Creeeeeeepy.

 Pumpkin Rot mentioned this movie on his blog, and the trailer looks creepy as fuck. I want to see this, and the original short film (only eleven minutes!) it's based on. Watch ye, and freak oooout!

Awkwardness Ahoy

I hate doing this. Seriously. On a pathologic level. I loathe and detest asking for help, largely because I'm afraid to do it. Ask Cins, she knows how much I hate the feeling of being an unwelcomed intrusion.

But I need help, and I need it, badly.

As any of the podcast listeners know, I've been having a rough time of it. My 14 year old cat, who I have had for everyone of those years, is in chronic renal failure, and while he can be maintained for now with subcutaneous fluids and special food I still have that knowledge in my head that sooner or later, when his quality of life drops, I'll have to have him put down.

Adding to that, my father died in March. I took my cat to the vet on Saturday, woke up Sunday morning to a message from my sister demanding that I call her where she told me that my dad died the night before. These two events ate up with little I had in savings, and because I'm still making up the finals I missed from last quarter, my financial aid got all kinds of messed up as well. Then this last Saturday I discovered that the assistanceship that would help pay for my first year of grad school got revoked thanks to the budget cuts that seem to be sweeping my school like a plague. Adding to this is the fact that my job ends in September.

I'm in trouble, of the deep shit variety. I talked with Cins and Metal Mikey and both thought it would be okay to post this here, so here is my plea:

Will you please commission me?

I'm a good artist, and a very crafty person. I've been designing Halloween decorations to make out of card stock and glitter, and the people I've shown them to have liked them. I'd be happy to design and create one for you. I create all of my blanks, and cut everything out by hand. No Cri-Cuts or punches, just me, some card stock, and an exacto knife.

I can also sew. Want a doll that looks like your mom? Want to finally be able to take Leather Face to bed with you? Need a Sam doll to keep the nightmares near? I can design and create something for you.

Want a drawing of something absolutely filthy? I'm your woman. I will draw anything excepting pedophilia or bestiality, but furry stuff is fine. Want a drawing of Freddy Krugar tap dancing with Julie Andrews? I can do that! If you commission me you'll get the original drawing, not a print, and I can do it black and white, in charcoal (also B&W), colored pencil, marker, or water color as the media of choice.

I can make little charms out of fimo in whatever shape you want. Need a scarf? I can knit you one!

Please, help me out. I don't do shoddy work, and I need 700$ or there's a very real chance I'm going to be evicted. I really, really don't want this to happen, and I'm scared. Everything is going wrong, I need help to make it right. If you decide to take me up on this, please contact me at the creepykitchgals@gmail.com address.

ANY help is appreciated, and that includes spreading the word for me. I know times are tough and a lot of people are barely scraping by. Don't feel obligated to help financially, but PLEASE spread the word for me? I need all the help I can get.

Thanks.

EDIT: Cins here. I can vouch for her art work! If you want to see her style, please check out Stac's DeviantArt page here!

An Observation

Looking at where that clip for The 'Burbs is frozen, I must comment. For some reason whenever I would pause our tape (fuck I'm old) copy, for some reason it would ALWAYS freeze there, on that same look on Tom Hanks' face.

He looks fucking EVIL there.

Just had to say.

My Nine Iron is an Extension of My Penis.

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SkullyBoom Love

This logo wins for being EXACTLY what they sell.

They don't know it, but SkullyBoom was invented for me. I managed to wreck my Saturn last winter (in the stupidest way possible, though thankfully one that minimized any risk of human damage), and got a newer car with a mix of insurance money and my older brother. My newer car, a white Ford dubbed The Boo Mobile, is quite posh for someone who has only ever owned used cars. Keyless entry, working A/C, low mileage. It also has a killer speaker system, but the car is schizo in a way that makes these speakers virtually useless, because I have no way to connect my iPod to them. For some reason the tape deck won't play the cassette adapter that I used before, and when I tried an FM adapter, it turned out my cigarette lighter, the source of power for said adapter, is dead. Why? Who the fuck know. And I'm sure you, the reader is probably adding who the fuck cares to that statement.

You care because that led me to the glorious world of external speakers, 99% of which are total crap for a moving car. EXCEPT for SkullyBoom. I bought one of their speakers on pre order, long before I trashed my previous car, so clearly an external force was at work here. Initially purchased to use while doing house work and as something that my nieces and nephews could use with my iPod, this speaker saved me from hours upon hours of boredom.

I'll be honest: I only bought the speaker for two initial reasons: 1: to support a small, growing business, and 2: I fuckin' loved that it was skull shaped. But it's also the loudest speaker for its size I've ever heard, and it is also the clearest, something crucial for in-car use. There's no separate volume control for the speaker itself, instead the volume is entirely dependent on the MP3 player's volume setting. The other straight up awesome feature: no batteries! You charge it on your computer, and from experience I can tell you that the charge lasts for a long time. I can usually get to and from my sister's house, 6 hours round trip, without needing a charge.

This is the same color speaker I have. The eyes are the actual speakers, and my model is either strung out, like above, or totally baked.

