Hello all - my birthday party just ended. It actually turned out quite nice - one of the better birthday parties I’ve had. Small group - just me, two of my roomies, Nathan and Meredith, and Jim towards the end. We ate cake and played Henry and Yahtzee wore Festive Hats. I was pleased.

I got some nice gifts - an amazon gift certificate from my parents, a check from my grandpa, a nightmare before christmas notebook (posing as a flipbook) from my sister, and a Haiku calendar from Hiro. As I was just looking at my little pile of gifts, I was thinking that really the kind of gift I like more than any other is one of time; if you want to get me what I want more than anything else, take me out on an outing for the afternoon or evening. Something that I’ll remember as time spent together. The thing about physical gifts is that they often feel rather unpersonal. For example, if you give me a CD I want, I’ll remember who gave it to me, but it won’t be much different than if somebody else gave me that CD, or if I bought it for myself. Money is handier than actual gifts because I can choose whatever it is that I want to buy, but that’s even less personal, because once it enters my money supply, it all blends together, so I can’t really say “this thing that I’m buying is from so-and-so.” But spend some time with me, and that’s something that only you specifically can give, and it’ll be something that I’ll remember and it’ll make me much happier than anything you can buy. That’s a good tip for anyone reading this that may feel like giving me a present now or in the future.

Now I’ll leave you with some party pictures, taken with my mini-digital camera, because my actual digital camera was forgotten at home.

Those of you who are clever may notice that the candles are arranged into a giant “21.” Those of you who are really clever may notice that this was actually my 22nd birthday. Unfortunately, I am not really clever, and so didn’t notice these things until I had finished arranging the candles into the wrong year. That’s what happens when you’re an old man of 22 - you’re mind starts to go.

This is another picture of the incorrect cake. Actually, tho, if you look closely, you’ll see that there are in fact 22 candles on the cake, so if you only look at the number of candles and not the number they are spelling out, it’s right on.

This picture is actually three different pictures photoshopped together into a panorama. The trouble with my mini digital camera is that the view finder is lousy (amongst other things wrong with it), and so I couldn’t really tell what I was taking pictures of. However, thanks to my photoshop skills, I was able to take three lousy pictures and combine them into one semi-decent one! Hooray!

I am 22 years old today! To celebrate, join me for dinner and/or cake afterwards, and give me some birthday lovin’.

Here’s a picture of what I look like now that I am 22:

I got into Evita! Woot. Come see me in all my chorusy goodness when it opens.

Today was the trip back up to Bellingham. The AmTrak was sold out (not counting the early morning train,) and so I took the greyhound bus for the first time from Seattle. I was looking forward to Many Great Adventures and Interesting Characters aboard the bus, but unfortunately everyone on the bellingham bus looked like they were college kids, sitting quietly and listening to their ipods.
The only semi-excitement of the trip was that there was apparently a 20 car pileup somewhere ahead of us, and this meant that it took nearly 3 hours to get from Seattle to Bellingham (without any stops at bus stations in between). But I got pretty good at the golf game on my cell phone.

Now that I’m here, I was able to get back to work. Not on schoolwork, of course. I may have another order from my Be a Cartoon site, so to get work my drawing muscles, I drew the first three parts of Raising Hell’s Seven Deadly Sins of Thanksgiving (an idea I had while at home, but which I couldn’t do on account of being away from my computer and drawing tablet.) The rest will come in the near future… or not. Maybe I won’t. And you can’t make me. Wanna fight about it?

Tuesday’s my birthday, and I’m going to celebrate it. (Napoleon voice): “How the heck are you gonna do that?” (Pedro voice): “Build a cake, or something.” If you enjoy eating birthday cake, then come and partake in it with me. I imagine that I’ll go to the Keg for a fancy dinner, with Cake to eat afterwards. And perhaps a movie or something. Should be fun.

And now, Acts 1, 2, and 3 of Raising Hell’s “Seven Deadly Sins of Thanksgiving”

May delicious food fill you: gob gullet and guts,
And your family not kill you: slob, mullet, and putz.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Happy Day Before Thanksgiving, all. I’m back home with the fam in Federal Way now - my brother is in from Olympia, and my grandpa is in from South Dakota, so we’ve got a good group going.

