Soulmate sounds like something Satan puts in his coffee.
— shariv67

If you never break eye contact, I assume you want to wear my skin.
— Molly_Kats

There aren’t any girl magicians because we burned them all.
— kellyoxford

Just because God doesn’t answer your prayers it doesn’t mean he’s not listening. It probably just means you’re boring. Maybe try incorporating car chases into your prayers. Or something with vampires. Vampires are really hot right now.
— The Bloggess

Don’t commit suicide alone. That’s selfish! Make people pay money toward the national debt to see you fight a rhinoceros with a banana.
— EmpPalp

No one talks about how Hogwarts is a VOCATIONAL SCHOOL
— meganamram

There’s a Marilyn Manson video directed by Shia LaBeouf. That’s the joke. That’s it right there.
— AinsleyofAttack

Two of the heads melted at the end of Raiders, while one exploded. Why? Something to do with diet?
— badbanana

“Love is patient, love is kind, love is…CALLING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE!” – The Spooky Bible
— Jordan_Morris

I used to sneak into my stepkids rooms and tell them I was murdered years ago and I needed them to find my killer. They’d cry SO much! Cute!
— JennyJohnsonHi5

Cauliflower is Broccoli’s deformed sibling that grew up chained to a post in the backyard.
— DumbNOTDeaf

The main problem with Halloween is that it only comes once a year. By the time April rolls around Halloween is six months in either direction, and those of us with a little ghoulishness in our souls can start feeling a bit bereft. Fortunately, a few years ago the members of a haunt-related listserv to which I belong found a solution.

The Secret Pumpkin gift exchange is similar in concept to “Secret Santa” exchanges, except it takes place in April and it’s Halloween-related. It’s open to members of either the Halloween-L or HOWL2000 listservs, and it’s a lot of fun. Participants list a few of their likes and dislikes, everyone is randomly assigned a “Pumpkin” to gift, then some time between April 1 and April 15 they send an appropriately spooky item to their gift-ee and receive something they should like from their gift-er.

Gifts are supposed to be $20US or less (matches are assigned in plenty of time to take advantage of after-Halloween sales), but many participants like to make something for their Pumpkin instead. Lovely handmade props, crafts, or other items often make an appearance.

I’ve been running the annual exchange since 2004, and it probably should have occurred to me well before now that it might be of interest to readers of this blog, but I never claimed to be quick on the uptake.

If you’d like to participate, sign up for one of the listservs (a lot of mail about the exchange gets sent through them): Halloween-L is a “casual” list, with lots of back-and-forth chatter, and the volume can be fairly high. HOWL2000 is much more stringently kept on-topic and has very low volume. Then, register at the Secret Pumpkin site. (Even if you don’t want to participate in the exchange, you might want to join one of the listservs just to make friends with more like-minded people.)

Non-US residents are welcome to join, with a small caveat: Residents of the same country are preferentially matched with each other, but if there are no other participants from your country you may find shipping costs for your gift to be fairly expensive. (Sending your gift early to take advantage of slower, cheaper shipping might help.)

And please, PLEASE don’t sign up for the exchange unless you’re serious about following through. We occasionally have participants flake out, and their Pumpkins are always sorely disappointed.

So come join us! Getting a little bit of Halloween in April is always a lovely surprise! The deadline to sign up is October 15.

Update: The page for the HOWL2000 list has an old address for subscriptions. To sign up for that listserv, send a blank email message to howl2000-join@WildRice.com

Haunted Housework – T-shirt featuring adorable little ghosts spooking up their house. (Hat tip to Kitten Herder)

Blood Lite – An anthology of “humorous horror stories.” Because “horror” and “guffaw” go together so naturally.

Good Omens Perfume – Black Phoenix Alchemy Labs has a limited-edition collection of scents based on Pratchett/Gaiman novel Good Omens, with combinations such as Crowley (infernal musk, red patchouli, lilac cologne, mahogany, lemon rind, oakmoss, leather, and vanilla husk) and Hastur (smoky-sour labdanum, black patchouli, wet tobacco, and brimstone).