But the best part of SkullyBoom, in my opinion, is their customer service. I got my speaker in January, and it broke in May. When I contacted them they had me return it, and then got me a new one IN THREE DAYS. That is some seriously AWESOME turn around, and for that reason I wear my SkullyBoom decal on my car, and happily!

If you're looking for a great, LOUD little speaker, then head over to skullyboom.com, and tell 'em we sent you! Now if I could just get them to make ear buds so I can stop using Skull Candy's crap..

New Murder Dolls!

I still need Clio and Deuce. :(

Mattel hit a stroke of awesome recently, and my wallet is going to pay, with pain, if need be. This article is hard to write because I have a cat butt in my face. Apparently my neck/chest is the best and warmest seat in the house, according to Salem. This new doll line is called Monster High, and the dolls are the teenaged daughters (and a few sons. Prom IS coming, after all.) of famous monsters. They are also fucking adorable.

The main four and easiest to find are Draculaura, Clawdeen, Frankie Stein, and Lagoona Blue; I'm sure you can parse what child belongs with whom. I lucked out over Halloween and was able to get all four at my local Fred Meyer's who did a buy one get one free sale-- apparently Freddy's wasn't feeling too confident over their saleability. But when I went back later in the season the dolls were all gone, and there were none in the after Halloween corpse, though there were plenty of Halloween Barbies marked down.

These dolls are seriously cute, and one thing I really like is that they have their own mold-- they're not retrofitted Barbies or Bratz dolls. They're very jointed, especially on their arms, and each has her own little special touch. Frankie's eyes are different colors and she has stitching all over her limbs, Clawdeen has pierced wolf ears (and no human ears, a nice touch), Draculaura has elf ears as well as fangs (along with Clawdeen), and Lagoona has little, transparent, removable fins on her arms and legs.

Another touch I liked is that each of their fashion styles has its own flavor. All of them are very "fashion doll chic", of course, but in that continuum there are little touches of individuality. Lagoona's look is surfer casual (with heels, but somethings are endemic to fashion dolls), Draculaura is sort of new wave happy goth. Clawdeen is very animal print fashionista, and Frankie has a Hot Topic punk touch with lots of plaid. Each character also has her own back story, and comes with her little diary.

What we have here is a very charming doll line, and perfect for creepy little (or big) girls to play with. Eventually I'm going to get a shelf to display them in my living room, and I may get a doll for either my goddaughter or one of my nieces for Christmas, depending. Next year an extended line is slated, featuring Ghoulia, the zombie girl, and more boys, thankfully. I always hated having ten Barbies to one Ken; it always made sex in the Barbie Dream bed awkward with everyone watching... ah, childhood memories.

Bottom line: this dolls are adorable, and we really need to encourage this trend in dolls! I NEED MORE CREEPY! And if you don't support them you'll awake one night to the the enraged gaze of Creepy Murder Dolls.

Thank about THAT before you snub Mattel!

I Had Such Plans..

SUCH PLANS!

But school effectively crushed those dreams, like a technicolor cockroach under the heel of monotone conformity.

So FUCK IT, sez I! I shall post all of my glorious Halloween nonsense now, now that I am freed of two of the three research papers I had due this quarter!

So stay tuned and comment often, lest you wake in the night and find the terrifying image of myself and Cins, standing at the foot of your bed, fondling a slab of bacon, and muttering dark, broken things that you simply do not want to hear! Also, if you're a boy, I will totally make you wear girl clothes. My little brother can tell you stories on my prowess in this endeavor.

Lesser Known Halloween Favorites, 1

I am a total slut for the Halloween season. You're shocked I know; you're also just as easy for the orange and black as I am or you wouldn't be here. Come, you're among friends; embrace the inner holiday slut. Embrace it. SUCCUMB! Of course, you get purple and orange herpes if you do; that's the festive price we all must pay. I also have green and red gonorrhea, but that's a topic for later in the year.

As a result of this tarted up behavior of mine, I will watch almost anything that has Halloween in it, at least once. I've discovered several enjoyable little movies as a result, most of them aimed at people about 25 years younger than myself. Hooray for emotional immaturity!

Christopher Llyod's DAAAAID in this! This dvd came WRAPPED IN PLAAAAAASTIC! Did you see what I did there? Huh? Huh? Didja?

The first of these titles is the underrated and hugely enjoyable When Good Ghouls Go Bad, starring Christopher Lloyd, Joe Pichler, and Brittany Byrnes. I watched this absently one day while folding laundry, and was fell in love with it; the story is sweet, it's got great timing for the comedic parts, and while there is some cgi it's used more to augment the practical special effects. That's right, folks! You got real people as zombies, or, if too dessicated, puppets! I think the special effects have a lot to do with the charm of this film-- had it all been cgi it would have taken on a static, sterile quality instead of the lively goofiness that is instead inherent. The costuming is also a lot of fun-- a lot of decayed velvet and shredded silks kinda deal, which I personally love.

