G-G-G-GHOST!!!

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

Okay, so… first off, I wanted to share a little something with you. I’ve been watching a lot of “Ghost Adventures” lately because… well, I have no life, I guess. I’m not really sure why either… as I think the host Zak is pretty much an annoying douche most of the time… and most of their “evidence” is flawed at best… but occasionally there’s a nugget or two of intrigue… and it’s pretty much October and I’m getting psyched for my New Orleans adventure so maybe I can have a ghost adventure of my own. Anyway, so I was watching an episode where they went to Rolling Hills Sanitarium in upstate New York… and of course it was late at night… because that’s when you watch this stuff. When I get a call from my brother back in Utah. “Dude, have you looked at your pictures from when we went to Winchester?” “Yeah, they didn’t turn out very good. Why?” “Dude! I think you have a picture of a ghost in a few of the living room pictures. You know, that room with the wood floors where they said they found the hair & newspaper clippings of the husband & her kid?” “Really? I didn’t notice anything… but I wasn’t really looking either. Let me grab my camera real quick. By the way, completely unrelated, are you high right now?” “F**k you, man. I’m serious.” “I am too. Alright, let me check it out.” Okay… so, a little more back-story I didn’t mention in the blog posting before. My brother charged his cell phone for about 30 minutes when we first got to the House and were waiting for the tour to begin… and then once we went inside the house, it basically went dead. Now, I’m skeptical and think that his phone may just have been dead as disco… but whatever. Also, my camera wasn’t working for crap in there… and I blame it on the bad lighting… and sometimes my camera does that… but then again, I’ve taken some pretty good dimly lit pictures before… and even in the well-lit ones, they turned out bad. Humidity on the lens? Possibly. User error? Anything’s possible. Okay, so because you’re intrigued as to whether Dr. Love has a ghost sighting, here are the pictures that he thinks there was a ghost in…

Okay, give up on where he thinks the ghost is?

Right side, by the two windows, the light image

that appears to be standing in front of the chairs

Yeah... he thinks it's a ghost...

...and it's confirmed in the next picture, same spot.

No, it's not just poor lighting and glare... it's Mr. Winchester

He also thought there was something in the window here...

I don't see it.

Is my brother overreacting? Maybe. Was he under the influence of psychedelics? More than likely… but I just thought that I would share that little ditty with you… because otherwise, I don’t have a lot to say. Also, it gives me an excuse to talk about going to New Orleans in a few weeks and how excited I am for it. “But $teve, what is there to do in New Orleans? Especially during a lame ass holiday like Halloween?” Child please! For the child in me, there’s the Boo at the Zoo at the Audubon Zoo, which I have yet to experience in my many trips down there. For the child in me that likes free sh*t (and hot girls sitting on my shoulders), there’s the Krewe of Boo parade with a few dozen floats & Mardi Gras zaniness. For the football lover in me, there’s a Sunday night Steelers / Saints game at the Superdome Halloween night. For the music lover in me, there’s the Voodoo Experience which is a festival with literally HUNDREDS of bands including the likes of Ozzy Osbourne, Drake, Weezer, Macy Gray, Interpol & Raphael Saadiq. For the ghost adventurer in me, the entire city is creepy year round… but they turn it up with places like the House of Shock, costumed actors everywhere, and the Haunted (insert structure or landmark here) located throughout the city. Seriously, there’s mortuaries, cemeteries, warehouses, mansions, plantations, bars, hotels, gas stations, Starbucks, burger joints, all with their own history of supernatural shenanigans. And then for the hedonistic lush in me, there’s the unparalleled craziness of Bourbon Street, Canal Street, Decatur, Frenchman Street, and pretty much any other street within a few miles of the French Quarter. Oh… and they’re all jam packed with drunken tourists and Southern girls, which both happen to REALLY dig me. It’s going to be f**king EPIC!!! Play safe kids. Here’s the news…

