ShareBrained Technology offers this wonderful and ridiculous open-source clock…thingie. You can buy it fully assembled, as a kit, or as a raw circuit board. If you’re really brave and/or have too much time on your hands, they even sell the circuit board layout so you can print your own.

The Chronulator starts life as a clock, showing the hours and minutes on two old-school analog panel meters. Dress it up to look like old test equipment, audio VU meters, or motorcycle gauges. Mount it in a picture frame, shadow box, computer case, plush toy, pumpkin… Customize the code and hardware to make the meters indicate something other than time — network traffic/lag, outside temperature, freeway congestion, terror threat level, stress level, whatever! Let your imagination run free.

The image shown here is a sort of steampunky design, but users are encouraged to share their own models on the site’s forum.

They’ve also just launched a new design, the Monulator, which can be wired up to report anything you want: “chance of precipitation, time until your next meeting, Twitter mentions, CPU load, stock market change, or a million other things.” So you could stick one in a ouija board and use it to count down the days to Halloween.

Man, I can’t wait until Shadowboy is old enough to learn to solder. These would be a hoot to build with him.

Awwww…cute.

Werepups is an adoption agency for orphaned Lycanthropes. When werewolf hunters kill the parents, dens of their helpless offspring are often left to starve. That’s when Werepups steps in, to “find loving homes for orphaned Lycanthrope babies, preserve the species, and eliminate the need for human blood in the diet.”

Artist Asia Eriksen’s original line of werewolf babies were hand-painted 11″ poseable latex dolls. The dolls inspired a movie, and her work to create more realistic “pups” for the film led her to offer similar life-size silicone dolls with hand-rooted hair. They are really adorably creepy.

Each doll comes with an adoption certificate and an “emergency silver bullet,” which is a nice touch. The artist also offers many customization options as part of the base price; at $70 for the painted latex and $500 for the furry silicone versions, it’s really not a bad deal for the werewolf-obsessed person in your life.

Additional photos are available on their Facebook page.

(Hat tip to Maven)

I was just going to stick this in a link dump, but the product description is so wonderfully coy that it makes me giggle.

Blk is spring water, “naturally” dyed black by “fulvic minerals:”

Blk Beverages Black Spring Water’s proprietary blend of Fulvic Minerals (a derivative of plant matter) are mined from a 70 million year old source deep within the earth. Naturally black in color, Blk Beverages Spring Water’s formula binds to the molecules of Blk Beverages pure Canadian Spring Water turning it naturally black, with no artificial dyes, coloring, or additives. Fulvic Minerals are critical in growth of plant life, helping the transportation and absorption of nutrients.

The strangely-vague “derivative of plant matter” and fact that it’s naturally black rang a faint bell, and a quick check reveals that “fulvic” is essentially another name for “humic,” and that’s peat moss. It’s rotting plant material. Yum!

It’s apparently not harmful, and indeed is occasionally used as a nutritional supplement. I’m just amused at the way all of their marketing literature carefully omits any mention of what the stuff really is.

Anyway, if you’re so frickin’ goth that you want the very water you drink to be black, it’s available on Amazon. Stick a few in the cooler at your next party and watch your guests’ reactions.

(via Neatorama)

Well this is just all kinds of neat. Intrepid reader Fiend4Halloween pointed me to Necromance, a store that’s a mixture of a biologist’s wunderkammer and your crazy aunt’s attic.

They have some lovely stuff, quite reasonably priced, ranging from freeze-dried bats to black lace parasols. They offer quite a variety of animal bits, including things like beetle elytra (about halfway down the page) which are useful for art projects or jewelrymaking but are sometimes difficult to find. (They unfortunately won’t ship natural items overseas due to customs restrictions, but they’ve also got plenty of reproduction stuff like skulls.)

They also offer useful items like bell jars and taxidermy eyeballs, plus medical oddities like reproduction trephines and sets of animal X-rays; the X-rays in particular would look great framed and massed on a wall. Their idea of home decor includes things like vintage skeleton keys and decorative tiles featuring anatomical drawings of hearts, so they’re definitely our kind of people.

For those lucky enough to live in Southern California, they have a brick-and-mortar location on Melrose in LA. From the looks of the store photos on their site, they have loads of other stuff that isn’t available online; it would be easy to spend hours–not to mention a hell of a lot of cash–poking around in their collection.

Lots of very cool stuff; definitely worth a look.

(Thanks, Fiend4Halloween!)

UK company Wish specializes in “life-changing experience days,” ranging from driving an Aston Martin to hand-feeding lions. One of the offerings in their Adrenaline category is a chance to battle zombies.

Thanks to video gaming technology, there is an entire generation whose happiest childhood memories revolve around the wholesale execution of hordes of shuffling, groaning, bitetastic Undead.

We at Wish like to make even the goriest dreams come true, and with our mega-popular Zombie Experiences, guilt-free slaughter has never felt so good.

They offer three levels of zombie-battling adventures: An assault on a “known zombie lair” (zombies have lairs?), clearing a manor house and its grounds of the walking dead, or–the most elaborate and expensive–fighting hordes of zombies in an abandoned shopping mall.

It’s interesting how zombies, more than any other popular monster, seem to have spawned an entire industry of LARP-type adventuring: The zombie survival training course and Run for Your Lives charity event spring to mind as well.*

Anyway, if you’re in the UK or planning a vacation, this looks like a fun excursion. Rumor has it that Simon Pegg is going to do the mall experience when he has a chance.

