NETSURFER DIGEST HALLOWEEN ISSUE
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NETSURFER DIGEST HALLOWEEN ISSUE
http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/sub/v09/nsd.09.41.html
What's Halloween without context? We aren't getting academic on your ass, nor would we expect you to recite Druidic chants or pray in Latin to ward off the costumed barbarians who plan to pillage your neighborhood. Have you ever wondered, though, where apple-bobbing and the rest of the wackiness came from? Score some seasonal trivia at the History of Halloween, companion site for two History Channel broadcasts planned for Halloween. The Holiday Origins page is disappointingly short, but the Around the World page is a nice adjunct. Another page has a brief history of the jack-o'-lantern, along with pumpkin trivia. Three short ghost stories, five "historic haunts", and five recipes help flesh out this pleasant site. It probably won't scare anyone, and you can feel safe if your kids hang out here for a few minutes. These tight, well executed pages attest to the playful side of what some people sometimes call, with not entirely groundless sarcasm, the Hitler Channel.
http://www.historychannel.com/exhibits/halloween/hallowmas.html
You can never be too safe. Why, just before that black cat crossed over in front of me, I walked under a ladder. And what do you know? I do so enjoy spending all that lottery cash I won just after the robin flew into the house. People will believe anything, and OldSuperstitions.com nicely lays out all the options. Good luck, bad luck, and just plain luck all have their traditional talismans and they're all here, along with pretty much everything else. Just be sure you check the site before you do anything at all.
http://www.oldsuperstitions.com/
Sarah Trencansky's "Final Girls and Terrible Youth: Transgression in 1980s Slasher Horror" provides the films alluded to in the title ("Nightmare on Elm Street", "Friday the 13th", "Hellraiser", etc.) a much-needed respite from bashing. The "final girls" are the surviving female characters in such films. Trencansky sees them as empowering and progressive instead of exploitative, examines how they are traditionally portrayed, and proceeds to question some widely-accepted critical beliefs which have for years disregarded slasher horror as a lesser form of cinematic expression. In her academic approach (this article first appeared in the Journal of Popular Film and Television three years ago), she relies on pillars of the critical community to show how the central, male monster figure becomes the object of the gaze, and how the heroines and the monsters are both outsiders. She argues that if the final girls fail to recognize their own connection to and hand in creation of the monsters, they cannot defeat the monster. It's a brilliant critical dissection of the genre, and, considering the succession of these movies, we hope she'll expand on this in the years to come. Epinions.com has a related top-ten list of the best final girls.
Trencansky: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0412/is_2_29/ai_77609481
Epinions.com: http://www.epinions.com/content_4082999428
You probably won't see the costumes featured at this retroCRUSH archive adorning the young hoodlums this Halloween season. These costumes - typically just a mask and plastic poncho - are passe, dangerous, and just plain bad. Today's would-be tricksters can pick up the latest in special effects make-up at a local costume shop. Why would anyone settle for a fragile plastic mask, when liquid latex is so easy to apply and roughly the same cost? There's also little argument to the danger of these retro costumes. The cheap masks with their anatomically incorrect eye holes have been known to impair vision. We won't even bother going into how flammable these costumes are either. Despite these issues, there's something nostalgic and charming about these not-so-life-like costumes - for those born in the pre-Bush (that'd be George H. W.) era anyway. Maybe it's the fact that kids (and adults) used to dress up like Archie, Rubik's Cube, or a Cabbage Patch Kid. Ah, who are we kidding? A putrefied zombie trumps a Cabbage Patch Kid any day.
http://www.retrocrush.com/archive2003/costumes/index.html
like this light-stick expansion.
If you've felt the urge to become a nudist, the detailed "clothing" on the Pen is Central site is a good first step. You can feel nude without actually going all the way. An added benefit of this neon-tube costume is that you're going to look great when the lights go out. The tubing set detailed here - yes, full plans are available - is for guys. Girls will have special issues that are not addressed by this scheme. The costume adds a whole new dimension to the phrase "all lit up". The sexual aspects are fake, camouflage if you will. Just because something looks like something doesn't mean it is something. Besides, the real thing doesn't glow in the dark.http://www.phdtop.com/glow/
A Disney-themed site in the Halloween issue? Horror. Two? Horror of horrors. This first one is the Disneyland Death Tour, a chronological rooting out of the truth from the urban legends of fatalities at ostensibly the happiest place on Earth. Although Disney-themed, this is not a site you want to take your kids to. It may not even be one you want to go to. If you aren't comfortable thinking about why someone would have to hose down the wheels of the PeopleMover, or if reading "Disney" and "virginal" in the same sentence (and we aren't talking about the harpsichord-like instrument) may offend you, this probably isn't the site for you. However, if you're the sort of person who turns to look at traffic accidents, this is right up your alley.
