make sure everyone gets a heads-up before we post that.

Okay, it's almost time for FALLING SKIES. And I need to get in my word count. Enjoy the voices, people!

And check under your beds...bwahahahaha....

Things that Go Bump: Mad Science Edition

I always knew infinity was blue.

Put on your vortex goggles and hide the unstable isotopes, kids, because tonight we're going to rip away the very bed-sheets of Space and Time and peer right up the skirts of Infinity itself.

The image above? It's a screen-grab from a video I made last night. But more about that later.

Right now, let's take a brief detour back to 1993, and pay a quick visit to a little enterprise which has come to be known as the Scole Experiment.

What was the Scole Experiment? Let me use their own words to describe their efforts:

The Scole Experiment chronicles the extraordinary results of a five-year investigation into life after death. At the beginning of 1993 four psychic researchers embarked on a series of experiments in the Norfolk village of Scole. The subsequent events were so astounding that senior members of the 
prestigious Society for Psychical Research asked to observe, test and record what took place.

-- From the Scole Experiment website

Okay, by now you may be thinking to yourself 'Aha. Tuttle isn't normally very enthused about psychic researchers. He must be short of blog ideas.'

Nay, nay. It's true I'm not usually a big fan of so-called psychic researchers. But this bunch captured some truly extraordinary evidence, and they did so in the presence of a professional magician on the lookout for fakery.

You can peruse their website and decide for yourself. But I would like to call your attention to a few intriguing photographs they obtained.

Click here for a page containing video screen grabs from various ITC (Instrumental Trans Communication) sessions. Two in particular caught my eye. Here's the first one:

Man in the Bubble

Blue

As I understand it, these images were obtained using a 90s-issue VHSC video camera aimed at a television screen. This setup is the basis for ITC, or Instrumental Trans Communications.

The Scole group produced a volume of fascinating material. There are circuit diagrams. There are images. There are drawings. Copies of newspapers. Odd little scribbles. You name it, they got it.

They also had a long conversation with a being claiming to be an extra-dimensional entity. Not a ghost. Not a spirit. Just an energy creature hanging out in its crib, playing with the 33rd dimension's equivalent of a HAM radio.

Of course not everything they present is thrilling. I'm still puzzling over this screen-grab. They see a face in the image. I see -- stuff. Video noise.

Even so, I couldn't get that 'Man in the Bubble' image out of my head. It's either genuine evidence of the paranormal, or it's fake.

Bubble Man.

At this point, I came to the same decision I came to years ago, when I first became intrigued by EVP recordings.

I decided to try and gather ITC evidence on my own, so I'd know it wasn't faked.

Furthermore, I built a special ITC rig of my very own. But that's for later. Right now, let's look at a standard ITC setup, and see how it works.

Standard ITC setup

It's simple. You aim a video camera at a television screen. The camera's video output is connected to the television's video input. Thus, you wind up with the camera filming its own output.

That creates feedback. Hold a live microphone up to the loudspeaker. That awful shriek is also feedback.

Here, we have video feedback instead of the audio version.

The theory behind ITC video images is similar to what some people say about EVP voices. The random video noise created by the feedback loop somehow allows spirits or other entities to create images, which are then recorded and can be replayed at will.

Okay. Regardless of how far-fetched all that sounds, the purely physical setup is pretty easy. Here's how my own ITC experiment looked:

That's a Sony Handicam on a tripod aimed at an ancient Sanyo CRT TV. The camera lens is about two feet from the TV screen.

That TV is old, people. It's pre-digital, which means it can't even get broadcast signals anymore. I use it to watch the occasional concert on DVD, but I disconnected the DVD player for the session. My point is that the TV isn't going to just randomly display images of people, for instance, because it is essentially a brick without a video source.

Here are a couple of static images I took when I started the experiment:

Stay away from the light, Carol Ann...

One quick note here -- I tried this first during the day, and I immediately spotted several fairly obvious reflections in the glass of the TV screen. There was me, for instance. The window behind me. A few other objects, none ghostly or extra-dimensional as far as I could tell.

So I dumped all that video and waited for dark. 

When the feedback loop is established, you get a strobing effect that takes about two seconds to move from full black to bright white. In between the extremes, you'll see mobile, indistinct shapes blossom and shrink and darken and die. 

