Morbid Romantic

bringing you quality randomness since 1981

I stood out in the rain yesterday to vote.  It was worth the hour outdoors in the wet cold.  The whole time, I was nervous that the outcome would not be what I wanted.  I worried that no matter my vote, the President was going to end up being McCain.  And GOD, to have McCain as President and Palin as Vice President… I don’t even want to think about it and luckily it will never come to be!

You can bet I sat at home refreshing cnn.com and the ABC website for the latest numbers.  There was a moment when McCain was coming up close and I got scared, for real.  I could see in my head McCain steadily catching up and passing and getting the 270 electoral votes necessary to be President.  After that, there would be no going back and nothing to do to stop him from taking office and running this country deeper into the ground than Bush has.

When the results came in and Obama won… it was like relief. It was joy and relief all in one. I saw this political cartoon, which sums it up perfectly. The entire wait was like holding breath. A few minutes after the results were in, I heard people honking their horns and cheering in the streets. It was awesome.

Yeah, America. We did it. We totally did it this time. This country has been in a slump for the past three years. We all need a change, and I don’t mean that in the Obama slogan way. I’m not trying to quote him here, I’m just saying that we can’t go on as we are. Our country is… depressed, economically and mentally. We’re losing who and what we are in this mess Bush has created. We’re Americans! In 400 years, we have achieved greatness that other countries have struggled for a thousand years to reach. It doesn’t suit us to be like this, to feel weak and powerless and poor. That’s not the American way.

Maybe now we can begin again and recover. We really need to just be… America again.

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It’s that time of the year again!  The best holiday is upon us.  It’s HALLOWEEN!  I don’t know about you guys, but I plan to spend the day as all anti-social shut-ins do by watching horror movies in the dark, eating as much chocolate as I can.

But, here!  Have this:

Yes, I do sincerely love making these little banners and putting them up for people to take. The picture this one is using is one I took myself of a grave at Mt. Olivet Cemetery in SLC, Utah.

You don’t have to come here and check to see if I’ve posted a holiday graphic, though. You can sign up to get them right in your email box through my Holiday & Birthday List.

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I have a purse collection. I don’t make a habit of disclosing this information because I like to keep a good balance between my girliness and my nongirliness. Too much of one or the other is not a good thing. If I start to feel too girly, I start to feel like my identity as an anti-girl is threatened. I spent a good portion of my life rejecting pink and pretty, yet the older I get the more I like it and I am trying to find my comfortable spot in all of this.

But, I love purses even if I don’t use them. Some purses I’ve never used and some I use until they fall apart. It’s all a matter of whim.

I saw one today that I had to have and someone bought it for me as a gift:

This is the perfect holiday addition to my collection, which I can use and enjoy every October without shame. I’ve always wanted a coffin shaped purse and now I have one. It was even on sale. SALE. One more thing taken off of the list of things I want to own and do before I die. Yes, owning a coffin shaped purse was and is that important to me.

Coffin purse down, an entire life time more of stuff to go.

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So, I was in Circus Circus today in Las Vegas (which I will write about later after I get the rest of my travel log up) and I saw a commercial on the hotel lobby for a Halloween event called Fright Dome. From what I understand, it takes place in the Adventure Dome at Circus Circus (you know, that shiny pink building behind the casino/hotel that has the amusement park) and it includes rides and haunted houses and all sorts of cool things including a two day visit from the guy who played Captain Spaulding in House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil’s Rejects.

I HAVE to go. There is no way that I can be so close to something so awesome and NOT go. Tickets aren’t too bad in terms of price, though the prices vary and I have yet to find out why due to the fact that I can’t visit the site because it crashes my browser. As soon as I can access the website, I intend to investigate the ticket issue and purchase some as soon as possible.

I can’t imagine Halloween passing without having experienced something like that. All we get in VA are dinky little haunted houses at Botanical Gardens or at Middle Schools. They’re fun, sure, for the moment, but they’re not really scary. Maybe I’ve allowed myself to become desensitized to scary things because I love horror movies and horror novels, but this merely means that I have to take my thrill seeking to the next level. My need for horror can no longer be sated by simple props and fake death scenes. I need something more. More than fake blood and obvious masks.

There should be a place in the world where it is Halloween every day. If there were such a place, I would live there.

But let me tell you the best part about Fright Dome. There will be a freak show.  No, not a real freak show with deformed people and such, but as close as we can get legally.  I’ve always wanted to go to one of those, though a real one. If this is as close as I can get, I’m in. It’s always been a secret dream of mine to own my own freak show.  Alas, I was born in the wrong time.  Humanitarian laws and human decency have curbed my dreams.  For now.

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I remember a Halloween party that my mother threw for me, my sister and our friends when we were children, probably during our middle school years. My mother spent hours thinking up decorations and fun activities for us to play, things that would be fun and spooky but not too childish that we’d scoff and refuse to have fun for fear of seeming childlike in our interests. She put a lot of effort into it and we all had fun.

