More Signal, Less Noise
Saturday, October 29, 2005
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NETSURFER DIGEST
More Signal, Less Noise |
Volume 11, Issue 38 Saturday, October 29, 2005
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NETSURFER LINKS
 NETSURFER DIGEST HALLOWEEN ISSUE
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http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/sub/v09/nsd.09.41.html No demons allowed! Yes, brothers and sisters, we to the accompaniment of organ music have gathered to deliver you from evil. Say Hallelujah! Know now that Halloween is the very highest Satanic holiday, all matters of etymological inquisition aside. The Catholic church, under the influence of pagans, is behind all of this. And that's enough. Lock your doors. Don't even open them to hand out tracts that might save the sinners. Ignore the toilet paper in your trees; it's simply the work of the Devil and his minions. Mere children would never stoop to such things, for they are innocents. Do you need skin-care products? http://www.demonbuster.com/halloween.html Charles and Sandra McKee dreamed of life in the home of the Munsters, the family in the '60s horror-spoof sitcom. Using TV footage and photographs, the McKees reconstructed a fully functional duplicate, inside and out, of the imaginary Munsters mansion. (Luckily, Sandra McKee writes, the original series never showed the bathrooms.) Designing the house took months of research and interviews with the TV series' production staff. The plans led to a massive 5,800-square-foot home on a two-acre lot, detailed right down to the dead tree in the front yard and the dragon under the staircase. The McKees even managed to furnish rooms with pieces from the original set. The most unusual feature of the house, unlike the facade on the TV show, is its bright, clean, and neat appearance in daylight. The McKees have hosted three of the original Munsters cast members and hold a growing annual Halloween charity event. http://www.munstermansion.com/ They're Coming to Get You, Barbara spends most of its time reviewing horror movies, but if you're stuck for tips on how to make realistic rats ripping a realistic arm to shreds out of cake ingredients, the site should be your first stop. The site's baking directions are detailed and well illustrated, although you will need to be confident in working with materials like spun sugar and airbrushes to make your delicious horrible creations come together. Besides the rat-limb cake, you'll find zombie head and thorax cakes as well. While you're waiting for your disgusting delectables to bake, you can take the site's horror quiz or read one of about 200 reviews. It also offers a bunch of terrific carved pumpkins for even more creative inspiration. http://www.theyrecoming.com/extras/ Ahhh. Memories of Halloweens long past find a home at the Old Haunts blog, which beside memories presents faded photos of other times, and links to maudlin, freakish, and campy sites. Some of the illustrations are remarkably well-done; others are just remarkably weird. If you want to show your anklebiters and whippersnappers what Halloween was like back in the '60s and '70s, this is the place to find your evidence. http://oldhaunts.blogspot.com/ Jared Winick last year dressed for Halloween as what we can dub an iPod macro. Think of a good use for a tablet PC. Didn't think there was such a thing, did you? Winick hacked apart a tablet PC, a mouse, and a little Java code to build a trick-or-treat costume that everyone will recognize. Winick obviously enjoyed this geeky project and even won a costume contest with it. Anybody can staple together an iPod costume - it takes major coolness to make it functional, as well. http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~jwinick/Halloween2004/index.html then waited for the scary girls You've probably seen Nathan Jurevicius's art before. He's done work for a variety of publications and television stations. His online sensation, Scarygirl, is the story of an abandoned little girl who is taken in by a good Samaritan. The little girl has only one eye and a tentacle for a hand - a handy blessing in disguise, as the good Samaritan happens to be an octopus. It's all art, wordless and definitely off-kilter.http://www.scarygirl.com/ Harold the Humble is proud of his collection of skin-tight leather and rubber outfits. Harold loves the look and feel right down to his undies, and he's not shy about modeling the collection online, despite or perhaps because he is a senior citizen. If you share Harold's predilection for leather clothes, you could get some fashion ideas here, especially if you like wearing waders. According to his home page, Harold lives on Mississippi's Gulf Coast, not the climate one would usually associate with tight leather and rubber costumes - but he points out that all it takes is sweat and attitude to pull off. We suppose all that rubber gear came in handy during the clean-up after Hurricane Katrina passed by. http://leatheroaks.org/index.html "Girls who are boys who like boys to be girls...", sang Blur. Sometimes, all it takes is a bit of tape and some cyanoacrylate glue. The Canal 96 porn portal provides a helpful visual guide to turning a boy into a girl - no anesthetic required, although a high threshold of discomfort doesn't hurt. If finances are unsteady for you at the moment, this is a cheap way to rake in costume-contest cash. http://www.canal96.com/extra/strange/sexchange/ About this time of year, hordes of parents and children succumb to the unshakeable conviction that they can sculpt. Granted, if they mess up pumpkin carving, they can buy a fresh one and try again easily enough - this isn't exactly Grecian marble. Naturally, the Web provides a home to someone who has taken this simple art to the next level of obsession, the Pumpkin Lady. She has spent five years honing her elite skills on natural and artifical pumpkins and now her portraits of everybody from Oprah to Harry Potter are in high demand -not surprising, as she is highly skilled. Those of us with less talent can download some of her simpler designs for use at home. http://www.pumpkinlady.com/ As Halloween spending surges, it's time for the power tool industry to give us adults the treats we really need. Imagine what you could do with a 14,000-rpm Dremel rotary tool - no, no, no, to a pumpkin! A Dremel carving tool is perfect for peeling away the outer skin in thin layers (we're still talking about the pumpkin) to reveal backlit patterns of incredible complexity. Precision machining lets your average pumpkin slaughterer advance far beyond triangle eyes and square teeth. Of course, after you shell out for the tool, it's nice to get the carving patterns for free, and Dremel knows that. Download one of 14 free pumpkin templates, print it, and glue it to the pumpkin. Shades of gray indicate depth of cut. This is a lot easier than sawing away with sharp steak knives (yep, we're still talking about pumpkins). Finally, remember to save the seeds and pulp for your puking-pumpkin masterpiece. Dremel: http://www.dremel.com/html/products/tools/pumpkin_patterns.html Puking pumpkin: http://www.halloween-pics.com/items/364.jpg I was able to carve both a self-portrait If you enjoy being taunted, visit iPod Hacks for their iPod-o-Lantern desktop wallpaper. You can covet their hip pumpkin from afar. The site also has articles on Jared Winick (the guy in the iPod costume we note above) and on less functional iPod attire. If all the taunting gets to you, feel free to fire back with the goatse pumpkin, which is either exactly what you think it is or a terribly rude surprise.iPod Hacks: http://www.ipodhacks.com/ipod_o_lantern.html Goatse pumpkin: http://sam.zoy.org/fun/goatse/pumpkin.jpg Carved pumpkins are about to be so yesterday. Yes, back in the day, a grim or smiley-faced pumpkin was so much part of Halloween - but that was before we learned to how high a level the Japanese have taken carving technology. Watermelons are so much better a base. For one thing, there's something other than air inside. For another, these melons in particular are carved by someone who has studied the art of etching and is pretty darned good at it. The results are mind-boggling. Many of the melon carvings are interesting, but equally as many are, well, bland. Imagine how much better you could do after, say, a dozen years of practice on thousands of innocent melons. We are left wondering, however, where these photos came from originally. http://www.americade.info/melons.htm Strong Bad started as one of a menagerie of Homestar Runner characters, but gained a unique identity and a certain amount of fame through his responses to e-mail. Homestar Runner offers printable templates for pumpkin carvings of all its characters at its Make-a Your Own Pumpakin page. It remains unknown at press time whether or not Sarcasta used a combination of these templates to carve her own Strong Bad pumpkin. Homestar Runner: http://www.homestarrunner.com/main2.html Make-a Your Own Pumpakin: http://www.homestarrunner.com/ween_stencils.html Sarcasta: http://sarcasta.net/ The Mystery of the Haunted Vampire is a blog of items spooky, whether in jest, serious, or far too serious. Peruse the entry on the Cathedral House Hotel investigation, for example. It features some truly weird material, including alleged recordings of ghost voices. Even Mick Jagger can't escape the encompassing grasp of the blog, which reports that his holiday home in France is said to be haunted by a headless ghost. So says his daughter, Elizabeth. He may be re-thinking that whole "Sympathy for the Devil" thing. If you're looking for a quick way to make your visitors soil their undergarments, check out the " When you're asked to bring wine" post for a link that tells you how to put a head in a jar. http://carnacki.blogspot.com/ Doom may have hit the silver screen before Halo, but it's the latter game that has its tendrils more deeply insinuated in geek culture. Fans of Halo, or of the hilarious "Red vs Blue" mechanima series that's "filmed" in