Flower Pump – Vase shaped like an (anatomically correct) heart.

10 Creepiest Abandoned Morgues – I can’t imagine how anyone could pick just ten.

Infectious Threads – Goth/punk/alternative clothing site which unfortunately suffers from the common delusion that purple-on-black equals “edgy” instead of “hard to read.” Some nice clothes, though.

crap at my parents house – Highly entertaining blog which allows people to send in photos of the weird junk that everybody’s parents seem to have. (Potentially NSFW due to the occasional appearance of things like ceramic boobies.)

I Heart Guts – Plush versions of various internal organs. Nothing says “I love you” like a stuffed pancreas.

Time for Pets – If you don’t want to immediately snorgle this baby bat I don’t want to be your friend any more. (Hat tip to JoAsakura)

Two pieces of movie-related WTFery:
The Evil Dead Remake Kisses Its Ash Goodbye
Guy Who Might Direct the Unnecessary Crow Remake Might Also Direct the Unnecessary Highlander Remake

I recently happened upon a comment in a quilting forum where someone mentioned quilts made from tombstone rubbings. Intrigued, I did a bit of looking and discovered that grave-rubbing quilts are very definitely a thing, and they are very definitely made of awesome.

It looks like one of the main creators of this sort of quilt is fiber artist Susan Lenz. She’s got a whole blog devoted to the quilts and other items she makes with the rubbings, often incorporating lace, linen and other vintage fabrics as well. (A few of her items are also featured in a gallery here.)

I had initially thought that she used some sort of transfer method to copy paper rubbings onto fabric, but from her descriptions it instead appears that she makes the rubbings directly on the fabric (often silk) using crayons. She then hand- or machine-embroiders parts of the design and often appliques it to a sturdier base fabric.

I love everything about this. I’m immensely taken with the soft, muted colors of her work and with the wonderful designs she finds on old gravestones. The pieces look marvelously old-fashioned and are charming rather than macabre.

If you’d like to try your hand at something similar, the Association for Gravestone Studies has a very nice article on making gravestone rubbings. You can get fabric crayons at craft stores or online. Thin silk is available at many craft stores, but my favorite place to get it is Dharma Trading; they have a great variety and they’re surprisingly cheap.

If you don’t want to commit to creating a quilt or other large piece, a single small rubbing would look splendid on a piece of clothing: Depending on the clothing you could either do the rubbing directly on the fabric (like this gorgeous linen christening gown) or do it on thin silk and then applique it in place.

I love visiting old graveyards anyway, and this project has given me a brand-new reason to plan an excursion.

I had no idea that Ben Stiller even had a TV show, which may not be indicative of the show’s quality so much as my attention span. If this is the kind of comedy they did, I’m sorry I missed it.

(via Mr. Macabre)

How adorable is this?

i am baker has easy instructions for making individual jar cakes with spiders or spooky messages baked inside, topped off with wonderful chocolate spiderweb lids.

She piped chocolate cake batter on the inside of the jars to make the spiders, but I suspect that you could use melted chocolate as well; piping it on and then chilling for a few minutes to harden should firm it up enough that it’ll stay in place when the cake batter is poured in.

I’m particularly taken with the snug-fitting spiderweb lids. I’ve made chocolate spiderwebs by piping them onto parchment paper–they’re a cute decoration for ice cream–but I had never considered fitting the parchment over a jar to make the edges curve. The same method could be used to create spidery little toppers for all sorts of things.

These would be perfect desserts for a Halloween party. They’re easy to turn out in quantity, and they should keep, covered, for a few days if you want to make them in advance (for a grown-up dessert, add a tablespoon or so of rum, brandy, or your favorite liqueur before covering; storing them for a day or two will make them even better). They’re also kid-friendly enough that decorating the inside of the jars might be a fun party activity; take the embellished jars, pour in prepared cake batter, and present each partygoer with their individual cake (with premade lids) as a party favor at the end of the evening.