It's these shapes that seem to hide the faces and other images.

And these are also the places where our old friend pareidolia comes out to play.  Pareidolia is what lets you see faces in the wood grain of cabinets, or in the clouds. We are hard-wired to make out faces, and do so quickly.

So my criteria for what constitutes an actual face is pretty high. A pair of dark spots and a slit for a mouth isn't going to cut it. 

No, I want to see an image like that of Bubble Man.

Old dude with glasses. That image isn't pareidolia. It may well not be real, in that someone may have cut out a perfectly mundane photo of a man with glasses and stuck it to the TV screen for a single frame, but it jolly well isn't pareidolia.

"Come on, Tuttle, quit stalling! You said you held an ITC session. Did you get anything, or not?"

Well. Yes and no. Mainly no. 

See for yourself:

If that image is the result of an extra-dimensional communicator, he needs to try a little harder. Yeah, okay, two eyes and a mouth, but that's obviously just a random formation of lights and darks. Bzzzzt, better luck next time.

What about this next image, which is a lot more complicated?

I asked for an image of a dog, and that's not actually a bad image. I believe it's nothing but pareidolia, but I can see where some might not.

But we're a long way from photographic-quality images such as the Bubble Man, aren't we?

Yes we are.

The truth of the matter is this -- analyzing ITC data is a lot more laborious than doing the same for EVP recordings. You have to wade through the video files one frame at a time. Let's see, at 30 frames per second and 60 seconds per minute that's 1800 frames per minute, or over 21,000 frames for the single 12 minute video I shot last night.

I'm about four minutes in. And I've been at this for seven solid hours.

So a complete analysis will have to wait. Sorry about that; I know I promised a good blog entry today, but the sheer math of it has overwhelmed me.

We won't even talk about trying to use Windows Movie Maker to do a frame-by-frame analysis of a longish video clip. We won't talk about that because I don't like to use those kinds of words in public. Suffice it to say I will be on the lookout for a basic cheap video editing package.

Again, my apologies for not finishing all this today. I will finish analyzing the video. Until then, these screen grabs will have to suffice.

The image I opened this blog entry with doesn't look at all like the blobby grainy green images I've shown, does it?

That's because this image was generated using the same camera in a device I built myself Saturday afternoon, after seeing the first grainy strobing pictures produced by the old-school CRT tube.

Televisions work by refreshing the screen 60 times a second or so. I think that's part of what causes the strobing effect we saw earlier. So, I decided I'd eliminate that by using four mirrors placed at ninety degree angles to reflect the camera's unblinking little lens right into its own viewfinder.

That way, I'd create an optical feedback loop, without all that headache-inducing strobing.

Here's how my 'infinity mirror' array works:

And here's what it looks like, without the camera.

And with the camera:

The screw assembly on the right is there to make minute changes to the pitch of Mirror 1, to keep the image centered.

Running it is simple. Just hit record. It doesn't matter whether the room lights are on or not; I zoom in until the viewfinder fills the screen, and that's that.

Here are some screen grabs. Turns out infinity is blue, just like we all suspected.

A screen within a screen within a screen....

Everything seemed to rotate slowly, counterclockwise...

Then things would (literally) spin off into the distance.

The little screen icons on the camera viewfinder, repeated to infinity...

What I didn't see were any faces. No faces, no dogs, no big text messages reading HI WE ARE FROM THE AFTERLIFE.

Looks like the process needs the strobing and the noise to conjure up faces and so forth.

I have an idea for a modification of the mirror array which will add some noise without strobing. If I can, I'll add it for next week's blog.

Until then, I'd like to hear your comments on the matter.

Did the Scole group fake their results? Is the Bubble Man image paranormal, or the result of scissors and rubber cement? What do you think?

I'm on the fence. But I need to shoot a lot more video before I have a strong opinion either way.

EDITED TO ADD:

Got the mirror array video uploaded. Click below to view:

http://franktuttle.com/podcast1/ITCmir3.mp4

The Crow Word for Snake

Tastes just like Diet Coke.

It's been a very busy week, here in the Valley of Unfinished Manuscripts. 

I envy the writers of old, who enjoyed leisurely days of writing interrupted only by rare changes of tweed jacket, trips to town to purchase more pipe tobacco, and delivering the odd Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech.

