H For Hero!

Happy Hallow’s Eve, Heroes!

That’s how pompous arts kids like me say Happy Halloween, for those of you not versed in pomp. Because t’is the season, and I don’t have any homework/haven’t fallen asleep midday today, I’m going to bless your feeble eyes with a post of a most festive persuasion! And since it’s the right time of the year, for your enjoyment, an article of such spookiness it shan’t be read alone save for the bravest souls!

H FOR HALLOWEEN: How to Survive Various Monster Attacks While Maintaining Panache to Spare! PART I of IV

VAMPIRES - N FOR NOSFORATU:

Vampires! From Bram Stoker’s dapper, well spoken Count Dracula to Twilight’s utterly unlovable, tortured vampire with a soul, Edward Cullen; Vampires come in a variety of shapes, sizes and flavours! None of them particularly interesting...

Your average vampires tends to have super strength, super durability and a never ending desire to give your neck the mother of all hickies. Depending on what genre of vampire you’re fighting, they could also be able to transfix you, turn into bats or wolves, command animals, turn into smoke or fly and heal at an astounding rate…or they may be written by Stephanie Meyers and just be lame and suck.

But you’re in luck, Heroes! Should you ever find yourself holed up in a warehouse, with vampires about to break down the door, you still may have a chance at survival BECAUSE YOU HAVE READ THIS BLOG POST, ERGO YOU ARE PREPARED, YOU SMART COOKIE! Pending they don’t just snap your neck in the blink of an eye and drain you like a  juice-box, you can easily defeat a vampire by shoving a wooden stake through their heart - because let’s face it, anything that gets a stake through the heart better damn well die, or else you have a real problem! If you do rely on the stake/heart method, let's just hope you either have a mallet handy, or are very adept at shoving a two foot piece of wood through a super-durable sternum, it's not really that easy...not that I would know.

Other solutions include garlic, which can easily be found at most grocery stores - either in the produce or spice aisle, crucifixes or other religious symbols, which can also be found in the spice aisle, interestingly enough, silver (though I wouldn’t risk it personally) or good old fashion fire! What is more satisfying then watching a menacing, eight hundred year old vampire explode in a fiery dust as you toss a zippo at them?

Now, if you suspect your friend is a vampire, there is a quick way to confirm your suspicion. Our first method of detection involves offering them two choices, a cup of delicious cream soda, the king of sodas, or a cup of warm, virgin’s blood. If they take the virgin’s blood, there’s a strong chance that they could be a vampire... or they could just be odd. If they seem to have difficulty shaving (due to their lack of reflection), have grown a set of nasty looking fangs, or started investing a lot of money in dark capes, that means their either magicians or VAMPIRES! Head for the Sunlight, Hero!

 

GHOSTS - P FOR POLTERGEIST:

It’s midnight, the witching hour, you hear a spooky rattling at your closet door in your bedroom. You open the door but nothing is there! You feel a sudden draft, and a haunting presence feels as if it is looming behind you! It could just be the house creaking as the temperature from outside causes the wood in the house to contract, causing noise, or, a far more plausible explanation - GHOSTS

Ghosts, wraiths, spectres, spirits, poltergeists and phantoms, all various names for the same spooky spectral scoundrel! Your average ghost seems to be happy enough just to float around your dwelling, yes you specifically, opening and closing cupboards, scaring the shit out of your children, being intangible and watching you sleep, because you‘re just that damn interesting to watch. Usually they either appear as old dead people or children, or old dead people and children wearing a sheet with two holes cut in it for eyes.

Now, if you have a serious cast of Ghosting in your home, there are few things you can do. One thing this author wouldn’t suggest is pissing them off, as they are liable to collapse your house in on itself, just to piss you off. I wouldn’t recommend talking to them either, as they’re all pretty messed up and no good can come from helping people, especially ghostly people.

A few recommendations I can make, however, is getting rid of any and all televisions in your house, to prevent your idiot children from being sucked into them. Another suggestion is removing all the cans from your pantries and putting child proof locks on the doors, to prevent those crafty ghosts from playing with them. If your ghost tries to make out with you while you’re at a potting wheel, please avoid this, ghosts are notoriously jealous and will probably follow you around on dates. They also want commitments and children, seriously.

One major issue with ghosts is that they leave ectoplasm all over the house, which can be a serious issue and can be embarrassing if you’re having a Tupperware party or something along those lines. Try explaining to your friends and family why your shag carpeting is coated in a thick layer of quivering translucent jelly, it’s tough, Heroes!