the Halo world, will appreciate this home-built replica of Master Chief's battle suit. Even better, the host Web site also offers a stepwise illustrated tutorial on how to do this yourself. The work, especially the dedication to creating the exact shades of color, is inspiring. "Red vs Blue": http://rvb.roosterteeth.com/home.php Master Chief Wearable Suit: http://halo.bungie.org/misc/cb_mcsuit.html We depend on Forbes for its many lists of rich people. Now, we can depend on its many masks of rich people. These masks are not just pumpkin-ready templates, they're eerie characterizations ready for wear on Halloween night. Forbes offers plenty of choices: Bill Gates patched up as Frankenstein; Donald Trump having a Wolfmanesque bad-hair day; and Oprah at her witchiest. Steve Jobs, of course, has been ripped, mixed, burned, and pirated. Each mask comes in living (or dead, as the case may be) color and a life-size printer-friendly format for your last-minute costume pleasure. All you have to do is print the graphics, cut within the lines, and attach with string, two-sided tape, or glue. http://biz.yahoo.com/special/masks04.html At Netsurfer, we approve of those with creativity who design their own costumes this time of year. Throwing a white sheet over yourself and yowling won't earn you many NSD points, but at least you're not just renting something from a costume shop. This year, we're happy to profile the Duct Tape Guys' costume designs. They're not perfect, but they will certainly get you noticed as you trick-or-treat. Take the used bubblegum outfit - all you need to do is dress in pink and tape a shoe to your head. Alternatively, duct tape two boxes to your shoulders, pull a turtle neck up high and arrive headless. Apply duct-tape bones to an all-black outfit and you've got a simple skeleton. The possibilities are endless and we applaud the inventiveness of the costumes listed here so far. http://www.octanecreative.com/ducttape/halloween/index.html I handed out chocolate deities Halloween presents an interesting multichotomy. Are we remembering the dead? Forgetting them? Are we bemoaning the loss of summer with a festival steeped in pagan lore? Or are we simply hungry for candy? At Chocolate Deities, you can combine the concepts. At the site, you'll find everything from the Goddess of Willendorf to Kokopelli lovingly preserved in handmade chocolate. You can choose the scary visage of the Irish Earth goddess Ma Gog in her Sheela na Gig visage complete with gaping vagina. Ganesh, the Hindu elephant-faced god, is available in dark, white, or milk chocolate. Our advice? Go with the full pound of milk chocolate formed in the image of the Goddess of WIllendorf. She's a 30,000-year-old fertility figure. Take the advice of the makers of these delectable deities and hold her in your hands, feel the weight of her voluptuous body, gaze on her tremendous breasts. As you let the chocolate melt slightly in your hands, bite her head off and see if she's as hollow as a chocolate Easter bunny rip-off. Yum!http://www.chocolatedeities.com/ and balls the kids could try to bounce. Justin Winokur tries things so the rest of us don't have to - like eating hair or collecting horse testicles. He has pictures of the latter, so don't read this if the sight of removed organs makes you queasy. Winokur's adventure - pouring excess blood down the toilet, gently massaging preservative alcohol onto them, and bringing them to work - do not appear to have sparked a craze for pet horse testicles. Sit back, have a glass of cranberry juice, and enjoy this short tale. If you like, Winokur will send you a free photo of the ol' HTs. The moral of the story? Reach very carefully for the cookie jar. You might be surprised by what your co-worker has stored in it.http://jwinokur.diaryland.com/020222_85.html Afterward, I thought about finding a movie Lovers of murder and mayhem in their movies will certainly enjoy the Savage Cinema e-zine. Cannibals, zombies, and other creepy folks are the meat and drink of the movie-review site, run by people whose taste in film veers far, far away from "Singing In the Rain" and "Bambi". No, they gravitate toward "Cannibal Holocaust", "Blood Feast", and other examples of the cult horror film. The reviewers are an eclectic crew and the reviews extend to encompass westerns, SF, and other genres. Readers who share these gory tastes are invited to submit their own reviews of films, TV shows, and soundtracks. Should you need more, the site includes a fine list of other horror, cult, and B-movie links. Brew up some popcorn and enjoy.http://www.savagecinema.com/ Once upon a time in the 1970s, a person loved kung fu movies. He - and we assume the genesis of this idea took place in a brain littered with Y chromosomes - also liked porn. What better then, this Y-chromosome-addled brain thought, than a movie that combines kung fu and porn? A few low production values later, "Kung Fu Cockfighter" sank into obscurity. Well, so this site claims. We can find no evidence of this master piece (and when you