Category: Horrordailies

Boo-kends

I’m not much into decor, at least for myself as I’m terrible at putting interiors together (bad Libra, BAD), but when I saw these bookends, I had to get them.

They sit on my bachelors dresser, holding my growing collection of Barnes & Nobles Collectibles Editions and a few other books.

I call the one on the left Edgar and the one on the right Allan. Seems fitting for the subject matter of most of those books. I’m about halfway through a novel I’m reading, and then I’m going to read the Lovecraft. I’ve never read any Lovecraft before, but the first paragraph of the first tale, “Dagon,” has me chomping at the bit.

I am writing this under an appreciable mental strain, since by tonight I shall be no more. Penniless, and at the end of my supply of the drug which alone makes life endurable, I can bear the torture no longer; and shall cast myself from this garret window into the squalid street below. Do not think from my slavery to morphine that I am a weakling or a degenerate. When you have read these hastily scrawled pages you may guess, though never fully realize, why it is that I must have forgetfulness or death.

Heck, maybe I’ll just read that tonight, since I had to take the book off the shelf anyway. “Dagon” is only a few pages long.

I saw my bookends while picking out these for a buddy’s birthday last summer.

She put them to very good use.

An doll in Egyptian clothes with two cat bookends.
Image: Kada Walden

She collects Barbies (although the one above is a Monster High doll, the Howliday Cleo de Nile), so if you’re into that, check out her awesome YouTube. In fact, even if you’re not into Barbie, check out her awesome YouTube, especially if you love spooky season. Her Halloween display is a thing of beauty, dark, delicious beauty.

Speaking of things dark and delicious, here’s today’s candy, good ol’ M&Ms. My friend is so elegant, I couldn’t put something tacky, crummy-but-good, or flat-out terrible below her video.

Sweet (Mary) Jane

Ever have one of those days when everything breaks? Today was one of those days. There I was, chugging along at work, highlighting passages in a PDF of a study I was writing about so my editors could see where I got my facts and figures, and suddenly there was a pop-up asking me whether I’d like a free trial of Adobe Creative Suite or just purchase it outright. When I took too long to answer—because I was hella befuddled—it quit. Then I got an email telling me I had lost access to Adobe Creative Suite Pro or some such. Right as I was typing this into a group message on Teams, our art director sent a message saying he was dead in the water because he lost access to Adobe Creative Suite. A friend at another organization said the same thing happened there, too: People were suddenly losing their access at random.

Eventually access came back except for me, but one of our IT folks sorted it out and I was up and running for about an hour when suddenly my Word crashed. Thank goodness for autosave or I would have cried. Word never fully recovered so I finally just called it a day and headed home, when along the way I discovered that the escalator at my work Metro stop was broken. Fortunately, it was the one where I enter the system, so I only had to go down the stairs and not up, but maybe I’m not the only one whose depth perception goes bonkers after about 25 steps down on an escalator. Or maybe I am, and I’m the only one who just kind of suddenly freezes up for want of seeing where the next step is.

Then the Metro itself broke and I got stuck in a tunnel for about half an hour.

After all of that I was very glad to get home, where I could pause to admire the tree-topper on the Halloween tree in the lobby.

We’re having a Halloween door decorating contest and this year I may just participate. I’ll have to think about it. If I were more social I’d decorate my whole apartment, get a Halloween tree and ornaments, and have a party, but I haven’t hosted anything in over 20 years and I’d probably give myself a good bit of anxiety worrying that no one would show up. Decorating a door might be possible, though.

And now, for today’s candy, the Mary Jane, a molasses and peanut-butter taffy candy invented in 1914.

Someone left a comment on a social media post about how these always fall to the bottom of the treat bag when you trick-or-treat. Come to think of it, yes, they always were on the bottom, along with the pennies. (Don’t get me started on people who gave pennies. I hope no one does that anymore.)

I hated them as a kid, but sometime in my 20s I fell in love with them. Perhaps molasses is an acquired taste. Today I’d be just as afraid of these pulling out a filling or pulling off my crown as the flavored Tootsie Rolls in the previous entry. Some candy I just won’t eat anymore, but for those who like these, looks like you can buy a 30-pound case of them for $152.79 at Oh! Nuts, the website where I yoinked the picture. Your dentist will love you, if not your primary care physician.

Happy Horrordailies 2024!

Hello, darlings! It’s the most wonderful time of the year again, and so I’m back with Horrordailies—only this time I’ll try not to have a heart attack in the home stretch. Man, that was a buzzkill.

I noticed that some of you really seemed to enjoy the daily Christmas ornaments and the pictures of the state Christmas trees in my 2023 Holidailies posts, so I strained my brain wondering what I could do for Horrordailies that would be similarly engaging. Then I saw this post on Threads by one Dan Emerson last night and boom, there we go: Halloween candy!

Me, I loved the vanilla ones (blue wrapper) and banana ones (yellow wrapper), but as I read the comments on Dan’s Thread, I saw that the vanilla ones are akin to pineapple on pizza: you either dig it or you don’t. It would seem that these candies overall are polarizing because he said when he posted this on X people were all “ew, that’s gross,” but on Threads it’s “all love.”

What say you? Gross or love? Any favorites? Pro-vanilla or anti-vanilla?