Sleepless in Waynesburg

My insomnia continues to be my best friend, though I have been a little more successful at the shut-eye thing of late. Slowly but surely I'm remastering the fine art of sleeping.

Of course, I can't just blame the stress or my natural penchant towards spaz-ism. One of our local coal companies misrepresented itself to us and our neighbors. Instead of the single line of pipe they claimed they would lay (to vent methane from one of the mines), they have begun to drill a methane capture well on our neighbor's hill. Which is directly in between two of their biggest pastures. Being sheep farmers, they need the pastures to feed their sheep. Without grazing land, sheep tend to do stupid things like starve and die. To make matters even more fun, the drilling goes on 24 hours a day, the sound travels over four miles to our land, keeping me awake even more. But, since I'm usually up anyway, the noise gives me the opportunity to be angry as well as exhausted.

When our neighbors complained to workers that this is not what was agreed upon, the workers replied, "We'll do what we want when we want."

So I'll be taking this up with the news--TV and paper. And internet. And, possibly, from my roof, shouting at God.

It's a character flaw of mine. I hate oppression. Not a big fan of corporate lying, either. Makes me testy.

With all this in mind, I've been trying to focus on getting things prepared for the Fangoria Weekend of Horrors in Chicago this weekend. It's always a great show for us, economically and funwise. And this year, we're listed as official guests. And Splatter Movie: The Director's Cut is premiering (in front of an unbiased audience, as terrifying as that may be) at 4:00 pm on Saturday. Which is a great time slot. The proof of my claims can be found HERE.

In other Fangoria news, my third-ever article for them runs in the current issue. It details my and Amy's set-visit to The Rage, where we got to hang with Robert Kurtzman and Andrew Divoff for the better part of the day, as well as get a personal tour of Precinct 13--Bob K's studio in Ohio. Seeing this piece in print gave me a special little thrill. Even though I've been writing professionally for about a decade now, I think that I've mentioned that Fangoria was always a market I'd dreamed of "cracking". And now I have, three issues in a row. So now I await Satan's collection on the contract I must have signed on one of my insomnia-enduced episodes.

Enough babbling - if you're going to be in Chicago this weekend, and, really, I see no reason why you shouldn't be, swing by the Happy Cloud table and say hi, pick up a copy of the pre-release of Splatter Movie, buy a subscription to Sirens of Cinema and say nice things about my hair.

Good night, good luck and good news tomorrow.