If you’re really desperate to get ghosts out of your house, you do have a few options: You can either get a priest, preferably an old priest and a young priest, or failing that, the craziest Jamaican or Dominican woman you can find will do in a pinch, be sure they have their heads covered by a bandana! If they don’t, they’re not worth your time! With this holy men and women in tow, you'll have a breeze exorcizing these ghostly apparitions, they should know the quickest way to get those ghosts out, if not, demand your money back or threaten to place a curse on them, that'll usually scare the pants off them.

Another option is to fashion a proton pack using Uranium 238 and what appears to be glow wands, a backpack made of tin and a conductor’s baton. Just make sure not to cross the streams heroes! You’re fighting ghosts, not marshmellowmen!

Driftwood says:

Top of the Morning to ya, Heroes!

Just another day here at Hero central, and before I get into the day’s thrilling topic, the next specialty week, I just want to make a little aside, trust me, even though it’s a bit on the serious-er side, it’ll still be moderately funny until we reach the meat of the post.

Now, for all of you following H for Hero, which if I believe correctly, is no one, you’ll know that I’m trying to find a way to make eight million dollars doing nothing but writing. There seems to be a few problems, A) My posting is lax, at best, and B) My last post really sucked.

Now let’s see if I can address both problems, in the most heroic fashion.

A) Now, one thing you’ll never, ever see on H for Hero is a post that goes like this, “I was too busy to post!” or something like those. Not that I don’t think that all of you Heroes don’t deserve a reasonable excuse for your favourite Heroicness related blog to be updated routinely, but I also am going to hope that most of you are smart enough to assume that when I don’t post it’s not because I don’t like you, it’s because I’m busy. Really. It actually happens sometimes, not very often, though. I’m probably never going to be too busy to post at least once a week, H for Hero was spawned from the twin guns of boredom and greed, and I don’t think I’ll ever stop being bored or greedy enough to stop posting.

And

B) My last post was pretty stinky. I keep reading it, and I’m pretty sure I’m still the only person who IS reading it, and I keep kicking myself. So I’m making a promise, there will never be anymore filler blog. I hate filler. All my material will have some literary value. When I set out to make H for Hero, I didn’t make it for a dumping ground for meaningless dribble, I made it for a dumping ground for Heroic dribble! But in the future, expect more updates on my comic that is currently in the works (being drawn, yay!) more updates on short stories I write, if any of you are actually interested in that, as well as the wacky humour I’m trying to pride myself on.

Also note, the first specialty week is coming up soon! You see, another reason I made H for Hero is so I could run little week long journals centered around a certain theme. October 26^th is the anniversary of the Patriot Act, and I’m going to celebrate it by hosting PATRIOT ACT Week, or as I like to call it, T for Terrorism! Stay Tuned, Heroes!

H for Heroes - If contact is made with the eyes, wash them thoroughly with hot soapy water.

Greetings, heroes!

Anyway, it’s that time of the year again; the new fall season!

Now, that being said, I do admit, I haven’t really had the opportunity to watch as much television as I would like to or once did. Before, back when I was young and innocent, before the horror’s of life burdened and crushed my poor spirit, I used to be glued to the television. I’m pretty sure the outline of my shadow has been burned into the carpet in front of the television back at my old home. I really hope all that radiation gave me super powers, like super heat vision or super strength, right now all it’s given me is a super compromised immune system. Shit!

Unfortunately, at my new house, I don’t have the luxury of watching a coma-inducing amount of television. I live in a house with four Chinese people and the house itself is owned by a Chinese land lady, so they’re usually Bogarting the picture-box. They also tend to play it incredibly loudly, I can listen to the television clearly from across the room at the volume level 15, they tend to set it past 50. I guess Chinese television needs to split your ear drums in order for you to appreciate it properly.

Now, not that I don’t enjoy my deafeningly loud Chinese soap operas, but there’s a soft spot in my heart for North American television, and since Kenny Vs Spenny, the best television show to hit the airwaves, isn’t on yet, I’ll just review the few shows I have watched. Most of them are on Fox and I watched most of them on the same day, yay for efficiency!

House:
I really didn’t start watching this series until the last season, I believe it was the fourth, and I hate to say it, but I’ve become hooked. Hugh Laurie is great, that’s not up for debate, but the rest of the cast rounds it out nicely. I’m surprised to see Olivia Wilde from The O.C. fame and Kal Pen who is famous for being this generation’s Tommy Chong putting on such strong performances. The previous episode even had an actress. Felicia Day if I’m not mistaken, who was seen in Joss Whedon’s Professor Horrible’s Sing Along Blog, which if you haven’t checked out yet, I highly recommend, if you can find it, that is. I found them long after they were initially released on a website called whedontube, or something like that. But yeah, House is pretty solid, even if the medical aspect to the drama is about as shallow as a leaky inflatable pool.

