A Stop by Windsor Castle



In this clip from the OWN TV series The Specials, Sam visits his younger brother Jack, who is on duty as one of the Queen's Guard at Windsor Castle. You can tell that they are both very proud. (via reddit)

Humanity's Fears

That's the thing about humans- we are out worst enemy. This comic is from Alex Culang and Raynato Castro at Buttersafe.

Aura Update



Remember last spring, when I posted so much about the TinyKittens webcam? Then you'll recall the kitten Aura, who was born with a severe cleft palate and had to be tube-fed until she learned to eat solid dry food. Aura and all the other kittens have been adopted into permanent homes, and Aura was taken by Shelly Roche, the kittens main caretaker. Aura had her cleft palate repair surgery on October 17. Shelly calls it "surprise surgery," because she took Aura in for her first consultation at  West Coast Veterinary Dental Services Ltd. and they said, "Do you want us to do the surgery today?" Surprise! See pictures of the surgery here. She was the recipient of a donated piece of bone from a dog.



The stitches held for the required ten days, and Aura can now eat canned cat food -and she's eating up a storm. You can follow her progress at her Facebook page.

Notorious RBG Halloween Costume


Miss Cellania's Links

Witches Floating Down the River. In Portland. (via Boing Boing)

From Elizabeth Taylor to Adolph Hitler, Presenting History’s Greatest Decoys. Hitler's double was filmed for posterity, although he didn't live to see it, in a video that may be disturbing.

The Echoes of Kristallnacht. On November 9-10, 1938, 91 Jewish people died, 30,000 were arrested, and 7,000 Jewish businesses were attacked.

The Creepiest Thing That Ever Happened To You.

The Mountaintop Cemeteries Surrounded by Coal Mines. The process of mountaintop removal has no respect for the living or the dead.

When ‘Dumb Suppers’ Were a Halloween Love Ritual. Once upon a time, young women indulged in magical rites that would reveal who they were to marry. 

The Nazi Werewolves Who Terrorized Allied Soldiers at the End of WWII.

The Bible says to welcome immigrants. So why don’t white evangelicals?

Here's a roundup of political links to get you up to speed.

A blast from the past (2008): America’s Most Haunted: Six Seriously Spooky Sites.

The Kenova Pumpkin House



I posted about the Kenova Pumpkin House 11 years ago, and wondered if it was still a thing in Kenova, West Virginia. Yes, it's up and running for Halloween 2018!

Tweet of the Day


And what does the president want to talk about? Central American refugees, and how we must deploy the army to "defend" our country from them.

Cyriak's Dancing Skeletons



Cyriak Harris already makes the creepiest animated videos on the 'net, so when he makes skeletons dance and releases it the day before Halloween, you know you're in for a really weird treat! His latest animation is called RIP. (via Laughing Squid)

I Got a Job!

It's true! I'm a part-time baker at a local grocery store. I'm in training right now, and it's terrifying. I don't know if I'll be good at this, or be able to keep up with everything. It's been more than thirty years since I've had a job requiring standing all day, and my legs are killing me. And I have to get up pretty early. But I'm excited about it, especially about the prospect of a regular paycheck. I now have several small income streams cobbled together, and although it's not as much as I used to make, it's enough for someone who lives alone and whose kids have full scholarships.

As a consequence, posting may be a little erratic here until I get my schedule straightened out and get used to it. Please bear with me; it's just temporary.



The Swords of Swap

Gettin' funny with the magic, eh? This comic is from Matthew J. Wills of the webcomic Swords. It's about swords. (via Geeks Are Sexy)

Miss Cellania's Links

Everyday Life with the Skeleton Family.

Tossing Salmon for Science. Twenty years of throwing dead fish onto a riverbank makes the trees grow faster. (via reddit)

The Psychology of Faking Your Own Death.
https://gizmodo.com/the-psychology-of-faking-your-own-death-1830022958

Why Is It So Hard For Native Americans To Vote In This Utah County?

Come along for a screening of The Rock Horror Picture Show deep underground in the Paris Catacombs. (Possibly NSFW content)

The religious right has infiltrated the office of Health and Human Services, and reproductive rights are the first target.