The plot is simple as well as unlikely, like any good holiday special should be: the town of Walker Falls doesn't celebrate Halloween anymore, fearing the wrath of the ghost of Curtis Danko, who after committing suicide (I think. I need to rewatch this. Today, probably. NCIS is fun and all, but the dead people don't tend to smart off. They just lay there. How inconsiderate.) in 1981, swore that a curse would come down on the head of anyone who brought Halloween back to the small town. Theyve bumped along fine for twenty years, until the Walker family that the town's named for, comes back to reopen the candy factory that established the town in the first place. Christopher Lloyd plays Uncle Fred, the patriarch of this clan, who is goofball incarnate. Everyone calls him Uncle Fred, something he put into place for branding reasons years before; even his adult son and 12 year old grandson Danny call him this. There's a lot of family dysfunction here; dad works too m uch, leaving Uncle Fred as playmate for Danny, who is bullied a lot at school. The usual plot of coming to realize your loved ones are the best thing ever, blah blah blah.

Christopher Lloyd channeling Lemmy from Motorhead.

This is very much aimed at kids, but it's got enough gleeful ghoulishness that parents can watch along and enjoy it. Minimal smarm, more of a focus on Dead Folks Crackin' Wise, which is fine by me. This is actually a great gateway drug for kids to get their feet wet in the horror genre. There is a love story of sorts, between both father and son Walker; both are sweet and not saccharine, thanks be to God. Trouble starts when Danny is pressured into looking at the "cursed" statue that Curtis Danko made the night he died. As an aside, isn't Curtis Danko just the perfect name for a town legend?

How perfect does he look for the school weirdo circa 1981? You KNOW he listened to Bauhaus and the Smiths.

Shortly there after, weird shit starts to happen all over town, and Uncle Fred accidentally drops dead. But it's when he resurrects as a zombie that trouble starts to really fly. There are great bits where Uncle Fred gets an arm or two ripped off, and then needs his limbs reapplied via power drill and hammer! Like a I said, there's a happily morbid streak in this film. It's also revealed that many of the children of Walker Falls have been having Halloween in secret, in the now derelict home that Curtis Danko once lived in. It's a very sweet, sort of Secret Garden vibe; the kids decorated and come in costume while bringing candy, music, etc. I really like these scenes because there are some great costumes floating around in the background; more thought than usually goes into costumed extras scenes. But at the same time, a lot look exactly like what you'd expect a kid to come up with on the fly, especially in a town where Halloween hasn't been since 1981.

Curtis Danko post crypt. He's a really great looking puppet. How cool would that look in a yard haunt?

Give it a watch if you like anything pertaining to Halloween, and especially if you have kids. It's a great way to help kids find delight in horror, instead of seeing it as something to be avoided until they're 20 and finally bring themselves to watch Poltergeist as well as A Nightmare on Elm Street, and only then with an alcoholic booster. Autobiographical? Perhaps. A little.

Or a lot.

Liquid Courage! Why yes, I am a lightweight. Thank you for asking!

Desperation is Not Pretty.

I am so desperate for Halloween tv that I'm watching Home Shopping Network's Halloween sale.

Try not to be TOO harsh when you judge me, okay?

Halloween Artists, version 1

I love Twitter; I learn all kinds of weird, interesting stuff there. Like how to put on makeup like Angelina Jolie, or what Craig Ferguson's Labor Day dinner looks like. Please note, I'm not complaining, folks! I also discover a lot of awesome Halloween-based wonderful, like the AWESOME website, Cult of the Great Pumpkin. On this site I discovered my newest entry to the Favorite Artist link, a man named Bruce Walters.

I don't know if Mr. Walters defines himself as a specifically Halloween artist, but he certainly has made one hell of a contribution to that medium. He did a series called Halloween Flight, and it is so perfect at summation for this most hallowed season that I have to share it, and, when I finally beat my finances into submission (it's all about violence with me, but I embrace that, really), I'm going to get his book of this instillation. Here are a few examples of his stuff, used COMPLETELY without permission.

There is a snippet of poem for this that reads:
"Summer's path has led to winter's threshold.
Its entrance moonlit as foresaid.
Enter gravely or with revelry bold
for with you, also pass the dead."

This is the only text in the series, and both it and the art itself reminds me heavily (in tone) of Edgar Allen Poe.

Everything about this image is perfect for me.

Head over to his website here to see the full series. While there be sure to look around at his whole site, not just this installation. He has a lot of wonderful artwork there, one of my favorites being the gigantic painting he did of the Headless Horseman.

Go! Check it out! Wallow in the coming season!

P.S: NO idea why the hell I can't get he italics to turn back off. But it's irritating the fuck out of me.

IT BEGINS!!!

The orange and the black is upon us! HALLOWEEN SEASON IS OFFICIALLY OPEN! It's always open for me, but that's because I live on the grounds and never really leave Halloween. Brief detour for Christmas, but I am the Keeper of the Creepy.

To commemorate this Season of Spooky, I have links!

I-Mockery has started their two months of Halloween celebration, beginning today! Go give it a look, they have great content and creepy content both!

