How Haunted Houses Became a Mega Industry

  Good Day World!

With Halloween lurking around the corner like Freddy Krueger, the scariest thing happening is the government shutdown.

The economy may be teetering on the brink of disaster, but there’s one industry that’s not only surviving, it’s thriving:

Haunted Houses.

Over the decades, I’ve watched the haunted house craze go mainstream with amusement. I remember when I was a kid in the late 50s and early 60s, some houses would have more Halloween decorations than others and the hosts sometimes dressed up in scary costumes.

One Halloween, my brother, sisters and I, were trick-or-treating and came to a house with an open garage door. Cobwebs were hanging down between strips of black material and an eerie light shimmered from the concrete floor.

When I rang the front door bell the occupant of the house burst out from the garage dressed like a Vampire!  That scared the crap out of all of us!

Those Halloween memories of mine were the foundation for the current Haunted Houses. Who knew an industry would result? It was a more innocent time when kids imagined old unoccupied houses were automatically haunted – but seldom dared to approach and investigate.

Remember what Halloween was like in the 70’s and 80s? The nation’s first commercial Haunted House was called “The Edge of Hell.” The Bequeaith family opened it up for business in Kansas, City, MO., in 1975.

Meanwhile, other (non-profit) Haunted Houses were springing up like toadstools across the country. Colleges sponsored haunted houses as fundraisers for students.

Fireman got in the act and sponsored their own Haunted Houses to raise funds for their daily operations.

Haunted Houses really hit the big time when Knott’s Berry Farm offered it’s visitors a higher tech experience…resulting in a lot of people pissing their pants and coming back for more! Nothing like getting the adrenaline (and urine) running!

So, here we are in the 21st century and Haunted Houses are now a mega industry. Check out the following story:

It’s aliiiive! Haunted-house industry scares up big money

What used to be a one-day kids' holiday of candy and homemade costumes has morphed into a season long commercial juggernaut that has growing numbers of adults forking over cash to get scared out of their wits.

Haunted houses, once a homespun hobby for dedicated horror fans that netted maybe a few million dollars a year in sales, has mushroomed into a $300 million industry.

Today, there are around 2,500 haunted attractions worldwide, most in the United States, said Patrick Konopelski, president and owner of Shocktoberfest in Sinking Spring, Pa., and president of the Haunted Attraction Association.

"It's a legitimate industry now," he said. "Now we're a season."

Indeed, Americans plan to spend nearly $7 billion on Halloween this fall. And about 20 percent of the 158 million consumers who plan to celebrate Halloween say they will visit haunted attractions this year, according to the National Retail Federation's annual Halloween survey.

Time for me to walk on down the road…

BREAKING: Fitch drops USA AAA credit rating–gridlock is the reason

It’s getting worse by the hour…

TREASURIES-U.S. bond prices hold losses on Fitch's watch on U.S. AAA-rating

Related:

U.S. AAA Rating Put on Negative Watch by Fitch on Delayed Budget

Stocks are closing lower as hopes fade for a quick solution to the gridlock in Washington over how to avoid a U.S. government default.

The borrowing limit on is two days away. Are we going to default?

The market jumped all over the places today in an on-again, off-again rumors of talks in Washington. Meanwhile, investors are wondering whether the U.S. could avoid defaulting on its debt.

We can only hope the GOP Kool aid drinkers in the House are defeated and common sense is restored. The Republican Party is poised for it’s darkest hour ever if we default on our debts!

A growing gap between rich and poor in America – what’s the tilting point?

The numbers don’t lie…but politicians do about protecting the wealthy!

Good Day World!

It’s no secret that our society is becoming increasingly unequal.

According to Forbes, the 400 wealthiest Americans are currently worth the same as the bottom 150 million combined, with the US suffering greater income inequality than Yemen, Pakistan, the Ivory Coast, or even Ethiopia.

This trend currently shows no signs of reversing—suggesting it could take us to a very dark place indeed.

A recent Pew study revealed that 66 percent of Americans think there are “strong” or “very strong” conflicts between rich and poor. That’s more than believe there is strong conflict between black and white, Christianity and Islam, or even left and right.

As the New York Times noted, the rising income gap is easily the biggest source of tension in the modern USA, and that discontent could spill over into something nastier at any time.

The future of American society could be one of underemployed and trapped workers violently lashing out against the wealthy. Right now, the basic conditions (rising prosperity for an elite few, falling living standards for everyone else, a perception of unfairness) are worryingly similar to those before some hefty historical revolutions.

FACTOID: When you're wealthy you make mistakes. When you are poor you go to jail.