These Are The Forgotten Sex Workers Of The First World War Who Played An Important Role In Soldiers' Lives.

The Hidden History of African-American Burial Sites in the Antebellum South.

Billionaires Made More Money in 2017 Than Any Year in Recorded History.

A blast from the past (2007): Destination Cemeteries.

Tweet of the Day



Three-Year-Old Sings BoRhap



The 1975 Queen song "Bohemian Rhapsody" is the perfect tune to belt out in the car when you're by yourself, or when you have your preschooler in the back seat. Here, three-year-old Holly Lee sings the whole song, sans musical accompaniment, with just the minimum of help from her mom. (via Laughing Squid)

How Polar Bears Ruined Halloween



Trick-or-treating can be a  bit different when you live in Nunanvut. In addition to watching out for traffic, you have to keep clear of polar bears! The town of Arviat cancelled outdoor Halloween activities for years because of bears, and now armed guards surround the town during trick-or-treat.

Zombies

I've been hanging out on the internet too long. I've read this discussion on so many websites that it doesn't even seem weird in context. That's why, of all the implausible things on The Walking Dead, the most implausible is the lack of discussion on the nature of zombies. This comic is from Alex Culang and Raynato Castro at Buttersafe.

This….is a Thriller

I am proud and pleased to present a guest post from author and historian WTM, who has spent a lot of time watching classic TV this fall. 


“As sure as my name is Boris Karloff, this… is a THRILLER!
- Boris Karloff, Thriller tagline

As a child of the 1960’s, I was fortunate enough at the tender age of eight to be present for a milestone in television history when, on September 13th, 1960, a new hour-long NBC anthology series premiered. Titled Thriller (aka Boris Karloff's Thriller), it was hosted by legendary horrormeister Boris Karloff.



In seventy years of commercial television history, no other program has ever so effectively realized the enormous potential of cinematic horror. That this black and white hour of weekly television so perfectly captured the unimagined terror and literacy of some of the greatest works in modern horror literature is an enduring testament to the power and legacy of Boris Karloff's Thriller. Sadly, the world of weekly commercial television has seen nothing approaching the quality and integrity of this nightmarish series either before or since its remarkable, gothic inception.

The above sentiments notwithstanding, Thriller originally presented little more than quite ordinary tales on crime and mystery, the content and format (including a host and his opening narration) being in apparent imitation of the popular contemporary program Alfred Hitchcock Presents.  However, it soon became a showcase for gothic horror stories, many of which were based on works by authors who were the greatest writers in the genre, such as Edgar Allan Poe, Cornell Woolrich, Robert Bloch, Robert E. Howard, Richard Matheson, and Charlotte Armstrong.

As would also occur later during the 1960’s with the gothic daytime television series Dark Shadows, Thriller’s producers quickly came to realize that television viewers of that era had a pronounced taste for horror and the supernatural, as opposed to mere mystery and crime drama, and there came a sea change in Thriller as a result. Suddenly, instead of mere mystery and ‘cops and robbers’ intrigue, there soon appeared a host of zombies, witches, demons, vampires, ghosts, ghouls, sorcerers, voodoo practitioners, and other unworldly beings and things, with a much greater thematic emphasis on supernatural horror.

The effect was astounding. Thriller quickly became one of the first, if not the first, ‘must-see TV’ programs of the 1960’s, and it has since garnered a cult following that is active to this day. Small wonder, with the arresting imagery seen on this television series, examples being:

* a dead man walking down stairs, brandishing the bloody hatchet that killed him
* the view from a moving child's swing that has just been used to kill a man
* a man morphing into a living skeleton with glowing eye sockets
* a possessed woman who has bitten the heads off of her pet birds
* the stark realization that one is, quite literally, a monster
* a melting wax statue revealing a skeleton within
* a sorcerer’s decomposing corpse being burned
* a laughing skeleton morphing into a corpse
* disembodied hands that move and kill
* a mirror swallowing a woman
* tormented zombies in a crypt
* Psycho-type human remains
* a genuine medusa's head

On the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), fan Ron Panarotti describes Thriller as follows:
Thriller is simply the best horror program ever done on TV - better than The Outer Limits, The Twilight Zone, One Step Beyond, Night Gallery, Tales From the Darkside, Tales from the Crypt, etc. It's a shame this classic only ran two seasons; it deserved far better.
The show took time to find its niche, and maybe this accounts for its premature demise. But once the show came into its own, nothing else could touch it.

