The weather guy on the local news is always the "goofy" one.

I've noticed that usually the weather guy on the local news is kind of the goofy, lovable guy that everyone makes fun of. The other newscasters make jokes about him and he just laughs like a good sport.

Often they wear Hawaiian t-shirts or dress up for Halloween. They also go WAY off tangent and talk about other stuff besides the weather because - frankly - the weather is boring.

In other words, the weather guy is the LEAST boring member of a newscast. Yet he does the most boring thing. Interesting.

Are the weather guys on the local news actually trained meteorologists? I think some of them are. The news promo brags about it like "And now the weather with meteorologist Josh Smith."

But I would think most of them are not. I'd think they would just google the weather before hand and then come on and tell you what they just googled.

Sometimes they might make their own bold prediction like, "They're calling for rain all night but I think it will stop raining in a few hours!"

They always seem surprised the next day when it snowed and they didn't call it. "Wow, we got that surprised snow fall last night!" You would think after years of reporting the weather, they wouldn't be surprised when the weather changes unpredictably.

I think it would be such an awesomely easy job to be a weatherman in Vegas. Or any desert city. "Today is going to be hot and sunny. Tomorrow, hot and sunny. Basically, all summer hot and sunny."

But very dull. Do those places even need weathermen?

What attribute would you give all children?

If you could give all children a powerful attribute, what would you give them? For example, if you gave children "patience", suddenly they would be super patient. They would never cry or whine whenever they didn't get what they want right this second!

My first thought would be "self-esteem". But then I don't think that would be so great because it could lead to selfishness or self-obsession, which I think our culture promotes way too much.

Cindy said she'd give them "persistence". Never give up. I think giving up is a good characteristic - or at least an underrated one. We all should know when to give up and move on.

What about intelligence? We'd have a bunch of smart alecs running around correcting our grammar. The good news is that when we're old they would have likely fixed all the problems we created and would keep us alive in dream pods or machines that trick our brains into thinking we're living in a perfect, heaven-like world. Tempting.

What about "morality"? Bor-ring. We need evil. We need a few kids growing up evil to keep us on our toes. All our stories and movies and books are essentially good vs. evil.

I think I would give kids "self-discipline". That would mean controlling urges and would basically eliminate tempers, bad habits, drug addiction and boozing. Kids would grow up fitter, happier and healthier. We could all use more self-discipline.

Which of my fictional serial killer characters is most creepy?

I want to write a fun, campy and extremely violent horror novel about a serial killer who kills people. Which of the three characters below is the most creepy/weird?

1. Jack Paulson, in his 30s, skinny, a bit of a joker. He's a ventriloquist and has a puppet that looks exactly like him. But it's a puppet. When he kills people, he tortures them and brings out the dummy as the person is dying. Then he has weird conversations with the dummy, who takes on the personality, of an evil, wise-cracking version of Jack Paulson. Jack will be like, "Hey this guy's had enough, let's let him go." The guy will be tied to a chair with a knife stuck in his gut or something. The dummy will be like, "No, cut off his leg!" That kind of thing. The dummy always advocates a brutal, pain-filled death while Jack plays the good guy. The dummy always "wins" the argument.



2. Billy "rockabye" Jean. Early 40s, chubby, fun-loving guy. He goes from town-to-town playing guitar shows for families. His thing is that he always "buys a new guitar" at every town he visits and part of his show is fooling around with the guitar as a sort of comedy routine. The kids love it. His songs are fun, catchy and have lots of audience interactivity. After each show he follow the least enthusiastic audience member home and bludgeons them to death with his guitar - shattering the strings etc.



3. Duane Carlson. He's that shy kid from your high school who you kind of vaguely remember, but not really. Anyway, as an adult he's constructed all these fantasies about how he was abused by bullies in his school and so he goes around killing all his classmates, using his yearbook as a list. As they're dying they beg him for mercy - they don't remember him and apologize for ignoring him as a teenager. He says it's too late and tortures them to death. Just as they're about to expire, he asks them to sign his old yearbook (because no one signed it when he was in grade 12). So they sign it and just before they die they see the signatures of all the other people in their class who've signed his book and are now dead.