http://www.bobfreemanshow.com/disneydeaths1.html
You mention "Haunted Mansion" and the first thing that pops into anybody's head is the ride at Disney amusement parks. There are four such rides - one each at Disneyland and Walt Disney World, another in Paris and the last in Tokyo. Today's jaded youth might not find anything scary in a Haunted Mansion tour, what with heart-stoppingly freakish black-and-white children popping up in TV commercials for movies (Damn you, "The Grudge") these days, but back in the day, it was extremely cool to pass in front of a Haunted Mansion mirror and see that you shared your car with a greenish ghost. DoomBuggies.com is an homage to the ride. You can read some behind-the scenes stories and look at behind-the scenes photos. The lighting tricks are nifty and you may be surprised just how much craft goes into scripting the exhibit. Nothing at the Web site will keep you up late, quivering in the candlelight, but if you remember the ride, you may get a healthy kick of nostalgia.
http://www.doombuggies.com/home.htm
The prospect of death is frightening enough; worrying about what happens afterward can really stress you out. No, we're not talking about afterlife options. EverWatch is a commercial "death notification service" which will remove from your loved ones the burden of informing your business associates, insurance company, credit card companies, etc. of your demise. Developed by Kerry McKelvy, a former insurance agent, the service can cost as little as $30 for the subscription fee plus $25 annually, depending on the number of notification entries. Of course, it's easy to be cynical about this kind of stuff, especially if you're young and healthy. Note, however, that amid the mix of grief and responsibility in survivors following a death, responsibility sometimes falls by the wayside. People have forfeited benefits that were due to them because of non-notifications. If you don't have an attorney to deal with this sort of stuff for you, EverWatch just might be a responsible thing to do. After all, you only die once.
http://www.everwatch.org/
All the numbers for all the countries about every reasonable and many unreasonable causes of death - that's this Nationmaster.com page in a nutshell. It also has billions of bits of data, sorted by country, about almost everything that is not secret in any country. Unless you pay up, getting to what you want can be either difficult or impossible. Pay up ($10/month) and the interface becomes a snap and all the data is a few clicks away. What our reviewer did discover is that while everyone dies and some bureaucrat assigns that sad event to some bureaucratic sounding category, knowing that doesn't really help you plan for your own eventual demise. Unless of course you just must go in the most popular way, or in the least popular way (far more difficult than you'd imagine).
http://www.nationmaster.com/cat/mortality
Twilight Tales is a group in Chicago that holds readings of short fiction and poetry. It's like most writers' groups, but with a definite twist. It's not just a chapbook publisher or a fiction e-zine or a Web site with forums where writers can discuss and improve their craft, although it is all of those things, too. Twilight Tales also holds regular Monday night readings for the public - properly, in a bar. The first Monday of each month is an open-mic session any writer can use to read from their work. Other Mondays feature particular themes or writers of some small renown. We love Twilight Tales' cocktail-tipping moon logo and its passion for writing and reading, which has lasted more than 11 years. If you're in the area, why not pop in and listen some Monday evening, particularly as its latest published anthology is entitled "Spooks".
http://www.twilighttales.com/
"Based on an ancient Chinese design, the Solar Fly Trap is guaranteed to render user satisfaction within 30 days or your money back," runs the sales pitch for this enchanting fly trap. It looks like an aluminum hatbox, and it works by attracting the flies with bait then channeling them towards a chamber in which they will be dehydrated by the sun. Very satisfying. When the trap is full, you just empty the dead and almost-dead flies into a garbage bag to use as fertilizer, chicken feed, or cookie ingredients. If you manage to collect enough of them, the trap manufacturer will buy them from you in 20-lb lots.
http://www.biconet.com/flies/FC4a.html
Edward Gorey died Apr. 15, appropriately mixing death and taxes. Gorey produced an enormous corpus of what is correctly described as "darkly hilarious" art. His style, so British for an American, was recognizable at a considerable distance. If you like any of his work, you like it all. Much of his writing and illustration has, if not the details, at least the spirit of Halloween. Think trick and treat. This short quiz from Quizilla will help you pick which Gorey books you represent. Several of our rigorous testers came up with excellent quiz-selected choices. The quiz is sensitive to slight variations in answers so tell the truth!
http://tinyurl.com/gx94
If you want to read a scary verse,
you won't find anything much worse.
Mrs. Brehmer, in 1999,
made her class write these gruesome rhymes
to honor this dark and spooky night.
The boys and girls stirred up a fright
with chants of witches and Barbie heads,
serpent's tongues and all things dead.