see the clip, you'll understand why that's two words) elsewhere. Nevertheless, some kind soul distilled the movie, which "contains surprisingly little kung fu cockfighting", into a video of its five best minutes. Unfortunately, the host site is out of bandwidth at the moment, but stay tuned - we're sure the video will pop back up any day. http://www.goodiebag.tv/odds/kung_fu_cockfighter.htm but I decided to play with my dolls instead. Exactly how far into erotic fetishes can a well-known brand of 12-inch dolls get? "Real far" turns out to be the correct answer. Nancy Farmer is an artist and photographer whose FetishDollies.co.uk is a photographic record of dolls doing things they're not supposed to do. The dolls seem physically stock, thus unlike any woman in their measurements. A little paint here and a little dye there and some inspired costumes take them right into the world of erotic and fetish art. The concepts and backgrounds are exactly what you would expect. Don't say you weren't warned. While this is pretty much porn minus the genitals, which very few dolls ever did have, it's also wholesome in the way this brand of dolls has always been wholesome.http://www.nancyfarmer.net/dolls/ Miss Mary's Victorian Halloween is sheer fun and is definitely worth a visit if you are planning a party this year. The site offers a ton of gothic games to play, ideas for costumes, and fortune-telling cards. We relished the selection of Victorian epitaphs (those guys really knew how to write death poetry) and we think the 1883 tale of the Evergreen Forest would still be wonderful to tell by a fireplace in 2005. Other articles, discovered in Victorian magazines, describe the curse of the werewolf and list suitable costumes for little girls, from the modern-sounding ladybug and princess to the less likely spinning girl and quakeress. There's even a pattern to allow the nimble fingered amongst you to create a 1920s flapper girl costume from nothing but paper. We guess you'd want to stay away from fireplaces in that one. http://www.victorianhalloween.com/ Keith Milford fondly remembers spending many Saturday afternoons in 1970s Detroit horrified by Sir Graves Ghastly's movie show. At one point, host Ghastly's classic (and worst) horror movies terrified teenagers throughout Michigan, Ohio, D.C., and even Canada. He kept them coming back for more with scary comedy skits, viewer's art galleries, and local contests. The voices and character skits of Ghastly actor Lawson Deming have followed him for decades. His Ghastly laugh was especially well known, but he could produce over two dozen other accents and impersonations. This site includes audio clips, newspaper articles, and much more Ghastly memorabilia. It's a fitting memorial, based on respect. http://www.sirgravesghastly.com/ invited me to a carving contest. In French, even "pumpkin festival" sounds enchanting: La Grand Bal des Citrouilles. And the citrouilles are everywhere on this Web site that documents what English Montrealers call the Great Pumpkin Ball. At the ball itself, 600 pumpkins celebrate their moment of glory, dressed as everything from teapots to hedgehogs. Kids at Montreal's Botanical Garden can meet Esmeralda, the festival's Friendly Witch, who isn't "mean or old". (Thank goodness! Who'd want an old witch chanting spells?) For the rest of us, the best part of this site is probably the gallery of decorated pumpkins, maybe just the incentive you need to create your own masterpiece. Unfortunately, there's a dark side to the competition, found in the fine print: "After the competition is over the pumpkins will be composted." Sounds like a cruel comeuppance for award-winning citrouilles, n'est-ce pas?http://www2.ville.montreal.qc.ca/jardin/en/propos/halloween.htm Do you own a dog of a breed considered aggressive? Are local laws making it hard for you and your dog to peacefully coexist with society? Do you want to campaign against extermination of dog breeds by punitively strict laws? Yes? Then the poodle disguise kit is for you! Well, actually, it's for your Doberman. Attackchi sells the kits to call attention to Australian attempts to punish canine breeds instead of holding dog owners responsible for a pet's deeds. The kit itself is a great costume, and not just for Halloween. A harness, some fake fur padding, paw "sleeves", and a fur hat will transform any self-respecting Doberman into a large poodle. A dozen photos detail the steps that turn your aggro dog into a fuzzball, including the application of doggie-safe body paint to darken the Doberman's tan spots. Future plans include kits for rottweilers, Great Danes, German shepherds, and mastiffs. Costume jokes aside, the site and its kits call attention to the plight of dogs whose few irresponsible owners jeopardize the future of entire breeds. http://www.attackchi.org.au/kits.htm and we headed out into the spooky neighborhood, Palle Torsson has used the Unreal Tournament game engine to recreate sets from horror movies. You and I might do that and send it in an e-mail to a few