Heroes:
Ah, I think everyone can agree that Season 2 was a bust. Actually, pretty much the last half of Season 1 of this series was a bust too. I really liked the start of the series, when it had that low budget, almost art house feel to it, but popularity and high ratings (initially) sorta made the series too big for it’s own breeches. Now we’ve flash forwarded to Season 3, where for the THIRD fucking time they’re trying to prevent a dark, evil future from coming to pass.

-but-

I gotta admit, the producers and writer’s and even actors realized the problems they made in the second season and are doing their best to address them. I haven’t seen hide of hair of West and that’s a step in the right direction. The story was solid, there wasn’t that much angst, save for Claire not being able to feel anymore and pining about losing her humanity. Mohinder’s story is closely paralleling the Fly, and if his performance isn’t a homage to Jeff Goldblum’s character, then it’s a blatant rip off.

And I’m calling it right now, his name will be Hinderfly when he sheds all of his skin. Alright, say it with me; Hinderfly. Good, we’ve settled that.

Further more, I really think they need to kill off Sylar, not show his ‘softer side’ as is being promised currently. I mean really, I know Zachary Quinto is a pretty good actor, and I’m sure he’s a swell person in real life, but seriously. He needs to die. He’s lost all of his threat, and turning him into a hero is probably the stupidest and cheapest copout the writer’s could take. Let’s just see how things play out…

I could gripe on for pages, but I wont!

Fringe:
Stupid, stupid, stupid. I cant stand John Noble’s character, it’s cliché, it’s poorly done and it’s just supremely grating. I’ve seen this character done a dozen times before and done a dozen times better. Think if Data from the Next Generation smooshed together with the scientist cast of Eureka and then toss in a dash of Mad Scientist. The rest of the cast blindly stumbles around the sets, leaping to broad conclusions and getting pissy about minor issues. It just makes me miss old X-files, the TV series, not the movie which I really had no interest in. I do admit, I am kinda fond of Joshua Jackson’s character, all the rest show about as much character as a sack of flour.

That’s the list of TV dramas I watched, heroes! Stay tuned for more updates of actual value!

On my quest to make such an amazing blog that I can stop doing actual work and live off of my writings, I realized there was one gaping hole in my plan. Mainly, I needed to have actual readers, and I needed to have more than one entry. It seems this whole ‘getting rich off of doing nothing but blogging’ plan I had concocted was a little more troublesome than I had originally anticipated, my good friends. Stupid money, it should be going into my pockets with as little effort as possible! So without further adieu, I present to you the second of surely many quality entries that H for Hero will become synonymous with.

Monitor Brightness!

Fuck!

So I recently upgraded my old, worn out, dimly lit monitor that’s so old I’m fairly certain it predates agriculture. I’m serious, this monitor was OLD. The instruction manual was drawn on the inside of a cave.

But my new monitor! Wow! It’s one of those fancy LCD types, and by Cthulu is it bright. Actually, it’s probably not all that bright, but after years of looking at the same, slowing dying out monitor, it’s sort of like I’m staring directly into the sun - which is something I don’t encourage any of you, my loyal readers, to do…unless you don’t intend to come back and read this blog frequently, in which case, what the fuck do I care if you burn out the backs of your eyes?

Seriously.

Anyways, I thought of a few easy tips for keeping those soft, jelly eye-bones of yours safe and protected while reading these mind melting posts. And this is because I love you all so very much!

Tip #1:

Sunglasses! - That’s right, sunglasses. Looking at another incredibly bright page? Why bother squinting when you can slap on a pare of these babies and surf the web in style? Sure, if your parents walk into the room and see you wearing a pair of sunglasses while looking at Digg.com, they’ll probably think you’ve finally gotten into the meth again, but it’s a simple price to pay for stopping your eyes from bursting into flames while loading pages. Plus, if you take enough photos of yourself wearing your new, trademark sunglasses, people may start complimenting you on them and start giving you kick ass nicknames like ‘Specs,’ or ‘Shades,’ or ‘Mirrors.’ And if you really get bored, you can pretend to be Geordi Laforge and whenever no one’s looking, you can act out your favourite star-trek episodes by going ‘WHOOOSH’ and ‘PEW PEW, PHASER SET TO AWESOME!’ or ‘ROMULANS DECLOAKING DEAD AHEAD, CAPTAIN PATRICK STEWART!’

Tip #2:

Make the rest of your room really, really bright.

Trust me, this’ll work wonders. Remember, if you’re staring at a completely blank webpage, you might as well be looking at a burning hot light bulb. So the second best way to avoid getting eye damage from your monitor is by getting eye damage from pretty much every other thing in your room. Hey, it worked for the Architect in the Matrix sequels, didn’t it? This may sound utterly counterproductive, but if the rest of your room is burning white-phosphorous bright, looking at your monitor should be less of a strain on your eyes.