So maybe they're not the greatest poets,
but surely now the students know it,
and their faces are likely red as Hell
because Brehmer created this URL.
http://collaboratory.nunet.net/nssd112/edgewood/TeacherWeb/halloween.htm
Horror films can grab and never let go, so reviews of our favorites are often cool blasts from the past. Classic-Horror stirs memories aplenty with interviews and retrospectives. The main attraction is its large and well chosen archive of reviews. You can browse by alphabetical order or decade. For 1910 and 1920 there are only three reviews: "Frankenstein", "Nosferatu", and "The Lost World". Hell breaks loose in the 1930s - an effect of the Great Depression, perhaps? By the 1970s, we're in deep. Classic-Horror reviews everything, from "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" to "Zombie '90: Extreme Pestilence". The latter (a "very low budget German zombie movie") may not be a classic, but we bet it made an impression on the actors. Check out "God Told Me To", which the site describes thus: "It is at once a gritty New York crime story and a science fiction/horror mystery of such bizarre magnitude that one may have to watch it twice just to check their sanity." Music to the ears of a horror freak.
http://www.classic-horror.com/
If you're trying to decide what to rent this weekend to send a chill up your spine, trust the resource that millions of Internet users have made possible over the past ten years - the Internet Movie Database. The site has compiled a list of the Top 50 Horror Movies according to users' ratings. Because this list is a compilation of the best movies to fall within the horror genre and not necessarily the best horror movies, some of these movies might not be the scariest you've seen, but you can be sure they may be some of the best movies ever put together. Beneath the page's headline is this cryptic note" "For these charts, only votes from regular voters are considered." We're not quite sure if that means they eat a lot of fiber, or maybe they passed some sort of personality test.
http://www.imdb.com/Charts/Votes/horror/
Dating from 1878, the collection of Gothic red-brick buildings in a remote rural Massachusetts known as Danvers State Insane Asylum is a scary-looking place. Perched on a wooded hill and now abandoned, all this place lacks is some lightning sparking its tallest tower. While beneficent moves to care for its former inmates within the community led to the asylum's abandonment, this is definitely not a door we would knock on when trick-or-treating. After years of neglect, these historic, if spooky, buildings are scheduled for partial demolition. They used to house research facilities and a top-class nursing college as well as the unfortunate inmates, but the next wave for this castle on the hill will be a series of modern homes and apartments. We can only hope that no interior designers will suggest padded walls to the new residents.
http://www.danvers-state-ia.com/
It'd hardly be Halloween without a nice database of information about destructive cults and stuff. We wonder if there's such a beast as an instructive cult, but perhaps such musings are too quibblesome. The Rick A. Ross Institute for the Study of Destructive Cults, Controversial Groups, and Movements wants to inform you of the mind-control tactics used by the likes of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, Jim Jones, and a host of other totalists with just a few mouse-clicks. Stay up-to-date with the link to CultNews.com, or just peruse the database - in which you'll find a listing for Amway. Amway? Aryan Brotherhood, check. Al-Qaeda, check. Nation of Islam, OK. Heaven's Gate, yup. Amway?
http://www.rickross.com/
Nothing says "I love you" more than wearing jewelry only your partner can see. Believe us when we say that only your loved one will see the jewels of this little collection unless, perhaps, you get arrested. Even you won't see them once you put them on. Wearing jewelry in such a sensitive region is, of course, a matter of taste, and while we are reassured by the knowledge that the stems and plugs are made of stainless steel, we can't help but wonder about the design for "a nice comfortable fit for long-term wear." What exactly constitutes "long term"? Let's face it - when a particular orifice has uses beyond the ornamental, and daily uses at that, just how long can you hold it in for beauty? At the eXtreme Restraints online shop, you can choose from three colors, and opt for an extra large ruby for only an additional $62. We're keen to know exactly which dimensions exhibit the "extra", so if anyone out there buys one of these things, please let us know.
http://www.extremerestraints.com/stat/JS700.html
For some, "Beautiful Agony" is only an oxymoron. For the folks at the Web site of that name, it's a personal display of eroticism. What you'll find at Beautiful Agony are videos of ordinary men and women experiencing and ultimately sharing the big O, the "little death" as the French call it (way to work in that Halloween reference!), with visitors to the site. The site offers nudity only from the collarbone up, and animated - sometimes very animated - facial expressions and a lot of heavy breathing. While you'll need to buy full access to the site ($100 a year or $495 for a lifetime subscription), anyone can gander and perhaps gawk at the few teaser videos available and several thumbnail images of contorted, mouth-agape faces - the name of the site really does fit.
http://www.beautifulagony.com/
Death is at once fascinating and frightening. Many cultures consider it a taboo subject while others glorify death for the purpose of entertainment (ahem). The Australian Museum hosts an online exhibition called, simply, Death: the Last Taboo. Visitors can explore a variety of morbid subjects including body disposal, morgues and mortuaries, and decomposition. You won't find glorified bits of gore and horror here. You will find a factual, historical, and scientific account of death and dying. In addition to the many articles available, the resources page lets visitors take a more interactive approach to learning about death. Take an up-close look at a Peruvian mummy or a step-by-step demonstration of an autopsy. The site also offers several online movies including footage of a Ching Ming festival, an interview with a coroner, and discussions with several forensic-lab workers.
http://www.deathonline.net/
and spending time in a casket.
