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What if you held a meme and nobody showed?

Well, my first attempt at a meme went bust. As you may recall, I asked readers to post (or submit) Halloween photos on their blogs back from when they were kids. It was going to be HUGE! It was the Best Idea I Ever Had! I was anticipating a flood of people posting their pics.

Well, I got exactly two participants. I got a few others from people saying either a) they didn’t dress up, b) they don’t have pics from them or c) they were never children.

Perhaps, I should’ve waited until I had more than two regular readers (thanks, my wife and my mom – two separate people, despite what that jerk Tony said in middle school). Or maybe I should have pimped the meme a bit more on my site to constantly remind people.

At any rate, thanks to those who did play along.

First up is Ron from Clark Kent’s Lunchbox who posted this photo, along with several other ones on his blog earlier this month.

Next up is Sean from Writer Dad who didn’t post anything on his site, but did send me these photos. The first one is pretty creepy. I forget which one he said he was in the bottom photo. Maybe the blond girl in the center front row? (I KiiiiiiD!)

As for Dave Fowler and Tara Cain, these two Brit bloggers claim they didn’t celebrate Halloween when they were younger. Well, maybe not, but that won’t stop me from finding pics and attributing them to the duo.

Up first, Tara. Since she had a bad day earlier this week, she gets off easy with this cute Supergirl pic found on Flickr. Being a fellow geek, she should not be upset.

And lastly, my pal, Dave Fowler. As much as he snipes at Tara and myself for our geeky pursuits, I can only assume that he is a closet nerd. Flickr turned up this photo of him cooking for his family. Case closed.

And while I hoped my mom would find a cute pic from when I was a kid, she only turned up some pics from when I was a teenager. There was one of me dressed as a girl, which is blackmail-worthy embarrassing. However, since only a few people played along, nobody gets to see it. Maybe next year if we can get some more participants. Here is one from God knows when. I think I was going for a zombie look, a zombie with bad fashion sense who wears acid washed jeans. And oh yeah, the hair is all mine, at the start of my metal phase. Bon Jovi had nothing on me. Well, except he scored with many more teenage girls than I did in high school. As for my hair, it got much, much longer. One day I decided to cut it all off. It was easily two feet long (the chicks LOVED it, so shut up Dave, I can already hear you sharpening the knives). I kept it for a few years as a reminder of the one time in my life I was cool looking. I was tempted to sell it to a wig shop, but eventually, I donated it to Locks of Love. I believe there was enough hair there to make 2,000 wigs. I wish I had kept a chunk of it, though. Just to remember… Maybe I’ll grow it long again?

And since it is Friday, why not close with a Halloween-themed comic?

Happy Halloween, everyone. Have fun tonight. And if you need Fowler’s address to egg his house, just shoot me an e-mail. We’ll get him into the Halloween spirit one way or another! For those who dress up this year or dress their kids up this year, if you post the pictures on your blog, feel free to come back here and add it in the comments for readers to check out.

See you all on Monday when I post something which may cause half of you to drop me from your RSS subscriptions.

as always, thanks for reading.

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Coming tomorrow: Halloween pics.

Coming Monday: a post which may cause half of you to drop me from your RSS feeds.

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Happy Anniversary to my wife. I got her this cake in honor of our special day.

Actually, I didn’t get her that cake. While it would have been totally funny, I would be the only one laughing. Of course, I’d also be sleeping alone. But the real story of the cake is even WEIRDER. My friend sent me the photo, telling me it was for her 4 year old niece’s birthday. Yes, a 4 year old girl actually saw a picture of a cake like this and thought it was “cool” and requested it. My friend sent me a second photo of her niece standing over the cake and smiling cutely. I’ll refrain from posting it, so as not to invite the Department of Children and Families to swoop down on her niece’s house.

And before you ask, NO Dave, you can’t have a piece.

Post your Halloween pics

There’s still time to post your childhood Halloween pics. Anyone who posts their old Halloween pics, or pics of their own kids or animals dressed up for Halloween, let me know in the comments of this post,

On Halloween, I’ll post links to everyone who participates and will also post the best (and worst) pics.

Please don’t let this guy submit the best pic! Although, Sean will still have to submit another photo, as this is not a Halloween pic, but from something called 60′s Day at school…

at least that’s the story he’s sticking to.

My next war

For those of you who have been following Blogger Dad for a month or so might remember my declaration of war on McDonald’s. Well, that war is on hold during McDonald’s Monopoly game. In the meantime, I am launched a second war against another giant corporation – Pepsi-Cola.

First, the grocery shrink ray started hitting cereal boxes, ice cream and candy bars. It now takes two boxes of Golden Grahams to fill my cereal bowl, for God’s sake. Of course, that might be because my cereal bowl looks like this…

Now the shrink ray is zapping a bit closer to home. Pepsi-Cola recently shrank its 12 pack of 12 oz. cans to 8 packs in a few test states, including mine! What the hell? I NEED my Diet Cherry Pepsi but I am not going to start paying MORE for it. I hope the experiment fails miserably so Coke doesn’t get any bright ideas.