The show obviously owed a lot to the legacy of E.C. Comics, and the better episodes include The Hungry Glass, Pigeons From Hell, The Cheaters, A Wig for Miss Devore, and The Incredible Doktor Markesan. The series often gave us intelligently written stories and, just as important, frequently succeeded in truly frightening its viewers.

Mr. Panarotti’s praise is well-placed; indeed, in his non-fiction book on horror, Danse Macabre, contemporary horror author Stephen King calls Thriller "the best horror series ever put on TV".

However, as with most television series, there are numerous episodes that do not measure up to the rest, including a few actual clunkers. These are generally those episodes that were produced at the beginning of Thriller’s first season. In Thriller’s defense, however, it must be said at once that the Hollywood writers' strike of 1960 was probably the main reason that the early scripts weren't living up to the name of the series. When compared with today's graphically gory productions such as HBO’s Tales From the Crypt (ironically, based upon the same E.C. comics that had in part inspired Thriller), Thriller might seem to be quite tame to modern audiences, but overall, the show has withstood the test of time and can, even today, still inspire chills and goose bumps, as we see here in a testimonial from another satisfied customer on the IMDb:

Recently I saw a Thriller episode on video entitled The Premature Burial and man, even at age 30 plus, it scared the pants off of me and made the goosebumps rise!

I used to watch Thriller regularly as a child and many of the episodes scared the bejesus out of me too. I distinctly remember watching one such episode, The Hungry Glass, from the safety of behind the couch. Yet, this was also solid Family Fare - “the family that was afraid together stayed together” - and my father liked the program as much as his adolescent son did.

The most memorable Thriller episode from my childhood would have to be Waxworks. This particular episode had it all for a young boy who found Thriller, well, thrilling: a spooky opening sequence that quickly becomes the stuff of nightmares, ear-piercing screams, a quite startling and dramatic introduction by Karloff (see above), a wax museum of horrors, bizarre and bloody murders, necromancy, implied necrophilia, exotic and beautiful women, altercations, guns, a fire, and a skeleton. What's not to like?

And it’s not just me, either; Ripperologist Magazine editor Eduardo Zinna offers the following, excerpted from a Thriller discussion that we once had on jtrforums.com:
I remember Thriller from way back when. They were scary - no doubt about it. I still remember vividly Boris Karloff playing a doctor who brought his colleagues back from the dead to force them to apologise for not having recognised his genius; I remember John Carradine playing a hillbilly vampire; I remember a fat, bald character actor with a five o'clock shadow who played an executioner that has been poisoned trying to get across Paris in time to guillotine a condemned man; I remember Pigeons from Hell; I remember A Wig for Miss Devore; I remember Boris Karloff in The Premature Burial; I remember a dummy that came alive, and a host of others. I remember all right.
Although Thriller’s forte had become supernatural horror, not all of the later episodes were of that bent. The producers covered practically all genres, and often covered several in parallel. Take humor, for instance; if you think that there can be nothing funny about someone being buried alive, then you haven’t ever seen Thriller. Categories of the genres explored, with exemplary episodes for each, are as follows:

Miss Cellania's Links

Websites in 2018. This is how you can tell a corporate website from a personal site. Commenters at Metafilter critiqued that link for leaving out so many featured that they could have included. I am kinda grateful for all the annoying things other websites do to satisfy their bean counters, because it only makes this little, sadly nonprofit, hobby blog more attractive to regular readers.

Trump’s Caravan Hysteria Led to This. The president and his supporters insisted that several thousand Honduran migrants were a looming menace—and the Pittsburgh gunman took that seriously.