What does a dead body look like as it sits in a coffin below ground? Does it rot? Desiccate? Crumble? The purveyors of SeeMeRot.com claim to have a webcam inside a coffin, keeping a lens on the decomposition of an formerly 41-year-old woman. The burial, of both the deceased and the camera, allegedly occurred Apr, 15, 2003 - although malfunctioning equipment rendered the installation unusable. The only photo at the site - a "live" head shot - shows someone with a remarkable complexion for even a recently dead human. What's even more remarkable is that the photo pretends to refresh. To top it off, the site promises a new cam will be installed July 2004.... OK, so while this site is more than suspicious (just take a look at the sponsors page), the concept isn't altogether impossible. Others have brewed controversy by playing with the dead. Just ask Gunther von Hagen, whose plastinated corpses we covered in NSD 5.18.SeeMeRot.com http://www.seemerot.com/
NSD: http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/sub/v05/nsd.05.18.html#SCI2
Hold onto your shorts, boys and girls - "The Book of Lucifer" promises its readers the ability to harness dark powers if they transcribe a copy of the book with their own blood. The ancient book, allegedly written around 2,000 years ago, has been characterized as the Bible of the Black Mass and is now available in e-book form. We must caution that you cannot gain control of the dark forces until you transcribe the entire book in your own blood. Typing it out with a red font doesn't count. Even if you do the blood thing, there are no guarantees. Past performance does not necessarily indicate future success. As with all such transactions, some level of risk is incurred. Not FDIC insured.
http://www.bookoflucifer.com/
petting a stuffed-animal mascot.
You might want to get these stuffed toys for the anklebiters in your life, especially if you want them to end up in an institution. These aren't the kind of toy your grandmother bought you for Christmas, unless she hated you. These are the sort of stuffies Hannibal Lecter might have played with in his crib. Structured as a typical X-of-the-month club, you can buy one of these beauties for the reasonable rate of $35 per. Artist Cat Grey's twisted vision brings to life armless bears, bunnies that have obviously died of radiation sickness, bunny parts wrapped in a placemat with a note written on who-knows-what - you get the idea. Some of the toys even incorporate actual animal parts, such as rabbit skulls or chicken feet. We especially liked the vampire bunny, but the two-headed teddy bear is also pretty cool. If these dolls don't make your six-year-old daughter run screaming from the room, you'll have serious problems when she grows up.http://www.morbidtendencies.com/botmc-details.html
Did you have a brother or sister who scared the living daylights out of you by mimicking horror movies and lurching zombie-like towards you in darkened hallways, moaning, "They're coming to get you!"? You're not alone - and we don't mean that in a "Look behind you!" kinda way. Two sisters, both fans of horror, have a site named after that act of sibling love where they review any horror movie, past or present, that they can find. You can search their comprehensive database of reviews by date, title, or rating to choose the best spine-tinglers available. Their novel rating system ranges from zero to five severed thumbs as marks of approval. The sisters also carve pumpkins and bake gruesome maggoty-delicious cakes for TV shows.
http://www.theyrecoming.com/
sometimes on the small screen.
Huge horror fans will appreciate the Horror Channel's ability to provide up-to-the-minute details on all their favorite scream-inducing films, shows, and books. Visitors to the Web site can check out its newsfeed of snippets about upcoming scary movies and interviews with the creators of the best in scare media. Model-making fans can check out the site's technical advice on paint and brushes. We think the feature on introducing your offspring to the joys of terror without causing endless nightmares might come in handy for parents faced with pleas to watch the late-night scary movie of the season. The site even suggests a list of horror flicks fit for the whole family to watch and enjoy. There's no excuse now for Mom or Dad to hide behind the sofa.http://www.horrorchannel.com/
What better way to celebrate Halloween than renting a scary movie? Maybe picking up a whole bunch of scary movies. Robert Berry, the embodied brain behind retroCRUSH, has watched hundreds of scary movies in the process of collating this list of the 100 scariest moments in the history of film. Not all the winners come from horror flicks - e.g. the root canal in "Marathon Man" - and the ranking of the scenes is, of course, a matter of preference. Part of the problem with lists such as this is that tastes and styles change; for some, a scary movie moment without a graphic viewing of a victim's internal organs is simply boring. Frighteners have to be judged by the effect they had on the movie audiences of their time. That may help younger readers to understand why first place goes to the recently deceased Janet Leigh and her shower scene in "Psycho". This little gem caused an entire generation to remodel their bathrooms because people refused to close their shower curtains. Enjoy this scary stroll down movie memory lane and see if you can come up with some of your own.
