Halloween Roundup

Herewith a selection from the holiday-themed submissions today. severedfinger writes, "CNET reports that this Halloween some people are using the alphabet-search system on the new iPods to communicate with the dead. The writer uses an iPod nano to test the new craze. He plugs it into a loud stereo system to 'increase the scary quotient when a spirit picks a track,' and the editorial staff begin to talk to a spirit called 'Brad.'" And markmcb writes, "If you've never read much about the history of Halloween, Nick Dilmore offers an entertaining and snarky summary of how the holiday came to be. From the article, 'Halloween, that festive time of the year when kids dress up in fantastic costumes, bob for apples, and go trick-or-treating. Well, unless they live in a community that has done away with Halloween because some Christians say it's a holiday for Satan, or some Jews say it's too Christian, or some Wiccans say it makes fun of their religion (which has as much to do with ancient witchcraft as P. Diddy has to do with Bluegrass...).'" Finally, check out MAKE's geeky / tech DIY guide to "amazing costumes, scary tech, pumpkins, and gross food."

OMG

Can anybody redirect me to a tutorial in which it shows you how to look like a ninja with just a t-shirt.

Homer Simpson's high-tech X10'd Halloween Display

While these halloween decorations [komar.org] are a bit over the top, /.'ers might find 'em entertaining and worthy of "News for Nerds"

7000 lights along with giant inflatable Pumpkin, Frankenstein, and Homer Simpson - D'OH. View with three webcams, control (yes, turn 'em on/off & inflate/deflate) with X10, send Instant Text Messages via webcam, view Google Map of surfers, and enjoy or cuss at the Franken-Homer cursor & Adams Family Music.

Website suggests sending your trick-or-treats to charity ... so far, it has raised over $14,000 for the University of Maryland Center for Celiac Disease.

Evil is limited trick-or-treat times...

Evil is limited trick-or-treat times. Seriously, when I was a kid, trick-or-treat started at about 3:05 (school's out) and ended around 10:00pm. In that time we'd cover about 12 linear miles of tightly packed houses and amass about two garbage bags full of candy each.

Today, most cities only allow trick-or-treating between 6-8pm....blah.

OT

I like how the big foot is crushing the iPod at the top of the page. It made me laugh.

In the Philippines...

In the Philippines, which is probably the most catholic country in the world, Halloween is the day you go to the cemetery and honor your relatives who have passed. It is a national holiday and pretty somber. But Christmas is the holiday where everyone throws costume parties and they all go crazy.

Tess the Vampire!

Obviously, the most important Halloween event today was my releasing a silly vampire game! It's slightly NetHack-inspired and Yipe!-inspired, except you get to eat placentas and suck blood. Yeah.

Tess the Vampire! [sippan.se] (There is 1 naughty word on that link.)

not directly related to halloween history, but...

you have to mention the day of the dead [wikipedia.org], which is actually tomorrow

while some christians may be uptight about halloween, in deeply catholic mexico and the philippines people actually go camp out in graveyards tomorrow

uptight christians must also recall that christmas trees are coopted from prechristian druidic tree worship, and that the time when christmas itself is celebrated actually predates christ as a roman winter solstice festival, saturnalia, and really has nothing to do when christ was really born at all

so perhaps in a couple of hundred years, halloween will become known strictly as a christian holiday, its real pagan origins shrouded in time, just like christmas is today

so let the coopting begin: someone suggest a new, christian-centered name for halloween, and suggest a christ-centered event the day was "meant" to celebrate

Re:not directly related to halloween history, but.

Or, we could just do what most Christians do (including my father, a Lutheran minister): have fun with it, and don't take it too seriously.

EXTREME PUMPKIN CARVING

liquid nitrogen, webcams, hatchets, dissection kits, power tools are used in this high-concept pumpkin carving contest [popularmechanics.com] by the editors of popular mechanics magazine. video, podcast, blog and photos included...

About the whole bread with currants thing...

The bread was, IIRC, baked with honey, making it more of a treat, getting a better reaction from those receiving them than: "Oh, bread... with currants... lovely" (followed by an awkward moment.)

From worthless to totally stupid!

From the "total waste of time" department.

I religiously oppose Halloween

I personally think the worship of God Mammon is evil.

While the holiday itself is fine, it's become what most holidays turned into: A way to spend money. That's not what it's about. No matter what religion it is supposedly rooted in.

Ironic

I have always found it ironic how evangelical/fundamentalist churches often shun the Christian aspects of the holiday (dead people) to embrace the pagan aspects of the holiday (the harvest). I don't know whether to laugh or . . . well I just laugh.

The scariest thing about halloween

is the amount of code I have to write.

All I can say is...

I called it [slashdot.org]. iPods are possessed by evil spirits.

Diddy

or some Wiccans say it makes fun of their religion (which has as much to do with ancient witchcraft as P. Diddy has to do with Bluegrass...).'"

I thought we established that "P." Diddy was no longer to be used :P. "Diddy" wants to be closer to his fans, especially the ones who are bluegrass freaks.

I went to the Brain Slug planet for Halloween...