X-Entertainment is still in the Summer Party, but I know Matt loves Halloween, and he's already dropping hints on how awesome this year's Halloween Countdown is going to be, so I would imagine it'll start soon, so keep an eye out!

WOOHOOO! Let us celebrate the orange and the black and the purple! My favorite time of year is about to start!

Did You Know That If You Pee Hard Enough You Can Fly?

Or so I learned a few nights ago! I had always suspected a corollary between force of urine stream and the ability to hover, and my theory was proven. I'll present my paper to MENSA next week. Wanna know how I learned? No? Too damn bad, it's my blog, not yours. SO READ ON, FEARLESS.. UM, READER!

I had some friends come into town a few days ago-- the parents of my goddaughter, in fact (known by me as The Bean). Since Kari (the mommy) is from the 'Burg, she comes to visit her mother quite often, and we usually hang out one night while they're in town. They lure me with promises of Thai food, and we swap gossip and amusement for a few hours.

At the moment, my front door is jacked up, compliments of one of my nieces who went all She- Hulk Smash on it, so until I can afford to repair it, it's kept shut and locked, and I use the back door as my primary entrance/exit. My yard is horseshoe shaped, and I have a little forest of mature pine trees all over. So even in daylight it stays dim and cool in my yard, and at night there is little ambient light even if there's a full moon out. It's not really a problem though, as the path around my house is clear, and there are motion lights at both front and back door. The only place it's really dark is at the bottom of the horseshoe shape, but like I said, it's a an unblocked path way.

So what in the HELL was the cold, smooth thing that pressed against my right calf as I was sashaying to the door, thinking my usual filthy thoughts?

Now, I am usually in possession of a moderately rational side. I am extremely prone to flights of imagination, as Cins can attest, but if there is a reasonable answer for something I'm usually capable of finding it. I have NO IDEA what touched my leg, but let me promise you this: a mystery touch in total darkness is as bad if not WORSE than something touching you under water (unless you're swimming at night-- that's worse). I squealed and did not know I was running until I was at my back door and the motion light came on. I slammed my key in the lock and was inside with the dead bolt thrown in, I'd conservatively guess, one half second.

It was a lot like this, but with a kicky hair cut and pad thai left overs.

I was so spooked that I found I couldn't pee unless the bathroom window (which is near that corner though it does not actually over look it) was firmly closed.

Did I bolster my nerves, grab a flash light and a base ball bat and go out and look? Fuck no! Do I look stupid?! At worst it was some tiny, gibbering monstrosity that goes around pressing cold glass bottles against unsuspecting legs, at best it was a skunk, and either damn way, I lose in that equation!

I think I ran before he could get his teeth in.

I went and looked the next day, but there was, as expected, nothing there. There is literally nothing but the flat, pine needle-laden path, and the side of my house. I've since, several times, walked that path at night, and have been thankfully unfondled. I've resisted the urge to run it, but just barely, and that's more because I hate to run than anything else.

I've creeped myself out typing this, and I think I need a drink. Why do you make me do these things to myself, blog? Why??

Hooray! A happy ending after all!

An Unpleasant Way to Wake Up

When I was 14 years old I went to live with my paternal grandparents in Arcata, California, smack in the middle of Humbolt County. I may very well have been the only teen to live there who would never smoke pot. My grandparents' house is very old: though now in the middle of Arcata proper, when they bought it back in the late 1950's it was still surrounded by farm land. As a product of originally agricultural origin, it is a large, two story farm house, replete with quaint and occasionally bizarre architecture. I love this house; I have always loved this house. It was one of my favorite places to be when I was small, and the setting only contributes to how the house has held me charmed over the years. There is no front or back yard, instead two sprawling areas on either side of the house. The front in the street the house sits on, the back is the wild, brambly slope that lead down into the Bottoms area of Arcata, named by some distant cousin "The Barrens", I assume after the wild play land frequently described in Stephen King's fictional (and often evil) town of Derry, Maine. At the back of the house are some of the tallest cypress trees in the area, visible for miles around. All of this worked together to concoct some alchemy for me; it is a place I will remember with love for the entirety of my life.

But, like any decent old house, there's a ghost. Her name is Leticia, and she lives in the attic. My grandmother invented her to keep all of us from playing upstairs when we were small-- my grandparents' house is antiques-laden, and she didn't trust us around them alone. For as long as I can remember, there has been a painting hanging by the staircase, a reproduction of Rembrandt's Girl At An Open Half Door. We were told that painting was a picture of the resident ghost.

Meet Leticia. She lives in the attic.

We were never told she was mean or evil, simply that she slept during the day, and as a result we needed to play downstairs or preferable outside so we didn't wake her. When I was little I accepted this as fact and never questioned it. That we would occasionally hear upstairs movement in a house that projected every footstep only cemented this concept. When I was older, I would learn that, though my grandmother had invented Letitia, she had merely given a name to something that was already there. Leticia was not invention; Leticia is fact.