http://www.retrocrush.com/scary/index.html
Just about everybody who's anybody in film has bitten the bullet in at least one flick. If you're dying to find out if your favorite movie star has escaped the ax by some miraculous twist of clout or fate, hie thee to Cinemorgue, a catalogue of famous, infamous, and forgotten moments in the cinematic lives of popular and obscure actors. Each bio features stills of the death scenes with brief commemorations. Take, for example, the entry for Michelle Ang's demise in an episode of "Xena: Warrior Princess": "Decapitated by Lucy Lawless, at Michelle's own request; we only see Lucy bringing the sword down. This occurs in a flashback sequence to Lucy's past; Michelle's ghost features prominently in the rest of the episode." Originally, Cinemorgue looked only at actresses, but there's now a separate annex for actors. William Shatner, we learned, has died onscreen nine times - not including his career.
http://www.cinemorgue.com/
Ohio has 88 counties, dense woods, and many spooky goings-on - even outside election years. Forgotten Ohio helps bring to light some of the dustier, cobwebbier corners of the state. As befits a relatively populous state, this site is stuffed with goodies, all divided among four categories. There's no search engine, unfortunately, and no way to look through the pages beyond browsing and scrolling. One highlight is the House of Nightmares (formerly the Knox County Poorhouse, then later a Bible college), listed on the Ohio Exploration page. Its page is photo-intensive, but that's a positive. You may be inclined to only look at the Ohio Hauntings section, but you'd be doing a disservice to yourself. Light some candles, dim the incandescents, and set aside some time to peruse this portal to mid-American purgatory.
http://www.forgottenoh.com/page1.html
where they grow pumpkins by the pail.
Pumpkin carving has its ups and downs. It's an art form, when practiced at the level displayed in these photos at Rotten.com. Some artists have too much time on their hands - and too many spare pumpkins. A simple slip while carving one of these masterpieces can destroy hours of work. The dozen-plus examples at the site range from ordinary carving arranged brilliantly to extraordinary carving conceived by some creative people. And some pics have naked people, doing things with pumpkins. Note that although these jack-o'lanterns are admirable work - in at least several respects - some of the entries are prurient and may even be considered offensive. Note even better that this is Rotten.com, and some of the links thereon lead to pages that hold porn and truly sickening images and sometimes both. Nearly everyone should stay with the pumpkins. They're better looking. Oh, and the reference to Ohio here: believe it or not, pumpkins are Ohio's second largest vegetable crop. So says Ag Answers, a collaboration of Purdue and Ohio State universities. Ag Answers:Rotten.com: http://poetry.rotten.com/pumpkin/
http://www2.agriculture.purdue.edu/agcomm/aganswers/story.asp?storyID=3763
If you have a kindergarten child or two lurking in your house this Halloween, try a visit to Great Pumpkin Detectives WebQuest this year. Simple links are strung together to show children how pumpkins are grown (did you know they have to be pruned?) and what different varieties of unusually named pumpkins look like. The site also links to easy rhymes about pumpkins, ways to carve them, and pictures of pumpkin patches. Don't get your hopes up, though, because most of those links were dead when we checked them. Nevertheless, the idea, set up as a game, is great and a bit of quick Web-searching can find lots to replace the missing elements. This site is a great way to spend an hour of pumpkin-related surfing with younger children, perhaps to distract them before the excitement of trick-or-treating. Of course, if you're just a big pumpkin-loving kid yourself then feel free to play, too - we promise not to tell.
http://www2.lhric.org/kat/pmpks.htm
Most pumpkins are carved with little skill and even less imagination. Your pumpkin has eyes, a nose, and a crappy mouth? Big deal. This year, why not be adventurous and go for something a little more, well, extreme? You'll be wanting to check out Extreme Pumpkins, then, for practical tips, advice on tools, and most of all for some inspiration. Why not go for the Gunshot Wound Pumpkin, complete with exit wound oozing bloody gore, or the stomach-churning Puking Pumpkin design? Tom Nardone, the stringy brain and nimble fingers behind this site, talks you through all you need to know about advanced pumpkin carving, from selecting and buying your pumpkins to carving techniques to preservation. Since this year's Halloween season corresponds with a rather important political event, you might want to check out the Rotting Pumpkin Presidential Race page. Nader seems to have dropped out early, but will the fact that squirrels have eaten a hole in the incumbent's face count against him in this tight race? We also love the candy traps.
