Friday, December 01, 2006

What I Crave


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Me & White Castle. "What you Crave." Open 24 hours a day, oh yeah.

White Castle


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Here I am standing in front of a White Castle location just outside Chicago. I have finally arrived.

B.K. Games Sans-Whopper Value Meal


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That's right I got all three games without having to buy a single BK food product. The worker was like, "Oh so you don't want to destroy your innards just get the games?" Yes. Does anyone have an XBox I can play Sneak King on? Oh, yeah and Audrey might wanna tag along.

Me and T.K.


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So, we found something on that day in downtown Chicago. However, still no coat. We set forth the next day looking for one this time to a different area. We also had the other goals of acquiring the Burger King Games that had just been released, or rather I did and to go to White Castle since I had seen one nearby and was like OH MY GOSH WHITE CASTLE! First stop Burger King. Here I am with The King aka T.K.. Both got the sunglasses going, oh yeah. The double crossandwhich, meat and cheese, meat and cheese.

No Flask is Holier Than Thou...


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Indeed. I believe it would go well with the virgin mary hanging from the rearview mirror of many cars in East. L.A.. They should be sold as a set maybe you get a price break if you order both online through Amazon. That'd be awesome. Anyways, post-thanksgiving Audrey and I and her sister, Jasmine, set out on a quest to find me winter provisions to be properly prepared. I don't have a winter coat, gloves, and the rest. So, we departed and went into downtown Chicago. So, nice during Christmas. We went into the Urban Outfitters and we found this wonderful religious trinket. Oh and apparently American Apparel has pants that are still in the R&D phase for sale. Audrey tried on a pair, really weird, testbed pants, how does that work? I thought that was something for like the Military Industrial Complex and such.

DAD The Movie


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Yeah, I almost forgot when Audrey and I went out to get supplies for the apple sauce she needed to get a card for her dad since it's his birthday. This one didn't make the cut but was rather "visually stunning." It definitely led the pack in the special effects category.

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This is Audrey and myself with her grandma at Thanksgiving.

The Chef


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This is Audrey's dad cutting up the turkey in his full out chef get up.

Brown Sauce?


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Yeah, a lot of us were trying to figure this one out. Is it like gravey is not gravey? Is it just some random generic brown colored sauce? It was good though but I still may never know if it was really gravey or not.

More Food...


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Ham, seafood salad, homemade apple sauce, bread turkey, etc.

Rest in Piece Turkey Lurkey


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So, tasty.

The Spread


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This is the spread.

Thanksgiving in the Greater Chicagoland Area

So, Thanksgiving. I hope it was good for all of you. I had a good time I didn't spend it back home I spent it in Chicago with Audrey and her family. So, nice, had such a good time and the weather was even good (aka not cold in the least bit very abnormal). Without further delay the food. Great, amazing, "visually stunning," and "fun for the whole family." Anyways, lots of food, turkey, ham, seafood salad, homemade apple sauce (Audrey and I made it), bread turkey (aka a bread shaped like a turkey), mashed potatoes, yams, seafood salad, fruit, and the list goes on and on much liken to the "beat." So pictures!

"I'm Teflon, Biatch!"


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That's right it's Ronald Grand Master Pimp Reagan. He's arrived and so have new blog updates and pictures. I ran out of bandwidth for the month of November so yeah, but it's December now so it's open season once again.

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Pimpidents

"Where's my money ho? Oh what? Does a pimpident have to dispatch military advisors to the site known as the upside of your head? Maybe you want a "bunker buster" or a "cuban." Or maybe you want me to send you to build a house for my NPO. See how much you like splinters." Yes, I had to get these magnets so awesomely hillarious. Dubbya Freaks me out a lil with all that exposed chest, he's riding a fine line between pimp and ho.

Well I had a smashing good time in Chicago with Audrey's family for Thanksgiving. The weather was actually nice (strange but true). More details and pics to come no time right now. I gotta work on my final projects. Working on some motion detection algorithiming for me Phys Comp class. Got my advisement appointment tomorrow with my advisor for classes for next semester so gotta get that together. SOO LITTLE TIME LEFT AGH! Ok back to work. More to come soon hopefully.

Pimp J.C.


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Pimp J.C. Referring you to one of his "nurses" down at the NYU Medical Center.