like-minded friends. Torsson printed his creations on high-quality paper and organized them into an art exhibit called Evil Interiors. He took the concept a step further and used other first-person shooter games to recreate art museums, and populated these museum scenes with characters from the original games. Delve further into Torsson's site to find Sam, a Half-Life-based game he designed and exhibited. Sam "is five years old and she kills." Evidently, at five, Sam is "still too young to be controlled by the conventions of society. Her frustration is uncontrolled, open and violent." How frustrated could a five-year-old be? The images vary from flat and lifeless to almost real - and that's almost the definition of surreal, isn't it?http://www.palletorsson.com/evil.php which somehow reminded me of World of Warcraft. The previously bandwidth-challenged who have just traded up to a broadband connection might need an introduction to Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft, a global massively multiplayer online role-playing game. If you've had broadband for a while, then put down your weapons and take a quest break. It's time for World of Warcraft's Halloween pumpkin-carving, screenshot, and costume contests, among others. Blizzard encourages its legions of gamers to attack countless pumpkins with sharp utensils in the name of art and submit their photos for judging. Your screenshots of Azeroth's scariest corners have to make the judges pop with fright - after all, you're dealing with zombies as well as gamers (there is a difference). This year's costume contest is in progress at BlizzCon, but you can view last year's submitted entries. Winners receive a copy of the game, six months of game time, or Alienware desktop computers.http://worldofwarcraft.com/contests/index.html This site promotes Doug Keister's book of great cemetery photos, fans of which seem to erupt from crypts this time of the year. And there are some great crypts in this book. Keister's site has over 900 photos. His book, "Stories In Stone: The Field Guide to Cemetery Symbolism", explores the significance of cemetery symbols, cemetery architecture, and unique tombs. It certainly has its place as a textbook for aspiring ghouls. It's also proof that reality is sometimes way stranger than the imagination. Do people really want some of these things as their monuments, or have their "loved" ones arranged an ultimate practical joke? http://www.keisterphoto.com/gallery/fs_cem.htm carloads of angry, naked Chinese yelled at me. This page is nothing more than a collection of photographs of Chinese couples caught in flagrante delicto in their cars. That it's hosted in Russia only makes it funnier. The Chinese look upset, and it's hard to blame them. If you were peaceably getting your rocks off in your Toyota and were suddenly photographed in the act by a passer-by, you'd be upset as well. There really isn't all that much to see here, although the expressions on the men's faces are priceless. We're not certain and our crack NSD legal team has yet to get back to us, but we suspect that this is a major human rights violation. Hopefully, none of these photos wrecked a marriage, but if there's a lesson to be learned here it's that it's both more private and more comfortable to spring for a motel room. At least they have curtains.http://www.fashionplace.ru/forum/showthread.php?t=4 Inside the walls, the World War I epitaph loomed, When we think about it at all, nowadays we tend to view the Great War as a warm-up for World War II, which of course was far bloodier and more widespread. We even changed its name to World War I. It doesn't help that all World War I photos are in black and white and that the newsreels are fast and jerky. This illustrates a problem with historical hindsight. For those who lived through it, World War I was an unspeakable catastrophe: a seemingly unending, grinding horror that killed millions on horrible battlefields and that transformed previously cultured nations into raving mobs. The Heritage of the Great War is not a Web site of battle maps or weapon specs but is rather an in-depth exploration of the experience of on the Western Front from a human or literary point of view, with a emphasis on photos and contemporary graphics. There are unorthodox and thought-provoking articles on subjects such as why it was a mistake for the Americans to get involved or why Australian soldiers were considered undisciplined by the British. Best of all are the photo galleries, which portray the war in all its naked horror - and we do mean horror. The site also has collections of World War I tunes, posters, and much more.http://www.greatwar.nl/frames/default-picnic.html and it made me think of long-ago deaths Death isn't something the average person likes to contemplate too often, much less view as an artform. Instead of saying that our grand aunt died, we mutter about her "passing" - anything to avoid the reality which we will all face sooner or later. In this vein, viewing the gruesome memento mori carvings of