http://www.extremepumpkins.com/
Dead or Alive is a celebrity quiz that tests your knowledge of celebrity passages. To wit: "Neil Hamilton, aka Commissioner Gordon on Batman... Dead or Alive?" Click on one response or the other and you get the answer right away. (Neil Hamilton died in 1984.) Serious players of dead pools may find this easy going. You have to keep getting correct answers to stay alive in the game. Once you fail, you can enter your name into the site's hall of fame, challenge friends by e-mail and, of course, play again and again, apparently with a new series of questions each round. As of late October, the all-time leader had scored 90,101,070 points. Talk about addiction! And time to kill!
http://www.deadquiz.com/index.asp
Selecting a Halloween costume has always been a hard choice, but it'll get even harder once you read this article. You may assume your mask hides you, but psychologists, in this Seattle Post-Intelligencer article, say your choice reveals more about your inner self than you might think. While you may kid yourself that you chose that Terminator outfit simply because it looks neat, there's no fooling the amateur shrinks at the Halloween party who will be secretly laughing to themselves at your pathetic attempts to deflect attention from your insecure, weak, puny personality. Similarly, a pimp or hooker outfit screams sexual repression, a glamorous celebrity costume reveals you as a Walter Mitty fantasist, and an evil-character costume hints at a dark side with perhaps fantasies of omnipotence masking underlying feelings of helplessness and insecurity. You would be well advised to read this before you choose your Halloween outfit and lay bare all your character flaws in front of your friends and family.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/lifestyle/146205_costumes.html
Some guys still play with dolls, dolls that cost a few grand and are anatomically correct. When spending that much cash, you want to make sure you're getting your money's worth, and test drives seem out of the question. Realdoll vs. Superbabe will get you up to snuff on the similarities and differences between the two leading manufacturers of these life-sized, washable (very important!) dolls. You get informed advice like "While not quite as soft as the Realdoll's skin, this grade of silicone is still soft to the touch, and very tear resistant," and "The tongue is removable for easy cleaning. It can also be repositioned for photography." The site has many photos of bare synthetic butts and private parts (surprise!) that might scare kids who've never seen the real thing. In brief, this site is for the serious doll lover who demands much more than your average Barbie fanatic.
http://www.victorias-closet.com/RDvsSB/page3.html
Stock up now before the holiday rush on the perfect stocking stuffer -- decorative and collectible fetus beads. You won't find them at your local Hallmark store, but Rachel Bosh-Guerra has put together a collection of beads that resemble, yes, fetuses. Many of them come with little accoutrements to help them signify celebration of a certain kind. For instance, there's a little one with a mortarboard, one with a Santa hat, one that's green like the Incredible Hulk. You can also customize one to look like yourself or your pet. Come on, admit it - you know what you always wanted was an Incredible Hulk fetus. Buyers can specify that orders not be drilled with bead holes or be mounted on a fridge magnet.
http://www.fetopia.net/
Long before commercial viability took a stranglehold on Halloween, the ancient Celts celebrated this time of year as the beginning of a new annual cycle. They called it Samhain, which literally translates as "summer's end", and would honor the night with huge bonfires, ritual slaughters, and the gathering of the harvest. Learn more about the origins of pre-Christian Halloween at this Web site operated by Mara Freeman, an archdruidess of the Irish Druid clan of Dana. Freeman details ancient Samhain traditions and offers magic spells and ancient lore passed down for generations.
http://www.celticspirit.org/samhain.htm
also known as a Halloween celebration.
In the US, 65% of Americans decorate their homes for Halloween. Have you ever wondered how this feast, which originated in Ireland, is celebrated in other countries around the world? In its native land, Halloween features bonfires that hearken back to Celtic traditions. There, celebrants eat the barn-brack cake, riddled with hidden objects used to divine the future - for example, a ring in a slice means a wedding for the person who found it. In Germany, folks protect the returning spirits from harm by hiding all knives. Paper boats are burnt in China to release the spirits of those who died by drowning. All the traditions listed at Halloween around the World relate to the spirits of the ancestors, either welcoming them or sending them on their way. Is it or is it not a surprise that there are more similarities than differences in the celebrations of the dead among various cultures worldwide?http://www.novareinna.com/festive/world.html
You're going to die. We're sorry to have to inform you of that sad fact, but it's true. And when you die, you'll be totally in the hands of others. They bury you, they mourn you, and they erect the monument to your life. They do it; you don't. Of course, you could plan all this stuff in advance. Advance planning is always a good idea. Indeed, advance planning can help offset that other inevitable, taxes. For those wondering just what epitaph they will have, the Tombstone Generator may help. It supplies an image of a blank tombstone large enough to hold five long lines of sans serif type. You can test what your epitaph will look like. Say what you want. Don't feel constrained by the conventions of those who only write about the dead. You're still around. For now.
http://tombstone.dogcrap.net/create.php
And Alek's house Transformation.