Pimpton


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This is Pimpton telling you to party down with one of his fine NYU ladies @ the Stuyvesant Community Center.

Pimpush


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Pimp Senior Bush wanna say, "Read my lips no mo high rates." Pimp Dubbya wanna say, "Don't hate the President hate the Terrorists. And a shout out to all my peeps in Texas, cause they're like that."

Sunday, November 19, 2006

Green & Black

Well, as you can tell I'm up quite late again. I'm busy playing the Fall of Saigon. What do I mean? I should clarify. I'm busy trying to get the data off my secondary hard drive of my G5 because the damn thing has gone belly up again. So, yes, I'm busy transferring files very slowly in firewire target to disk mode. The first signs of something amiss it stopped burning DVD's again. Then it became unstable. Then it just started taking like 15 minutes to boot and 10 to get to the desktop. Applications where beach balling sporadically and then the hard drive started clicking. What does this all mean. I have to take the damn thing back in again. Tell them once again, replace the darn processors like you should have when I took it back in circa September. Blasted 5th Ave. The thing will also prolly need its hard drive replaced, logic board, sata controller, etc, oh yeah and don't forget the casing because the last time it was in they mishandled it and dented and dinged it up. As you can tell not to found of the 5th Ave store. Anyways that's going along slowly the transfers because the G5 is limping along and sometimes having to get restarted and restart transfers over again. It can't transfer anything larger than about 10GB's or so at a time.

So, in the meantime I got productive. I started working on my I.C.M. final project. I started working with parsing the names of the soldiers who have been killed by I.E.D.'s in Iraq thus far. I have a preliminary text only visual of it. NamesGRNBLK The green and black a throw back to the computer commandline. I'm not sure what I think of this, but I almost am interested in just the text itself and the names alone without anything else. We shall see where it goes. Now I sleep.

Saturday, November 18, 2006

I Want To Gag On My Dinner, That Means It's Finals Time Johnny...

That's right, if you can supply me with a chicken bone to obstruct my breathing let me know, i'll even pay extra for the shipping. Joking of course, that's right mid terms have concluded bloody finally however now it is time for final projects. That final push. That final half of a semester, oh whoops I mean 3-4 weeks? Seriously I don't get that, midterms ended so late it should be called Three Quarter Terms or something. I'm a lil bit edgy about final projects, I have a lot of work ahead of me and I know I'm going to be exhausted by the end. I hope it all ends up working out. So, what am I actually going to be doing for the next few weeks that will probably hamper me from updating this very often? Should we tell them Johnny? All right kids, these are for you and you, and hey wait not you, you go home, who let you back in here, security. First up, Intro to Computational Media, I will continue working with I.E.D. statistics and visualizing them. The visuals from this actually will tie into my Physical Computing final project which will be an IED field. (NOTE I'M NOT GOING TO BLOW ANY OF MY FELLOW CLASSMATES UP OR ANYONE IN THE PUBLIC. THERE IS NO REAL EXPLOSIVES BEING USED. I STILL WANT TO BE ABLE TO BOARD PLANES TO FLY HOME. THANK YOU.) It will consist of de-centralized proximity sensors within the classroom that will communicate hopefully (fingers crossed) wirelessly to my computer to drive the visuals of explosions happening from a top down map view. It will have audio com chatter and the explosions on screen will be based off of the positions of the triggered proximity sensors (I.E.D.s) within the classroom. They will be hidden and embedded as to stay in accord with the idea of an actual I.E.D.. Thirdly, Pixel by Pixel, I think I will be re-visiting my RGB to CMYK live image processing idea. The idea really stimulates me on an intellectual level about the whole idea of color space and the implications in commerce, business, and society. So, I have a lot of work? Yes.

Actually today I was thinking about why they call I.E.D.s, I.E.D.s. I thought about the fact it feels almost like a new term to describe something that has been around for a rather long time. It's odd how it has been rebranded and brought to the forefront and in turn the fixation that the media seems to have on it. Yes, my thought of the afternoon.

The weather has been better oddly lately, not as cold. I wanna go see the new James Bond, even though Daniel Craig looks like your typical "Baddie" instead of a good guy. The action should be really good since the stunt coordinator for Ong Bak I heard was doing them. Also the guy who started parkour aka free running is apparently a bad guy in the movie and they do a parkour-esque chase scene. Man I've seen videos of that stuff crazy, looks like a lot of fun, I'd love to learn how to do it. Hopefully I'll get to go see the new movie soon, I'm such a Bond junkie.