Halloween has always been an important holiday for her and now for me, as well, in part because of her early cultivation and my own nature. I cherish this time of the year because it is the one time we are allowed to embrace the sinister, the mysterious and the truly frightening. We are, for that one day, given the luxury of sinking without fear of incrimination into the allure of night shadows and evil, of things that whisper to the dark side of who we are. There’s excitement in that, or at least a flutter of anticipation or of fear. Maybe there’s even satisfaction found in the feeling that you’re doing something wrong, something against the norms of our beliefs and societal expectations.

Even though I don’t hold them and don’t go to them, I think Halloween parties are excellent ways to celebrate the holiday. I’m too antisocial and sleepy to plan for a party or have friends enough to be invited to one. I can admit to my own failings, there’s no crime in not being a people person. I’m more inclined to spend the night first passing out candy, then visiting a haunted house or two and then finally retiring to the couch to watch horror movies all night long.

But that doesn’t mean I haven’t had my fair share of making Halloween food, decorations and games. You don’t love a holiday as much as I do if all you can do is draw a blank when it comes to how to properly celebrate. I’ve seen and done quite a few Halloweens, attended my fair share of parties (as disinclined as I am) and have a mind enough to think up some things on my own. Innovation is a good quality, too. There’s no rule that says you have to follow directions step by step. If you see something neat, don’t be afraid to change things to your liking to give it your own special flair. That’s what I like to do.

And that is what I will do here.

I hope to be able to find the time to post up a lot of original and innovative Halloween ideas. Some will be food, some will be decorations and some will be games. I have tons of things in my head, I just need time enough to get them down and impart them to you.

So, you’re having a party and you want creative ways to decorate, to give it flavor apart from the conventional decorations ordered from catalogs or bought at party/Halloween superstores.

Severed Hand Ice Cubes

A party needs punch, right? You need something to drink for your guests.

So imagine this: a large black witch’s cauldron sitting on a table full of dark red punch the color of blood with floating green hands of ice to keep it cool. It’s the perfect Halloween punch bowl. Of course, you’ll have to buy the cauldron and the red punch (or make your own punch, whatever works for you). Clean out the cauldron very well with hot water and soap because you’ll want it to be sanitary after sitting so long on a store shelf. Once it’s clean and dry, you can fill it up with red punch and put in your severed hand ice cubes.

But, how do you make these hand ice cubes? I am going to take you through the steps and include pictures of me following the steps with one glove to give you a visual of what you must do.

1. The first thing you need is a pack of latex gloves without any of that powder or lotion that sometimes gets put on them. With a pack, you can make multiple cubes for multiple hands. It all depends on how large your cauldron is, though some to spare would be a good thing so that you can refill the punch cauldron with more ice and hands as necessity requires.



2. One by one, take a glove and fill it up with water under your faucet. I always fill the glove up with water once, dump it out and then refill it just to be sure there is no gunk or dust on the glove put there during packaging. You don’t want to fill the glove up to the top because you’ll want space to be able to tie the glove off or wrap a rubber band around it. It would be a bad thing to flood your freezer up with water!



3. Once you have your glove all filled, add a few drops of the food coloring of your choice. Green goes pretty well in a bowl of red punch, but you can also use orange or make a brown or anything else that pleases you. Pinch off the end with some space for water to move around and give it a shake to turn all of the water the color you’ve picked.
4. After you have filled your glove up with water and dyed it your color, tie it off either like you would the end of a balloon or by wrapping a rubber band tightly around the end so that no water can escape. When it is tied up, give it a check by turning it upside down and squeezing very, very lightly. If no water comes out, I think it’s safe to say you’ve got it secure enough.



5. Now, how you put them in your freezer is up to you. You can lay them down flat, but keep in mind that you’ll end up with one flat end, which I have found actually helps keep the hands on a balanced float. If you do it this way, arrange the fingers so that they are not all scrunched up. You can also hang them from your freezer if you have a freezer that contains hanging hooks or a place for you to put a small hanger in.
6. After your hands are frozen, you can remove the ones you want to use immediately and cut the glove from around each one. All I do is snip off the tied off end and peel the glove off. After being frozen, the glove becomes a little brittle, so it’s really easy to peel off and not so elastic anymore. That’s all you do! After the glove is removed, you can plop it right into your bowl of punch and serve.

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I’ve been busting hard to get my blog ranked high.  Since doing PPP has all but destroyed my chances at Google PR, I have to reply on other ranking standards. I’m really proud to say that I was able to pick my RealRank up from the 6,000s to around 720.  That’s a definite improvement!  I was shocked when I first saw it.  I thought that it was a fluke.  In the Women’s category of the top 100, I am ranked 13 and growing.  This is a real confidence booster.

Let me tell you how I did it.  It was quite simple, in fact.  All I did was install the Wordpress Plugin Platinum SEO.  Now, when I make a page or a post, I give it some distinct keywords.  Instead of my site having a list of important keywords, all of my pages are individualized so that I can target searched my directly to specific content.  Right after I did that, my RealRank, Page Views and Unique Visitors shot up exponentially.

I try not to assign generic keywords, though, because then my site is likely to fall in line with a list of millions of sights and there will be no reason for mine to be viewed.  For me, being that I am at the learning stage, it’s really a matter of trial and error.  I try something, wait for the results to roll in and them modify based on feedback.