The Tale of the Diabolical Teapot. (via Strange Company)  

Halloween Pop-Up Stores, Explained.

What Would Ina Garten Serve Trump?

1774 Rebel Newspaper Donated to Goodwill. A representative of a New York auction house estimates the newspaper's value at between $6,000 and $16,000. (Thanks, WTM!) 

14 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets of Haunted House Actors. It's a peculiar job with peculiar perks and challenges.

Look at who’s knocking on doors for Stacey Abrams and all the Democrats in Georgia!

A Brief Halloween History of Pets in Costumes.

The 15 most interesting House races of 2018.

A blast from the past (2011): Six Seriously Spooky Cemetery Stories.

Dead Man's Bones



Every Halloween needs a dancing skeleton! Comedian Nathan Barnatt dances all over dressed as the bones of a dead man, accompanied by the 2009 song "Dead Man's Bones" by the group Dead Man's Bones. His lanky, creepy moves are just as you'd imagine a skeleton would dance -if that skeleton were a decent dancer! (via Buzzfeed)

Tweet of the Day

Why 2000 People Died Fighting Over a Bucket



Wars have been fought for a lot of dumb reasons, but when political, religious, or ethnic tensions are inflamed, it only takes a spark to light a conflagration. In medieval Italy, all those tensions were sprung into war by a bucket. To be honest, the two regions were already fighting, but the bucket incident blew everything up, drawing thousands of fighters to their deaths in the battle of Zappolino. It was called the War of the Bucket. Be aware that the last minute of this video is an ad, so it's not as long as it seems. (via Digg)

A 5-Year-Old's Questions for Google Home



 A father who is totally embracing modern technology discovers that Google Home had saved a year's worth of data, including his 5-year-old son's questions. He is charmed by his son's curiosity about the world, and appreciates the funny parts.

Rowan's questions are adorable.  On the other hand, it's a bit creepy to think that all these commands to an app are recorded for someone else to find, and for Google to analyze and market.

My children came to me with incessant questions about the world throughout their childhoods, which I tried my best to answer, even if I had to look it up. As a result, they thought I was the repository of all the world's wisdom. They know better now, but I wouldn't trade that experience for all the chocolate. (via Laughing Squid)


Cat on the Catwalk



A cat strutted her stuff on the catwalk during a fashion show in Istanbul. Watch her graceful strides as she shows off a classic fur coat. Granted, she gets distracted by the models passing by, and has to stop for sudden grooming needs, but that's what you'd expect from a feline fashionista. (via Tastefully Offensive)


Lip Balm

Funny, I find lip balm all over the house. I'm pretty sure there's one in each room, and I can always find them. None of them were bought by me, and some are probably ten years old. I don't ever remember using the last of one, ever. This comic is from Chris Hallbeck at Maximumble.

Kitchen Tools for the Blind



People who are blind can become very good at negotiating the world by touch, but that presents real hazards while cooking, specifically sharp knives and burning heat. Kevin Chiam designed some kitchen products to mitigate these dangers during his final year at the National University of Singapore. You can see that if these came to market, sighted people would use them, too. Chiam explains the design behind the products at his website. (via reddit)

This Week in Voter Suppression

Kansas
Iconic Dodge City moved its only polling place outside town. One polling place for 27,000 people, and this year it will be even harder to get to. Dodge City is one of the few minority majority cities in the state. Then county election officials sent notices to newly-registered voters and gave them the wrong polling location. 

Georgia
Georgia Voting Begins Amid Accusations of Voter Suppression. Voting should not involve suffering from heat exhaustion. Using an absentee ballot isn't an alternative because Georgia Is Using Amateur Handwriting Analysis to Disenfranchise Minority Voters. Also, more than 4,700 vote-by-mail applications were missing in DeKalb County, one of Georgia’s most populous and liberal-leaning regions. And voters have reported that their votes for Abrams have been changed to votes for Kemp.

North Carolina


Arkansas
Democrat says she felt 'sheer disbelief' after being left off ballot in one Arkansas county. 

Texas
Student voting rights fight erupts at Texas State University. 

