Taxidermy Art Classes – I’ve mentioned the Morbid Anatomy site previously, but these new classes they’re offering sound fascinating.

Criminal Crafts – Edgy-looking book of craft projects. The little voodoo doll is cute.

Pixar Announces Dia de los Muertos Movie – The next project for the director of Toy Story 3 will be a movie involving the Day of the Dead.

Grand Theft Kickstarter – Amanda Palmer is seeking backing for a new album and tour.

Where’s Jason – Amusing computer wallpaper.

6 Scary Tricks that Amazed Us as Kids (Explained by Science) – Damn science, ruining everything.

Knife Typography – Lovely sentiment, pretty font, made out of knives. I like it.

Neil Gaiman Interviews Stephen King – Gaiman wrote this for the UK Sunday Times, but since it’s paywalled he also posted the “raw” version on his blog.

Anatomic Heart Teapot – Arresting–and apparently functional (in the tea-brewing sense, not the blood-pumping sense)–handmade ceramic teapot.

Make Your Own Leggings – Great tutorial on designing and sewing custom leggings.

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?

Spent the last 2 hours whispering “here comes the tickle monster!” to the people that were bench pressing weights at the gym.
— iamyourguy

So many funeral prank possibilities if you outlive your identical twin.
— KenJennings

I’d watch the shit out of a reality show that’s a search for the most pretentious vegan.
— imaliwaller

I didn’t hover round the business end [of my wife’s C-section]. I’m not a fan of innards. What if you go mad and lean forward and dunk a biscuit in them or something?
— Charlie Booker, discussing his child’s recent birth

I always sleep on a sack of knives in case a pillow fight breaks out.
— badbanana

I’m the only one who knows this is a murder mystery dinner
— meganamram

Sometimes when I use tampons I like to pretend that my vagina is knitting a little scarf.
— AinsleyofAttack

The only relationship advice I have for the young ladies out there is this: Find yourself a goofy bastard. Trust me on this.
— Aimee_B_Loved

I wish parents would watch their kids better because my basement is filling up.
— nachosarah

If asked on TV what I’d do if I won $540 mil I wouldn’t say “Quit my job.” I’d look at the camera and say “Society will know soon enough”
— fmarciuliano

(No prizes, but if you can answer them all without googling you get bragging rights.)

1. This prolific SF writer gave us such works as More Than Human and Venus Plus X (not to mention an important literary Law), but also wrote Some of Your Blood, a nicely horrific vampire novel.
   A) Theodore Sturgeon
   B) Robert Silverberg
   C) Harry Harrison
   D) Hal Clement
   E) Larry Niven
2. This Gothic novella by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu tells the story of Laura, a girl who is victimized by a female vampire who seems to periodically shapeshift into a cat.
3. In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, “William the Bloody” is better known as whom?
4. During the same vacation in which Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, Byron began a vampire story but never finished it. His physician (who had also been on the retreat) eventually wrote a work entitled “The Vampyre” based on Byron’s story. Name him.
   A) Gabriele Rossetti
   B) Matthew Lewis
   C) George Tighe
   D) Leigh Hunt
   E) John Polidori
5. In the Marvel Comics universe, detective Hannibal King was turned into one of the undead by the same vampire who killed Blade’s mother. What was his name?
6. In the Russian short story “Family of the Vourdalak,” a family awaits the return of their patriarch, whose tardiness may mean he has become a vampire. Who wrote this influential story?
   A) Nikolai Gogol
   B) Aleksey Tolstoy
   C) Ivan Turgenev
   D) Alexander Pushkin
   E) Peter Kropotkin
7. The TV series Forever Knight followed the adventures of Nick Knight, an 800-year-old vampire working as a cop in Toronto. It starred Geraint Wyn Davies as Knight, but its pilot was originally shot starring what 80s rocker as the title character?
8. In the novel Dracula Jonathan Harker travels to the Count’s remote castle, located in which range of mountains?
   A) Sahyadri
   B) Karawanken
   C) Trollheimen
   D) Carpathian
   E) Rhodope
9. Born Theodosia Goodman in Cincinnati, Ohio, this silent movie starlet was nicknamed “The Vamp” (short for vampire). Her stage name was an anagram for “Arab Death.”
10. This author’s “Dracula sequence” of novels, beginning with The Dracula Tape, had the Count interacting with literary characters such as Sherlock Holmes. The series was so successful that he was hired to write the novelization of the movie Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
    A) William Tenn
    B) James Blish
    C) Fred Saberhagen
    D) Leigh Brackett
    E) Jack Vance

(Answers below the fold)

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