Yes, it is like comparing apples and oranges. That is the point though. We have built two very different societies with two very different sets of values.

Related:

China’s Poor vs. America’s Rich

Rich-Poor Gap Widens to Most Since 1967 as Income Falls

Time for me to walk on down the road…

Drone on! Do you have a driver’s license for that thing?

    Good Day World!

 Growing up in the late 50s and early 60s, I use to enjoy watching airplane hobbyists display their mastery of model airplanes.

They’d usually go to parks or schools on the weekends and you’d hear the whine of their engines from a mile away. Some of the planes were quite large, but most where just around 24 inches or so.

I can’t remember ever seeing someone lose control of his aircraft. If it happened, I never saw it. Which leads me to today’s subject: drones. Hobbyist drone pilots are becoming common. Which is okay up to a point.

Compare the safe and reliable model airplanes of my day with these new notoriously temperamental and accident-prone drones and you have to wonder why their even sold without a hand full of warnings and a drivers license! These drones are no joke.

You may have seen YouTube videos of camera-carrying quadcopters and hexacopters getting tangled up in trees and falling to the ground. It happens. The drones can also be deadly as one 19-year-old hobbyist pilot found out. He was killed when his remotely operated helicopter hit him on the head during a flight in a park in Brooklyn.

Before company-operated drones are integrated into U.S. airspace in 2015, as the Federal Aviation Administration's Modernization and Reform Act of 2012 mandates, safety regulation is one of hurdles the FAA will need to clear.

A panel of experts at a recent Drones and Aerial Robotics Conference (DARC) conference agreed that before drones become a daily sighting, technology and humans both need to start behaving just a little bit better.

Small drones like quadcopters can be bought online, and adding warnings to the bots could be an easy first step. Right now there are no warnings. Heck, even McDonald’s warns you their coffee is extremely hot.

One way to assure a minimum level of competence could be pre-use certification, a "driver license" of sorts for pilots who fly the birds. Why not? Operators of small military drones like Ravens are trained before they can use them.

By classifying the crafts by weight regulators, they could come up with an effective safety strategy, according to several DARC panelists.

Small drones range from a few grams in weight to several pounds. Just as driver licenses are distinguished by vehicle class — trucks or or limos or motorbikes or cars — it makes sense to separate the qualifications for drone users, too.

The safety risk they pose differs depending on their size, according to Mike Winn founder of DroneDeploy.

Others DARC panelists are less sure that humans, even trained ones, can be trusted at all. Drones would need to come with software-based "training wheels," or "safety bumpers," to protect amateurs and reckless pilots from harming themselves and others, Missy Cummings, who studies drones and autonomous systems at MIT told the panel. (information via NBC News Technology)

Time for me to walk on down the road…

911: When Private Parts are in Peril!!!

              Good Day World!

There’s a lot of subtle differences between people living in England and in the USA.

For example, most of our firefighters consider it taboo to talk about emergencies seeking help in removing foreign objects stuck on — or inside — people’s bodies. The very hint of sex makes them blush. Not so in merry old England.

London firefighters have launched a public shaming campaign targeting people who get carried away with their sexual organs and find themselves in very bad situations.

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TWEET From London Firefighters:

Top tip from us today: Don’t put your penis in a toaster. Read our most unusual incidents here: http://bit.ly/12wXndi #FiftyShadesofRed

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The exception in America is Los Angeles. Firefighter medical director Dr. Marc Eckstein acknowledges that 911 operators do receive a small number of sexually bizarre rescue pleas and do dispatch ambulances, including instances in which they must assist men with heavy steel rings lodged around their private parts.

LA Firefighters, paramedics or emergency medical technicians use bolt cutters or, when necessary, the blazing torch of a plasma cutter to burn the rings off of the men’s penises’. They just downplay the number of cases per year.

But in London, fire officials aren't holding their tongues about how they must perform tasks like freeing a man's penis from a vacuum cleaner.

The London Fire Brigade has launched a public campaign dubbed "Fifty Shades of Red," theorizing that an increase in such randy rescue calls in that city is perhaps propelled by the popularity of the erotic romance novel "Fifty Shades of Grey." 

CBS late night talk show host David Letterman heard about the issue and decided Wednesday to dedicate a top 10 list to "Thoughts Going Through The Mind Of The Guy Who Had Sex With A Toaster." 

Time for me to walk on down the road…

Why do so many Americans post videos online?

Cat’s are not lazy…they’re energy efficient!

Good Day World!

 Have you posted a video on the internet lately? Have you ever posted a video?

I discovered the percent of American adult Internet users who post videos online have more than doubled to 31 percent from 14 percent in 2009.

There’s a new report out about online video posters from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project.