I’m a Twit

Sean (Writer Dad) Platt twisted my arm and convinced me to join Twitter. Yeah, I know, I waited a loooong time to join the party. The thought that anyone would actually care about what I’m up to every moment of every day is a bit unlikely. Also, the concept of sharing random thoughts seems a recipe for disaster for someone who declares wars on fast food corporations, but it could be fun. Of course, now that I joined, twitter will fall out of favor and be replaced by some other new “thing.” If you’re interested in reading my updates, rants and whatnots, you can check on the text box to the right. If you click below the tweet, you can even “follow” me – now doesn’t that sound like fun?

Namasté

Speaking of Writer Dad, his wife Cindy launched her new website, NamasDaisy on Friday. I drew the awesome chalkboard, but that isn’t the reason you should go. She’s a great writer, also. I look forward to great things from her.

Faster than a speeding bullet?

My Eight Questions interview series will return this Wednesday featuring someone who has been nominated for “hottest daddy blogger.” No, not me. I’m talking of course about Clark Kent’s Lunchbox.

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In the spirit of Halloween, and yesterday’s discussion on costumes, I’m putting out a call to all readers to show us your childhood Halloween pictures.

Yes, it’s a meme. But it’s a FUN meme (despite what kitty says)!

So dust off your old photo albums or call your parents and ask them to find the cutest or most embarrassing childhood photo of you in a Halloween costume. Once you find it, post it on your blog anytime this month. Once posted, swing by this post add a link to YOUR post in my comments section. On the week of Halloween I’ll post my own pic and a link to all participants’ blog posts. I’ll also post some of the best pics (with your permission of course).

If you don’t have a blog, feel free to contact me and let me know you’re interested and I’ll send you my email address so you can send me your photo(s).

If you don’t have pics of yourself, feel free to post pics of your children or even your pets (particularly cute cats or guinea pigs). The idea is to spread some good Halloweeny fun across the blogosphere.

as always, thanks for reading,

Blogger Dad

Coming Wednesday : Find out who the next Eight Questions interviewee is.

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As you’ll notice if you visit BloggerDad.com, rather than read this via a feed or email, the site is sporting a new design for the month of October. The image to your right is my son from last October. My wife thought he looked just like Snoopy from “The Great Pumpkin.” I think his head looks more like Charlie Brown, but he’s cute either way.

So why the design tweak? Well, Halloween is my favorite time of year, and I wanted to bring some of the fun here.

Of course, it’s been a long time since Halloween has held that same innocent joy for me.

I remember walking home from elementary school in Octobers of years past. Excitement rode the currents of crisp autumn breezes, electrifying children already hopped up on sugary dreams of Halloween. I don’t know why most kids loved Halloween – for me it was all about the colors. Deep dark forbidding blue skies, bright orange pumpkins, black cats, brown werewolves, green Frankensteins, white ghosts and skeletons, gray tendrils of smokey fog billowing across graveyards where shifting mounds of dirt signaled the uneasy undead making their way back home. The world had become one big giant Saturday Morning Cartoon and it was AWESOME!

TV shows and cartoons and even commercials all featured Halloween themed entertainment and to this day, they all give me a happy, comfie, nostalgic feeling.

Each October first, I began my countdown to Halloween. Oftentimes, to get myself all psyched up, I’d borrow books of ghost stories from the school’s library and would sit in my dad’s chair and read them until he came home from work. The scarier the better! Of course, at night, I was convinced that there was a ghost in my room, and would spend an hour peering out from under my Star Wars covers, half fearing, half hoping their might be.

Of course, the coolest part about Halloween was dressing up.

On a good year (when we could afford it) dressing up usually consisted of going to the corner drug store and buying a plastic costume. I remember being Spiderman, and I’m pretty sure I was a Star Wars character – though I can’t recall if I was Luke Skywalker or C-3PO. The coolest thing about costimes was that you got to wear them to school. Given the cheap nature of the costumes, they were usually ripped before I hit the streets with my mom and dad at night.

AllTop

In unrelated news, I got the exciting news that I was invited to be part of AllTop’s cool daddy bloggers! Thanks to the person who reccomended me! (Not sure if they want their name out there or not, so I’ll hold it for now). I’m thrilled to be one of the “Cool kids” even if I’m the dorkiest one at the party. You can’t miss me, I’m the guy in the back, still wearing his 3-CPO costume from when he was eight.

Sorry if this post is all over the place. It’s a bit of a last minute rush. I had another post lined up, but ran out of time due to a very hectic weekend. I’ll likely post the post that was supposed to run on Tuesday.

as always, thank you for reading,

Blogger Dad

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