...And all I got was this lousy assimilation.

Of my own free will, I decided to build my own brain slug [scarytoyclown.com] for Halloween.

OuijaPod would you help me?

The table's rumbling

The click wheel's turning

No I was not pushing that time

It spells M-S-Z-U-N-E

The table's rumbling

The click wheel's turning

No I was not pushing that time

F-U-C-K O double F

(Ouija Board [youtube.com])

Misleading article

From TFA: By around 43 AD Rome had conquered most of the Celtic lands.

No way Jose. The Romans never touched Ireland, and they left Scotland to the Scots (even built Hadrian's Wall to keep them out). That leaves Wales, Cornwall and Brittany under Roman rule, although even there Asterix and his mate stopped them in their tracks!

my Linux Pun'kin (almost)

I figured the /. crowd would get a kick out of my jack-o-lantern [cexx.org] this year. The realistic lighting is powered by a bundle of six RGB LEDs, each individually controlled by its own tiny PIC10F200 microcontroller - so technically my pumpkin is pulling 6 MIPS right now :-P (The 'flickering' pseudorandom table is generated with the blue channel all 0s, and the green limited to about 3/4 the intensity of the current red value so that it can only produce a flame yellow and not a sickly green...)

Faeries?

Life was good for the Celts, if by "good" you mean living in constant fear of pissed off faeries (it's less gay if you spell "faeries' with the "ae" than "ie") and evil spirits.

Thank you.

For anybody who asks: I celebrated Halloween by fucking a handsome Russian. He was an excellent lover!

Re:P. Diddy has tons to do with Bluegrass

O Brother, Where Art Thou:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0190590/ [imdb.com]

Shawn Combs:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0004835/ [imdb.com]

As you can see, Combs' contributions to O Brother, Where Art Thou are far from insignificant. His role in that film was cited as the inspiration behind the transition from rock to folk for Spinal Tap, now known as The Folksmen [wikipedia.org].

Re:Bah humbug!

I bet your a riot at all the parties.

Re:Bah humbug!

Why do non-Americans call a vacation a holiday? In my book a holiday is a celebration (or day a day of morning), whereas a vacation involves time off work.

Re:Bah humbug!

Tastes great or less filling?

Re:Bah humbug!

If you think Halloween was "invented ... by businesses", you need to read up on your world history. The Snarky Halloween History linked up top will catch you up.

But you have a point. Remind me not to purchase any more food, either, which after all is invented and promoted by businesses in the name of profit.

Oh wait, no, you don't have a point. Some of the best Halloween costumes and decorations are home-made, and dressing up in costumes is something kids have enormous fun with. I'm not even American, but I spent a year in a small town in the midwest US when I was about five, and trick-or-treating is one of the things that really stands out in my mind from that time.

But for some strange reason, people don't just give away costumes, decorations, or food, so it often makes sense to pay someone for them. What's wrong with that, exactly? Should humans never celebrate something together as a community, or if they do, only wear found scraps while doing it? (That would be scary, I admit.)

Question: why do American's call Halloween a holiday? In my book a holiday involves time off work.

Simple: in the U.S., "holiday" has a meaning closer to its derivation, "holy day". Time off work is called a "vacation".

Re:Holloween Fibs:

Sorry about the lack of formatting. The above is hard to read. If this doen't look right, sorry. Happy Halloween!! He Is Awake In my soul A seething hot-bed Of all that will come and will be My Darkest Angel, Come, Sweet Prince of Oblivion. We Are Consumed One and All We beckon Your Call Ashen earth, wake of The Hallowed Harvest Us, O' Lord that we may walk in Your Shadow Lo And Behold My Brethren Perse is the Sunset We are Harbringers of the Void His Mechanism, Stillborn Severance In Vivo

Re:umm.. not true?

As a actual Wiccan I can say it definitely has a lot to do ancient witchcraft, it is just that our religion isn't afraid of change and it helps our religion evolve and change over time and not be stuck in some 5,000+ year old paradigm that is totally unpractical.

So, what you're saying is that it actually doesn't have anything to do with ancient withcraft, but claiming an ancient lineage makes it sound cool? Is using paragraph breaks offensive to Wiccans too, or is that just a personal thing?

Re:Bah humbug!

You forgot to tell us durn kids to get off your lawn.

Re:umm.. not true?

Hrm... Witchcraft isn't a religion either, and only a small part of wicca is involved with witchcraft. If a group of people set up a religion that incorporated the ancient knowledge of the healing properties of herbs, then that wouldn't be an ancient religion either. Christianity has a lot more to do with judaism than Wicca has to any ancient religion, yet few would argue that Christianity was substantially older then 2000 years.

The actual name of the holiday is what people choose to call the holiday. It happens that it falls on the same day as the celtic holiday of Samhain. Because of the proximity, and some PR by the church, some of the traditions were absorbed into Alls Hallow's eve.

Now, where and when does the celebration encourage fear and hate? It's a time of partying and festivals and candy, where children go around knocking on doors and delighting old people in their costumes in exchange for sweets.

Or to put it another way, get over yourself.