Most of my observations were small things, and some events were unquestionably the result of a very imaginative teenager living in a house with some serious, serious ambiance. The hallway up to my room still has the wall paper original to the house-- and it's been falling apart as long as I've been alive. Turns out wall paper tends to do that past the century mark.

Leticia's room is just at the top. Mine was just next to it. I have fallen down these stairs so. Many. Times.

On these stairs I would frequently leave my folded laundry, to take upstairs with me when I next went up (this drove my grandmother APE SHIT which was a big reason for why I kept doing it. The other prominent reason was that I am deeply, deeply lazy.). I usually put the pile o' clean clothes on the third step, as it was exactly hip-height on my frame. Sometimes, when I was home alone and had been all along, I would notice that my clothes had moved from the 3rd step to the 4th or 5th, and once or twice down to the 2nd. A few times I'm almost sure that my clothes were put upstairs on my bed, and I couldn't actually remember taking them up there, though that could easily just be inattentiveness on my part.

But the weirdest thing that occurred during my brief habitation there happened one Sunday morning when the house was full of family. My grandmother liked to have a big family breakfast on Sundays. Various aunts, uncles, and cousin would come, and eat a huge meal. At 8 am. As a truly devoted night owl who profoundly hates getting up before 10 am, this quickly became something that I slept through, which of course pissed Grandma off (I learned during this year that I had a knack for that).

One Sunday I awoke in a startle, ready to holler because someone had been in my room, staring at me. This is a pet peeve of mine-- I really dislike people looking at me while I'm sleeping. I was certain my very young cousins had been in my room again, and like most fifteen year olds I was less than excited by the thought of baby cousins taking off with my shit. I knew someone had just seconds before been looking at me; my door was not just open (I slept with it closed) but it was still swinging from the touch of whomever had just been there. Scrabbling for my glasses I climbed out of bed and went looking for the culprit to yell at them.

I was certain I would catch a rugrat or two just outside my door as I had heard no one go down the stairs just outside my door. This house is so old and creaky that you can literally hear every footstep a person makes. You can hear it so clearly you can also usually tell what room they're going into. You could hear it best when you were downstairs and whomever was upstairs, but even when I was upstairs I could hear a person walking downstairs. So there is no way in hell a 5 year old and a 3 year old could have gone scampering down the stairs without me hearing every footfall. Other than my swearing and the creaking of my bedroom door, there had been silence upstairs in the few seconds since I awoke.

Just to be sure, I went downstairs. Maybe I had been so confused when I woke that I had missed the sounds of fleeing feet. But when I went grumpily down I learned quickly that my young cousins had not come that Sunday. So I asked my grandmother, who was cleaning up, if she had come and looked into my room, perhaps to glare at me for choosing sweet sleep over an early morning calorie load. Grandma was pissed at me when I went over to ask her-- no shock there, as she was usually pissed off at me all day on Sundays due to my accursed resistance to the Borg. I mean family time. Today was no difference. When I asked her if she'd just been upstairs, she snappily told me that of course not, and then went off on her usual diatribe about how she would never violate my privacy by going in my room, blah blah blah. Hilariously, this was a lie-- she would never go into my room, she would just stand at the door way and snoop, and then yell at me later for my admittedly slovenly ways. So that really wasn't an out of the way question.

She then rounded on me, and very angrily said "And I don't appreciate you treating my house that way!" I stared blankly at her; I had apparently wandered into the country of Non Sequitur. When I asked her what the hell she was rambling about, she told me that everyone at the table heard me get up, walk down to the hallway, and then RUN down the hall, into my room, onto my bed. They then heard me do this three more times. The problem with this? I had done no such thing. I'm certain I wasn't sleep walking, either, because I have never gone sleep walking in my life; I had been deeply asleep, and had not moved for some time when I awoke. I am sure of this because I could feel the need to stretch, badly, when I awoke, my pulse was also slow and my breathing calm. Finally, I'm an asthmatic; I would have known if I had been running, because I would have had an asthma attack as a result.

But everyone had heard "me", not just my grandmother. And when I asked everyone else if they had been in my room, I got a negative in reply. I don't think anyone was lying, because none of them had previously expressed any interest in my room at all (other than Grandma's afore mentioned occasional excursion, and that she only did when I wasn't home). Added to this was the fact that until a few months later, I was the only (living) person who inhabited the second floor.

It wasn't a frightening or cruel experience, it was just a weird one. The impression I get now was that I was being admonished to get up, because I was missing breakfast and family time. My grandmother does not to this day believe there has ever been any presence in her house; she doesn't believe in ghosts at all. Grandpa has never said what he thinks either way, but he's pretty taciturn by nature. But the feeling I get, and I've generally learned to trust feelings like these, is that my grandmother simply gave a name and face to something that was already there, something benevolent and lonely. Leticia is who she is now, and I think she's fine with that name. Whomever she was in life I have no idea, but now she's the girl in the half-door, and she lives in the attic.

Creepy Crafts

Just a few more days and Cins and I should FINALLY be able to get episode five out! I hope everyone is still sticking with us, and would like to mention that this hiatus is ENTIRELY my fault.