I’d advise you check this link out if you want some startling statistics. I’ve yet to post a video myself. My reasons are varied and complex.

I really enjoy it when other people post videos about animals in funny situations. The one featured here is a riot, watching that imperious pussycat bitch-slap a pit-bull!

Here's some other tidbits from Pew's report, based on a nationally representative telephone survey of 1,003 adults done in July, that paint a picture of our online video habits:

• Videos about dog shaming, or babies and cats on Roombas might not provide any insight to the current Congressional crisis, but they sure make us laugh. And comedy videos continue to lead the list of the most widely viewed types of videos online, with 58 percent of adult Internet users say that's the genre they favor. That's followed by "how to" videos, 56 percent, and educational videos, 50 percent and music videos, 50 percent.
• Younger adults are "twice as likely as their older counterparts to post and share videos online," with 41 percent of 18-to-29-year-old Internet users and 36 percent of 30-to-49-year-old users doing so, compared to 18 percent of Internet users ages 50 and older.

Time for me to walk on down the road…

“Bionic Man” to make debut at NY Comic Con Today!

“Gentlemen, we can rebuild him, after all. We have the technology.”

The term "bionic man" was the stuff of science fiction in the 1970s, when a popular TV show called "The Six Million Dollar Man" chronicled the adventures of Steve Austin, a former astronaut whose body was rebuilt using artificial parts after he nearly died.

Now, a team of engineers have assembled a robot using artificial organs, limbs and other body parts that comes tantalizingly close to a true "bionic man." For real, this time. Read story here

You want dysfunctional! How about shutting down a government while waging war!

    Good Day World!

 After 30 years of following politics while serving as a newspaper editor and political columnist, I never thought this country would become this dysfunctional.

 Somehow I didn’t see Congress totally caving in to partisan inertia after the Republicans lost the last two elections. All the GOP can think about is revenge.

After Barack Obama became the first African-American to become our president in 2008, a monumental shift in society sheared through the very fabric of our governing process. The drastic change in politics that we currently are experiencing, came about for several reasons.

Top among those reasons for our current crisis is the fact this country wasn’t really ready for a black president. The moment he was elected gun sales shot up, hate groups increased, and the Republicans promised not to work with him…ever…and going so far as to sign pledges to the effect.

Conservative billionaires poured millions of dollars into Super PACs and created non-profit think tanks to oppose everything Obama tries to do. The most obvious example has been the opposition to Obamacare which was used as an excuse not to balance our budget and shut down our government.

Despite Obama’s popular mandate when he was re-elected in 2012, the Republicans decided it wasn’t good for people (because Obama proposed it and they all agreed to obstruct his presidency). They used lies to try and stop it from becoming law, and ignored the Supreme Court’s ruling that it was a constitutional law.

All of which leads us to the current hostage situation in the House of Representatives. Each day more Americans are feeling the negative effects of this scorched earth policy led by the extreme wing of Republicans who call themselves tea partiers.

Never, in our 225 year history as a country, have we fought a war and shut down our government in the midst of it.

I doubt if there’s been a country in history that decided not to pay it’s bills and shut down services to all of it’s citizens over politics while waging war and passing out IOU’s to it’s military. I’m open to any example, if there is one.

Think about this for a moment: we’re in a war with Afghanistan and our government services are shut down over ideology.

If you really want a kicker to this sad state of affairs take Syria. Yes, that nasty Assad regime has been waging war for several years with it’s own people…but there hasn’t been a government shutdown of services there!

That’s about as low as you can go, and we all should be ashamed of ourselves for allowing this to happen. By gerrymandering, an extreme minority has subverted our system of government with the help of dissatisfied extremist billionaires (the Koch brothers come to mind) and funding groups like the Tea Party which tries to pass itself off as a grassroots organization, but with a national network and a group of congressman and billionaires, in their pocket.

When this stupid shutdown ends, and it will one way or the other, we better make sure this doesn’t happen again. If House Speaker Boehner had any balls (and wasn’t so concerned about staying the Speaker of the House to cater to his thirst for power) this farce could end today.

He just has to bring a clean bill to the floor and let the majority decide. So far, he’s too afraid of the Tea Party group and continues to advance their philosophy of no government.

With an economy that is slowly recovering from the immense debt the Republican’s created with their wars, we can’t afford to take steps backward. Shutting the government down should never be an option again.

Right now we have to wait and watch this partisan assault on democracy and hope the loonies finally smell the roses long enough to join us all in the real world and stop this stupidity now!

As It Stands, the greatest challenge ever faced by the American people is upon us. Can we meet the challenge?

Time for me to walk on down the road…