For those of you who were wondering the results of my auditions, I got called back for all three shows. This morning they posted the cast lists for Naku Tsuru and Hedda Gabler - Evita won’t be posted till after break. I’m going to be one of the Samauri in Naku Tsuru, and I won’t be in Hedda Gabler, which could be more good news than bad because it means that I can be in Evita (those two conflict, so if I had gotten a role in Hedda it would have meant no Evita for me).

That’s about it for now. If you’re in the area in the next few days lemme know - if not, I’ll be back again in a couple weeks for winter break.

Tonight was my audition for Evita, Hedda Gabler, and Naku Tsuru. I don’t think I failed miserably, but I certainly didn’t do as well as I could have. I was so nervous when I got up there that all of my physicalization went out the window. But apparently I sounded pretty good from out in the lobby, so we’ll see what happens.

In other news, today I brought my camera up to campus to take pictures of the fog (which disappeared when the sun came out, and came back after it set, so there’s a Fog Intermission during these fog pictures):

This will not be an entry of epic length because I have to get my monologue and song ready for my Evita/Hedda/Naku auditions. Wish me broken legs on that.

Yesterday was fun. In the afternoon there was a Surprise Birthday Party for Kelsey - complete with hiding and then shouting “surprise” when she walked in. It was a very short party - once she got there it was less than an hour before people disbursed for their evening plans. But we played pin the tail on the donkey, and had a fun elementary school time.

Speaking of birthdays, mine is coming up quickly. Right now my only birthday plan is to go out to a nice birthday dinner. I never have good luck putting together an actual party, (example: last year for my 21st birthday the only person that was able to go to my party was Peter, and since he’s under 21 all we did was go to The Keg for dinner), so this year I’m not even going to try it. Sigh.

Getting back to the happier story of yesterday, last night was also the last performance of Quake, a show which I had wanted to see. Kelsey and Mel were going to go get on the waiting list after the party because they heard they would be adding extra seats so those on the waiting list could get in, and so, since i thought I had a chance to see it, I went along. As it turned out, somehow people had been able to get on the list earlier than they were supposed to, and so even though we got there early, we were still 20 people down the list, and so we couldn’t get in. That was a bummer, and Kelsey and Mel left, and I decided to go see the Harvey Danger concert.

It was a great show. There were three opening bands: Jet Lag Napalm, Tennis Pros, and Smoosh. I wasn’t too impressed with any of those three. I had heard really good things about Smoosh, but after the initial novelty of saying “hey, there are two little girls playing a rock show” I lost interest. But all this was made up for when Harvey Danger came out and rocked the house. They’re most known for their hit song “flagpole sitta” (Paranoia, Paranoia, Everybody’s Comin’ to Get me…), but I liked all of their songs. I’ll have to pick up one of their albums. It was the best concert I’ve been to in quite a while - if you get the chance to see Harvey Danger perform, I highly recommend it.

And that’s all I have to say for now. No “Raising Hell” today because I’ve got work to do. And it’s Sunday, and you shouldn’t draw cartoons of Satan on the Sabbath.

As you know, I ordered Arrested Development on DVD with my fancy Amazon membership the other day, and the fanciness was that I got the 2 day shipping for free. If you do the math, that means that I got my DVDs in the mail today. But unfortunately, UPS is stinky.

After class I went to the store, picked up some pineapple, shredded coconut, and a loaf of french bread. When I got back to my apartment, I saw a note on my door saying that UPS had been by, but since they required my signature, they left without dropping off my package, and would try again on Monday. Of course, if I waited until Monday and they delivered during the day again, chances are I wouldn’t be home again, and would only have another note. So I looked at the back of the little slip where it said how to organize other options. One of the options was to put my signature on the back of the paper and put it back on the door, which would authorize them to leave it without me being there in person. However, because of the Super Special 2 Day Shipping, that wouldn’t work - I’m so Special that they need me to be there in person to sign for it. So I called up the 1-800 computerized number, and they said they’d call within an hour.

A little less than an hour later, they called. I explained my situation (that I wouldn’t be home on Monday during the day, and don’t have a car to drive to the pick-up center which is far away from me). They said that they couldn’t arrange for a drop off time to be when I’d be home, so I’d have to find some way to get to them. What’s the deal? They are delivering to me, but I have to pick it up? What are they getting paid for?

