Howl-o-ween

qaz submits a story about a remote-controlled graveyard. Supposedly this site is another computer-controlled setup, but it's not responding at the moment. Still looking for a pumpkin carving pattern (the Ellen Feiss pattern is nice too)? Or perhaps you'd prefer yet another punkin-chunking machine, a new model which has several news stories about it: here and here. And if spooky stories are more your style, everything2 is running a scary story contest (see last year's for ideas).

Comments

reminds me of Ripley's

[loomis]

The Ripley's museums have those silly graveyards inside, and Ripley's also has those Haunted Adventure places. Somewhat similar.

Loomis

FoxTrot Halloween

[rbeattie]

Has everyone seen today's FoxTrot?

"I feel like I should send Microsoft some of this."

Heh.

-Russ

Re:FoxTrot Halloween

[Raul654]

A girl down the hall in my dorm put this on her door. I write back (on her marker board) that it was cute, but please don't remind me of things I have to deal with in my major ;-)

Re:FoxTrot Halloween

[microTodd]

I actually dressed up as a BSOD one year for a halloween party. Blue face-paint and blue posterboard taped to my chest with white lettering.

Only a few people got the joke, and most of the girls at the party thought I was a wierdo geek and ignored me.

*sigh*

Halloween reading for geeks

[Penguuu]

Here is scary halloween-reading for geeks :)

The original idea of All Hallow's Eve...

[suman28]

The original story is that people were trying to keep the spirits away from your house. I don't understand why people dress up to go to others houses. This is nothing more than the candy manufacturers way of getting extra dough into their pockets.

Re:The original idea of All Hallow's Eve...

[mincus]

In the US, halloween is second only to xmas for total dollars spent, and comes in third for total number of parties (after new years and the super bowl). Also for a more detailed description of the integration in american culture, see here

Re:The original idea of All Hallow's Eve...

[JPelorat]

Heaven forfend we should have a little fun...

Not everything is a conspiracy, ya know.

Re:The original idea of All Hallow's Eve...

[thefirelane]

It comes from the Celtic traditions:

People believed around this time, spirits walked the earth. They would put out their fires, in order to make their homes less appealing to the spririts. They also dressed up, and acted strange, in order to make the spirits think they were already posessed, so they would move on.

Children would also go door to door, and ask for "treats" in exchange for singing a song, or reciting a poem. This tradition was brought to America by Irish immigrants in the mid 1800's

Listen to NPR a little, no conspriacy here

You'll have to wait until February to see a holiday that was truely concocted by merchandisers to sell thing (namely cards and flowers)


---Lane

Re:The original idea of All Hallow's Eve...

[Waffle Iron]

The original story is that people were trying to keep the spirits away from your house. I don't understand why people dress up to go to others houses. This is nothing more than the candy manufacturers way of getting extra dough into their pockets.

In reality, the origins of Halloween is much more complex that that. Check out this article to find out more. In particular:

In medieval times, one popular All Souls' Day practice was to make "soul cakes," simple bread desserts with a currant topping. In a custom called "souling," children would go door-to-door begging for the cakes, much like modern trick-or-treaters.

It's funny that the whole Halloweeen thing may be an early example of "embrace and extend". The early church rescheduled All Saint's Day to coincide with an older pagan holiday, then told people to go ahead and have fun on the new enhanced hybrid holiday.

Re:The original idea of All Hallow's Eve...

[IxnayOnTheIxnay]

No, it started when three witches went around eating children, until one family offered them sweet gingerbread children. That's the story of the first caramel cod....yar, I mean, Halloween.

Halloween Scavenger Hunt

[wizarddc]

No one posted this? Weird

http://hiptop.bedope.com/

It's a halloween scavenger hunt. The objective is to use your Hiptop mobile device, and take pictures of as many things on the list as you can. There are 5 teams (which are closed, sorry johnny-com-lately's), each vying for the fabulous prizes being awarded to the one team that score the most points (each item on the list has a point value. McDonalds is 1, White Castle 2. George W. Bush is 8, Al Gore is .5).

What's everyone doing?

[Bobulusman]

Is anyone bothering to dress up?

I'm in college, so I wasn't planning to, but I found out everyone else is getting into the spirit, so I need a costume quick.

I combed the shops this morning and this was all that was left to buy: stage blood and various color face paint. Any ideas? If I can't think of something cool I can make quickly, I just going to mix up a grey-green paint and go as a zombie.

uuuuhhhhhhhhhhhh brrraaaaaaiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnn

Anyway, I just want to know what cool costumes everyone else did.

Re:What's everyone doing?

[foistboinder]

Do what I do...

I usually spend the day dressed up as my evil twin (at leat it's cheap!).

Re:What's everyone doing?

[DrMaurer]

Uhh, get a cereal box, preferably one with a cuddily mascot on the front, and a toy knife.

Impale the box and spread your sage blood liberally.

If you're creative, paint your face up like the mascot. (They're GRRReat!)

Go, cereal killer, go.

(Yeah, it sucks, but I usually go as a chick, but this year I cut my hair, so it's a bit tougher to pull off.)

coolest pumpkin carvings

[cr@ckwhore]

Check out this guy's carvings... http://www.grumpkins.com

He carves giant pumpkins, and they don't look like the standard run-o-the-mill jack-o-lanterns, thats for sure!