Medieval Europe is a less than popular pastime. Enter the age of photography and lithography in the 19th century US and the artform strikes even closer to home, frighteningly compelling. The heavily illustrated essay, "Memento Mori: Death and Photography in Nineteenth Century America", explains the attitudes of that time to death, from the art of a good deathbed scene to touching portraits of dead children who look asleep to reassuring photos of ghosts demanded by the spiritualist movement of the time. This is more essay than Web site, and the photos are few and of poor quality, but it's fascinating all the same.http://138.23.124.165/exhibitions/memento_mori/default.html The perfect medium? While photography has generally been used to capture scenes of the visible world, like birthdays and weddings, spiritualists have increasingly turned to the medium in order to provide glimpses into the immaterial world. Their body of work may surprise you. These photographs were printed long before the invention of digital enhancement, but that doesn't mean they are unadulterated, pure images of reality. Photo tricks existed long before Photoshop. You may ask whether these photos have been altered, and if so, how did they do this stuff? Did they actually capture these images - or somehow enhance and add to them? If the latter, how did they do it? If the former - whoa! You just want to see the whole collection, but it's a teaser to get you in the door of the Met this fall. http://tinyurl.com/auuay I persevered, but strange beasts sprang to attack me, After you or your pet dies, have yourself sent to Sarina Brewer's animal stuffing shop, Custom Creature Taxidermy Arts. She can fix you up the way you always wanted to be: blond, buff, and beautiful. Of course, she might decide to add an extra head or two, or some fangs. She may even meld you with your beloved animal. She's a really good artist as well as fully licensed taxidermist. Just see what she's done for some originally ugly dead creatures. Too bad she only improves the dead. We kinda made up the part about her working on people, but we bet if you ask her very nicely....http://www.customcreaturetaxidermy.com/ along with a puffy-faced freak Jerome Abramovitch needs a hobby - er, he needs a better hobby. He has cut off most of one finger (which he keeps in the freezer) and has inserted 200 needles into his body, but who hasn't these days? What makes Abramovitch unique in the field of body modification is his signature opus, forehead inflation. Abramovitch injects saline solution into his forehead and/or cheeks to make them swell up as if he's having a massive allergic reaction. He has a series of rather disturbing photographs on his site. If you had to grit your teeth to get your flu shot, this is probably not for you.http://www.chapter9photography.com/2005/bio/forehead_inflation.htm Maris the Great, self-proclaimed zombiefag extraordinaire, has a message for all the great and even middling rock bands out there: watch your back. He plans to kill all musicians who exceed his own Maris the Great and the Faggots of Death in talent. Did you play kazoo in elementary school? Time to hire a bodyguard. Maris's site is actually an original take on indy music reviews and interviews. Some of the subjects are good sports and submit to gory make-up and special effects to help Maris keep up the gimmick. We hope. http://www.maristhegreat.com/ In 1964, US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart explained pornography, or what is obscene, with the famous "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced...but I know it when I see it." Far be it for NSD to define or even advocate this particular sort of entertainment, but porn is an inseparable part of the WWW. In the interest of online harmony, we would like to expose to you this handy pornography search engine. Ask Jolene is a slick search engine for free porn that lets you define your search by category, although the small directory on the home page ought to satisfy most visiting voyeurs. You can get better results with Deep Search (not what you think), and there's a Search Tips page for those of you unfamiliar with the ins and outs of search engines. You get results as images, and most point to free image sets or short video clips that entice you to sign up. The best part of Ask Jolene, however, is that it blacklists all sites that try to force malware onto your hard drive. http://www.askjolene.com/ Trick-or-treat challenged are you, Bucky? There are a couple dozen dogs who sure ain't. What's more natural than a beedog? Gina Zycher claims to have "the premier online repository for pictures of dogs in bee costumes." We won't argue against that, but it's shocking. Bees and dogs are hardly different: three letters each, although you have to work around the two consonants and vowel versus one consonant and a vowel thing. Bees seek food constantly, and so do dogs. Some bees get angry, although that's hard to see on their little faces - and some of the dogs on this site are also less than