But then the lady I was talking to said that she’d check with the driver and see if he’d be back in my area that night and call me right back. So I hung up with her, and waited… and waited… and waited… almost an hour and a half. At that point, I decided to call them again - and thanks to Sara, I knew the secret was to press zero in order to talk to a real person instead of the computer system. So after a while of them finding no record that they had ever talked to me, they eventually found me in their system. They said that they didn’t know why I hadn’t heard back, but that they would try and figure it out and get back to me when they knew.

After even more waiting, the first lady I talked to called me back to say that the driver would be back to drop off the package at about 7, or 7:30 at the latest. I said that’d be fine, and then headed up to campus to work on my 360 scene. My scene partner and I practiced falling over in creative ways until about 6:30, so that I could get back to my apartment by 6:45 in case the driver got there early (I wanted to make sure that someone would be there to answer the door even if I wasn’t, so I was calling the apartment phone repeatedly hoping someone would be there to wait until I got home, but the phone just rang and rang and nobody answered.) I got out to the bus stop just as the shuttle was pulling up… and driving past without stopping. What the heck!? So I had to wait till the 6:45 bus came. Meanwhile I was calling the apartment, and being frustrated with the timing of everything, and at UPS for not just dropping the package off at the community building with the rest of the mail, until the bus came and I made it back to the apartment just before 7, to find my roommate sitting in the living room watching TV.

Apparently the phone is broken - that’s why he wasn’t answering. But it didn’t matter either way, because the UPS hadn’t gotten there yet. I made myself some dinner (parmasian chicken with the french bread I picked up at the store), and watched Run Ronnie Run while we waited for Arrested Development to arrive. 7:30 came and went, and no UPS man (remember how she said it’d be 7:30 at the latest?). At least this time she called at about 7:45 to say that he was running late, but would be there eventually.

And eventually he was. As the movie neared its end, I heard the knock on the door. I leapt up like an antelope and raced to the door, and swung it open to find… no UPS man. Just the package, set on the ground. The guy didn’t even stick around long enough to say “hey, sorry this is late.” Actually, he didn’t even stick around long enough to GET MY SIGNATURE THAT WAS THE WHOLE BASIS OF THIS ORDEAL!!! Grr! UPS!

But anyway, once I had my much stress inducing DVDs, and Run Ronnie Run ended, we watched the Extended Pilot Episode from the first season. Ahh, Arrested Development - you sooth my weary-of-UPS head.

After that the evening was smooth sailing - we watched Batman, I made muffins, and I made another installment of Raising Hell:

And now all is right in the world.

Tonight I went to the Dead Parrot Society’s improv movie, which was called “The Rise of the Fall,” based on my suggestion - although in the movie, nothing fell nor rose. Hmm. But even lacking in its accuracy of the title, it was a decent movie to watch - though not so great as to make up for being unable to see Harry Potter. *grumbling about lack of harry potter*

I just finished eating some hashbrowns, and they were delicious. I wasn’t sure how they’d come out because I’ve never made them before, and I didn’t have a recipe, so I just improvised it, and they turned out well. This was the second dish I’ve made with the 15 pound bag of potatoes I bought the other day. Yum, potatoes. If an Irish person shows up at my door, I will be able to be accomidating.

The Good News: my funk is pretty much gone, I’m finished registering (for now - I may have to change it after auditions, because I found out one of the shows I’m trying out for conflicts with the dramatic writing class). The schedule as it’s officially registered now is: THTR361 (the next portion of the acting class I’m in now), 428 (contemporary women playwrights), 381 (next part of Theater History), and 384 (Dramatic Writing). I also picked out my monologue to be used for the 360 final and the auditions on Monday. It’s from Ibsen’s “Pillars of Society.” I like it - hopefully it’ll be good enough to get me into at least one of the shows.

And now here’s the next installment of “Raising Hell”:

Raising Hell - a new comic in the classic style of Family Circus!

Ah, hillarity is sure to ensue!

What’s going on with me? Well, yesterday and today I’ve been trying to get my registration for next quarter all set - that’s been taking most of my attention. I also got my physics midterm back (the one that was killing me last week) - I got a 37 out of 50, which may not seem very great, until you factor in the curve which means that my grade is actually a B+. Hooray!

I won’t be going to see Harry Potter tomorrow night - it’s been long sold out, so I’ll be seeing it in the day/evening time rather than at midnight, just like I would if I were a non-crazy!