Alek Komarnitsky is our kind of guy. He goes in for Halloween in a big way, much like many others decorate for Christmas (he does that. too). For their sake, we hope Komarnitsky's neighbors in Boulder, Colo. appreciate his effort. For our sake, we're glad he's put his house on a webcam so we can see his decorations. The webcam only operates between 7 pm and midnight local (Mountain) time, but the page is a cornucopium of information even outside normal viewing hours. Komarnitsky is nothing if not friendly and free with information. Follow the Crazy Guy link to his personal pages, and in a few clicks, you can even view a close-up of a photo-radar ticket he received - which snapped him speeding and picking his nose. Back at Alek's Halloween Webcam page, you can pan and zoom the webcam and play with the lights once the sun sets behind the Rockies.http://www.komar.org/cgi-bin/halloween_webcam
Fans of Randy Cassingham's "This Is True" mailing list, which has been entertaining folks since 1998, are aware of his Honorary Unsubscribe obituary feature, but perhaps the rest of you are not. Eulogizing "the unknown, the forgotten and the obscure people who had an impact on our lives", Cassingham seeks to break from our relentlessly celebrity-driven culture to honor the passing of those whose contributions outweigh their fame. Thus, for instance, we have tributes to such relatively unsung heroes as Charles Kelman (who introduced ultrasonic techniques to treat cataracts), Ruth Handler (the inventor of the Barbie doll), and Michael Navratil (last male survivor of the Titanic). You can browse Cassingham's lists by name or by publication date, and each entry suggests reading (via Amazon) should you wish to broaden your knowledge. It's a worthy endeavor in every respect.
http://www.honoraryunsubscribe.com/
for he who on Earth no more lingers
It's a relief to come across a dark blog that neither involves the standard teenage angst nor has the writer pretending to die of some horrible disease as a psychological experiment meant to reveal how the reading public reacts. Jade Walker's Blog of Death is a fitting obituary tribute to a select few of those who have recently passed from this world - in blog format, natch. How difficult it is to master the obituary is apparent; one must summarize a full life in very few words. Walker accomplishes this with apt grace.http://www.blogofdeath.com/
Now, this is cool. The BBC is involved, so you know it'll be good. The Beeb's Cult Vampire site offers content that ranges from classic tales of Dracula and Sherlock Holmes to new artwork, and somewhere on that spectrum falls new fiction. The site even interviews vampires - they may not show up in mirrors, but RealPlayer seems to do a good job. You can view or listen to much of the material, but reading provides the greatest rush - and you usually have the option. This is all about vampires, and we aren't talking about the cute little bats.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/vampires/
who like to watch "Salad Fingers".
The Net is absolutely fraught with homemade animations. Fat-Pie.com, animator David Firth's collection of truly bizarre cartoons, has already separated from the pack, proving a real hit with the neterati. Firth's cartoons feature oddball characters such as Salad Fingers - a strange little man with a penchant for stroking rusty spoons with his romaine-leaf-like digits - and the similarly equipped Banana Fingers. These cartoons don't succeed through technical brilliance (but bear in mind that the artwork and animation of "South Park" is hardly cutting-edge) but through their capacity to intrigue, disturb, and amuse. Firth certainly has an eye for the macabre, and many of his cartoons, such as the Spoilsbury Toast Boy ones, have a nightmarish hallucinatory quality about them. If you believe the site's FAQ, it seems that one of the most common questions Firth is asked is simply "WTF?" An understandable question, but one you should not bother asking. Just sit back and enjoy the weirdness of it all.http://www.fat-pie.com/
Whether you're far from your coven this Halloween or a house fell on your sister and you're looking for someone to talk to, witches all over the world can turn to the Witches Meetup Group to fulfill their socializing needs. Almost 30,000 practitioners of witchcraft and their friends from all over the world have registered at this Meetup.com group, which allows them to hook up with others of like belief locally. Without a tool like this, who would have guessed that both Bogota and Kuala Lumpur have more than 40 witches? We wonder if President Bush knows that Texas is the site of the largest collection of registered witches on Meetup.com.
http://witches.meetup.com/
Goth fashion generally demands a reasonable amount of disposable income to really make it work - black nail polish, facial ironmongery, and purple hair dye don't come cheap, you know. Maybe this is why most goths are teenagers, the most voracious disposers of income known to mankind. The Six Feet Under site helps you do goth on the cheap, with instructions, links, and other resources geared towards helping people make or adapt their own mopy wardrobe. Obviously, when it comes to affecting that sullen sense of alienation and morbid fascination, you're on your own, but looking the part at low cost is a good head start.