New York, Missouri, and Ohio
Republicans facing close races in three states send voters incorrect ballot info

Halloween Awakening



This video from 2007 is still one of my favorites for Halloween.

The Vampire Bat



A 1933 film starring Lionel Atwill, Melvin Douglas, and Fay Wray. From Wikipedia:
When the villagers of Kleinschloss start dying of blood loss, the town fathers suspect a resurgence of vampirism, but police inspector Karl Breettschneider remains skeptical. Scientist Dr. Otto von Niemann, who cares for the victims, visits a patient who was attacked by a bat, Martha Mueller. Martha is visited by a mentally challenged man named Herman Glieb, who claims he likes bats because they are "soft like cat" and "nice".

On the doctor's journey home, he meets Kringen, one of the townsfolk, who claims to have been attacked by the vampire in the form of a bat, but withheld his story from the town in order to not spread fear. Dr. von Niemann encourages Kringen to tell the townsfolk of his story. Kringen becomes suspicious that Glieb may be the vampire due to his obsession with bats. Glieb lives with bats and collects them off the street.

Pure Canine Joy



In case you don't see the caption, it says,
“Stella’s home! I can’t wait for my girl to run directly into my arms like she always do—oh, right... that.”
A dog must have her priorities. This is Stella, Queen of the Sploot. She's a yellow Lab who lives in Maine. She's had knee replacements, but that hasn't slowed her down at all. Let's take another look at Stella in the leaf pile.



See more videos of Stella at Instagram. (via Metafilter, where you'll find more canine joy links.)


Internal Monologues

There are amazing things about every field of study that only experts ever think about. That's okay, because the rest of us have too much to wonder at and worry about already. This comic is from Randall Munroe at xkcd.

The 2018 Illusion of the Year



The winners of the 2018 Best Illusion of the Year contest have been announced. Once again, mathematician Kokichi Sugihara of Meiji University has taken the top honor, with his illusion called Triply Ambiguous Object. It's just a flat picture, with a 3D object drawn on it. But that object looks different in the two mirrors placed near it. You think you know what the object looks like, but when it is rotated, it looks ...different. Trying to suss out the individual shapes in the mirror images will tire you. So take a look at the second place illusion, from David Phillips, Priscilla Heard, and Christopher Tyler. It's called Movement Illusion with a Twist.



Cosmic! You can see all the top ten finalists from the contest here.  -via Gizmodo

Light Goes On



Light painter Darren Pearson has a video that follows a skeleton as it skateboards and dances. The skeleton is made from over 700 light painting photographs taken over a year's time. (via Laughing Squid)

Tweet of the Day


(via Buzzfeed)

Watch a Dumbo Octopus in Action



Grimpoteuthis is a type of octopus that was nicknamed "Dumbo" because of the fins that resemble the large ears that the Disney elephant could use to fly. This little guy certainly looks like he's flying with those batwing fins in this deep-sea video taken by the ROV Hercules controlled by the EV Nautilus crew. Another nickname is the umbrella octopus, and you'll see why. This specimen was two feet long, and was recorded in the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. He/she thoroughly charmed the scientists watching aboard the Nautilus. Don't miss the punch line at the end. (via Smithsonian)

Spooky Halloween Facts



Why do we get a thrill out of horror films? And what's the deal with poisoned trick-or-treat candy? Those are a couple of the subjects in the Halloween edition of the Mental Floss show Scatterbrained. You'll also hear about a scientist who did research on trick-or-treaters, the inspirations for Stephen King novels, and a 1992 British TV hoax that terrified the audience.  

Travel Priorities

Brain might think he's in charge, but Tongue knows how it really is. My last big road trip took the family to Mt. Rushmore, the Devil's Tower, the Badlands, the St. Louis Arch, Yellowstone, and all the scenic places in between, but we felt most adventurous looking for a good place to eat. This is the latest from the Awkward Yeti.

Ghost Choir



A short, sweet, seasonal music video by Louie Zong. (via reddit)

Miss Cellania's Links

Sword Swallowers and Shrunken Heads: An Ode to Johnny Fox and His Freakatorium. The collection of rare oddities, memorabilia, and ephemera from the era of circuses and sideshows goes up for auction next month.