Segway Tragic Comedy - The British millionaire businessman who owns the firm Segway has been found dead at the bottom of a cliff with one of the two-wheeled electric scooters near his body, police said on Monday. Jimi Heselden, 62, who bought the U.S.-based firm, and who was also chairman of Hesco Bastion, was discovered in a river near Leeds, northern England, on Sunday. The incident, described as a freak accident in the media, was not being treated as suspicious. A Segway was found near his body, a police spokeswoman said. "It is with great sadness that we have to confirm that Jimi Heselden has died in a tragic accident near his home in West Yorkshire," Hesco Bastion said in a statement. A family spokesman said speculation about the cause of his death had been deeply upsetting. "There is absolutely nothing to suggest it was anything other than a tragic accident," he said in a statement. Invented by Dean Kamen, the self-balancing Segway scooter was made famous by then U.S. President George W. Bush when he took one for a spin, only to jump off after losing control. Heselden, a former miner who left school at the age of 15, became a wealthy businessman, donating millions of pounds to charity. This month, he gave 10 million pounds ($16 million) to a community project which helps disadvantaged areas. He made his fortune with Leeds-based Hesco Bastion, which developed a flat-pack wire mesh "blast wall" container, replacing the traditional sandbags, used by British and coalition troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. Media reports said Heselden was one of Britain's richest men, with a fortune put at 166 million pounds ($260 million). So what was the tragic accident? Apparently, rumor has it… that Mr. Heselden was chatting on his cellular phone while riding around on his Segway… and the rest is gravity. It truly is tragic… but there is something to be learned. Distracted & drunk driving doesn’t care who you are, who your family is, how much you’re worth, how much good you’ve done for your community or anything like that. It’s a matter of physics. You’re still in a dangerous and basically unnecessary situation. Please be careful out there. Since we’re talking about dead people, I want to send my condolences out to Mr. Heselden’s family as well as the family of football legend George Blanda & Quentin Tarantino’s fabulous editor Sally Menke. There, now that that’s out of the way…

Utah Reality Update – My thoughts of police in Utah have been long known. It’s a noble profession… and they could seriously be doing so much better. This story just kinda emphasized the point. The new reality TV show "Sister Wives," featuring a real-life advertising salesman and four women he calls his spouses, has sparked a criminal bigamy investigation by police in Utah, officials said. The show, following the lives of Kody Brown, 41, the four women and their 16 children, premiered on the TLC cable channel on Sunday, catching the attention of authorities in the Utah town of Lehi just south of Salt Lake City, where the family lives together in a large house. "We looked into it, and we have detectives working on this case now," Lehi police Lt. Darren Paul told Reuters. No arrests have been made, but the investigation findings will be turned over to the local district attorney's office for review, he said. The Brown family released a statement on Tuesday saying they were "disappointed" but were aware of the risks of doing the reality show (much like those people you see on shows like “Intervention” who use illegal drugs in front of the cameras… and broadcast across the nation and/or world… but somehow never end up in jail). "But for the sake of our family, and most importantly, our kids, we felt it was a risk worth taking," the statement said. Brown is legally married to just one of the women, but counts three others as "sister wives," a term in polygamist sects that refers to a husband's multiple marital partners (but in legal terms, has about as much clout as a pimp calling one of his employees a b**ch, it doesn’t matter as long as what they’re doing is legal… and technically, they’re roommates that f**k). Plural marriage, an early tenant of the Mormon faith and once common in Utah, was renounced by the church more than a century ago and outlawed, as it already was in the rest of the country, as Utah was seeking statehood. But polygamy persists in secluded communities scattered mostly around the West, especially among followers of a Mormon splinter group called the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, or the FLDS. FLDS spiritual leader Warren Jeffs was serving time in a Utah prison for arranging child bride marriages, but that conviction was recently overturned. He remains in jail awaiting prosecution on other charges. Plural marriage was long largely overlooked by Utah authorities until 2001, when polygamist Tom Green went on national television to espouse his lifestyle. He ultimately was convicted of bigamy for being married to five women simultaneously and of child rape in connection with his 1986 marriage to a 13-year-old girl, and served several years in prison. Paul Murphy, a state attorney general's office spokesman, called the Green case "the tipping point" in law enforcement's crackdown on polygamy. Murphy said Brown contacted the attorney general's office before "Sister Wives" aired because he wanted to inquire about the legal ramifications, and was told essentially: "It is against the law, but it's up to local law enforcement." Again though, if there’s only one legal marriage, the rest of the “sister wives” could be called “girlfriends”, “mistresses”, “poodles”, “macaroni” or “schpedoinkal” and it doesn’t matter. I’m just kind of surprised that there isn’t more incidences where some illegal stuff is being shown on TV… but no action is taken. Yet you get ODB on MTV getting some welfare… and the sh*t hits the fan. Good times.

