Straight from the PhotoImpact Goodie Graveyard!

Drac

Frankie

RIP

Vanessa

This year’s seasonal seance has brought my Halloween Menagerie back from the dead.  (Sadly, can’t say the same for Ulead’s PhotoImpact, since Corel gleefully drove a stake through its heart!)

In case you’ve missed the annual visitation, I started this Menagerie back in 2003 using PI v8 and have enjoyed creating each new creature from leftover body parts from the year before (Vanessa’s hand is up there in my site’s header). So don’t lose your head, but if you work with any version of PhotoImpact, make sure to take apart these UFO files. They’re hiding a few surprises. Click on the image caption above to download any or all of the ZIP files containing the full-figure UFO (not just a head-shot). But just like a good Halloween Trick-or-Treat, these files will disappear on November 1st.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Sheeee’s baaack!

Wishing all my friends who celebrate, a very happy and safe Halloween. (Once upon a time, of course, you didn’t need to add “safe” to your greeting and it makes me infinitely sad that we do now.)

In spirit, I’ll be going with you door-to-door, pillowcase in hand trying to quell my insatiable craving for mini-Butterfingers.

PI users: if you’d like the UFO for Emily (figure only), just drop me a comment with a working email address. The font used here is Gorey, both on the headstone and a bit distorted for the greeting itself.

More Ghoulish Goodness on this site:
Vincent
The Zombielections Are Coming!
One for the Ghouls

Vincent

Eat your hearts out, Robert Englund and Johnny Depp. For me, the soundtrack of Halloween would not be complete without the gloriously gloomy and sometimes slightly maniacal voice of Vincent Price. Evermore.

Other Posts about Halloween you might enjoy reading:

• The Zombielections Are Coming!
• One for the Ghouls
• Fracas: A Monstrosity of Halloween Goodies

Intermission

As a part of our unexpected belt-tightening, we gave up one of our regular small pleasures of weekly movie-going. We finally loosened the belt enough over the last month to go to two movies, “Inglourious Basterds” (or “I’m Here Because of My Husband”)  and “Julie & Julia” (or “I’m Here Because of My Wife”).

Even with a passing familiarity with Tarantino’s filmography, I wasn’t ready for the gleeful violence of “Inglourious Basterds“. Beyond being swept away by Tarantino’s brilliant script and the incredible performances (especially by Christoph Waltz as Landa, the “Jew Hunter”),  you’ll just have to lump me in the group who wasn’t prepared to see this period in history getting a Tarantino makeover.  I’m still not sure what disturbed me more, the movie itself or the audience reaction to it.

Our second movie-going experience was frothy and light as an unbaked meringue. Even though I’ve never prepared a single thing in Julia Child’s now famous again French cookbook, her influence, particularly her TV presence, in my parent’s house while I was growing up was undeniable. Learning the back story, especially from the likes of Nora Ephron, whose writing I love, was the crème fraîche on the strawberries.

While I will never make a pilgrimage to Julia’s kitchen in the Smithsonian in DC to leave a pound of butter there, à la Julie & Julia, here’s my own little WordPress Logo Fun holiday homage to Julia Child’s spirit and her influence on American culinary culture.

And I don’t know if it’s always been there or now revitalized because of the movie, but Julie Powell’s “The Julie/Julia Project” blog is available for reading at its original home on Salon.

And now, the Intermission. I’ll be mostly MIA for the next 6 weeks, working on a special project and Tweeting when I have the time. Believe me, things will be the better for it when I return.

Want to know when a new post goes up? Sign up for my blog’s RSS feed by RSS Reader or email. You can subscribe over there in my blog’s sidebar.  À bientôt !

The Zombielections Are Coming!

This whole US election campaign season has been nightmarish. Presidential candidates from the Black Lagoon, Ghoulish VP choices, Zombie Hordes chanting, “Yes, we can!” Makes me want to run and hide in the deepest, darkest mausoleum. Hopefully we’ll wake up on November 4th with our eyeballs still in our skulls and skin still on our faces!

(What? You were expecting serious discussion of the US elections on Halloween? And while I’m not even going to touch the Israeli elections, though the fodder is overripe, I will say that it should be clear by now that our PM is a member of the Undead. It’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” all over again.)

Geeky WP Halloween fun!

(via Matt)

In further news, the MarsPhoenix lander is holding a contest to pick its own epitaph. R.I.P.