(via CRAFT)

Every time I think Dracula has been reimagined in every way possible, somebody digs up Vlad’s corpse and does something new with it.

iDrakula is a rather literal “reboot” of the story, a modern retelling done entirely via text messages, browser screenshots, e-mails, and file attachments like photos and PDFs. It’s really rather clever, with lots of detailed touches like pages of bounced emails during Jonathan’s captivity at Dracula’s castle.

The book has also been ported into an iPhone app, which creates an interactive story that includes emails and voicemails sent to your phone.

The first text is, “Renfield had a psychotic break. Carted off to Bellevue. More l8r.” How can you not be amused by that?

How to Release an Ancient Evil – As someone in the comments points out, there’s an entire genre of bad horror fiction that essentially starts out with panels 1-3. Heh.

Monsteretsy – Flickr pool of monstery Etsy offerings.

Nosh 404 – Funny “not found” page at Nosh.

Historical Disney Princesses – Artist Clare Hummel dresses various princesses in historically-appropriate (more or less) attire.

Gothic Garden – Lots of great photos.

Heavy Metal BBQ Fork – I expect the etching would soon be lost under grime if it got used regularly, but it’s funny nonetheless.

Arty Bollocks Generator – If you don’t feel up to writing your own pretentious artist’s statement, this site can instantly provide you with such gems as, “My work explores the relationship between emerging sexualities and recycling culture. With influences as diverse as Nietzsche and Miles Davis, new combinations are created from both orderly and random dialogues.”

17 Real-Life Mysteries – Interesting roundup, although it’s kind of all over the map in terms of what qualifies as a “mystery.”

Neil Gaiman Presents – Gaiman is starting his own audiobook label.

Collectible Cemetery Postcards – Photographer John Thomas Grant is making some of his lovely cemetery photos available as limited-edition postcards.

Since about two-thirds of the internet by volume are memes, you’re probably already familiar with user-captioned memetic images like Success Kid, Insanity Wolf, Advice God, or Philosoraptor.

Now there’s Misunderstood Spider, and I sort of want to give him a hug. It’s as if Charlie Brown were reincarnated as an arachnid.

There are a couple of pages of the poor little guy over at quickmeme. The site also allows you to add your own captions; if you decide to play along, leave your link in the comments so we can all go admire your handiwork.

(Hat tip to pdq)

Interested in Egyptology? You can now become a “citizen scientist” and help do fieldwork without even leaving your house.

The Oxyrhynchus Papyri are a vast collection of fragmentary documents recovered from an ancient Egyptian trash heap. They’re mostly written in Greek, they’re mostly in pieces, and there are a heck of a lot of them. They’re a massive trove of information about everyday life in the 1st to 6th Century CE, but researchers face the very daunting task of both piecing them together and translating their contents.

That’s where you come in. The Ancient Lives project has turned this task into a sort of puzzle game, where you can examine digitized fragments of the collection. You can measure the fragments–which will eventually aid in reconstructing the documents they’re from–and you can also transcribe their text by clicking on individual letters and then choosing their match from a floating keyboard of Greek symbols. No knowledge of the language is required; all you have to do is match the shape.

Incidentally, I have a strong suspicion that this kind of decentralized “crowd computing” is the next big thing in scientific research. Although artificial intelligence has come a long way, the human brain is still superior for many important kinds of reasoning. Casting tedious-but-important tasks in the form of a game is the pefect way to get a lot of laypeople to happily help out.

Anyway, as the papyri in the Ancient Lives project are reconstructed and translated, they’ll be published in the Egypt Exploration Society’s Graeco-Roman Memoirs. I’m hoping that any venture which relies so heavily on computers will also eventually be available online.

(via io9)