This is the time of year where I start to get dreamy, and find myself thoughts drifting of their own accord to my favorite time of year which is, of course, Halloween. According to one of my favorite websites, Halloween is Here, spooky times are only 123 days away as of this posting. Hell, by the end of next month we'll be seeing Trick or Treat candy in stores! And personally, I LOVE it.

So this seemed like the ideal time to share the accidental Halloween craft I ended up doing for a loved one. One of my nephews is still very small, and he has developed a deep and profound love affair with his two Care Bears, Harmony Bear and Funshine Bear. While at my house he was rooting through my eBay stuff, and stumbled across some Care Bear accoutrements I had forgotten I possessed. He found a dress for the same-sized CBs he has, as well as a sleeping bag and a pillow, also the perfect size. He immediately claimed them as his own, and I gave them to him, wondering how hard his dad was going to let me have it when he discovered I'd given his son a dress to play with. (As it turns out, my brother took it all in stride, and just rolls his eyes when he sees it.)

After discovering that these items were several years old and therefore unlikely to be found at our local Fred Meyer's (Kroger's to all on the East coast), I was press-ganged into making him a duplicate of each item. How this became a Halloween craft lays in my cloth inventory: almost all of my fabric stash is Halloween themed because a: I'm planning on making myself an All Hallow's quilt, and b: I just really fucking like Halloween.

The Tiny Terror picked the fabric he liked which I immediately nay-sayed; he picked purple fabric for a purple bear. He got black instead. I will sew for him, I will not offend my own aesthetics for him! Plus he was fine with the black.

Here are the pleats pinned into place. I stabbed the shit out of myself several times doing this, and two of my nephews kept taking off with my pin cushion; apparently that was the coolest fake tomato-and-strawberry combo that ever was.

Anyone who has ever had to hand stitch pleats will understand my frustration. Normally with a machine you pin your pleats and then zip a line as fast as fucking possible, but my machine has apparently been watching The Exorcist a lot and getting ideas; at the moment it just turns into a hell-mouth and bites at me whenever I try to use it.

Here the pleats and hem have been poorly sewn. He's six, he doesn't give a crap.

I was SO glad to be finished with those pleats. Small hands kept trying to "help" and subsequently the pins would slip. I may have flipped off the skirt after I had it all sewn. Hard. Like, the ligaments in my finger hurt afterward.

Waistband attached. Not sure why a bear with no waist needs one, but hey, I'm just the seamstress.

This part was fairly easy once I got everything folded and pinned. I am fortunate in that I have nimble fingers, and also that I have about a bajillion pins and would gleefully pin shit into submission, then taunt it.

This looks so flirty, especially for a Care Bear.

Here the straps that will become the sleeves are attached the the apron front. The other dress has little ruffled cap sleeves attached to the straps, but I was suddenly struck with the notion that I would have to hem on a curve and then pleat AGAIN, then attach, and I decided it was now more of a sundress. Harmony Bear needed some vitamin D. "D" for "Don't do that to yourself".

TA-DAAA!

And there's the finished product. I have to admit that it was gratifying to succeed in this; I have never taken a proper sewing class, and did this dress by eyeballing it, as patterns both frustrate and intimidate me (I don't know how to do darts). Fortunately, I'm very good at taking things apart in my head, so I just reduced the simple design of the dress down to shapes and ended up with my own variation. To date I still need to attach a pocket, but over all, I consider it done. The Tiny Terror loves the dress, and really, that's all that matters, right? Plus, I have to be honest: little boys playing with Care Bears is adorable, and there's not a damn thing wrong with it.

So there's my post on how I made a creepy dress for a Care Bear! Aren't you glad you read that? Do you feel like a better, stronger person? Do you feel that YOU TOO could make dresses for small relations, regardless of gender? Then POST PICTURES, fool!

Creepy Crap For Sale

Not literally. I think eBay frowns on people trying to move bio-hazardous materials through their auction site.

I'm selling some stuff to help address my real-life problems as described by my delightful partner in crime, one post below. If you guys would be nice enough to take a look and see if there's anything you like there (or pass on the link if you know someone else who might like this) I would really, REALLY appreciate it. There's a melange of stuff though I only have 8 items up at the mo, but more, and a lot of it Halloween related, will go up tomorrow.

Stac's ebay junk

Thanks guys, and thanks for bearing with me!

Lymph Lymph Everywhere..

Its almost 3 am and here I sit, writing a paper that's due in 8 hours. I have to be up for class in 5. My paper is on Mayan origin stories, taken from the Popol Vuh, which is the text that explains the creation of the world in Mayan belief systems. It was miraculously saved from destruction when European contact was made with the New World; the Mayans hid it.

As I write this paper, I am listening to the theme to Clive Barker's Nightbreed, one of my favorite movies, and one of my favorite pieces of thematic music. Clive Barker's work is always bloody, but it's more than that, too, it's lymphy, I once heard it described, and that description has always stuck with me as the perfect summation of the look of a lot of his gore.