Which brings us to William Faulkner. Oxford is hosting the annual Faulkner Conference this week, which means the town is filled with Faulkner scholars eager to glean something new about the man and his writing.

There you go, Faulkner scholars. The secret ingredient to 'As I Lay Dying' revealed. Please leave a dollar in the tip jar on your way out.

Rowan Oak, Faulkner's legendary crib. See how I talk just like the young folks?

As a lifelong Oxonian, I've been to Faulker's Rowan Oak. It's a nice old house, and though it's close to Oxford's bustling Square it's so quiet and heavily wooded you'd think you stepped back in time.

Here's Faulkner's writing desk:

I took the pic. I still haven't figured out where he plugged his LED flatscreen monitor in, or what version of Word that old Underwood runs. I was glad to see Faulkner, like all burly he-men, eschewed use of the Mac.

Surprisingly, the elephants were life-sized.

I'm pretty sure that if Faulkner came back from the Great Beyond and saw my writing rig, he'd spit whiskey bottles and dangle participles in sheer unholy envy. The man typed everything, first draft to final, and he did all that before Liquid Paper was even invented. 

Not that ol' Bill couldn't think outside the box. You've probably heard that he was prone to write plot outlines on his walls -- well, he did, and here are the pictures I took of them:

That's the outline for 'A Fable.' The lore claims Faulkner's wife painted over the outline and Faulkner wrote the outline again over the fresh paint and then shellaced it to make sure new paint wouldn't stick.

I suspect the wall wasn't the only thing partaking of shellac during all this, but I wasn't there.

There is a story that Rowan Oak is haunted. The tale hits on most of the haunted house tropes -- star-crossed lovers, a stern father who refuses to grant his daughter's hand to a Yankee, broken hearts, suicide, anguish, all-around bad times. From that, it is said, a ghost arose, to walk the grounds at night.

It's hogwash, all of it. Faulkner himself made the story up just to watch it spread and grow. And, like his other stories, people have enjoyed it so much it persists to this day.

I myself have never written an outline on my walls. That's what Word is for, to preserve carefully-constructed outlines that you ignore in the end. 

THE CROW WORD FOR SNAKE

I like crows. They're smart, they're brave, and they have a certain dramatic fashion sense. I watch them, and listen to them, and over the years I've been able to make out what I believe are a few words of basic Crow.

Seriously, their calls are different. You've got the bored, half-hearted caw they croak out every five minutes or so in the heat of the day. You've got the strident, brief Caw! that I think says 'I see you, other crow.'

And around here, they have a word for snake. 

Look, this is Mississippi in the summertime. Rural Mississippi. Snakes are like clouds -- everywhere, most of the time, and best left where they are and observed from a safe distance.

But crows hate snakes. Let a single crow spot one, and within moments all his crow pals are gathered about, mobbing the slithering fiend in a wheeling, noisy circle of black wings and sharp eyes.

I managed to record a mob of crows circling a rat snake this afternoon. It's a short audio file, less than a minute. Hear what the crows have to say!

http://franktuttle.com/podcast1/crowword.mp3

As long as I'm posting audio files, here's another one. I took this one during the fireworks show on the 4th of July, so it has explosions and crowd noise. I know there are people out there who collect audio clips of such things, and if you are such a person, you can have this one, if you want it. Or, if you're at work, crank up the speakers and watch people jump...

http://franktuttle.com/podcast1/fireworks.mp3

AND NOW, FOR THE FEMURS....

Never gets booked for birthdays parties...

The image above? From the movie, of course. Just one image, without explanation. I will say that is one decidedly un-funny clown. 

It's the big shoes. They make one grumpy, and by grumpy I mean homicidal and deranged. 

As they say in the movie biz, that's a wrap. Got to get back to work, which won't be on a 1912 Underwood typewriter, and for that I am grateful.

A Cast of Thousands!

This was a most unusual week.

As I mentioned earlier, my friend Matthew Graves is making a movie based on a screenplay I wrote. We shot the short film this past week, in a three-day marathon run of night-time shooting.

I've agreed not to post any pics or reveal too many details. I will let it slip that I had a small part in the movie, which meant I got to experience make-up and be on the set for the filming.

It was a blast. One day I will post pics, and you'll get a laugh. But for now, I'll just mention some of the people who worked on the movie.

