I’ve had some great Halloween costumes over the years.  Until now, the most memorable was in 2001, when I dressed in full chain mail and took top prize in four costume contests.  Now, I think I’ve outdone that as Buckethead.

This was a cheap costume to put together.  I dropped $1.97 on the mask at Wal-Mart, which I had initially thought would be the hardest piece to get.  The guitar, a B.C. Rich Warlock, I already had, and though I bought a Marshall MS-2 mini amp to stick to my belt, I don’t consider it solely for the costume.  The hardest thing was getting the KFC bucket.

From the beginning, I knew I wanted a clean, unused bucket.  Seven KFC trips later, I was prepared to use a dirty one.  Try as I might, I couldn’t fine anyone willing to lay one on me.  Several times, I offered to buy a 20-piece as long as they just wouldn’t put the chicken in there.  People got weird.  They’d never give me a solid reason, just saying that they couldn’t fork over half a cardboard tube.

On Monday night, I hit my eighth KFC.  A sixteen year-old kid was behind the counter.  I said, “Man, I hope you can help me.  I need a clean, empty, large KFC bucket.”

“Here you go,” he said.

I thought that being Buckethead for Halloween would be great for two reasons.  First, I’d get to carry a guitar around at work all day.  Second, nobody would get it.  I was half right.

The first thing I heard when I stepped out of the car was some guy shouting, “Buckethead.”  That would be the pattern for the day.  Half of the people I ran into would ask, “What the hell are you supposed to be?”  The other half would answer so that I didn’t have to.

Have I ever mentioned that I work in a large corporation?  The most surprising Buckethead fan turned out to be one of our Vice Presidents.  She’s cool.

After work, I took a long walk down the street for some Starbucks.  The walk usually takes me twenty minutes.  Today, it took an hour and a half.  Everywhere, people were stopping me, praising my costume, asking me to play them a few riffs.

I didn’t stick around for any of the costume contests.  I just didn’t have the energy.  Instead, I left downtown around dusk, stopped at Wendy’s for some fries and a Frosty, then came home and collapsed on the couch.  I’m exhausted.  Either I’m not as young as I used to be, or it’s easier to walk around in 150 lbs. of armor than it is to carry a guitar and a chicken bucket.

“So, I went into the bathroom, and I checked the stalls, you know, just to make sure I didn’t walk into one that was already occupied. And in one of them, there was this guy, and he was dressed like a cop. I thought he was that nice young man from the Village People, so I tried to get an autograph. That’s all it was, man. Just a simple misunderstanding.”

I think we’d all swallow this easier than the horse pills Craig has been trying to feed us.

“The FBI raped a warehouse owned by David Copperfield.”

The preceding was overheard on FOX News at 1430 EDT on October 29th, 2007.

Today, I installed Leopard. Now is not the time for a full review. Rather, I’m just looking to see whether or not the Wordpress visual editor works in the full version of Safari.

For those of you without tracking devices attached to my car, I’ve been out of town over the weekend. Because of the reinstall, I’ve got a lot more work to do tonight, so expect details to come tomorrow.

Items packed for a four-day trip:

• Jeans, socks, shorts, and shirts for four days.
• Deodorant
• Toothbrush
• Toothpaste
• Electric Razor
• Macbook
• Macbook power adapter
• Bose in-ear headphones
• iPod
• iPod cable
• Motorolla RAZR
• Motorolla RAZR charger
• Four external hard drives, total storage, roughly 1.5 Terabytes
• A dozen unwatched DVDs
• B.C. Rich Warlock electric guitar
• Line6 TonePort UX2
• M-Audio Studiophile reference monitors
• Marshall MS-2 mini amp
• A box of assorted guitar picks
• Extra pack of Ernie Ball Slinky guitar strings
• Three guitar cables
• Panasonic over-ear studio headphones

I’m at my parents’ house for an extended weekend, taking care of their dog and mine while they’re at the beach. Hopefully, I’ve brought enough stuff that I won’t get bored.

Come the day after Halloween, there’s going to be a lot of kids with tummy aches, a lot of grown ups with hangovers, and possibly some mixture between the two. Out in Hollywood, however, the pain is likely to be centered in hearts, heads, and groins. It just might be contagious.

The Writers Guild of America has authorized a strike when their current contract with production studios ends at midnight on October 31st. This contract began after their last strike in 1998, when the world introduced to us such wonderful reality television that was less real than the current crop of hour-long drama shows featuring Keifer Sutherland saving the country in a single day, an Emo kid saving a cheerleader, and a guy who can make corpses wake up at will. Why? Because when writers strike, television studios just put anyone they can in front of the camera.