Oh - I also ordered Arrested Development from amazon this morning, and when I went to the checkout page, it said I had been selected to get 4 free months in their super-duper club. I don’t know what all the perks of being in the super-duper club are, except that for this order rather than getting the super saver (9 day) shipping for free, I got the extra-schmancy *2 day* shipping for free. So they might be here on Friday! Whenever they get here I must have an Arrested Development party.

What’s going on with you?

… My Ding-Ding-Dong.

Do a google search for “you touch my tra la la” if you don’t get why that is hillarious.

Today’s post is brought to you by Name Brand Shoes: http://www.nathanieljones.com/cartoons/shoes.html

I’m having a rough week. It started out rough because I was stressed about my physics midterm. But for whatever reason, I didn’t feel any better once it was over. Every now and then I go through times when I feel really lonely and sad for no really good reason, and the end of the week up through right now has been one of those times. It got a little bit better last night - I went to the Dead Parrot Society show, thinking that would be cheering, but that actually did no good. What did good was that because I went to the Deat Parrot show, I was able to talk to Kate for a little while in the lobby and Jessica for a little while outside the ticket window. After the show I really didn’t want to go home to sit alone in my apartment, so I went to the computer lab and wrote about what I was going through, and that felt good just to get it out.

And around this time is one of those timing things that makes me wonder “is it a coincidence, or was it Supposed to happen this way?” After leaving the computer lab, I caught the shuttle to go back to my apartment - but as we got near, I decided that I’d go to Haggen to pick up some ingredients, so I got off at Haggens instead. I had been looking at recipes for raspberry bars earlier, so I knew that I needed to pick up some rolled oats and raspberry jam in order to make them this morning. I looked in the bulk section and saw they had “regular oats,” but no rolled oats, so I went to the baking row, and they had rolled oats, but only in a big bag, and it cost $1.60 a pound, while the “regular oats” in bulk were only 60 cents a pound or something like that. So I walked back and forth from the bulk section to the baking section trying to figure out what if any difference there was. Eventually I just brought the big bag of rolled oats over to the bulk section to look at them side by side to see if they looked any different, and they didn’t, so I got the bulk oats. Then I picked up the raspberry jam and some brocolli, and I paid for it, and walked out the door - right past Crystal. She was there with Matt and Brittni, and were about to go over to Matt’s place. So there I was, in desperate need of other people, and here other people were. And I wouldn’t have met up with them if I hadn’t gone to the computer lab before going home, if I hadn’t decided to stay on the shuttle untilt he Haggen stop, or if they had simply called the “regular oats” “rolled oats.” So was it a coincidence? I like to think not.

So I stayed at Matt’s until a little after 4am (where I was introduced to the Ding Dong Song as quoted in the title), and then Crystal gave me a ride home on her way back to her place. When I got back to my apartment I opened the door to find that the sliding lock thing was closed, so I couldn’t get in even though I had my key. I thought for a little bit about what I ought to do, but then Greg opened the door for me, because he was still up even though it was around 4:30am, so I was able to get in and go straight to bed.

I got up this morning about 11, and made my raspberry bars. Unfortunately we don’t have any timer on our oven so I always have to rely on keeping an eye on the clock, and so I didn’t notice it was time to take them out until about 5 minutes after they should have been out. So they’re quite toasty, but still edible. Since then I’ve been sitting in my room all day, talking on AIM, making the Name Brand Shoes ad, and trying not to feel too lonely. Hopefully this funk I’m in will end soon.

Howdy, y’all. As you may be aware, I’m going to be making a TV show up here starting either at the end of this week or the beginning of next called “The Nathaniel Jones Show.” I had been planning on going seat-of-the-pants style on it, but I found out today that they wouldn’t let me use a camera to make my pilot episode unless I actually gave them an organized, written-out type deal telling them how the episode would go (dang TV executives and their red tape). But since I’d rather do the writing out and turning in to get permission to get a camera than do no show at all, today I made a little Storyboard-type thing showing how the pilot episode will go. You can take a gander at it here, and tell me what you think - I want the pilot episode to be as good as it can possibly be so that it can prove to be the basis of a long-running fantastic show that wins a pile of emmys.

Check it out here: http://nathanieljones.com/television/storyboards/pilot.html

This past week was really cold, rainy, and so windy that there was no use in trying to use your umbrella to save you from anything. By far, this was the lousiest week I’ve had in quite a while.