Johnny McPhail did an amazing job playing  -- oh, wait I can't say. Same with Rhes Low, who truly brought the role of <redacted> to life.

Everyone on the set worked very hard to make the movie a delight. When it premiers on Halloween this year, I'll make sure to provide links. I truly believe you'll love it.

Watching Johnny and Rhes bring my characters to life was an experience I'll never forget. It's one thing to imagine the characters, to see them in your mind's eye. But it's another entirely to see an actor put on a costume and make-up and assume the role. When those first words come out, it's a genuine thrill.

My time on the set did teach me a few things about being an actor.

FRANK'S TIPS FOR BIG-TIME MOVIE STARS SUCH AS FRANK:

1) The other actors grow agitated if you try to claim the food on the craft table is yours and charge them two bucks a slice for the pizza.

2) Don't giggle and say the words 'the cheese' each time the director yells 'cut.'

3) If you try to make your own fake Screen Actor's Guild card, sharpen the black crayon first.

4) Shakespearean soliloquies are a staple of dramatic presentation, true, but impromptu renditions of the dagger scene from Macbeth are best performed within the actual play, and not during a coffee shop scene in a romantic comedy.

5) Prop toilets don't flush.

6) Keep up morale on the set by spiking the bottled water with LSD. When your finished film turns out to consist of one hundred and eighty minutes of lens cap with an audio track of slurred mumbling, sell it to the SyFy channel, because at least it's not about mutant sharks.

7) When you first arrive on the set, immediately begin shouting orders to the gaffer. The resulting limp, bruises, and swollen right eye will cut make-up prep time for your hospital scene in Act IV in half.

8) Break up tension buy secretly replacing a random page of every script with a page from a SpongeBob SquarePants script. Listen as classically-trained actors attempt to read Squidward as the suicidal failed heavyweight boxer.

And fear not, gentle readers -- my role is small, and non-speaking, so I had no chance to goof things up. I'll wager most of you won't even be able to pick me out.

I'd like to take a moment and thank Karen and Matthew and Melissa and Rhes and Johnny and Cookie Chris and Laura and Greg and Andy and Daniel and Ben and *inhale* everyone else who worked on the movie.

It was a pleasure, and I can't wait for everyone to see the fruits of our labor.

OTHER NEWS: REVIEWS IN THE WILD

Google Alerts let me know my book All the Paths of Shadow got another review! You can see the review by Olga Godim at Silk Screen Reviews. I was pleased, both with the review and the fact that Google Alerts wasn't showing me yet another torrent site where book pirates are stealing my books.

YET MORE OTHER NEWS: THIS YOU WILL NOT BELIEVE

All I can say about the following item is that it is in fact true. I kid around on this blog a lot, but this is no joke.

On Tuesday, I'll be giving a brief presentation at the Center for Intelligence and Security Studies (CISS) here on the University of Mississippi campus. I was asked to speak as an author of speculative and fantasy fiction, and give my take on the uses of surveillance and intelligence gathering in science fiction and fantasy.

Now, at first, you may think to yourself 'What? Surveillance and intelligence gathering in fantasy? Are you into the mushrooms again, Tuttle?'

No. I'm not. I think I'll post the text of my remarks here next week, so you can see what I mean.

FINAL BUT MOST IMPORTANT WORDS

You're a reader. I'm a reader. We're both readers.

And what do readers love?

In my case, whole bags of cheeseburgers, illegal moonshine whiskey, and yodeling. But I'm talking about books. Good books.

Good books for free?

That's enough to make me drop my cheeseburger and spill my whiskey and push the yodeler off the cliff. And you can get some great free books by clicking on the link to Maria Schneider's Bear Mountain books blog, where she is making Under Which Ghost (A Moon Shadow series short) free for you to enjoy!

Please check out the series. They're great -- you've got witches and vamps and werewolves and love, but without all the sappy soap opera filling that is choking Certain Other paranormal outings (I'm looking at you, True Blood on HBO).

Seriously, grab a free copy! Maria is a great writer.

And now I'm out. It's back to work for me, as soon as I get this make-up scrubbed off my face...

The No. 7 Fireworks Embalming Pump Mail-Order Skeleton, And Others!

Find a nice comfy chair, boys and girls, because tonight's blog is one of the long ones.