Tux pumpkin

[Drath]

Hmm. The tux pumpkin is a helpful tutorial, basically it says to make a pumpkin with tux on it all you need is:

1.A Pumpkin
2.Artistic Ability
3.Expensive Software
4.Something called a light board (sounds arty)

Wow! Simple!

you know, if i could draw tux i wouldn't need a kit...

Re:Tux pumpkin

[mblase]

Ironically, this is typical of Linux advocate's thinking.

"All you need to run this free software is standard PC hardware! And these CDs, of course. Well, you'll probably want to partition your hard drive beforehand, too. Be sure you know the specs of your components so you can configure the OS correctly. And do you know how to configure your own broadband Internet connection? No, you can't use AOL on this, but here's a great web-based tool that's also free and you only need to compile it once or twice...."

Geek scary movies

[briggsb]

Here's a list of the scariest geek movies.

Call that a pun'kin chucker?

[mblase]

That's nothing compared to the world-record-holding Aludium Q-36 Pumpkin Modulator (A "Marvin the Martian" reference for those who don't watch enough Warner Bros. cartoons).

Re:Call that a pun'kin chucker?

[mblase]

Incidentally, the pun'kin chucker article in the Slashdot headling quotes its creator as believing it could shoot a pumpkin five miles. I sincerely doubt it; the record-holder shoots a 5- to 10-lb. pumpkin only(!) three-quarters of a mile, and it's the size of a semi trailer. Wind resistance is pretty strong on an unaerodynamic ten-pound gourd once you get it moving.

Re:Holloween must be boycott'ed

[tit4tat]

Holloween... is a Pagan holliday that celebrates pure Evil and the power of Satin. Do not allow you're children to wear costume, do not let them go to holloween party's, and do not hand out candy to kid's who are glorrifying Satin. This type of holliday has no place in a post 9-11 world!

I love satin! Soft, smooth, shiny. Satin is definitely not "pure evil." Pure lux, is more like it. What's this AC's problem with satin?! Where would the post 9-11 world be without satin pajamas?! We must fight for the love of satin or the terrorists will have already won!

Uh... he probably meant "Satan." Whatever.

Because it's fun

[stefanlasiewski]

Gee whiz, don't be so negative.

You don't need a day off to have a holiday. Some holidays are just for fun. Are all of the holidays in your country _serious_ holidays? Don't you just want to go out and play sometimes?

Not everyone in America celebrates halloween so extremely. It's mostly celebrated by people 35 and under (with many exceptions), and is a big holiday for many college kids, geeks, artists, and people who veer from the mainstream.

I'll give you a perspective from someone in the San Francisco, California area. Halloween is a holiday because:

- It's fun
- It's creative. I get to exercise my creative juices by decorate my house in spiderwebs, skeltons and blacklights. Next year I'm planning Robotic flying ghosts in my front yard.
- It's an excuse to dress up
- The children love it
- It's an excuse to party. Halloween is by far the biggest holiday in the San Francisco area. In the city, you'll have parties that stretch for 10 blocks, with tens-of-thousands of people dancing and having a good time.
- Day of the dead is tomorrow (Big holiday in Mexico and here in California).

Now, there are historical roots to the trick-or-treating, and the dress up, and pumpkins, and the day of the dead, but I won't go into that now. (Wait, looks like you're from the UK. You should know the roots already!)

Re:Because it's fun

[stefanlasiewski]

The whole thing is just dumb for dumb unimaginative people who don't know how to have fun by themselves.

Thanks for being so 'fun'. With those dictionary references, I'm sure you're a riot at parties.

Another thing: why does society have to give you a reason to have fun and party and perhaps even dress up? What's wrong with doing it on some other day in the rest of the year when you're not being a sheep

So tell me, in the last year, how many times did you wake up one morning and say "Today, I'm going to dress up in a costume and go to work|school|to the park|whatever!". Let me guess... zero. And I wouldn't do it either. Why? Because if I was the only person wearing a costume, I'd feel like an idiot.

Look, Halloween gives me an excuse to dress up as a scarecrow and take my nephew out to get candy from the neighbors. We like it. It's fun. It's full of imagination and creative energy. I can't wait until I have my own kids and can take them out.

I love making my house look haunted. I like the toys, I like the special effects.

There is nothing wrong with communities dressing up and celebrating the same thing on the same day. Doing this does not make us 'sheep' any more then celebrating New Years on the same day. It's a fucking holiday.

Don't like it? Fine, don't do it. Nobody's forcing you. Now go back to your 'fun'...

You want sheep, try Valentines day. But leave my holiday the fuck alone.

Pumpkin Cannon is a scary story

[Jaguar777]

''I intend on shooting in competition, and I'm going to change my barrel size to regulation so I can compete with the other big guns,'' he said.

The fact that there is a "regulation" barrel size for a pumpkin shooting competition scares me.

The "Ellen Feiss" pattern is spooky

[burgburgburg]

In the "Discomforting amount of attention paid on a teenage girl, leave her alone and start meeting some adult women already" sort of a way.