Mutt Strut Howl-oween and Southport Block Party

We attended a fun Halloween event this weekend. Thanks to the great people from Chicago Canine Rescue, who organized the Mutt Strut's rain date (original date was in September) in connection with Lakeview Chamber of Commerce's Southport block party and Dog-a-holics. I think it was a winning combination. In addition to the Mutt Strut events like the cake-eating contest (for dogs) and silent auction, there was a pet costume contest as well as all the block party fun for the kids (games, bouncy houses, trick-or-treating at Southport businesses.)  After the costume contest there was a pet parade down Southport. Kye Martin from CLTV was there MC-ing the event and said to look for an entry about the event on her blog page. I'd post a link if I could find it. We also got to see our friends from Safe Humane Chicago at their booth as well as check out some other info and product booths at the event.
I will try to add some more photos or links to this post if/when I locate them It's too soon for anything to be online yet, but if anyone wants to check you can go to CLTV.com, chicagocaninerescue.com, and fetchportraits.com

They're not there yet as I post this but also check here for photos of the event:
http://photos.fetchportraits.com/Dogs/Event-Candids

RVAH Halloween Bash and Bark-o-ween photos

 Yesterday we attended the Roscoe Village Animal Hospital's Halloween Bash. It was a lot of fun! There were many great pet costumes (and kids), fun games, raffles and refreshments, and a photographer. The event benefited New Leash on Life Animal Rescue.
We had a lot of fun trying to wrangle two cats and a dog to photograph, but you can see below that the results were not bad (the middle two photos). I also added a few photos below from the Parker's Pets Bark-o-ween party.

Svengoolie's Blog

We were mentioned again this year on Svengoolie's blog entry about Parker's Pet's Bark-o-ween event!
http://www.wciu.com/svengoolie.php?section=blog&assetID=10003632

You can see photos from the event here:
http://photos.fetchportraits.com/Dogs/Event-Candids/Svengoolie-Parkers-Pets/14043861_md6xR#1033636468_zzxRq

Bark-o-ween 2010

Last Saturday was Parker's Pets Bark-o-ween party and contest. We were hoping for better weather than last year since it is earlier in October this year, but we ended up with a lot of rain.  It was outdoors. The forecast called for scattered showers but it rained more than not and at times it was hard pouring rain. Despite that, it was a lot of fun! We got photos with Svengoolie again (they will be added to this post when I pick them up) and there were a lot of creative costumes. We got first place in the cat costume category. I don't have any photos yet but I will post them as soon as I can.

Bioshock

Bioshock is not technically Halloween related, but it is a rather spooky/creepy game so I think it qualifies. The music is spooky enough by itself, but when you add in everything else-- the visuals, the sound effects, the Big Daddy and Little Sisters-- you get a game that is fun to play but can give you an adrenaline rush because you just never know what is coming around the corner...unless you hear the distinctive THUD THUD THUD of the Big Daddy's footsteps of course!

Here are a few videos showing some of the scary scenes of the first Bioshock game. The special effects and music really add to the atmosphere!









Here is some of the music:

Halloween Playlist

I created a Halloween playlist on youtube for anyone who wants to get in the Halloween spirit. I chose these videos for the music mostly, so some of them have weird videos:

Creepy Doll

I really like this song, I think it is one of my favorite songs about creepy dolls. Oh, wait...

The video's not bad either.

Must See Movies

I am a big fan of horror movies in general, but at Halloween I feel like watching them even more. So here is a list of movies to watch around Halloween time.

Nightmare Before Christmas
Halloween
Nightmare on Elm Street
The Shining (original)
Halloweentown
Hocus Pocus
Final Destination
Ginger Snaps
Sleepy Hollow
Blair Witch Project
28 Days Later
Rosemary's Baby
American Werewolf in Paris
Night of the Living Dead
Dawn of the Dead (both versions)
Suspiria
Silent Hill
The Faculty
Disturbing Behavior
Idle Hands
Juon
The Ring/ Ringu

Licorice Zombies

 Spotted these "Licorice Zombies" when I was visiting my brother in Madison. They were in with the Halloween clearance merchandise at Shopko after last Halloween.

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Made by Necco.


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Nutrition Facts:

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Notice, the "Best Before" date box is blank. Considering most of the bags contained a single, solid giant mass of licorice zombies, I question this.


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As for the taste, it's pretty much what you'd except artificially flavored licorice "Mello Cremes" to taste like. Think licorice jelly beans but softer/smoother texture. They weren't too bad if you like artificial licorice.

If you're wondering about the dolls, I needed something to prop the candy bag up because there was too much reflection with the bag flat on the table, and they seemed appropriate for the job. They are Living Dead Dolls. On the left is Posey and on the rightis The Lost.

Let's Visit the Uncanny Valley

Today's post is about the Uncanny Valley. Well, actually it's just an excuse to post a few videos of disturbing human-like robots and animation, but in case you haven't heard of the Uncanny Valley I'll explain it. The idea of the Uncanny Valley is a hypothesis which originally referred to robotics, referring to peoples' reaction to robots that look and act nearly human but not quite. As robots look and act more like humans, the reaction to them becomes more positive until a point at which it drops down into a 'valley' of revulsion/negative reaction. While this originally referred to robotics, it is now often used to refer to anything that is unsettlingly human-like.
A quote from The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe fits this pretty well: "...when you meet anything that's going to be human and isn't yet, or used to be human once and isn't now, or ought to be human and isn't, you keep your eyes on it and feel for your hatchet." (funny when you consider this advice was given to the children by a talking Beaver.)

The Uncanny Valley:

For your enjoyment (or terror), here are a few creepy videos.


This video, "The Cat With Hands" is creepy even without the foray into the Valley.



The previous example was intentionally creepy. This robot, in contrast, is not supposed to be.


Another robot, this one a little girl.





This may not be an example, but somehow the idea of a kid that size just scares me.

The October Game

Welcome to October! For an explanation of what this is about, see my previous post "31 Days of Halloween."
This is Day One! Today I would like to share a Halloween-themed short story by Ray Bradbury.

"The October Game"

He  put  the  gun back into the bureau drawer and shut the drawer.
   No,  not  that  way.  Louise wouldn't suffer. It was very important
that   this   thing   have,   above  all  duration.  Duration  through
imagination. How to prolong the suffering? How, first of all, to bring
it about? Well.
   The  man  standing  before  the bedroom mirror carefully fitted his
cuff-links together. He paused long enough to hear the children run by
switftly on the street below, outside this warm two-storey house, like
so many grey mice the children, like so many leaves.
   By  the  sound  of the children you knew the calendar day. By their
screams you knew what evening it was. You knew it was very late in the
year.  October. The last day of October, with white bone masks and cut
pumpkins and the smell of dropped candle wax. 
 
Read the rest here:

http://lib.ru/INOFANT/BRADBURY/october.txt

31 Days of Halloween

I have always said that Halloween ought to start on October first. One year I even proclaimed that I would refer to October as a month as Halloween instead, although I forgot to keep it up about a day later... Halloween is my favorite holiday and I want to keep up the Halloween spirit (not to be confused with Spirit Halloween) all month. In fact it is only September first and I already have Halloween on the brain, but I thought this would be too early for most people to start getting in the swing of things. So this year, I have decided to post all things Halloween related on this blog all month from October 1st to October 31st. It could be a video, photos, Halloween events, memories from past Halloweens or just my take on Halloween related topics.
I will also be posting abbreviated versions on my Twitter and Facebook accounts, with links back to this blog.

So get ready for Halloween!