Fortunately for you, most of the length is composed of photographs. As long-time readers of the blog know, I am fascinated by fireworks, and tend to get excessively camera-happy around the 4th of July.

This year was no different. Indeed, I had three cameras trained on the sky. Two were digital, one was film. The only film processing shop in Oxford is closed until they get parts in for their developer, so you will spared the film photos, at least.

And for a treat, I'm featuring photos taken by a real photographer on a real camera as well as my own amateur offerings. Karen Tuttle, who many suspect may be my wife, took her Canon Rebel SLR to the fireworks show, and got some truly amazing shots.

But before we get to the exploding things, let's take a brief detour into the past. Our vehicle will be a comic book I unearthed while searching for an old solenoid. The comic's cover is gone, so I don't know the name of the series or even the year, but I suspect it to be from around 1969, because that is the year I learned that Life is fundamentally hostile and that no good can come of it.

SKELETONS ARE A BOY'S BEST FRIEND

Direct your gaze onto the advertisement below. Try to see it through the eyes of a bookish six year old who loves all things strange and eerie.

Oh yeah. This is the stuff dreams are made of...

Life-sized monsters. Seven feet tall. SEVEN FEET TALL. That's tall, people. With glowing eyes! Reaching hands! Imagine the terror, indeed.

For a dollar.

Did I absolutely have to have a seven-foot-tall glowing skeleton of my very own?

Why yes. Yes I did.

So I shoved a buck thirty-five into an envelope and checked 'Boney the Skeleton' and the clock on my frantic little life came to an abrupt and screeching halt the instant that envelope hit the bottom of the mailbox.

I'd never wanted anything so bad in all my life. I went to sleep dreaming of the fun Boney and I would have! We'd stroll around town, scaring Hell out of everyone. We'd sit out on the porch and wave to horrified passers-by. We'd be the terrible talk of my tame little town, and if any kid came around with some lame Frankenstein's monster we'd knock his block off.

That is what I dreamed. Such thoughts consumed my every waking moment. And oh, did the moments drag. The ad didn't include the traditional admonition to allow six to eight weeks for delivery. How many hours did I spend, pondering the significance of that mysterious omission? Did the fine creators of Boney the Skeleton rush their sinister creations to the happy owners in a matter of mere days, instead? Was there, even now, a dark, unmarked truck speeding through the night toward Oxford, an eager Boney at the wheel?

Hours dragged. Days crept. Weeks crawled.

Moment by agonizing moment, I waited for my skeleton friend's arrival, forsaking all lesser concerns.

One Week. Two weeks. Three weeks, four. I lost my appetite. Lost interest in all things unrelated to the subtle click of clever bones.

Five weeks. Six weeks. Seven weeks, more. My eyes developed dark circles beneath the lids. I walked with a slump. Dragged my feet. How long, I wondered, so often the very words left paths in my brain. How long must I endure this never-ending sojourn through darkness?

Then, on rainy Tuesday afternoon in September, my mother met me at the door, smiling the smile of a relieved but patient parent.

I knew. I knew without words that Boney had arrived!

He was home, home at last, all seven glorious glowing feet of him! All 206 intricately connected phalanges and metacarpals and femurs and mandibles!

I was alone no more.

I was....complete.

I raced into the kitchen, sure Boney would be seated at the table, waiting to give me a cold but friendly embrace.

Instead, atop the tiny Formica eating table, sat an envelope.

An envelope. Thick, yes, and larger than the usual bills that came to us.

But only an envelope. No more for more than a single toe-bone. If that.

Mom must have recognized my confusion.

"It's from the right place," she said. "Open it! You've waited so long."

My mind raced. All right, I thought, though I'm sure I didn't use those words. Boney's delivery has been delayed. Or maybe they send a letter ahead before the actual skeleton arrives. Yes, I decided, as I tore into the paper. That must be it. It's a warning, so people won't be frightened.

Mom moved to my side.

So she was right there, for that awful moment when I removed the contents of the envelope, watched them unfold in my hand, and realized that Boney, my magnificent life-sized seven-foot-tall skeleton friend, Boney of the glowing eyes and the reaching hands, was nothing more than a cheap piece of plastic with a crude rendering of a skeleton painted upon it.

I do remember quite clearly thinking this:

Life-sized. They said it was life-sized. That means sized like life, with height and width and thickness.

