I WANT TO EAT A NUT OF LAERMA!

LATE HALLOWE'EN FUN...

Eh, unlike a lot of pro-Republican bloggers, I really wouldn't make too much of the early exit poll results... so much so that I'm not going to comment on them at all.

Since The Simpsons Hallowe'en episode won't air until Sunday November 7^th, I don't think it's too late to mention the great Hallowe'en features on a lot of very obscure websites no one but myself knows about.

Something Awful has a Flash Tub cartoon thriller spoof called "The Very, Very Haunted House" about some guy who thinks he's being cursed by the ghost of his murdered wife and is in no way responsible for the rash of murders and other crimes that mysteriously seem to happen in his presence. This isn't exactly an animated sequel to their short horror film Doom House, but the voice of Gary is done by Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka, who also starred as Reginald P. Linux in Doom House, so it's quotable in a very similar way.

Some guy: Wait a minute, didn't I see your wife pull out of the driveway and leave yesterday?

Gary: No, no, no, no, that's impossible. She was brutally murdered last Saturday and I can't get the morbid memories out of my mind.

Old woman: I thought you said it was Sunday.

Gary: They... ah... the killers broke in and started stabbing her Saturday at 11:59 p.m. but... but they didn't finish until 12:02 a.m. on Sunday.

Homestar Runner's feature cartoon is "Hallowe'en Fairstival" about Strong Bad going around from character to character trying to scare the hiccoughs, or "hiccups" for you Yanks, out of The Cheat. If you know where to click, you get an additional scene with Homsar as Kumar from Wes Anderson's Bottle Rocket! Other Hallowe'en features from this year include a "1937" "The Homestar Runner" cartoon entitled "That's a Ghost", and a short film entitled "Homestar vs. Little Girl 2" with the Homestar puppet talking to a real little girl.

I'll be lazy and steal an excerpt from a transcription of "Halloween Fairstival" from HR Wiki:

STRONG BAD: Oh yeah, we need to get rid of The Cheat's hiccups. You got any grody old man remedies?

KING OF TOWN: Sure! You gotta feed and feed the hiccups until they mature into liver failure! And then...

STRONG BAD: We're not trying to kill The Cheat! Don't ya have anything that could just scare him?

KING OF TOWN: I have this x-ray of my heart.

{The King of Town holds up an x-ray showing a ham where his heart should be, labelled 'General Caveat Lower Eclusal'}

STRONG BAD: That's not scary. That's... promising! Come on, The Cheat. Let's let the King die in peace.

{The King of Town's mask spins into a sad face, like the character he's dressed up as}
KING OF TOWN: Yes. Let's.

Finally, X-Entertainment's Matt Caracappa did another exceptional Halloween Countdown this year, with my favourite article being the one where he tries to dress up his cat in a store-bought vampire costume for pets. Matt wrote:

"t took Lenox some time to get used to the idea, but more sincerely, our pride and joy hated every second of this. It didn't get to the point of outright hisses, but Lenox's meows soon transformed into what I will swear on a stack of bibles were clear and audible "nooooos.""

so I wrote back, in the X-E blog entry for October 31^st:

"It was a great Hallowe'en countdown this year, though. I especially liked the article about dressing up your cat; I just wanted to bring that up because, no, Matt, it's not just your cat that has learned to say "Noooooooooo!" My cat says the same thing too, very distinctive from her normal mewing, and I fully believe she is attempting to say the English word "no"; I don't think it's a far-fetched premise at all that animals can learn to say one or two simple words. She hears "no" often enough and must have some vague knowledge as to what it means and if she can do a meow variant that sounds more or less like "no", she'll use it when she doesn't approve of something. And it's not just my cat that can say one simple English word; when I get home, Luke, my golden retreiver mix, says "Eh-rooow", which I honestly believe is an attempt to say "Hello". He never makes a sound like that at any other time other than when a person he knows comes through the door. Strangely enough, of our two dogs, Luke is the stupider one, he can't plan things the way my other dog, a Labrador mix, can, but he is the one with rudimentary language skills."

All true, by the way.

Speking of The Simpsons "Treehouse of Horrors", I don't think there's been an exceptional one since "Treehouse of Horror VIII" in 1997, with The Homega Man, where Comic Book Store Guy says, just prior to noticing that he's about to be atomized by a neutron bomb, "But Aquaman, you cannot marry a woman without gills. You're from two different worlds! Oh, I've wasted my life." And they never seem to play the classic "Treehouse of Horror" episodes from the seasons currently available on DVD anymore in reruns in syndication or on the Comedy Network, just the crappy ones from recent seasons, especially the one with Pierce Brosnan and that fucking annoying leprechaun! I'll try and watch this year's episode, but I'm not holding my breath that it will be any good. At least there will also be a new episode of king of the Hill.

posted by Steve Brandon @ 11:15 PM