Ran into a friend from CalArts today randomly on the way home from class today. My friend Chi Chi, so bizzare, apparently she's out here in New York working. Small world hey. Oh speaking of class today, I had class today, yes on friday when I don't have class. Why? Makeup class because we had holidays and fell behind due to them. My teacher had an awesome t-shirt on, I had to give him props. It was like an aircraft carrier but made out of office supplies. The best part was the fact that it had paper airplanes for jets.

Anyways, I'm going to be get back to work. Four more weeks and I'll be done with a quarter of my graduate degree kinda skary. I'll also be back home in California. Hopefully if I get back in time, I'll be able to go to D1 GRAND PRIX! DRIFTING! Ohhhh Yeah! Laters.

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Doesn't that one Sumo on the top left of the front most cup look like one of the members of KISS? They call me Dr. Sumo.

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Sushi with Audrey. Such nice presentation. They even put some caviar on top of some of them. It was really good.

Friday, November 17, 2006

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The final etched board.

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Taking the trace patterns off of the board.

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IMG_0029.jpg, originally uploaded by lt_zanders.

Today in Physical Computing we etched our own circuit boards. It was oddly satisfying. Not so much that this is a funcional thing that I've made but rather the aesthetic aspects around this functional object that has been created. It feels like it could potentially more about the design then about the circuit at all possibly. Yes much to ponder on that note. Anyways, so this is the circuit with the template after being heated onto the copper clad. People seemed to like the whole Skull thing. He's growing on me.

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IMG_0023.jpg, originally uploaded by lt_zanders.

After a rather painful journey home from JFK aka the L train deciding to be stopped and having to take a rather round about route home while being hungry and missing Audrey, I went to Veselka's. I had myself some pancakes with raspberry syrup, bacon, orange juice, and some tea. So, good. Audrey and I had gone there also for dinner one night and had peroiges. Rather good and very filling. We also went to this sushi place near my school, oh my gosh that was good. I don't have the pics yet off my phone I'll post them soon if they came out. But yeah, good foods and good times were had by us.

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I had never been to see J.F.K. International Airport. I still haven't but got to see it from affair from the Air Train terminal.

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Me & Audrey before leaving to take her to JFK so she could flly home. She's wearing her cat hat.

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So Audrey decided to add some items that I should pick up at the market on the white board. Yes, love the whole O.J. Simpson Orange Juice Carton, classic.

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Me & Audrey at Rona's B-day party.

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So, Audrey was able to come and visit me this past weekend. So nice to see her. The night she came in we went to my friend Rona's b-day party. She had it her friend's place out near Time Square, my gosh was totally swanky. Even had a view. Really sweet place. It was a nice time. The next day me and Audrey went to go see Borat, my gosh that was hillarious. Yet there were some parts that were like gosh, did it have to be that graphic especially with the fight between him and his producer, yeah, "...that's going be scorched onto my retina."

Lotus Exige on Bio Ethanol, Hells Yeah

I want bio-ethanol but mostly I want a lotus. I'm not picky i'd be fine with either a Elise or an Exige. Love that car, for me it's like today's MR2. Toyota needs to bring that back after the Supra. Please bring them back.

Friday, November 10, 2006

"Because I'm an Army of One."

I stumbled upon this guy by accident earlier this week while procrastinating like what I'm doing right now. "Popes I can't stand them with their pope hats and their pope mobiles." He's so bloody funny. Watch his stuff u'll die laughing.

Big Salty Balls

"Have you ever seen my balls they're big, they're salty?" No prime I haven't, nor have I tasted them.

Holy Shiite Batman

I dunno what needs to be said, it's pretty self-explanatory and awesome. Who woulda known Robin had such a foul mouth, haha, the boy wonder.

I Fought The Law & The Law Won

Yes, Vader, he fought the law and the law won. Cheap shots. They have no honor.

Monday, November 06, 2006

Gnome Myth...


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Apparently, I think, Travelocity is doing some sort of campaign involving trying to find or spot or something a rather with gnomes. But yeah, I just thought it was funny because gnomes have been kind of a going on thing lately for me. Audrey sent me this awesome button that says Gnome Chomsky. One of the best buttons ever.