Height Genes – I am a tall handsome man. Okay, at least two out of three ain’t bad, the handsome is up for debate… but I am certainly tall (like top percentile) and mostly definitely a man (probably top percentile on that one too). Whether you love or loathe your stature, scientists now know more genes you can thank, or blame for it. A review of the genetic codes of more than 180,000 people revealed 180 places in our genome where common variations help determine how tall we grow. The finding gives scientists a better understanding of how genes influence our height. These 180 variations account for only 10% of why we're born tall or short (we’re all pretty short when we’re born, aren’t we?), but genes previously known to be at work bring the total portion higher, said Karen Mohlke, a genetics professor at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. "By doing more sophisticated genetics, the number is closer to 16 percent," Mohlke, one of the many authors of the study, told MyHealthNewsDaily. That means much of what determines human height has yet to be explained, she said, but the findings are still substantial in understanding how genetic variations influence height. "We certainly didn't know which genes, or the extent to which many genes ... would uncover the biology of height," said study researcher Dr. Joel Hirschhorn, of Children's Hospital Boston. The findings provide insight into how variations in the human genetic code can influence common traits, and the methods used in this study can be applied to future research on traits and heritable diseases, Hirschhorn said. The researchers found that many of the variations were near genes already known to cause skeletal growth problems, while others were near genes that have never been suspected of playing a role in determining height. And at 19 of the 180 genome spots, the researchers found multiple variations, which suggests those spots play a huge role in childhood growth, they wrote. Scientists looked only at variations present in many people in this study; they did not investigate rarer variations that could also influence height, Mohlke said. "Less common, or rare, variants may be responsible" for some of the differences in height, too, Mohlke said. Other influences of height include diet and environmental factors, she said, though more research is needed to decide how much of a role they have. The study was published online today (Sept. 29) in the journal Nature if you’re interested. What does this mean? Not a whole lot. Spoiler alert: Your genetics determines your height. GASP!!! Why do I mention it then? Why not? Scientists are closing down on designing the perfect genetic person… but if they were really smart, they would just come find me in Tahoe. Sigh… I’m so humble.

Panda Update – As the Father of Panda Porn, I find this next story appalling. As a spat between Beijing and Tokyo rumbles on, China on Wednesday opted for a bit of panda diplomacy, naming a Japanese woman as one of six winners of a contest to care for the endangered animals. Yumiko Kajiwara, from Tokyo, was picked to become a panda keeper for one month at the Chengdu Panda Base in southwestern China's Sichuan province after a week of training with the animals, a spokeswoman for the base told AFP. "Training was exciting and stressful, but what touched me the most was to meet so many people from other countries. It was a very human experience," the spokeswoman quoted Kajiwara as saying. Her win comes as China and Japan are embroiled in their worst diplomatic spat in years, triggered by Tokyo's arrest of a Chinese captain after a tense maritime incident in disputed waters in the East China Sea. Japanese authorities have now released the captain, but the two sides have yet to bury the hatchet, with Japan reportedly considering stationing troops in the waters, near an island chain claimed by both sides. The five other winners of the contest hail from Taiwan, a self-ruled island that Beijing considers part of its territory awaiting reunification, as well as China, Sweden, France and the United States, the spokeswoman said. They will begin working with the pandas on October 4, and will blog about their experiences to help raise awareness of the endangered animal's plight. The keepers will also trek into the mountains around Chengdu, Sichuan's capital, to study pandas in their natural habitat. There are just 1,600 pandas left in the wild and nearly 300 others are in captive-bred programs worldwide, mainly in China, according to official reports. After having successfully managed to make the animals mate in captivity, researchers are now looking at ways to send captive-bred pandas into the wild to boost the number of animals roaming free. Four pregnant pandas bred in captivity were released into an area of Sichuan forest over the summer to prepare their future cubs for life in the wild, state media reported. But this task is a difficult one, and so far, the only attempt at releasing a captive-bred panda into nature has ended tragically. Xiang Xiang, a male cub who was trained to adapt to the wild and released in 2006, was found dead 10 months later, apparently killed by wild pandas native to the area… possibly gang related. That’s fantastic that they’re spreading awareness and all… so why is it appalling? First off, I wasn’t selected. Let’s see, what are the qualifications? Love for helping pandas? Check. Ability to blog? Done been doing it for years (may have played into why they didn’t pick me, they know I’ll do it anyway). Ability to hike in the mystical mountains of southwestern China? Ugh… yeah, that’s what I do. Watch how pandas reproduce in the wild? Sh*t, I’m the one who started filming that smut to help them in captivity. Apparently one of the requirements must have been a funny accent, which I can also do. That’s not going to show on the blog though. Sigh… this isn’t as bad as being gypped ONCE AGAIN on my Lifetime Achievement Award for working with pandas… but still, you would’ve been intrigued by my observations, right? The only way this would be interesting to me now… is if we find that the wild pandas have a hankering for French tourists and nabs one of the “winners” here. Seriously, is there ANY footage in all of the internet… of a panda mauling a human (not just stealing their jacket and then playing with it like some kind of p**sy like on Tosh.0)? That would get more hits than a joint at a Cypress Hill concert. F**k viral video, this would be a pandemic video.

Anyway, that’ll do it for today, kids. Still excited about the possibility of a second date with Candy… but trying not to get my hopes up either. For some reason, that seems to happen from time to time (as you know from my “dating” entries over the years). Anyway, still optimistic. Have a great day everybody!!! G-g-g-g-ghost!!!