In addition to the poor weather, there was a big sense of everything going wrong in the lives of people that I know. This sense of everything turning rotten is best portrayed in this little drawing:

But luckily there exists a cure to lousy weeks: great weekends. My weekend began on Friday Night (as they ought to) when Matt showed up at my apartment to get my roommate to go over to Crystal’s house. Since she is also a friend of mine, I went along.

We brought some movies over, including Ghostbusters, which as it turned out Crystal had never before seen, and so of course we had to put that on. During the movie there was a bottle of vodka being passed around, and as the evening progressed the level of sobriety quickly fell, and the amount of loudly singing “penis church” increased exponentially. After that things became a bit crude, as Matt began putting hot tamales up his butt and then describing the smell, and showing off his hot tamale box condom. This is not my preferred style of entertainment - I ended up sitting quietly most of the time this was going on. I thought about leaving, but it was late at night and cold and wet and so I didn’t want to walk all the way back to the apartment.

Later on it was decided we should all stay the night because nobody really felt like leaving. So I went downstairs to sleep on the mattress they have down there. It was surprisingly warm and comfortable:

In the morning I got up and went upstairs. We spent a while talking, and then roomie Greg pulled out his elaborate D&D-type roll playing game so that they could make Matt a new character so he could play later on. In the end everyone started making characters (except for me because I wasn’t feeling my best, and didn’t want to have to put all the thought into it that this was requiring.) It took somewhere in the vicinity of 3 hours to fill out the front side of one of several sheets that make up the character info pages - further supporting my idea that these types of game take much more time and effort than I’m interested in putting into a game.

So once again I sat quietly, and didn’t have a thrill a minute. But I did draw a lovely picture of Greg and Matt and Crystal and Mel filling out their character forms on a napkin, which I have lovingly recreated here.

At this point you may be saying to yourself “hey - I thought you had a great weekend. But so far you’ve just been sitting quietly and not enjoying yourself. What gives?” What gives is that this was only the first part of the weekend. It was what happened that night that made it all worth it.

That night was Crystal’s Disney Princess Party (and other disney characters). After looking around at what clothes I have, I decided to expand the idea of disney royalty, and so went as King Louie (which I mis-spelled in the drawing) from the Jungle Book.

The party was a swell time - spent a while talking to people, and then playing a game of Suits downstairs using the rules as follows:

That was a fun time, although the boy-to-girl ratio was way off (a room full of boys to two girls), so for the kissing card all of the kisses went to the same girl. She seemed to enjoy it, tho. Since there were so many people playing nobody got to do very many things - the only things I did were take a couple sips of whatever that gross drink was they had down there was, one kiss (that I enjoyed thoroughly), and a fully-clothed porno captured on a camera phone.

After that game was over, it was time for dancing until around 3, when Rodney gave me a ride back to my apartment.

That party was the highlight of the weekend. The next morning (this morning) I had to go get up at 9:30 so I could go up to campus and work on my tragedy scene with Savanna:

And after that I did some shopping. I picked up some cauliflower (that I turned into a tasty garlic-y baked dish), some marionberry coffee cake, a banana, and a box of satsumas.

During the day for some reason something reminded me of the Punky Brewster Halloween Episode that had scarred me for life when I was a little kid by the incredible horror of it all. So I went online to see if I can find anything by it, and I discovered there are whole pages about that one episode full of people that were similarly scarred for life. I even found a page of screen caps showing all of the terror:

It was interesting - when I saw the picture of that ghost, it sent a little shiver down my back, just from remembering all the nightmares it gave me when I saw it on TV.

After that, I went up to the mall to see the Wallace and Gromit movie with Lisette. We hadn’t made an official plan to see it, but while I was waiting for her to call back about whether or not she could make it I realized that if I didn’t leave at that point I couldn’t make it to the movie on time, so I got on a bus and went up to the mall. When I got there I went in to Macy’s and saw Lisette cleaning up her make-up counter. I asked her if she was up for the movie, and she said that she was not - and so I hopped back on the bus and went back to my apartment. It was a thoroughly un-productive trip. But the upside is that while I was on the bus I got my Greek Tragedy lines pretty much memorized, so that’s nice.