Perrier Ads


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Hey Bunny. Like peace and love. You totally gotta try some of this Perrier, it'll blow your mind. It's either that or he's some sort of Falconer Beast Master like animal tamer who uses Perrier.

Get Physical!


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Another one of the new Perrier ads.

Glue Sniffer


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Well apparently Totoro (my sister's cat) likes sniffing glue now. I asked her if he was turning into a druggy she said no. She was like he's only done it once. I was like what is he running for public office, I tried it once but I didn't inhale? Yeah, sure Totoro.

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So, an all nighter and of course some pictures of the sunrise. It's something I got into when I was at CalArts. My workspace used to be right by the window so I could see the sun coming up and I would go out and take a break around that time and walk around and take pictures. It wasn't that cold at first being out there but then it started to feel real cold, 36 degrees cold.

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IMG_8859.jpg, originally uploaded by lt_zanders.

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Sunrise on the East River, Manhattan Side.

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Here is the East River from the Manhattan side.

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FDR Dr. & 20th St. at 6:40 A.M.

All Nighter For ICM...

Well I am still up and it's morning almost sunrise. Been up working on my midterm for my Introduction to Computational Media, aka I.C.M. aka programming, class. Well I finished it about a half hour ago but I will have to be up because I'm expecting a package this morning from UPS so I need to be up and if I sleep I won't wake up. I'll sleep after I guess. But, enough of that, what was the midterm? Well it was more like a homework assignment then a full blown project. I decided to continue working with data parsed from icasualties.org. I took data on the monthly statistics of those killed by IEDs in the Iraq war in conjunction with the total casualties per month. I took the data and created a program to visualize it, it's a rather abstract visualization/representation of the data. The IED data expands along the x-axis while the total casualties data expands on the y-axis. Each death is one pixel of growth. Right now it is asynchronous. Its odd at times when both sets of data coincide with large numbers the result is cross like. I.C.M. Midterm

Of course today is also election day, me I'm an absentee so no going to someone's garage or some elementary school to vote. There is a pretty cool project Audrey told me about and I'll pass it on to you so take a picture when your out voting. pollingplacephotoproject.org. Also, regarding the election one of the most devious computer based phone banking thing I've ever heard of turned up, being used by of course that Grand Ole' Party. Robo Call Barage. The blasted thing calls you repeatedly if you hang up, and it acts like it's the Dem's calling you. If you listen to the whole message it teabags the Dem. Canidate. Bloody devious and mallicious. Oh yeah and bloody go out and vote.

More on Iraq. There was an article in the NY Times about Sniper's in Iraq taking it's toll on coalition forces. It's a fairly straight forward article but what got me was the front image. It's very graphic, way out of the norm, especially in such a large and mainstream newspaper. I'd read it. Sniper Attacks Adding to Peril of U.S. Troops

The N.Y.C. Marathon was run yesterday. The Kenyans did not when, shocking. A brazillian won, I hadn't really heard much about him. The American's didn't do as well as hoped, especially for the women's race. The women's race wasn't much of a race in fact, the leader got away from the pack early, everyone ran way to timidly. There's more, Lance Armstrong, I guess figured he'd try his hand at the marathon. Of course, why not? Well, apparently he lacked respect for the race, the distance, and to me the sport of distance running. "I think I bit off more than I could chew, I thought the marathon would be easier," said Armstrong. His longest run was 16 miles aka improper training. He did make his time, sub 3 hours, which is pretty good considering. However, halfway through he started getting shin splints. He hit the wall. Basically he ended up hobbeling in. "For the level of condition that I have now, that was without a doubt the hardest physical thing I have ever done," said Armstrong. He probably won't be able to walk right for a week or two. That's what it'll do to you. You can read about the rest.SI.com: Different Wheels

Welll that's it for now, I'm gonna go outside and take some pics hopefully of the sunrise. I've done some all nighters already but I hadn't had a chance to go out and take pics, I like to do that typically. I have pictures for most of the all nighters I pulled at Cal Arts. It's something that started then. Well off I go into the cold, weather.com says it feels like 36 degrees, agh!

Sunday, November 05, 2006

Pro-Cat Regime


This is a Pro-Cat Regime, hence the video. Yeah, poor kitty looks like something my sis' cats might do.