http://staff.haas.berkeley.edu/tmiller/sixfeet.htm
You know how flight simulator aficionados have to get just the right gear? Folks are now buying peripherals that put the joy back in joystick. There's a trance vibrator out that works with Sega's Rez game. By combining the technology of force feedback with Rez, a game based on visual and aural pleasure, you get a combination that's apparently rather successful in the female gratification department. We're not quite sure how the gratuitous shots of the chick in the panties contribute to the facts of Game Girl Advance's review - is it supposed to be a manual of some sort: place device here? - but they will probably increase readership, or at least lookership. While the trance vibrator/Rez combo pack has been around for a few years now, there's a new kid in town named the Sinulator. TheFeature has a hands-off review, good considering the reviewer was in a public forum, that explains just the basic mechanics. We don't remember seeing "sexual stimulation device" in the network diagrams section of our copy of Visio. We need to ask for a refund. Game Girl Advance:
http://www.gamegirladvance.com/archives/2002/10/26/sex_in_games_rezvibrator.html
TheFeature: http://www.thefeature.com/article?articleid=100317
sometimes hunting's a passion.
Nothing scary here folks, so if you're looking for something to really give you the heebie-jeebies, please move along. What you will find here, however, is an extraordinarily accomplished short film that in a sense provides some linkage between the carnage-filled days of Halloween and the kinder, gentler Christmas season. This film explains it all, and will likely leave you chasing around the house in search of the butt you just laughed off.http://www.woodpeckerfilm.fi/jalmarihelanderb11.html
NSD is prepared to let its readers in on the darker side of TV chef Martin Yan. Turns out he's a homicidal maniac. We know 'cuz we saw it on the Interweb. Fans of the "Yan Can Cook" TV shows will be disturbed to learn that when away from the cameras Yan unwinds by slaughtering people and incorporating them into ingenious and tasty Chinese-style recipes. Don't believe us? Then check out his recipe for Beef Filet and Parmesan Salad with Crunchy Skulls. According to this site, Yan has even gone where no chef has gone before - we think - and chowed his own children to create a meal; there's even a photograph to prove it. He can wok and he can roll.
http://www.i-mockery.com/martinyan/
Want to give the kids in your neighborhood a big surprise when they show up for trick or treat? Iowa State University's Department of Entomology has some people whose interest in insects ventures beyond the strictly scientific into the gastronomic. If reality TV isn't enough to turn you off eating bugs, here are eight handy recipes that use insects in various stages of metamorphosis as ingredients. The Banana Worm Bread didn't sound too bad, but we'll skip the Chocolate Covered Grasshoppers, thank you. If you're determined to try these dishes out on your family and friends, the site includes important nutritional information for bug-eaters - a dung beetle, for instance, has 17.2 grams of protein - and tips on where to buy insects for eating. Before you pre-heat your oven, please note the site's disclaimer which states, among other things, that the Department of Entomology is not responsible for "feelings of repulsion" as a result of eating bugs. Neither are we.
http://www.ent.iastate.edu/misc/insectsasfood.html
The Zodiac murders are a series of cold cases that various sleuths have rewarmed over the past 35 years. Everyone likes a challenge, and a series of unsolved cryptograms and loose ends just beg the Internet community to take part. On ZodiacKiller.com, Tom Voigt has urged anyone with additional information, no matter how insignificant they think it might be, to come forward. Voigt's definitely got some ideas of his own; he'd have to in order to dedicate this much of his time and effort to something like this. He's brought together an in-depth compilation of years worth of Zodiac Killer facts and hypotheses.
http://www.zodiackiller.com/
Is there enough sex and gore in this book?
Gore and nudity are two nearly essential elements of horror films, at least in the eyes of Hollywood. Axe Horror Reviews celebrates both in its many reviews and five interviews. The interviews may hold your interest, especially if you're in the biz, but it's irksome that the reviewer chooses anonymity yet promises an autobiography that'll "feature explanations for my reviews as well as in depth information on me and where I am in the film industry." Credentials aside, the reviewer shows enthusiasm in scope and expression, biting into many flicks with a penchant for violence and the macabre. The Gore Hall of Fame is textually quite graphic, but the Nudity Hall of Fame is a bust: one photo and no nudity - just brief descriptions. This is the entry for "Cheerleader Massacre": "April Summers shows off her body more than once, the attractive coach shows her breasts for an extended period of time and there's also lots of other nude scenes. BONUS: The DVD has a lengthy threesome with Julie K. Smith, Regina Russell and Dana Pine, full frontals and all (plus the ever popular chocolat syrop)." Quick, hose us down.http://www.freewebs.com/axehorrorreviews/index.htm