And when I got back to the apartment, I drew these lovely pictures. And now that this entry is finished, I’m going to get to quickly write out a little “But I Think” paper for Theatre History, and then go to bed so that I can become well rested after this weekend.

I’ll have a nice long story of what’s been going on the past couple days later, but for now here’s a nice way to predict the future: your horoscope!

And because I wrote it, you know it’s perfectly accurate. Enjoy.

I went to the store tonight to pick up some apples and something for dinner, and while I was there I decided to go see what sort of great bargains they had on all the Halloween stuff - but I had to do quite a bit of searching, because where just yesterday they had piles of Halloween stuff there then stood rows and rows of Christmas stuff! Of course, there’s been Christmas stuff pretty much since I got back for school, but today it had completely overrun the store. I found the Halloween stuff relegated to a little corner - there weren’t any great things I couldn’t live without, so I went to Rite-Aid next to check out their selection. At least over there they still had the halloween stuff in the same area, but over there too they were fully decorated for christmas, complete with a giant inflatable electric snow globe by the front door (that I imagined would be quite fun to play inside if you could climb in).

Right now I’m taking a break from Physics homework. What’s the deal with Physics homework? It’s times like this I wish I could just say “there’s no such thing as physics - I believe in Intelligent Design, and I say that the real reason that when you throw a ball in the air it comes back down isn’t because of gravitational forces, but really just because God caught the ball and tossed it back.”

In other news, I’ve been playing with my little mini digital camera I got recently, and I discovered that when it is hooked up to the computer, I can use it as a webcam on my site! So if you go to http://nathanieljones.com/webcam/ and I’m on there, you can watch me sitting at my desk! Yow - what a thrill! I was on there earlier so people could watch me do my physics homework, but I’ve turned it off because I was just so interesting that I was distracting myself from doing the work. And now I’m distracting myself from doing the work by posting in this crazy thing. So now I must gather up my will power and end this post and get back to doing physics while listening to Christmas Carols and thinking about what Santa must be up to about this time.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

I had just gone to IHOP for a Halloween meal. I stepped outside of the restaurant to find myself in the worst rainstorm I’ve seen in years. I had no umbrella, because on my way down there it had been barely sprinkling, and having to carry the umbrella would have meant leaving behind my magic wand, which of course would have totally wrecked my Snape costume.

I stood in the rain at the street corner waiting for the ‘walk’ signal so that I could make it to the bus stop and get out of the torrential rains that were pounding at me - and I mean pounding. As I stepped into the street there erupted an enormous crash of thunder so loud that I had to stop and look around to see if it had struck nearby - and in that second a car turned the corner so fast that I literally had to jump out of the way to avoid being hit. It was at this point that I knew I was in for an eventful halloween.

Just in the short distance from the IHOP to the busstop across the street I was sopping wet. I stepped into the covered area at the bus stop and tried to wring out my costume a bit as I waited for the bus. Luckily it did not take long, and so I was able to get on and get warmed up quickly despite the wetness of my clothes and hair.

The bus went on its way as usual, but as we were approaching BT I noticed the flashing lights of police cars blocking the road from both ends. I assumed there had been an accident - with all this rain it seemed highly likely that someone had skidded into a tree or some such thing, but as I looked out I saw no cars or anything. Then I looked to the road itself, and saw that the entire street in front of BT was full of water.

The Bus stopped in front of the police cars and an officer stepped on board to talk to the bus driver. After they had finished talking, the police officer looked back toward me and gave me a funny look, and then motioned for the other police officer to come up, and the other office gave me a funny look. I said ‘Happy Halloween,’ and they stepped back off the bus. I expected the bus to get moving on its way, but it sat there for a little while longer, and then the second police officer came back on and walked back to me.

He asked me where I had been during the evening, and I told him that I was at my apartment, and then had gone to IHOP, and was then on my way to see the Rocky Horror Picture Show. He asked if I had any proof of that. I looked in my pocket to pull out my reciept from IHOP, but realized that I had thrown it away with the wrapper of a mint they had given me. The officer then asked me to step off the bus, and while I realize that I really shouldn’t have without knowing what was going on, I didn’t want to hold up the other people on the bus, and so I got off.

The officer asked if they could ask me some questions, and I still had a while before the movie, so I said OK. Since it was still pouring down rain, they put me in the back seat of the police car there, and the two officers got in the front - the first officer in the driver’s seat, and the second officer in the passenger seat.

