The title means “First Fall,” and this animated short is simply lovely.
Abel lives in the winter and Apolline lives in the summer. Isolated in their “natures”, they never met each other. They are not even supposed to meet. So when Abel crosses the border and discovers Apolline, curiosity is overwhelming. Their encounter soon becomes more complicated than they could imagine. Both of them will have to learn compromise to protect the other…
(via Beans)
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31 Days of Halloween Parties – Site with a couple of years’ worth of party ideas; it hasn’t been updated since 2012, but there are some useful links.
55 Words – I sort of love the idea of dinosaur ghosts.
Eye Heart Spleen – Pretty photo series of flowers arranged to look like human organs.
Improved Thrift Store Paintings – Artist Chris McMahon buys cheap paintings and “improves” them with monsters. They are utterly wonderful. (Hat tip to Pixel Pixie)
Biology of Mermaids – Famed oceanographer Karl Banse has written a “serious” (in the sense of humor written with a straight face, rather than actual belief) scientific treatise on mermaids. A PDF of the full paper is here.
p.s. – I’m going to be dragged, kicking and shrieking, away from the computer for a week. Due to the magic of advance scheduling blog posts will continue as usual, but if you email and I don’t respond I’m not ignoring you. (Or am I? Muwahahahaha.)
If you were a kid in the early 80s you might have been permanently scarred by Alvin Schwartz’ Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark or its sequels (1, 2). The stories were creepy folktales and urban legends; spooky enough for kids, to be sure, but what really turned their Chill Factor up to 11 was the horrifying and surreal illustrations by Stephen Gammell. (There’s a sampling of those here; when a 30th anniversary edition of the books was released with the work of a different illustrator there was an uproar from fans.)
Deadline is reporting that CBS Films has accepted a pitch from Saw writers Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan to adapt the short stories into a film which centers on a set of outcast kids who work to save the town when their nightmares become reality. I’m…pretty sure that was a Buffy episode.
There’s no word on who’ll star in or direct the film, but it could be a lot of fun. Seen through an adult’s eyes (and studiously ignoring the illustrations), the stories are more campy than creepy; however, for kids the books are high-octane nightmare fuel: There’s an amusing discussion of that here. The movie could thus be a family-friendly romp through urban legends or a straight-up horrorfest. And if Stephen Gammell’s work doesn’t get incorporated somehow I’m going to be sad.
Novelty purveyor Archie McPhee has just released its “modest urn;” an inexpensive cremains repository for the thrifty.
Everybody has a cheap relative and death can be expensive. You know when they die they’d be mad at you if you spent thousands of dollars on a fancy urn! That’s why we made our Modest Urn for the frugal. This metal can, which mysteriously resembles a coffee can, comes with a sticker sheet so you can customize it for the deceased. It’s 5″ tall, 4″ diameter and has a volume of 62.8 cubic inches. In addition, there’s a reusable interior metal seal and an exterior plastic cap to keep the ash from falling out. Includes a fill-in-the-blanks eulogy for easy mourning.
The coffee-can resemblance is more than accidental; the urn is labeled “Hallowed Grounds.” They also have a pet version bearing the legend, “Freshly Roasted.” The backs of the urns also have an Ingredients label listing the contents as “Dearly Departed” and “Beloved Companion” respectively.
Here’s their promotional video:
If the deceased had a sense of humor, this would be sort of an awesome receptacle for their ashes. You could also just use it to store coffee and make guests vaguely nervous.
The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories was written by this director of offbeat films.
What is the name of Voldemort’s mother?
A) Bathsheba
B) Alecto
C) Merope
D) Hepzibah
E) Andromeda
This French aristocrat’s novels are often classified not as “Gothic” but as “Libertine” and include Justine, or the Misfortunes of Virtue; Juliette; The 120 Days of Sodom; and Philosophy in the Bedroom.
The film Grindhouse was a “double feature” with one segment directed by Robert Rodriguez and the other by Quentin Tarantino. What was the title of Tarantino’s segment?
A) Thanksgiving
B) Death Proof
C) Werewolf Women of the S.S.
D) Machete
E) Planet Terror
Which movie has Beetlejuice seen 167 times (and it keeps getting funnier every time he sees it)?
“Once upon a time, not so long ago, a monster came to the small town of Castle Rock, Maine.” This is the opening line of which Stephen King novel?
A) Needful Things
B) Firestarter
C) ‘Salem’s Lot
D) Cujo
E) It
The “penny dreadful” The String of Pearls: A Romance introduced the world to this murderous denizen of Fleet Street.
Michael Crichton’s novel Eaters of the Dead purports to be a translation of an old manuscript describing a 10th-century Muslim’s travels with a group of Vikings. It’s actually a re-telling of this classic story.
A) Beowulf
B) The Odyssey
C) Sigmund
D) The Mabinogion
E) Orlando Furioso
“It was a terrible, indescribable thing vaster than any subway train—a shapeless congeries of protoplasmic bubbles, faintly self-luminous, and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and un-forming as pustules of greenish light all over the tunnel-filling front that bore down upon us, crushing the frantic penguins and slithering over the glistening floor that it and its kind had swept so evilly free of all litter.” What is the Lovecraftian creature described here?
In Game of Thrones, what is Hodor’s real name?
A) Hodor
B) Hodor
C) Hodor
D) Hodor
E) Walder
Mario Wienerroither, who makes “musicless music videos” like this one, decided to go in the opposite direction and created a condensed version of the silent classic Nosferatu…but “silentless.” It is sublime.