Tip #3:

Welders Mask!

Okay, if your too cool to wear sunglasses, and too uncool to coat your room in phosphorescent paint, this may be a welcome middle ground. Sure, odds are you wont be able to see a single thing through this beast, unless you're watching youtube videos about blow torches and arc welders, you wont have to worry about having to get corrective lenses one day for your milky, vestigial eyes! I personally wouldn’t recommend this option, mainly because after playing Ben Croshaw’s 7 Days a Stranger, welder’s masks freak the living bajeebies out of me. So do British people and pithy, fast spoken video game reviews. I have a lot of problems I need to work out. But if you don’t mind not being able to see anything, and are willing to risk being possessed by a fictional, Lovecraftian-esque, adventure game monster, a welder’s masks is straight up your alley, Heroes!

Tip #4:

Turn the brightness on your monitor down?

Pfft, like this shit tip will ever work.

Tip #4 (for real!):

Stand really, really far away from your computer.

Really, this helps a lot. Next time you want to surf the internet, try doing it from across the room from your computer. If you have a wireless mouse and keyboard, you’re in luck. Unless you’re like me, Heroes, in which case you’ll have to resort to using a couple of giant sticks with stuffed hands at the end of them. Of course, you’ll usually end up doing more strain to your eyes by squinting at the monitor from far away, but we have to chose our victories. This problem can easily be averted by keeping a pair of binoculars handy!

Tip #5!

Go outdoors!

This tip is an actual tip, it really helps, but you wont look awesome doing it!

There you go, Heroes! Five quality tips to help keep your eyes their optimum optical-y-ness! With all that eye strain averted, you’ll be able to continue reading H for Hero for years to come, unless I get bored and stop updating or you do something totally villainous like stop visiting, which would make me one sad Hero, ladies and gentlemen.

On that note, this entry would have never come to fruition if Live Journal had a black-layout that didn’t suck. I really don’t want to strain anyone’s eyes with overly-white pages, but seriously, all of the darker pages look awful, and the ones that look moderately useable are marred because they’re being used by people who title their blogs ‘One Day I’ll Drown You in a River of Tears.’ or malarkey like that. Drowning isn’t very heroic, Heroes!

That’s the sort of information we don’t need clogging up our Inter-tubes!

-Graham

PS: If I ever learn how to make little side bars on the side of this live journal, I’d like to start making: A) A list of terrible blogs that we should all see so we can snicker at them. And yes, if anyone suggests I put H for Hero in that list, I'll cry heroicly. And B) A list of decent blogs/web sites that people may not know about that you Heroes think people who like H for Hero should check out! I know this was a lot easier on Blogspot, which I think is over all a little better at the whole blog thing than LJ, but if there’s a way to do it on Live journal, I’d be all over that.

And even though I liked Blogspot for being able to make little, customizable side bars, I can understand why they wouldn’t have them on Live Journal; they have a tendency to be misused to the point where there’s only a row of words one letter thick for each journal post.

H for Hero - The Journal that can cure Blindness, Illiteracy and, much to my ire, Hypersexuality!

Hrmm, starting another web blog? Should I really bother? Do I really want my senseless blathering to be broadcast across the inter-web, taking up valuable tube-space from other, more deserving websites? Couldn’t the resources that I consume by rambling on and on be put to better use? Like another website for menstrual pads or Gillette razors? Nah, my confused, nonsensical spoutings are the ideal place for the internet!

But really, this is my third go ahead at a blog, the first one was just a place where I dumped my short stories, this was back when I was but a starry eyed maiden hairy chested, ultra male. To make a long story short, no one really tuned in. That, and the stories were pretty bad. D'oh!

The second go ahead was considerably more successful (ish) It was a little blog called ‘Why Other Blogs Suck,’ where I went around proclaiming my greatness and how other blogs were lacking in quality. Every week or so I would search the darkest corners of the internet for various blogs that helped lower the bar for all humanity. You know, terrible spelling, bad poetry, griping and typical teen angst. It actually faired pretty well, in it’s hayday I think I was getting 1,000 hits perday, mostly from bloggers who didn’t get that I didn’t like them and thought that I was 'silly'. Lots of people would message me just so I would review their blog harshly, which sort of took the fun out of it. Also, there were a lot of Germans, don’t ask me why, but they were usually pretty cool.

So now I’m here, third times a charm. Hopefully I’ll be able to post some short stories that people will actually bother to read, or at least provide enough humour to have people stopping in with some frequency. So let’s begin this little party, shall we?

Trust me, it should be a hoot.

-Graham