(via io9)

*This makes me just a touch bitter, since I’ve never found zombies to be particularly interesting. Where are the Innsmouth raids and the werewolf-tracking classes, dammit?

One of the things I love most about the Internet Age is the opportunities for cultural cross-pollination, which is how you wind up with a ceramicist in Thailand specializing in Dia de Los Muertos skulls.

Muddyskull offers a variety of marveous cake toppers, salt-and-pepper shakers, and jewelry which look like Jerry Garcia blew up all over them. The artist does custom designs on request, and also sells unpainted blanks if you’d rather decorate your own. The Muddyskull site is primarily a showcase of her work; you can purchase them through Artfire or via the related gOOdiemud site, which also has non-skully items available (the dogs and humans are unremarkable, but the owls are pretty darn baroque).

Although she apologizes for her imperfect grasp of English, the artist’s enthusiasm definitely shines through. I love her wonderfully over-the-top decorative excesses, and for handmade items they’re really quite affordable.

One of the things that always astounds me about molded leather is how much detail it’s possible to achieve. deviantART member GriffinLeather uses this to great effect in his wonderful line of skull clutch purses, managing a high degree of anatomical fidelity.

His profile says that he sells these (and will do custom work if he’s sold out), although I have no idea what the price would be. There’s contact information on his bio page if you don’t think you can live without one. (Incidentally, a googling of “Griffin Leather” turns up a couple of sites such as Griffin Leather Works, but they don’t appear to be associated with this guy.)

He’s also got some other nice stuff, including several steampunky gas masks and these great-looking “lost souls” bracers, which would be fantastic for cosplay.

(via The Gothic Tea Society)

I’ve mentioned Tim Powers’ books previously, including the excellent vampiric “secret history” The Stress of Her Regard. Stress follows Michael Crawford, a man who unwittingly proposed marriage to a lamia, across Europe as he tries to free himself from his bloodthirsty bride. He encounters a number of Romantic poets and authors–Byron, Keats, Shelley, and Polidori amongst them–and discovers that lamia can act as artistic muses…for a price.

Powers wrote a postscript to that novel called A Time to Cast Away Stones, which can be found collected in The Bible Repairman and Other Stories (there’s a free excerpt at Tor). In it, Edward Trelawny schemes to remake the connection between humans and monsters, hoping to use his alliance to free Greece from the Turks.

Now Powers has released a true sequel entitled Hide Me Among the Graves, in which the vampires have returned. Set in Victorian London, veterinarian John Crawford sets out to save his young daughter from the attentions of a vampiric wraith, eventually joining forces with the Rossettis (poet Christina and painter Dante), who are the unwilling students of a supernatural muse.

One of the things that makes Powers’ “secret histories” so engaging is the deftness with which he weaves the fiction into actual events. He is quoted as saying, “I made it an ironclad rule that I could not change or disregard any of the recorded facts, nor rearrange any days of the calendar – and then I tried to figure out what momentous but unrecorded fact could explain them all.” So all of the deaths, wars, disasters, and other historical events in his novels are accurate…and then he takes you behind the scenes to see the hidden supernatural machinations which “caused” them.

Great stuff; highly recommended. I’m thrilled that there’s another chapter in this particular corner of Powers’ universe.

(via BoingBoing)

Apparently they’re a thing. Who knew?

Jane of All Trades turned me on to this “bridal bouquet stuffed in a bird skull” design by Gisèle Ganne, who states that the elements are traditional French wedding symbols subverted to show the inevitability of the breakup.

Ganne appears to be at the forefront of the divorce-jewelry trend, with a number of designs available for sale at Boticca–pricey, but quite lovely–and additional photos at her site. Check out her other work, too; she has some attractive mourning jewelry.

Other divorce rings include BR Paterson’s line engraved with sayings like, “Over You” and “So Long,” Spritzer and Furman’s split heart, and Diana Maynard’s “broken band” design. I also quite like Vagabond Jewelry’s amusing but highly impractical guillotine ring.

Sites commenting on the trend range from pearl-clutching “Why would you want to remind yourself of a divorce?” to “Heck yes, celebrate your freedom.” I myself can think of a lot of things I’d rather blow a couple grand on, but am otherwise unmoved. What do you think? Weird, or cool?

(Thanks, Jane of All Trades!)

I ran into these cute “pumpkin rump” pettipants at Gloomth several months ago, but they’re a seasonal item so are unavailable until next October. If you simply can’t wait until then, something similar–albeit not quite as fancy–can be knocked together in a couple of hours.

Loose elastic-waist pants are a snap to sew, pretty much consisting of three seams: Sew each leg and then sew the legs together. You can find suitable patterns in pajamas or sportswear, or you can skip the pattern entirely and just look for tutorials on how to make your own tap pants, bloomers, or pettipants. I used the pants from a pirate costume because I happened to have the pattern lying around. (I suppose you could also get fancy and use a historically accurate pattern, but that seems entirely too much like work.)

I used an inexpensive cotton fabric for a rather lightweight, airy result. You can use silk, satin, or whatever other fabric appeals to you (I wouldn’t use anything too heavy, such as denim, but you could probably get away with velvet or brocade if you really wanted to). I also decided to make the bloomers a bit longer than knee length and add elastic to the legs so they could be hiked up to whatever length was desired.

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