Isaac Cordal’s Cement Skeletons – The artist leaves miniature cement skeletons, dressed as housewives and businessmen, tucked away on the streets of Chiapas, Mexico. (Hat tip to pdq)
Friday the 13th Engagement Photo Shoot – I want to know who made the awesome “Camp Crystal Lake” sign. (Update: It’s been pointed out to me that the text notes the bride made the sign. Next time I will try reading for comprehension. Thanks, angelus!)
Monsters of Grok – “Band” T-shirts honoring scientists and other great thinkers.
Martín De Pasquale – These digitally-manipulated photos are both clever and rather creepy.
I love a good sideshow gaff, and the Pyewackett and Pecke site has posted a rare treat: Build notes and photos for a great-looking FeeJee Mermaid prop. Artist Dan Baines has a five-part series of posts detailing the prop: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5.
(Incidentally, if Baines’ name sounds familiar, it’s because he was the artist responsible for the great mummified fairy hoax in 2007.)
Some of his techniques and materials are probably out of range of the average home DIY-er: The mermaid’s claws, for instance, are made from 3D-printed bird feet, and Baines made a custom silicon-rubber texturizer to create the impression of scales. However, there are other, less esoteric, ways to achieve similar effects: Replica animal claws are available at places like The Evolution Store, you can use claw-looking things like dentalium shells, or you can simply mold the things individually out of polymer clay. Instead of clawed fingers, it might be interesting to give the mermaid webbed hands instead; in that case, the model duck feet used for taxidermy would look great.
The scaly texture on the tail could be created by lightly pressing the head of a large nail into the wet covering on the skin in an overlapping pattern. Although not flexible the way a silicon mold would be, the “coarse” section of a cheese grater might also work. (There are also dog treats made of real dried fish skin; I’m curious as to whether they’d have sufficient depth to be used as a mold.)
For the front half of the mermaid Baines used an 18″ medical skeleton model and a resin cast of a human infant skull. He unfortunately doesn’t specify where he got either; the Skeleton Store has a replica of a full fetal skeleton, but it’s a tad pricey. Their Frugal Fernando seems about the right size for the ribs and arms, and instead of a fetal skull a replica monkey skull might be a cheaper option; after all, the original taxidermied FeeJee Mermaids were made from the front half of a monkey attached to the back half of a fish.
This would be a fantastic display piece, and would look great as part of a cabinet of curiosities. The next time you vacation at the beach, be sure to dig around souvenir shops for dried seaweed and similar oceany stuff which could be used either as detailing on the body (feathery kelp might make interesting fins) or to add “carnival exhibit” interest to the display stand.
Bonus link: The Propnomicon site has a nice post mortem discussing this build, with further suggestions for materials and techniques more suited to the amateur builder.
It’s funny how serendipitously following one link can lead to the discovery of something entirely unrelated here on the ol’ intartubes.
Ask MetaFilter recently considered the question, What are the worst songs?, and in opining that teen death songs (such as “Tell Laura I Love Her” are the absolute worst, commenter jenfullmoon noted in passing:
Amusingly enough, Seanan McGuire’s book “Sparrow Hill Road” uses those characters in a few stories, in which Laura has become a vengeful professor and ghost Tommy has long since forgiven the main ghost character for not managing to stop him from being an idiot.
At which I cocked my head like a quizzical basset hound and discovered that the book was born out of a linked series of short stories that McGuire wrote for online magazine The Edge of Propinquity. The series focuses on Rose Marshall, a hitchhiking ghost seeking revenge on the man originally responsible for her death.
The first story is still online at the magazine site (along with some introductory notes). The rest are available through archive.today:
A while back I found a photo of a barbecue grill housed in a casket and was dismayed because there were no other photos or information about it. Fabulous commenter Fiend4Halloween just pointed me to a version that’s not only much nicer, it also includes build instructions. Check out this awesomeness.
The creator is lime3D, a self-described “Inventor for Hire,” who built the grill for tailgating parties with the Nightmare Cruisers Hearse Club. The modified casket and accessories are fairly heavy, so part of the project involved refurbishing a trailer to tow the grill behind his hearse. I would enjoy seeing that driving down the road.
The casket mod is really well-done, with half of the interior housing the grill and the other half an insulated cooler. There’s storage space between the two for tools and utensils, and the storage lid doubles as a cutting board. He even installed a radio in the exterior.
Now, obviously, this is a project that requires some fairly advanced skills and tools, so it’s beyond the scope of a lot of us DIY types. However, if you’ve got the necessary experience (or can obtain the services of a welder and/or carpenter), this would be an amazing build opportunity. If you aren’t the tailgating type, mount it on a stand in your yard.
The maker answers some additional questions in the comments section, such as where to obtain a casket. U.S. law makes it fairly easy to purchase them from a third-party source; Wal-Mart sells them, as does Amazon. If those options aren’t available to you (or are too expensive), check with local funeral homes for damaged products. You’re going to rip out the whole interior anyway, and an exterior dent or two shouldn’t matter much. If you don’t want to bother with the cooler half of the project, a child-size or pet casket (why they make steel caskets for pets is another question entirely) should be significantly cheaper and could house just the grill.
If you were a kid in the early 80s you might have been permanently scarred by Alvin Schwartz’ 
Novelty purveyor Archie McPhee has just released its “modest urn;” an inexpensive cremains repository for the thrifty.
I love a good sideshow gaff, and the Pyewackett and Pecke site has posted a rare treat: Build notes and photos for a great-looking FeeJee Mermaid prop. Artist Dan Baines has a five-part series of posts detailing the prop: 