October 2010

Halloween safety – A How To Guide of Tips

by Hank Thompson on October 28, 2010

Ghouls and goblins, spooks and spectres, ghosts and ghouls!  Halloween! It’s a time of fear, fright and friendliness. And candy. And sluts. Which is why most Americans polled describe Halloween as one of their 12 favorite holidays. But it isn’t all fun and games. It isn’t all the joyous celebration of Satan’s influence. In fact, Halloween can be dangerous. For both adults and kids.

The good news is that you’re not alone. We’re all in this together. Whether you’re a parent or one of those non-reproducing assholes, here are few safety tips to make sure Halloween doesn’t turn into Halloscream:

How to Carve a Pumpkin

Crossing the street is more dangerous the darker it gets. Protect your child by forcing other children to cross the street first.

Open the door with caution. Be prepared with a wooden spike in case an actual vampire comes to the door. Please note, actual vampires look exactly like a ten year old child with bad makeup and a shitty cape. Stab immediately.

Avoid the unhealthy part of candy by removing the wrapper before eating.

Because salt is the opposite of sugar, feed your child candy-sized chunks of salt. These can be acquired at the place where deer buy their salt.

Razors in apples is a significant threat. But the good news is your shitty parenting has left your child without the knowledge of what an apple is. He won’t know it’s food and will instead think it’s a broken ball.

If someone attempts to give your child those shitty candies in brown and orange wrappers, call the police and tell them, “somebody is about to get hurt.” Then drag that person to the street and curb them. When the police arrive, remove your shirt to reveal the swastika tattoo on your chest and turn around very slowly before they cuff you.

Candy corn is an old Halloween staple. Understand that it is illegal to plant them for the purpose of reseeding.  All modern strains of candy corn are patented by Monsanto Corporation to be pesticide resistant and must be purchased annually from your nearby licensed Monsanto dealer.

Avoid licorice. Instead, lick rice.

If your 8 year old daughter insists on dressing sexy, protect her by making her wear an “I have syphilis. (even on my hands)” sign around her neck.

Tattoo your child’s forearm with your zip code. This is a great way to keep track of somebody you don’t want to escape.

Make an imprint of your child’s dentition prior to the holiday. This will make identifying the body much easier, assuming the killer doesn’t keep his/her teeth.

Smashing pumpkins can lead to even greater forms of vandalism. Do not download their albums.

Razors aren’t the only dangers for trick or treaters. It’s a big time for bullies as well.  Train your child to defend himself by quickly removing an attacker’s eyeball. Kill Bill is all the instruction you’ll need. Practice on local dogs.

Because candy can cause unwanted weight gain, allow your child to eat candy only when walking on the treadmill. If she starts crying from the exertion. Tell her she is ugly when she cries. She will spend her life trying to earn your love. This will keep her skinny.

Warn your child to watch out for strangers in white vans. Rainbow and polka-dotted vans, however, are perfectly safe.

Hank in a graveyard slash Halloween

This is me in front my favorite fans: the ones who can't complain.


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Podcast: Episode 7 available now

by Hank Thompson on October 20, 2010

Head over to the podcast website and check out episode 7. We were joined by Tony Blanco — comedian, cajun, cylon. We talked about many things, including his time as the house MC at Lakeshore Theatre. He tells the story of how he met Robin Williams and the time Jim Jeffries exposed his balls and rested them on his head in the middle of a show. And I spend a lot of time flapping my gums about things I’m not qualified to talk about. You go now!

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Machete tweets. Cause somebody had to.

by Hank Thompson on October 19, 2010

Twitter can do strange things to a person. During a typical night of tweeting the usual cantankerous miscellanea I found myself honing in on one particular topic: machetes. Didn’t even realize I’d done it until I woke up in a bathtub full of ice with an extra kidney installed and my twitter URL written on my chest in lipstick.

That may or may not be true but either way I wrote a bunch of tweets about machetes. Call it a glitch, call it a feedback loop, call it insanity. It’s social media meets obsessive compulsive disorder.

Not to mention relevant to the world of today. Maybe you’re a third-world farmer clearing a patch of brush for yams? Or maybe you’re an oppressive regime too cheap to afford swords or guns? Or maybe you’re just a kid looking for a nifty accessory for your Halloween costume? No matter the situation, a giant sharpened knife is the perfect solution for almost any problem. Indeed, the machete has earned respect far and wide by anyone looking to quickly slice through something, whether that something be the neighbor’s pumpkins, overgrown brush or the ankle of a victim.

