So the final location list gets submitted today, and we should find out where we are moving in early november. Turns out they are offering substantial bonuses for this specific sort of assignment that works out of a lot of small, rural areas that aren't on the official list of places, and joy of joys, none of these places are in texas or florida or the deep south or east coast. 25K bonus plus after 4 years there you get your guaranteed choice of location and they'll cover moving costs. So we're all: 1) uncle sam will move us to the northwesternish boonies where we don't have to pay for parking 2) give us 25k and 3) move us to Alaska for free after 4 years guaranteed. Uh. Don't threaten us with a good time! So spouse put in for that. It's not guaranteed, but they do need people and he's likely to be a good fit. Yeah, we'll be rubbing elbows with the red hats but at least they'll be the poor working red hats and not the rich spoiled ones. I'll pick wyoming over texas any day of the week. When I was driving down from alaska I totally judged states based on their radio stations and I am sorry to say that wyoming was the absolute worst. Praise music and country, those are your choices. So it says something when I am excited about the possibility of getting wyoming. At least wyoming has mountains. And if we can't find weirdos to make friends with, oh noooooooooo, how will I survive, so hard. And the internet will be crap but we already have crap internet. We've got a fat couple of DVD binders, we'll be fine. Oh please universe, put us somewhere where the neighbors are down the road and we can have a garage. Please please please. I really want a garage and I doubt we could rent a house in higher COL areas. Spouse's new job pays decent but the money doesn't go as far as it used to, and it may be a while before I am contributing anything substantial.

I told spouse this is basically moving by random encounter table. The GM (uncle sam) gave us this list of places and we ordered it based on what sounded interesting ("I don't want to fight the horde of undead in the swamps, put that at the bottom") and now he's going to roll dice behind his GM screen and tell us where the adventure takes us. Which means that the agony of ordering the list is mostly performative. Also there are sekrit alternative lists that we don't get to order. Who relocates themselves by random encounter table? We do! Oh boy! So fun!

Slowly chugging on inktober. I finished "vessel" and it's okay. Not great, just okay. I have this thicker white ink marker and every time I use it I regret it. But I keep trying and keep regretting. I think I've used it up on "vessel" - good. I screwed myself again on "knot". First I thought, I'll do a dragon twisted into some sort of simple celtic knot shape, easy. Then I thought, no, I'll do a snake because it will be easier (wrong). What kind of knot? Why not a hangman's noose. So I sketched up the snake with the body as the hangman's noose and the head of the snake coming out of the top coils. Peaceful snake (mouth closed) or angry snake (mouth open)? Duh, angry snake. Then I had to find photo ref of a decent open mouth snake, and if you've tried this you know that 95% of pictures of snakes with their mouth open look like a goofy toothless grandpa with their dentures out. So then I had to narrow it down to the green tree viper, which has multiple rows of fangs and actually looks threatening. Cool. Then, like a genius, I decided that I needed to add the detail of all the snake scales to show the shape of the coils. And the snake is all wrapped up in this hangman's knot. Ugh, idiot. But once you start you have to do the whole thing!! So it took a couple hours just getting the scales right. Then I looked at the composition and it's not balanced in the square frame. The noose hangs down vertical and there's blank space to each side. So I added a simple banner that wraps behind the snake, and in script it says "First time?" The snake has this sort of "ha hah" expression with his fangs hanging out. I think it's funny, anyway. So I am still 3 inktobers behind, son of a bitch. This is why I always fail inktober, because you get behind and you're fucked unless you skimp on quality, and I get fancy ideas and can't not.

Today's prompt (actually tuesday's) is "raven". I think I'm gonna draw Raven holding a moon in his beak, like from the native stories. Wednesday's prompt is "spirit" and that's tough because it's so undefined. I will have to think about it while I do raven. Fingers crossed I can get two done today.

I was streaming the tv show ghost hunters off amazon prime for background noise. The embarrassing thing is I was originally watching top model (the one with tyra banks) and it was too interesting and I was getting distracted. You'd think it would be easy fluff to tune out, but I got too interested in seeing how their photos came out. So I had to stop and switch to something more boring. Ghost hunters fits the bill and it's seasonally appropriate. They try to present the show with this veneer of scientific respectability by debunking incidences, but then they give it the same overly creepy background music that makes it impossible to tell what noises are real, and do the same cheesy jump scare commercial cuts where nothing happens. I don't really hear the knocks and footsteps they claim, nor am I going to blast my speakers to do so. So it's mostly people wandering around in the dark yelling questions and saying "did you hear that?!" to each other. Vaguely interesting yet easy to ignore - perfect.

However, I have to admit, I like my paranormal reality shows on the dumber side. I have no investment in the existence of ghosts one way or another. I've had one very mild possible experience but it doesn't matter to me if it were real or not. But if you're going to watch a ghost show, it's more fun to buy in and watch the ones that don't try so hard to be scientific. Because they are all just entertainment. So personally, I prefer ghost adventures to ghost hunters, because ghost adventures is a masterpiece of unintentional comedy. My old roommate and I used to laugh so hard we cried watching ghost adventures. It is probably the absolute funniest thing that isn't marketed as a comedy. It's chock full of absurd "evidence" interpretations, weird pseudoscience gadgets, hyper-dramatic voiceovers, bad historical larping, and the hosts scaring the pee out of themselves. Like, it's gold. If you were to run a ghost hunting RPG setting, this is exactly the sort of player character nonsense you'd get. So I happen to have the first four seasons of ghost adventures on DVD and I've been rewatching it and it's every bit as glorious as I remember.

I guess in the later seasons one of guys (nick) split off to do his own paranormal show (paranormal lockdown). I wouldn't be surprised if the main host (zak) got a bit full of himself and they disagreed on the tone of the show. Zak seems to really hype the overdramatic angle and nick seemed more grounded and serious. Unfortunately it is the combination of zak, nick and aaron that makes the show so great, because zak by himself would be too much, and nick on his own lacks the wacky energy that makes the show worth watching. Aaron is just the ordinary guy along for the ride, kinda like the frosting in a sandwich cookie that makes it stick together.

Anyway, if you've watched the same halloween movies a jillion times and you want some funny halloween vibes, the early seasons of ghost adventures are top tier.

I may go back to ghost hunters after this. It's interesting to see them investigate the same locations as ghost adventures. Shows a very clear difference in their stylistic approach.