So while listening to lymph music, what do I read, in a section on human sacrifice but this:
"You will become great in your very being. Defeat all the tribes. They must bring blood and lymph before us, they must come to embrace us. They belong to us already." (Popol Vuh, 163-4, Tedlock translation).

That's a lot of lymph for 3 in the morning.

Family Pain

Just a quick note: Next podcast ep is supposed to be viewer's choice. So send us your choices! Got something absolutely AWFUL? Got something that hurt you so bad you want someone else to hurt with you? Found a hidden gem? Got a guilty pleasure? GIMME, FUCKERS!

So Cins is off playing pirate for the next week, and I have been left to keep the cobwebs if not cleared out then at least festively sprayed with glitter. I was listening to the fine lads over at Drunken Zombie talk about Hitchcock's Psycho, and my own family's recurring trauma sprung back to life in my brain pan.

The first story is not Hitchcock-specific, but it was something that plagued my whole family. That plague was my father, Steven. Or as I call him, Dad. Dad everyonce in a while decides that some family member's pulse is faaaaaar too calm, and he tries to find some way to terrorize that person. His favorite attack point? The bathroom. His favorite place to get you? The shower. He scared me so damn many times that now, in my early thirties, I still have to open the shower curtain and occasionally peer nervously around for a lurking figure with mania on his mind. To show the true depth of this trauma: I haven't lived with my parents since I was 14. Some scars run deep. To exacerbate it, I'm a screamer, so many was the time I'd be a small child, laying down in the tub, washing my hair, only to open my eyes and see my father's face, mere inches from mine, staring. I screamed a lot as a child.

But Dad's favorite target by far has always been my mother. I will refer to her here as "Mom". Mom is also a screamer; apparently those genes are dominant in this bloodline. Dad's favorite thing to do was to either tear the shower curtain open and shriek, or sneak in and put a cold pop can against Mom's neck. Seriously, did you guys think I came by my vicious personality purely via nature? Nurture had a lot to with it, too. We'd see Dad start giggling, creep into their room and the attached bathroom, and then shortly there after we'd hear Mom scream, Dad's giggle increase, and Mom holler "DAMMIT, STEVEN!" Sometimes he'd even get her twice in the same shower.

But on one glorious, deeply hilarious day, my father got his comeuppance in a big way, and I was in the house to see Karma bite my father firmly on the ass. He had gone a'sneakin', as usual. Mom was getting ready to bathe, but not int he shower yet, and brushing her hair out. Dad, seeing this, dropped down into a crouch so she wouldn't see him in the mirror. He was getting ready to grab her and scare the shit out of her, when she adjusted her towel. At the same time Dad was moving forward. Her elbow met the bridge of his nose. The elbow said "wallop", and in reply, his nose replied "crunch!". My mother had accidentally broken my father's nose.

It was fucking glorious.

In a truly wonderful reversal, we in the living room hear a muffled roar, followed by "DAMMIT, ALLAYNE!" Dad came out of their room cupping his nose, blood flowing copious and red, and Mom following him, trying to apologize and cackling at the same time. I joined her-- I also got the cackle gene-- and those of us who had been terrorized by my dad in the past (i.e, all of us) followed them into the kitchen, essentially to point and laugh at my father.

Now I personally take the more proactive approach to scare-based revenge-- my current favorite is to tell my dad I'm dropping out of college because I'm pregnant and have the father narrowed down to one of several potential fathers. He falls for it every time. I have also been known to hide in a closet and leap out with a scream-- what I'm saying is if you scare me (and it's really fucking easy, sadly), I WILL get you back.

But Mom didn't have to; payback got her revenge on my Dad for her. To add to it, Dad looked like a raccoon for several days after, and talked funny to boot. So remember this if you like to scare your significant other, to terrorize her (or him) in a variety of ways, much like my father. Just remember: payback really can be a bitch.

I Probably Should Have Just Gone to Bed.

I stayed up until 3 am this morning watching Mongolian Death Worm. Now, with a title this stupid, and the fact that it was on, of course!, SciFi (I know how they spell it; much like Prince's stupid symbol, I refuse to participate.) I should have known better. I really, really should have. But this was one of those weird movies that had a cast that was way too good for it. Sean Patrick Flannery was the lead, Daniel, and was way too charming for my getting to bed at a decent time. He also had a great, low-key chemistry with the female lead, Dr. Alicia Something, played by Victoria Pratt.

This movie is supposed to have been set in the vast Mongolian grasslands. Hilariously, everyone in this drives a vehicle; from what I've heard (and it is admittedly second hand. I'd go look it up but, well, it's Sunday and.. uh.. I don't wanna.) the Mongolian tundra is simply too big for vehicles to be viable. There's no place to refuel, a big reason for why the nomadic people in that area prefer horseback. There are also several shots, at the experimental oil drilling facility (run by the expected Evil White Guys Corp) of very lush, manicured lawns, and what appeared to be a forested area. Mongolia does have forested areas, but I'm pretty sure they're not smack in the middle of the tundra, ya know?