Follow me on Titter here: twitter.com/Hank_Thompson

Without further ado, here are my machete tweets, in order of appearance:

If I didn’t know better I would say that machetes are severely under-priced.

Somewhere in the world is a machete factory. It’s slogan: Where Dreams Come True.

A fat affable balding Italian man wakes up at 4:30 every morning, shuffles to the bathroom and says, “time to make the machetes.”

The worst thing about machetes? Not having sugar cane as a crop in northern Illinois.

When shopping for a machete, sharpness is secondary to how many jewels are embedded in the handle.

Worst sex toy ever? A microwave that doesn’t warm up silicone. Second worst? A machete.

Walmart sells machetes. They can be found in the hunting/camping/sushi supplies department.

Never go camping without a machete. Correction: don’t go camping.

Always be good and decent to each other. Conduct yourself with kindness. If that fails, murder the neighboring tribe with a machete.

Balloonists are adventurerers who love big round things. Sand is a tool they use to manipulate gravity. Machetes are how they open Snapple.

Stuff your grandkids stockings with candy, chocolate coins, oranges, money and foil-covered machetes. It’ll make their socks longer!

+++++++++

twitter.com/Hank_Thompson

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Podcast: Episode 6 available now

by Hank Thompson on October 11, 2010

Head over to winnersandlosersshow.com to get the latest episode of the podcast. This one’s a good one!

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Winners and Losers Podcast wants your ears

by Hank Thompson on October 6, 2010

It was a launch many weren’t sure would happen. Technical difficulties, financial constraints, and crippling bouts of laziness were all challenges that had to be overcome during the tumultuous past months. Research, equipment purchasation, readingifying manuals, website developmentizationalism, microphone plug-inafastidiousnessisitude. It all came together.

And finally, with the Florida dew still glistening on the tires of the state’s many mobile methlabs, in the stillness of morning and the silence of a complete lack of promotion, a years worth of preparation hinged upon one switch. A mouse click, really. The engineers and technicians, designers, investors, painters and pickpocketers, the janitors and janitors’ wives all, held their breath at the moment of launch. Ignition. They erupted into uproarious roars of roaring upon the news that indeed, the mighty ship, the USS Hank’s New Podcast, finally cleared the stratosphere and settled intact into an orbit about the Earth.

Well, sort of, kind of, maybe.

I can definitely say that doing the podcast is a lot more fun than preparing to do the podcast. My biggest fear in putting in all the time and money getting ready was that I would hate it. Considering that I’d never done a podcast or any radio before I wasn’t quite sure I knew what I was getting into, but my instincts have so far proven to be correct in that I enjoy doing the show very much.

It’s made me really respect the better hosts out there. It’s a skill that done well goes hardly noticed. It’s not dissimilar from hosting a stand up show. As the host, your job is to be funny and engaging, while guiding the show into topics people hopefully want to hear about. Steering the meanders, as it were. But mainly, a good host doesn’t make mistakes. I’m going to make many but I can promise I will pay close attention and learn from them. As hosting becomes more natural the funny and the fun will follow suit and the show will get better and better.

This is part of the reason I’ve held off promoting the show. I didn’t want to make a fuss about it on Facebook and Twitter until there were at least a few episodes to download, and until the website resembled what someone who knows what they’re doing might put together. My hope is that people’s first impression is, “Oh, look, here’s a podcast that seems like a real podcast” rather than “Hey look, some idiot thinks he knows how to do a podcast.”

Soon enough, I’ll start promoting it directly and ask guests to promote it as well. Then I’ll sit back and watch the downloads climb from dozens to baker’s dozens. I can already smell the cinnamon.

Please check out the show.

Here’s the website: www.winnersandlosersshow.com

You can subscribe through your RSS feed here or if you’re one of the vast masses of iPod users subscribe through iTunes.

Or here are the first five episodes for direct download.

right click to save:

2010.09.06_WandL_001_-_Simmons_McDavid_Lane_Pieschel.mp3

2010.09.13_WandL_002_-_Simmons_McDavid_Joe_McAdam.mp3

2010.09.20_WandL_003_-_Joe_McAdam_Ryan_Walker.mp3

2010.09.27_WandL_004_-_Ricky_Gonzalez.mp3

2010.10.04_WandL_005_-_Mike_Joyce.mp3

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