The Mummy > Running Angry Zombies

"Now, here’s the thing about regular vampires: they’re fucking lame. They sneak around in the dark and drain blood from people. They talk a big game, sure, and everyone thinks they’re sexy. But is sexy going to protect you from the Wolf-Man?"

Protect yourself this Halloween by studying A Hierarchy of Monsters at Threat Quality Press.

Mama, he's crazy

I passed a gentleman on my way into the restroom at work this morning. He was standing outside the men's room in a sort of lunged-forward stance, staring bug-eyed at a tongue depressor he was holding out in front of him just above his eye level. He rapidly turned the tongue depressor over and over between his fingers, reading the words written on it. Those words were YES on one side and NO on the other. When I came out of the restroom a couple of minutes later, he was still standing there . . . but now he looked perfectly calm, standing in a relaxed way with his hands clasped behind his back and a benign little smile on his face. Maybe the tongue depressor ritual soothes him somehow.

The lost links of You'll Eat It and Like It

Often, when I'm cruising around the web, I come across interesting-looking sites that I don't have time to fully check out at that moment. I'll email myself a link to the site so I can come back later and explore it in depth. Sometimes -- and now is one of those times in my life -- I am busy enough that those emailed links pile up and I never seem to get around to looking at them, let alone bookmarking them. Here are some of the sites I've come across in the last few months that warrant further attention:

The Periodic Table Printmaking Project

Meditations on the Perfect Burger

The Footnotes of Mad Men

Lili's Bookbinding Blog

Jam Today

Foodbuzz

the Manbroidery flickr pool

How to build your own letterpress

Craftastrophe

The Secret Language of Families

Bascom Hogue's red work

Zombie Boogie by Mad Tea Party

Shadow Manor: The Art of Darkness

Cupcake Project

Taxidermy werewolf head

Nerd boyfriend

If you get a chance to check any of these out, let me know what you think, because who knows when I'll ever get around to it?

El Dia de los Muertos

Don't worry - I won't go TOO crazy posting videos. But my friend Isabel sent me this one and I just had to share.

It really is the most wonderful time of the year!

You Make My Dreams Come True

Ever have one of those days?

Ever dream about this man?

I stumbled across this today, and I admit, it kinda freaked me out.

I shan't spend it all in one place

$7

Created by WhatsMyTwitterAccountWorth.com

Home, part 3

These papier-mache fellas live in a vase on our living room mantel. Sean got the star-shaped one on a trip to Croatia years ago. I don't remember where the skull came from.

Home, part 2

My piano. It's a 1966 Yamaha upright, built the same year that I came into being. Sean and I bought it in the summer of 2001, about six months after my dad died, with some of my inheritance money. We went to Waltrip's Music Center in Arcadia and I played Scott Joplin rags on a bunch of the pianos they had for sale; this one was far and away the best. When it's in tune, it has a bright, open sound. It reminds me of the piano on which I accompanied our high school choirs (shades of Glee). My piano is in our living room and is one of the first things you see when the front door is opened.

Quote of the day

"Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit
of happiness and just be happy."

~ Apollinaire

Applehead dolls

Two weeks ago Norman and I got the bright idea to carve applehead dolls. We were in one of those seasonal Halloween stores, and a display of withered little shrunken heads (fake, I assume) reminded me of the appleheads my sisters and I used to carve when we were kids. We must have picked the technique up in school somewhere along the way: You peel an apple and carve a little face into it. Then you sprinkle it with salt (to help draw out the moisture, I guess) and leave it in a warm, dry place for a couple of weeks to dry out and shrink. Voila! An applehead. My sisters and I never did anything with ours beyond admire the finished product, though many people out there on the internets have made some pretty cool complete dolls. Norman was surprisingly enthusiastic about getting crafty -- perhaps it was the prospect of wielding a knife -- so we decided to throw a little carving party. Amazingly, everyone we invited accepted the invitation, and last weekend we gathered at The Shambles to work on our dolls. It seemed like the perfect way to kick off the advent of fall; never mind that it was 95 degrees outside and we had to work indoors with the air conditioner running full blast.

Here's Curtis, peeling his apple.

Lucy is taking a mighty big slice out of her apple with that knife. Dig that look of intensity on her face!

Norman attacked his apple with a vegetable peeler and several of Sean's woodcarving tools. The hand on the left belongs to my sister Karen, who didn't carve any apples but instead wanted to watch the rest of us work on ours.

My two finished appleheads. I used a paring knife and some kind of wood gouger to create mine. I had no illusions about my skills as a carver -- I was primarily pleased because the finished products looked very different from one another. (In case you're wondering, I used Red Delicious and Gala variety apples. The Gala was particularly juicy.)

Norman's finished applehead. It had a decidedly skull-like appearance to it.

Sean, hiding behind his finished applehead. He created really impressive 3D features; I particularly liked the nose.

Curtis' finished applehead. His looked like an owl.

Lucy's finished appleheads. The one on the left looked really simian and kind of unnerved me.

Both Lucy and Curtis took their appleheads home to dry. I popped mine, Sean's and Norman's into our oven and let the pilot light do the drying work for me. I was pretty good about checking on our little guys at first, but then I kind of forgot about them and went a couple of days without opening the oven door to regulate their status. Tonight after dinner I finally checked on them, and lo and behold, they're done. Completely shriveled and dried out, they're ready for whatever decorative touches we decide to apply to them.

They look kind of like they're carved out of wood. The two on the left are mine. The third one is Sean's -- it's the only one that still feels slightly springy, though I think it has mummified adequately. Norman's is on the right. The withered brain-like thing in the center is an extra peeled apple that we dried out in case we want to make some hands or feet for our dolls.

Lucy and Curtis, how are your appleheads coming along? We need to plan a dollmaking session soon!

There's no place like home, or, Stuff around our place, part 1

This bottle opener is hanging on the side of one of our kitchen cupboards. We've had it for years and years and can't remember where it came from; Sean told me that, creepily enough, there was one just like it -- though not this one -- in the pool house of a place he lived when he was a kid. Even creepier, he said he saw a female version of it on eBay a couple of years ago. I can't for the life of me imagine why he didn't bid on it.

Plus ca change . . .

While driving home today, I was listening to a story on NPR about the discovery of Ardi, who is now considered the oldest human ancestor. A scientist who was interviewed said that one of Ardipithicus ramidus' distinguishing characteristics, one that clearly set it apart from earlier, more ape-like creatures, was its lack of large, fearsome canines. Male apes and chimpanzees use their oversized canines to intimidate other males and impress females. Without these, the scientist said, Ardi's male contemporaries would have had to resort to other meaures to woo females, most likely (and I quote) "exchanging food for copulation."

"And that," I thought, "is where evolution stopped."