But my faaaaaavorite part of this movie was the BLATANT paternalism running rampant and peeing all over the conflicting landscape of Pretend Mongolia. Every single Asian person in this film that was given a name is eaten by the worms (except in one case where someone is inexplicably shot by a member of Evil White Guys Corp. Still not sure why on that one). There was one person of Asian extraction who was portrayed as competent, the local cowboy hat wearing sheriff (?) named Timur. He kicked wormy ass, and then, to punish his hubris for being a competent non-white person in a shitty horror movie, he is literally eaten in the last two minutes of the film. Yeah, fuck you too, movie. Only Whitey could save everyone!

There's also some subplot about finding and looting Ghengis Khan's tomb, but I think I was playing Pet Society on Facebook or something when they explained that. The movie ends with the Evil White Guys Corp goin' 'splode, and then dead guy gold rains down on our cackling survivors. Apparently, heated up gold coins don't hurt when they fall on you from great heights! Who knew? I'm going to cite this film in my defense when I climb a building with scrap jewelry and a slingshot. I think my chances of getting off are pretty good, honestly.

The CGI in the film was almost decent for the most part; the worms, which looked like giant maggots mashed violently with hook worms, looked pretty good, which means they looked gross and squishy. The worms also had a second mouth inside the first: yes, this movie is essentially a Tremors rip-off but with more passive racism and less Fred Ward.

Now, there is an actual rural legend in Mongolia, called the Mongolian Death Worm. I'm sure it sounds way cooler in Mongolian. The actual legend is pretty interesting, and I suggest you look it up.

In summation: I should have gone to bed.

Creepy History

Quickie update first: our premiere podcast should go live sometime this week; I'm trying to figure out how to splice in music for the opening and closing, then we'll upload, etc. Big big thanks (and blame) to Mike from the Cadaver Lab Podcast; thankfully he knows what he's doing, because Cins and I so do not. We'll post here when the episode goes live.

I've bitched endlessly in previous posts that I am a history major with the burgeoning carpal tunnel to prove it. Truthfully, I love history, and am very glad in my four year degree program of choice; it really is fascinating. It's also frequently morbid as hell. Try learning about Ivan IV of Russia-- you'll see why he earned his title of "Ivan the Terrible". Look up what happened to the first "False Dmitri" in Russian history-- it's gruesome and also, because I'm a ghoul, hilarious. It involves his ashes, a canon, and Poland!

In one of my current classes this quarter we've focused on the 1919 Influenza epidemic. This killed more Americans than all of the wars of the 20th century combined. Some 20 to 40 million people are estimated to have died in this pandemic, and the terrifying fact is that it came out of no where, went with the American Doughboys to WWI, infected who knows how many, enemy and ally alike, then mutated (and also killed more American troops than European combat did), came back, and continued to spread, spread, spread.

The most chilling part? The stories of kids playing on stacked caskets, pretending they were pyramids, and the jump rope rhyme that kids came up with:

"I had a little bird,
his name was Enza,
I opened up the window,
and in flew Enza!"

This is, for me, creepier than the rhyme from the Nightmare on Elm Street series. How hard would your blood curdle if you heard kids singing that one while jumping rope? When we did it as kids the worst thing I remember happening is Cinderella kissing a snake on accident, but at least she immediately got medical help in the jump rope rhyme. By the way, if you get that, you are hardcore, playground awesome!

This is just proof that sometimes, reality is scarier than anything we can dream up in fiction.

Unsettling Artwork

I collect "creepy"; things I find that fit that bill are displayed, consumed, or in the case of the internet, added to the bookmarks file. I'm also a goon over on the Something Awful forums (try to contain your shock), and there is frequent fodder for the Creepy Collective that passes through the forums over there. One such item is the link to a website: The Artwork of Keith Thompson.

This guy is amazingly talented, and comes up with often frightening little snippets of story to go along with the artistic children he gives birth to. Some of his stuff is commission work for productions like Borderlands, gaming books/sites, etc, but for my nonexistent money, the best is his original stuff. He does everything from landscapes to characters to robots and the undead, and it's always unsettling. Go into his gallery, and have a look around, you won't regret it. But a word of warning: be prepared to lose a good hour or so of time exploring. For me his artwork causes lost time. Either that or it's whatever's been rustling in my closet, eating my shoelaces.


Here's one of my favorites; I plan to get a print of this when my finances permit:


"SCRIBE: A scrivener automaton working in a rather wealthy merchant's library. The arcane procedures for creating automatons are as varied as their appearance and roles in society (servitors, military, labour, prostitution, etc). The taxidermic use of cured human remains is legalized, economical and common place in their construction (similar to how the powdered wigs in our past often used the hair of corpses). However the practice of "rendering" down living persons into an automaton state is outlawed, it is frequently employed since the resultant product tends to outperform the legal alternative. The merchant who owns this particular scribe automaton has some very extensive paperwork detailing her conformity to all applicable regulation. Despite this assurance, those who deal with her have noticed how quickly she learns new tasks, and have caught her smiling when backs are turned."