overjoyed. But some are, and so are their bee-clad human masters. Now that's strange. http://www.beedogs.com/ If you're into retro print schlock and gore (and really, who isn't?), head over to the Groovy Age of Horror. You're in for masterpieces such as "Satan Was My Pimp", and reviews that include the following quote, "There's no fight, and the Monster doesn't even have sex with her. Two missed opportunities!" It's kitsch to the max. http://groovyageofhorror.blogspot.com/ Google "Halloween collectibles" and you'll get more than 300,000 results, which should tell you something about the popularity of vintage Halloween paraphernalia. On Mark Ledenbach's HalloweenCollector.com, you can view pictures of some of his collection, which has been featured everywhere from HGTV to "Antiques Roadshow". The site also posts estimated values of the items. It's definitely a good place to look if you're deciding whether to donate that old Halloween candy jar to charity or to list it on eBay. Ledenbach also sells on eBay, so you might be able to scoop up some of his toss-offs there. http://www.halloweencollector.com/ was no match for the dreaded poultrygeists. From the wacky Troma team comes "Poultrygeist", a movie about - you guessed it - zombie chickens and chicken zombies, the distinction being that the former were originally chickens and became zombies, whereas the latter were humans that became zombies because of said zombie chickens. It all gets confusing, a veritable blur of gore and feathers - just how we like it. The movie's site has a trailer and a great section of blog entries from folks who worked on the production that include such notes as: "talk to Jamie about getting a baby or a toddler to put in the deep fryer." We foresee avian flu sponsorship tie-ins.http://www.poultrygeistmovie.com/ Those of us of a certain age can (sometimes) remember the knickers-wetting frights to be read in the pulp horror comics of the '60s and '70s. Yep, there was nothing quite as scary in print as the latest copy of Creepy or Eerie for a growing babyboomer. How else were we to learn exactly what would happen were a wolfman to fight a vampire? (The vampire wins, but is so exhausted by the struggle that he becomes easy meat for a nearby ghoul.) Or how a sorcerer's abuse of a bloodthirsty demon (no, not a broom) could turn against him? And the covers! These full-color masterpieces by Frank Frazetta, Vic Prezo, and others were enough to imply a gruesome, untimely end if you didn't cough up the four bits to buy the magazine, which in the end was worth every penny. It is these covers that Monster Mags displays so lovingly. If your tastes run more to old-time horror films, then the covers from Monsters of Filmland are right up your alley. We are partial to Vampirella, every 13-year-old's dream first and last date! Don't miss the links section for more wholesome monster goodness. http://www.gdarkness.com/monstermags/ Kids, if your parents won't let you have a pet, build your own with the Beast Blender from the Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists. Our reviewer just created a Bloodsucking Rhinoceros of the Serengeti, which is far superior to a puppy, anyhow. Just think of the fun you'll have snuggling up with your own bloodsucking rhinoceros! http://www.beastblender.com/ and now I write this in spirit alone. Do you believe in ghosts? Would you be more likely to believe if you saw a convincing photograph of a specter or would you need a live haunting? For those skeptics out there, this site provides some fake ghost photography and the reasons why they were debunked as well as a list of supposedly genuine ghost pics. Site owner Dale Kaczmarek is somewhat of an expert in the dubious field f ghost photography and is happy to analyze any of your spooky images to rule out trickery, digital flaws, and the effects of natural conditions such as lighting. Go on, scare yourself with pictures of a ghost in a toy store, ectoplasm, and strange faces at windows. You can always regain your composure afterwards by reading about how such things can be generated deliberately. The debate over fake ghost pics will continue, probably until we hear them saying "cheese" and making rabbit ears over other ghosts' heads.http://www.ghostresearch.org/ghostpics/ I never even got to hear the band. Canada's most haunted band does not appear to be the Barenaked Ladies. They appear to be called Sci-Fi Prodigy, and they are/were fronted by Canadian ghosthunter Patrick Cross, who runs Burlington Ghost Walks walking tours. As the story unfolds, Cross and his keyboard player were casting spells to protect the band and add power to the music. It sort of worked - except for the accidents, suicides, killings, fires, and dismemberments which seemed to follow them along on their tours... not to mention the dreaded curse of the font-size tags. Scroll to just above the bottom for links to Burlington Ghost Walks material, if you dare!http://www.burlingtonghostwalks.ca/weird.htm |
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