sweasel.com

This is going to sound crazy, but just a few
days ago, I had the though ‘I should put a naked
mannequin in the front yard, just to see what
would happen.’ My yard is immediately
adjacent to a major State Highway that
sees a lot of traffic.
Bad Idea, I am sure.
There would be calls to the police about a
naked person standing next to the road.
Then you post this. So I check the price.
Nope, a naked mannequin in my front yard would
be stolen the second night, and then I would have
to report to the police that my naked
mannequin had been stolen.
Nope, not a good idea.
But if I had a camera, that captured video …
I could put it on YouTube.

This looks like a mosquito breeding facility to me. Maybe that’s just because I am from Florida…. Imagine all the stagnant rain water in those things.

Even though the majority of those body parts are pasty white, one could imagine that pile as the raw material for a whole passel of “hate crimes.” Just need a bit of rope, rags, sheets, feathers, nipple rings…and a CNN producer on speed dial.

Well if your region is anything like mine, folks need the whole month to decorate their house and lawn for Halloween. One of my neighbors has (plastic) dog skeletons scattered all over their lawn. One is draped belly-up across the center roof line of a “Snoopy” style dog house. (I’d be horrified to the max except children don’t read the funnies anymore, and only see Snoopy on seasonal television specials a few times a year.) Another house sports a huge “human” skeleton, standing propped against the house with one elbow on the roof, like it was leaning against a bar.

I could write a long diatribe on how Halloween has ruined the whole month of October for me, but it’s apparent that I am in the minority.

P.S. On the plus side, this means I can store up a favorite candy while it’s fresh: Bit-O-Honey.

P.S.S. I taught myself to read by reading the funnies, because my oldest sister would only read them to me if I promised to be her slave for the day.

Once again, I am devastated by my inability to upvote comments anymore.

Aside from having to ship them, the movie shoot we were in this weekend could have used them instead of hiring hundreds of extras to lie about in gruesome poses as casualties.

Bet the mannequins wouldn’t need feeding or paying or paperwork and wouldn’t complain at all about laying in the sun for “action” and then hearing the words “We’re going again! Reset to your #1 marks!” for about 4 hours straight.

I’ve a friend who has a company that makes high end props for haunted houses and theme parks. The place is full of realistic corpses in various stages of dismemberment. He wisely shared his creations with local law enforcement and emergency responders to avoid any awkward scenarios that may arise.

Btw, if anyone is a fan, I’m really enjoying http://www.100daysofdante.com. It’s very well presented with English and Italian text and video commentary from various scholars per canto updated several times a week. Also includes those fantastic and horrific Dore illustrations. It’s 700 years old but for me, few works are as affecting and down right scary as hell.

Back in the day I briefly worked for a window display company. Adel Rootstein had just released her high fashion manikins. They were gorgeous, 7 ft tall with attitude up the ying-yang. We usually dressed windows in the dead of night and sometimes those beautiful Amazons would creep me out, as if they were judging me. One store popped for a dozen chrome finish manikins for the annual competion (yes, Virginia there is an award dinner in NYC and the gongs are highly prized) We did a bank of SciFi windows with the chrome ladies and it was stunning, the firm won that year. It was a fun job but I moved on to a marketing internship with Walter Landor. Now that was high octane nuts kinda job, but I learned enough to start my own bidness. Landor was a branding genius, he designed the Coca-Cola script and the GE logo among many other iconic logos.

@Deborah…halloween is out of control. We’ve gone from pirates and princesses to serial killers. Our road has done a hayride for over thirty years, everyone turns up at the designated barn with their tractors and trailers loaded with hay, costumes are admired and we head out on a loop of private roads which are decked with skeletons and cobwebs and such. Each property puts a candy bowl and a light at the end of their drive and the kids swoop down…it’s a neighborhood event with hot drinks and cookies after…the kiddos love it. We know when they arrive at the nearby creek bank road cuz we can hear the shrieks as skeletons & ghosts (older teens) spring out of the bushes. We’ve invited two adjoining roads to join in and last year had quite a parade of wagons and side-by-sides decked out with lights and creepy stuff with over 100 kids…the grownups enjoy it as much as the kiddos.

@BJM—the hayride sounds like perfect fun.

Sounds neat BJM – you know of course you’ll have to stop because it’s unlicensed fun, and that can’t be permitted.