I guess it’s hard to be interesting sometimes!  I want my blog to be informative, but my brain doesn’t always corporate.  Ambition and action are controlled by two different brain functions entirely.

Halloween is coming!  As I travel across the United States these coming days, I will think of as many good Halloween ideas as I can.  Then, when I return, I can share lots of good ideas for parties and costumes.  Halloween is definitely my favorite holiday.  If I could, I would keep my home perpetually decorated like it’s Halloween.

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What’s the best late night snack when you want something sweet but not too sweet and certainly not chocolate? Mochi, of course.

I ended up eating much too much mochi, but I couldn’t help myself. For anyone who doesn’t know, mochi is made up of a gluttonous rice paste, filled with something like peanut butter or red bean paste and sometimes covered in sesame seeds or whatever else someone decides to coat a mochi in. The rice paste itself has the texture of a softer and more sticky marshmallow. It’s sweet, but not as sweet as marshmallow. It’s actually a weird consistency if you’re not used to it. If you’ve never had anything like it in your mouth before, you’ll probably be a bit taken aback. But, it’s delicious.

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After considering my price range and what I was looking for, I decided to buy the Nikon Coolpix with my birthday collection fund. I took time out to read reviews of the cameras I looked at, the ones on the consideration list, on DigitalCameraReview.com. The Nikon Coolpix that I bought had a general 9/10 to 10/10 rating from users, in addition to being affordable and easy to use. That was what most of the comments praised the camera for.

Just what I need!

I wanted the blue, but all they had was the plum. Since that was my second choice, it didn’t hurt my feelings to buy that one instead.

Mind you, I’ve not had the chance to go out and shoot some good pictures aside from a few practice shots, but I do love what the camera offers so far. The focus and face centering box is pretty awesome. Auto light seems to pick up a good range of light; my test pictures have yet to come out too dark or too white. Next, I need to take the camera outside during the night and the day to test out the auto light function more since all I’ve done are inside practice pictures. As for now, as far as inside pictures go requiring flash, it’s great. On one picture I did, I noticed that the left side was a bit blurry. I need to take some more pictures to see if this is due to the camera or due to my moving at the wrong moment.

All in all, so far, I love it. I’m glad with the camera I chose. I’m not trying to be a photographer, I just want something to capture the things I want to remember and maintain.

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Alfee and I went to Colonial Williamsburg earlier this month. We have year passes, so we can come and go as we please. On one of our trips, I decided to bring a small disposable camera along. I don’t have my digital camera yet (hoping to get it this weekend), so they’re simple Kodak single use camera shots.

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Despite that I have tons to do, I spent Friday night at Alfee’s.  We took a few boxes and tubs to his house and settled down for the night since we had to be up early to take me to the post office to get my P.O. Box (I’ll give it out to my friends, no worries ).  The process of getting the box went smoothly.  I filled out the form and of course messed up on it… I swear, I must make myself look like such an idiot.  I’m always screwing up something important.  It’s at the point now where I just smile through it.  This time, my mess up was on my address (how do you get those wrong?!  REALLY!?).  The guy forgave me and accepted my application.  He gave me two keys and I’m renting the box for 6 months with an option to renew.  All in all, for the 6 months and the two key deposits of a dollar a piece, I paid about $32.  Not bad.  I feel a lot more comfortable with the P.O. Box to collect my mail.  It makes me a feel a bit more independent, as lame as that is.

Now for the arduous task of changing my address.  When I get back, I can get Alfee to take me to the DMV to get a new ID and get a change of location form for my voter registration (a presidential election is coming up and I am not missing that for the world).  I gave Alfee the other key to my P.O. Box so that he can check everything out for me and collect my mail while I am gone or can’t get to the post office.

Then, because I want to buy a good digital camera, we shopped around.  Of course, I didn’t buy one yet.  I wanted to get the model numbers and prices of a few cameras I liked to read further reviews on them.  I saw quite a few there for a good price, but I want to be sure that I’ll get a quality camera for the money that I spend.  I’ve always wanted a really good digital camera.

After that, we went to the mall to spend the ‘buy $50 worth of stuff and pay only $25′ gift card from PacSun.  I FINALLY got Alfee to  buy something for himself.  He hasn’t bought anything new, really, in years, so his wardrobe, while fine, is in need of a few updated items.  He got two pairs of jeans, which we are going to take to my tailor to get hemmed a bit next weekend.  YEY!  His butt is going to look so cute in them.  He got some of the Hammonds Loose fit jeans.

And, of course, Alfee can’t buy himself anything without getting ME something.  With summer being almost over and all, a lot of the summer stuff is on sale in favor of winter coats and sweaters.  So, PacSun was having a sale on their dresses.  So, I got a cute one, a Hurley Vertigo Dress, down from about $40 to $20.

I can’t even describe how comfortable it is.

I have gotten some of my addresses changed, but it’s a long road to all of them.  I have to change my bank and credit card address before I can change my primary Paypal address, and change my primary Paypal address before I change my eBay address.

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