Friday, November 03, 2006

Splinter King...


Ok so I slept in this morning. Reading some tech news and stuff and what do I see. Burger King Xbox 360 games just released. I'm like what? I have to see this. So I see it and I'm like agh. Ok the racing one is whatever, glad they put in the Subservient Chicken but not anything to trade in your breadbox for. However, Sneak King, now that is some creepy freaky stuff. If the King weren't creepy enough now you get to play him running around and sneaking up on people. It feels so wrong. Matt pointed out why is he all moving around like all Splinter Cell, Solid Snake and stuff? He's waiting though for the sequel when they'll put in nightvision and shadows and stuff. So bizzare, I just had to post about it.

Happy (Belated) Halloween...I'm Burnt, Real Krispy Like, 12 Spices

Well I'm back. Finally. My midterm for Physical Computing is done. That project has just sucked me dry. However, in the end it came out rather good. The final prototype was an interactive wearable. Since it was due around Halloween it was aptly themed. It consisted of a vest mounted LED grid that made the shape of a ghost (very Pac Man-esque). The microprocessor (arduino board), breadboard, and battery were also mounted on the vest. Gloves with conductive fabric that had strips for power, common ground, and input. There were also upper arm mounted LEDs as well. Then there was a an external garment, kind of a cross between a poncho and a sheet or shirt that was worn over to diffuse the LEDs a bit and to also hide all the internal components on the vest. We took it out for a test run on Halloween to the NYC Halloween Parade. It was really bizarre making repairs in the street, especially when it involves pulling out a laptop and plugging a USB cable into your costume. Also, the police, not to thrilled by it, got a lot of second glances especially when we had to lift the covers up. It's just a wee bit suspicious, you know, vest mount, lights, a bunch of wires, microchips and the like, looks a lot like something else. Coulda become an issue of National Security, haha. Three hard weeks on that project and it has thoroughly sapped me. But it's done, and it came out well, and the presentation went well which was today. Very happy and relieved. Oh yeah and don't ever solder 168 LED's, in one day, AGH!

You can check out the site for the project as well there's some video up there and stuff and more pics. Project Ghost

In other news. I also completed my first real project using live video processing, using C. I changed RGB into CMYK. A play between the ideas and conventions of the two color spaces and the content that is particularly associated with them. I would like to continue with the idea, I really like it. I don't have any pictures or documentation of it yet though, hopefully soon.

I handed in an animated short for my Applications class, based off of that M5 bust trip I took awhile back. I kinda like it. It's silent right now, not sure if i'll leave it that way or not.

I'm planning to continue working on making graphical/visual representations with data from the war in Iraq, for my programming class. The midterm is due monday but it's more liken to a regular assignment which is nice.

Oh I got a vacuum cleaner! A lil red dirt devil, it's got a lot of oomph. Quite nice and decently priced. I need to get a small point and shoot digital camera for documentation purposes, because I can't really lug my SLR everywhere sadly. I need to start looking for something decent and cheap.

Audrey is coming out to see me this coming week which is going to be so nice and great. I'm really happy about that. My G5 tower is acting up a freakin-gain and I'm pissed. I told them to replace the damn processors! Another thing I'm furious about, my bloody car got towed. Freakin' ridiculous I'm pissed and just hope I can get it back, I'm really sad about that, discouraged, and angry about it all.

What's up with all the (RED) all of a sudden? It's everywhere now. However, I'm totally down with the (RED) iPod Nano, freakin' sweet color, it's very tempting but I don't have the money and I'd rather get a Gameboy DS Lite. Hey the Gameboy I could even use for school, so it could be justifiable. Oh yeah also some other random pictures I had forgotten to post from Chicago and New York.

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And this is how I felt during most of this week and the weekend.

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What does sex sell? Ghost costumes.

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Team Ghost. Left to Right, Ji Sun Lee, Robert Moon, & Emery Martin

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DSC04576.JPG, originally uploaded by lt_zanders.

Ji Sun and Me testing the night before our presentation.

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Ji Sun's suit.

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Ji Sun's ghost vest.

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After the parade. How i miss Thai Tea.

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Dinner after the Parade. It was soo good.

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Ji Sun at the NYC Halloween Parade