Lots of people are against unions, but a guild is not the same thing. In a guild, not everyone gets paid equally. Not every member gets a share of an overall lump sum. A guild is about the big guys fighting for the little guys against the thirty ton behemoths. There are television and movie writers who make big bucks, but there are a lot of people in the industry who have steady jobs and are bringing home less than your average car mechanic. Compound that with the fact that they live in Los Angeles (a requirement), and you’ll understand why they have three roommates in a studio apartment and want a little more money.

Who’s making the big bucks off of television? Disney, General Electric (owner of NBC), Viacomm (CBS), and Rupert Murdoch. Think any of those guys have roommates? Dozens of kids with a handful of wives don’t count.

What television and movie writers are asking for is pretty simple. They want a higher base rate, something the studio isn’t really fighting, as they do understand inflation. The big contention is over residuals. When Season Six of 24 goes on sale for $49.95, four cents per episode is given to the writer. If you think that the retail outlet you got this from is making any of that money, think again. That’s a loss-leader, which means that they’re likely loosing a bit on it just to get you in the store. In mass production, those five DVD discs and packaging might total two bucks. Another two bucks goes to the actors, two bucks to the directors, and probably another two bucks is split between all the other people involved in making that show. Who gets the other $40? FOX.

That’s right. You just paid $50 for something that was free in the first place, fully funded by advertising, just so one of the richest men in the world could get another pair of Andrew Jacksons to drop on his latest trophy bride.

What’s more is that television studios whine about Apple not charging enough for shows on the iTunes Music Store, yet to them, that’s pure profit. Digital distribution isn’t covered by contracts with the people who make the shows, so the studios reap all the rewards. When you get to watch Heroes for free on NBC.com, in turn for just looking at (and maybe clicking on) some advertisements, which cover the cost for the network, it’s the same deal. GE/Universal/NBC is making money, hand over fist, but the people who sweated, bled, and cried to make something you’d find entertaining get nothing.

So yeah, sooner or later, we’re going to be in the toilet when it comes to television again. In the next year or two, we’ll be watching yet another Summer of Remakes at the theater. Look for some Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson comedies, expect Simons Fuller and Cowell to create a few more spin-offs of American Idol, and prepare to see what the latest is with Trista and Ryan. Just don’t get angry at the creative talent. They only want to get their bills paid. The problem is with the fat cats whose wallets can just never be thick enough.

Politics don’t matter. Electing Schwarzenegger as governor of California is the best thing the state ever did. Why? Because he gives the best news conferences of any political officer ever.

It doesn’t matter what he says, I hear, “Come with me if you want to live!” Whatever line he delivers to the camera, my ears hear, “Get on da choppah!” Then, at least half of his lines I hear as, “It’s a ferret.”

When your state is in the middle of one of the worst natural disasters of all time, when you’re moving millions of people out of their homes and crowding them into shelters, when you and everyone else realize that there will be thousands of homeless families before it’s all over, the actual words don’t matter so much. What matters is that you have a charismatic, inspirational person who might be able to make you remember just a little gleam of hope. Who hasn’t been felt that from at least one of Arnold’s characters?

Some people might say that a disaster is not the time for jokes. They’re wrong, flat wrong. I’ve been evacuated, I’ve been homeless, I’ve had to dig my way out, and I’ve had to rebuild. If there’s ever a time in anyone’s life for jokes, that’s it. Southern California, I know how you feel, but you’ll be fine, and I hope that you draw what you need from your governor and the rest of the people around you.

Last week, Mark decided it was time to redesign BurnedOutGeek and at least attempt to be a blogger again. Given that I either copy everything he does, in the hopeless attempt to fashion for myself a vicarious existence, I surmised that it was time for me to do the same. This is what you get as an outcome.

If you’ve been following the countdown on the main page, you’ll know that roughly seventy-two hours ago, I’d completed a logo. It’s nifty, right? Okay, maybe it’s not your cup of tea, but if that’s the case, might I suggest some Earl Grey?

The fact of the matter is that I’ve got several secret projects in the works and because I never shy away from a lame excuse for creating a new logo for something, this seemed like a good place to start. Secret projects need teasing information, right? I mean, what’s the point of having a secret project in the first place if I don’t at least drop some hints here and there?

In that case, here are your hints. One secret project kicks ass, one secret project takes names, and one does both. Does that mean that there are three secret projects? Not necessarily.

Oh, and I’ll try to be a regular blogger, too, just because I think I can do a better job at keeping up with it than Mark can.