Here's always that one guy that the others guys are always tempted to pick on.

There's an AT-AT in the Front Yard!

The Most Haunted Places in All of Florida.

Sarasota Candidate Aims To Become First Florida State Legislator With A Disability.

How much do these chicken wings cost? Math nerds are going bananas trying to discern a pattern in the pricing structure.

Hurricanes destroy beachside homes, but not this one. The Sand Palace stood tall among the Mexico Beach homes flattened by Hurricane Michael.

A blast from the past (2010): The Scientists Behind the Movies.



Doctor Strange Leaves the Portal Open



What could possibly go wrong? Doctor Strange gets the Robot Chicken treatment. (via Geeks Are Sexy)

Tweet of the Day




Turn the sound up! Truck Torrence created this short animation of a clip from the movie The Lost Boys. He says,

“October is just a great excuse to draw all my favorite horror movies, so every year I try and do something that scratches that itch,” Torrence told io9 via email. “I eventually always go back to The Lost Boys because it’s one of my all time favorites and I basically just want someone to hire me to make a full length animated version of the movie.”


Hispanic Halloween



Comedian David Lopez imagined the movie Halloween as if it happened in his house. Michael Meyers is no match for... well, just watch it. Bonus comedy if you are bilingual. This year, he produced the sequel.



There are other videos where Lopez (Juan) encounters Chucky, Pennywise, and Jigsaw. (via Metafilter)

The Flu

I've never worked any place where you could just put work off until later. You were expected to be there, and if you weren't, not only did you not get paid, but your co-workers had to work extra to cover for you, which made them more upset than bringing in a bug. This story is from Yanni Davros at Prolific Pen Comics.  (via Geeks Are Sexy)

Best of Michael Jackson Halloween Light Show 2018



Music teacher Tom BetGeorge of Tracy, California is known around the world for his computerized light shows for Halloween and Christmas. He has unveiled his 2018 Halloween show, set to a medley of music by Michael Jackson. Tom points out that the notes on the piano are accurate for the songs. I am glad that the ubiquitous geometric Jack O'Lantern faces we've seen for years have been replaced by new pumpkins. (via Boing Boing)

Miss Cellania's Links

Lest We Forget the Horrors: A Catalog of Trump’s Worst Cruelties, Collusions, Corruptions, and Crimes. February 2011 to February 2017. And March-April 2017. There will be more installments. (via Nag on the Lake)

Cape Town's Slave Ship Secret. The São José Paquete d’Africa foundered in 1794 off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa, and has now been found. (via Digg)

Leonid & Friends are a Russian band that plays Chicago songs as they were meant to be.

How and Why Conservative Nonsense Dominates American Politics.

How to Make Chocolate Dead Man’s Toes from the movie Hocus Pocus.

The Parasite That Forces Bees to Dig Their Own Graves.

How Generous The Wealthiest Billionaires In The US Are, Charted. 

Younger Americans are better than older Americans at telling factual news statements from opinions.

Trapped in a House with a Psychopath. Trump has invented a new twist in gaslighting.


A blast from the past (2014): 10 Halloween Costumes That Incorporate Amputations and Wheelchairs.

Sale!



Chris Cultrera saw this wind dancer crying out for the proper soundtrack. Not only does the rhythm work well, but the lyrics are perfect.  (via Digg)


Tweet of the Day


(via Buzzfeed)

Why Beautiful Things Make us Happy



Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so it's fairly impossible to define. That doesn't mean we haven't tried. An easier question would be how we did come to value beauty as much as we have -and not just in people, but in everything around us. Kurzgesagt tries to answer that question. (via Boing Boing)

Crazy Old West Train



Steve Onotera (samuraiguitarist) has a new song for us: a spaghetti Western version of "Crazy Train." Enjoy! (via Laughing Squid)

Wolf, Man

I think I know why Anthony is missing. This guy would drive me up a wall. This comic is from Buttersafe.