What’s interesting about Halloween is that it has no real connection to the majority religion of this country, it does not celebrate an event in our nation’s past, it does not involve traveling to visit family, and it doesn’t even give us a day off work. But it gives us the chance to try out other identities. For one day, people can feel free to dress as the opposite gender, as criminals, as superheroes, celebrities, animals, or even inanimate objects. But Halloween retailers report that the most popular costumes remain some variation on witches, ghosts, and devils.

• Words:
  • The Eggcorn Database, “unusual spellings of a particular kind….a word or part of a word [that] is semantically reanalyzed, and the spelling reflects the new interpretation” [via]
  • Court enforces letter of the law:
    

    “A Turkish court fined 20 people for using the letters Q and W on placards at a Kurdish new year celebration, under a law banning characters not used in the Turkish alphabet…”

    Not just your Ps and Qs you have to mind, I guess.

  • Hunting for fake words in the OED [via]
  • Lyrics from the Shaft theme translated to Chaucerian English [via]
  • Worst lead of the year?:
    

    It looks like something a person might say after splashing through the chilly waters of the Pacific Ocean — “Cthulhu.”

    It is pretty lame all right.² [via]

  • Lists of fictional characters [via
  • The Fantasy Novelist’s Exam [via]
  • Tarrantino meets Socrates: Republic Dogs³ [via]
  • Weird and wonderful vocabulary from around the world [via]
• Pictures:
  • Mad Magazine Explorer: thousands of covers [via]
  • Betty and Veronica go goth [via]
  • Doonesbury: When Good Strips Go Bad — think of it as a view into an alternate universe where Harriet Miers didn’t withdraw her name from consideration as a Supreme Court nominee [via]
  • The art of Yakov Smirnoff [via]
  • They’re made out of meat⁴: Machine Animal Collage [via]
  • All Men Like Birds Must Die, sketchblog of illustrator Jason Sho Green [via]
• Video:
  • Do They Know it’s Halloween?¹ (Quicktime) (more info) [via]
  • Hip-hop Yoda (Windows Media) [via]
  • The Archive of American Television interviews with the likes of Walter Cronkite, Ossie Davis, and Carl Reiner
  • DriveTime, Ravi Jain’s weekly video blog from the driver’s seat of his car during his daily commutes (Quicktime) [via]
  • “Baby Got Book” [via]
• More religion:
  • iBelieve — Can you use it to listen to anything except psalms? [via]
  • Clarence Larkin dispensational charts [via]
• Other:
  • Soylent yarn is people: how to knit DNA (scroll down to the bottom) and a knitted human digestive system [via]
  • The Brontosaurus: Monty Python’s flying creationism⁵
  • Good Smell Perplexes New Yorkers — I thought I smelled something myself Friday morning at work. That was before I’d read the story, so I doubt it was the power of suggestion. [via]
  • Civilization Anonymous [via]
  • Hufu, “designed to resemble, as humanly possible, the taste and texture of human flesh.” [via]
  • Elephants may pay homage to dead relatives [via]
  • Kentucky lands grant to protect bingo halls from terrorists [via]
  • How to build a working Dalek [via]
  • “20 percent of human genes have been patented in the United States, primarily by private firms and universities.” But no trademark on the scent of strawberries⁶ [via]

² I can definitely understand why Nalo Hopkinson had the “sudden urge to start using Blogger word verifications as character names.” I keep expecting to see Cthulhu pop up among them. I suppose I could look this up, but does anyone know the etymology of Lovecraft’s creations? Did he just make them up whole cloth, or are they fudged from actual words? (Perhaps something faintly Welsh?

³ I guess I’m just not well-read enough to find this laugh-out-loud funny, but maybe you are, who knows.

⁴ “They’re Made Out of Meat” by by Terry Bisson

⁵ Monty Python actually has entered the courtroom before. In 2002, the defense offered it as an alibi in the murder trial of Michael Skakel. Skakel was convicted.

1. He ain’t got no distractions, can’t hear no buzzers and bells [“Pinball Wizard” by The Who, guessed by John]
2. And the flowers still grow, but they don’t smell as sweet as they did when you picked them for me [“Do I Ever Cross Your Mind” by Dolly Parton, guessed by Eric]
3. And people tend to pass you over ’cause you’re not standing out like flashy sparkles in the water or stars in the sky [“Bein’ Green” by Kermit the Frog, guessed by Nyssa]
4. He’s a kid from Colorado counting raindrops in the drain [“Waiter at the Station” by Willy Mason, guessed by Eric]
5. Well, I’ve been lookin’ all over for a gal like you, I can’t find nobody so you’ll have to do [“Honey Just Allow Me One More Chance” by Bob Dylan, guessed by Eric]
6. He can make it if he try, to the sky like a Coney Island ride [“What You Need Is Jesus” by Public Enemy, guessed by Eric]
7. Beware the thrum of hearts in your presence and watch the breeze that snaps at you now [“Unsingable Name” by Mike Doughty, guessed by Eric]
8. Are you so deaf that you cannot hear his plea? [“Free Nelson Mandela” by The Specials, guessed by Eric]
9. Living in sin doesn’t move me either way [“Kick Him When He’s Down” by The Offspring, guessed by Eric]
10. When all the world is a hopeless jumble and the raindrops tumble all around, heaven opens a magic lane [“Over the Rainbow” by Ella Fitzgerald, guessed by Eric]

Oh, and #4 from last week, the only song that wasn’t guessed, is “Llorando (Crying)” by Rebekah Del Rio.

Maybe something along the lines of how it was constructed thanks to the generous funding of University professor Dr. Otto Octavius and family or something.