They lied. The lying liars lied.

I dropped Boney on the kitchen floor and started bawling.

The weight of every moment of the long agonizing wait fell over me like a tidal wave. I had to say goodbye to my skeleton pal Boney forever, because there really wasn't any magic at all in the world, not even for a dollar plus thirty-five cents shipping, not even from storied New York.

Mom is gone now. Boney, who I kept, flaked away into bits of dust decades ago. I turned quickly past all the ads in my comic books, because after that I knew darned well Sea Monkeys didn't wear festive outfits and build little cities in your fish-bowl, and X-Ray Specs were just cheap plastic frames with concentric circles drawn on the lenses. No. Those were merely more lies. The world is what you see, nothing more. Jobs and bills and tired Dads and worried Moms and pets that sometimes never came home.

And all that came rushing back when I lifted that old comic book out of a stack of cast-offs and saw that ad again.

I still miss ya, Boney my skeleton pal.  Maybe one day.

Maybe.

This is life before the Internet, kids. Count your blessings.

THE SUPERIOR EMBALMING PUMP No. 7 SPECIAL

As I've mentioned before, my friend Matthew Graves is making another movie. Entitled The Embalming,
it's a macabre little film which will debut during the Oxford Film Festival next February.

I got to build a couple of the props for the movie. An embalming pump will be featured in several shots, as well as the sign on the door of the mortuary at which all the action takes place.

Building weird movie props turned out to be a lot of fun. The pump is actually just an old electrical box joined with a clear dog food tub, some hoses, a few lights and switches, and the contents of my cast-off plumbing parts drawer. But it pumps goo, and it looks appropriately creepy, if I do say so myself. But you be the judge!

There are some stains even Formula 49 won't touch.

If your initial reaction was 'yuck,' I've done my job. Now imagine the fluid tank filled with a bubbling concoction of syrup, old coffee, soup, and maybe just a dash of clam bits. Add bubbles, and presto! Instant gag reflex.

The stains are actually a mixture of mineral spirits and hardened mahogany wood stain, with some splashes of melted black crayon and floor dirt rubbed in. Not sure if you can read the label in this pic, but it claims the pump was made by Superior Embalming Pumps of Arkham, Massachusetts, as a shout-out to H.P. Lovecraft.

The guts of the device. I know, real guts would have been more impressive, but Karen says they stink up the place.

That's the pump that makes the whole rig work. My cordless drill powers it, so even if my lines spring a leak mid-shoot no one gets electrocuted.

And here's the sign!

I'm proud of that sign. I did the text, the fonts, the graphics, and had them printed on a clear vinyl decal (thanks Vistaprint!). The frame is wood, and aged to look a bit weathered, but better maintained than the pump.

Sorry for the reflection in the image!

But now, let's see some THINGS EXPLODE IN THE FREAKING SKY!

THINGS WHAT EXPLODE IN THE FREAKING SKY!

First, Karen's pics, because she has a good eye and a good camera. I have a good eye too, but I keep it in a jar in a safe deposit box.

That Canon Rebel never ceases to amaze me. Look at the detail it captured, without a hint of blur. Go on, blow it up -- incredible.

Same here, and here. The optics can capture so much so quickly.

Karen really needs her own webpage of pics. I think she said she shot 800 during that single fireworks show.  I'm just not that fast. Speaking of which....

AMATEUR HOUR

I took my cameras, too. I've got a Fujifilm S1000that I put on a tripod and set for long exposures. I've tried this before, with no success, but this time I captured a couple of images I liked.

Here's the first one:

Boom.

The smoke, the flash, the colors -- okay, it's not National Geographic worthy, but it's pretty cool.

Below is another one from the S1000:

Neat, huh? Not everything is in perfect focus, but I like it anyway.

I had friends on that Death Star!

My other camera is a much older 5 megapixel box I've had for years. But it takes great pics. Here are a few it captured.

Boom. Hope you enjoyed the fireworks, sorry about the skeleton, and wash your hands thoroughly after each use of the Superior Embalming Pump No. 7 Special featuring High Pressure Cavity Inject.

Shooting for the movie starts this week, so expect some pics from the set next weekend!

Until then, don't pin your hopes on mail-order skeletons, son, because they'll burn you every time...