As it turns out, somebody matching my description had been been causing a ruckus and throwing eggs, and was probably the person who had beaten up a kid so bad that he had to be put in the hospital (which was the real reason they wanted to question me.) Of course I knew that I wasn’t that person, and I think the second officer believed me too, but the first one seemed really freaked out and seemed to believe whole-heartedly I was the perp they were after (tho I thought they could be playing good cop/ bad cop, too). After they had questioned me for a while it looked like they were about to let me go, but then the first cop got a call on his cell phone. He stepped out of the car, and I spent some time just chatting with the second cop about Halloween and things.

A few minutes later the first cop threw the door open and jumped in. He turned on the ignition and started to pull away. I asked if he was going to let me down, and he cut me off and yelled surprisingly loud “You sit the (explative deleted) down!”

I was rather stunned. I sat silently in the back seat there as he drove along a dark road. I listened to the radio crackling every now and then announcing crimes in progress: noise complaints mostly, but now and then a drunk and disorderly, and one suspected drunk driver speeding around somewhere. The Second officer tried to get the first to calm down and was talking to him, but I couldn’t fully catch what they were talking about until a few choice words reached my ears - the boy had died. The one in the hospital who the first seemed sure that I had beaten to get his halloween candy.

I was stunned further - here I was, having a lovely halloween, and then found myself accused of murder. But I figured things would be allright - back at the IHOP I had talked to the people working there for a while, and they’d be able to vouch for me and say that I had been there. But the cop wasn’t thinking rationally at this point. I couldn’t see the speedometer, but I could tell we were going fast along small roads that aren’t meant to be driven quickly on. The second officer was trying to get him to pull over, and then I made the brilliant move to chime up and say something so wonderfully stupid I can’t even remember what it was, but whatever it was made the first officer turn around in the seat and slam his fist against the grate that seperates the front from the back and screech at me “You killed my son, you f***ing piece of s***!”

At that point things slowed down - he was facing me with crazy eyes that made me think that he was going to pull out his gun and shoot me then and there, but the second officer was not looking at him - he was looking at the pair of headlights speeding straight towards us. He grabbed the steering wheel to try and swerve out of the way, and so did the other car - but both swerved in the same direction and slammed almost head on. The force of the crash sent the first officer’s head slamming into the grate, and i felt a splatter of blood fly across my face. The car flipped over and slid quite a ways before finally stopping.

I checked myself to make sure I was alright, and thankfully I was. The back window had shattered and so I was able to get out. I looked in the front seat - the two cops weren’t moving, but I didn’t stay long enough to see if they were dead or just passed out - the only thought in my head at that point was just to get as far away from there as I possibly could.

I ran about a block when I almost ran right into a little kid dressed as a zombie or some such dead person. He stopped me and pointed back toward the crash. I looked at the kid and something struck me as very odd, and I looked back at the crash. I turned back to the kid to see what he had been trying to tell me, but he had vanished.

I felt a strange tingling sensation, and knew that I had to go back to the crash. I ran back over there and looked into the cop car - both the officers had come to and were struggling to get out, so I helped pull the second cop out, and he in turn helped the first one. While that was going on, I went back to the car that had hit us and looked inside.

I looked inside - the passenger seat was stacked with eggs, booze, and what I could only assume were stolen pillowcases full of candy. Then I looked at the driver and stood in shock - even with a gash on his forehead and blood soaking his face and clothes, I could see the resemblance; this guy could have been my twin brother. I hollared for the officer to come take a look, and he did after he had gotten the first officer leaning up against the car (he was pretty badly injured, but still alive). The officer was just as shocked as I had been - by some unlikely coincidence, the very person they had been trying to find found them first.

After he had called the ambulance and coroner or whoever the heck they call when somebody has died, he put me in another cop car to take me back to my apartment. On the way back I told the story of the whole evening, and about the kid that had made me go back and help the cops stuck in the car. When we got back to the apartment, I noticed a picture on the dashboard of the car of a little kid. I asked who it was, and the officer told me that it was the police officer’s son that had just been killed. Then I felt a drop of sweat slide down my back, because the child in that picture had been the same one that told me to go back - that had made me save his dad and partner, and discover the child’s murderer in the other car…

Happy Halloween, everybody!