HAPPY HALLOWEEN EVERYONE!

Here are some great photos my sister took of me in costume. We went down to the park near our house on Saturday before the parade.

That’s right… sewn from scratch and the ideas in my head! Inspired by Amy Brown’s art.

[ Disclaimer: This is vampire related... not solely about Twilight. All vampire-inclusive.]

History & Origins
(thank you Wikipedia!)

“Many theories for the origins of vampire beliefs have been offered as an explanation for the superstition, and sometimes mass hysteria, caused by vampires. Everything ranging from premature burial to the early ignorance of the body’s decomposition cycle after death has been cited as the cause for the belief in vampires.”

“Although vampiric entities have been recorded in most cultures, the term vampire was not popularised until the early 18th century, after an influx of vampire superstition into Western Europe from areas where vampire legends were frequent, such as the Balkans and Eastern Europe, although local variants were also known by different names, such as vrykolakas in Greece and strigoi in Romania. This increased level of vampire superstition in Europe led to what can only be called mass hysteria and in some cases resulted in corpses actually being staked and people being accused of vampirism.”

My First Exposure

My initial vampire exposure was with Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles . When I was about 16 years old my friends and I were pretty obsessed with Louis, Lestat, Claudia, and Armand. It was great, and I really liked the books as well as the movie. I’ve only read Interview with a Vampire and The Vampire Lestat but I liked them, and one day I intend to finish the series. The good thing about them is a number of the books can stand alone. I think The Vampire Chronicles have to be my favourite of all the vampire stuff I’ve read so far.

Other Mainstream/Modern Vampires

I never really got into “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”. Almost every time I sat down to watch it, I got a rerun of the musical episode where everyone is breaking out into song. However, I do have a bit of base knowledge and I have to vote for Spike over Angel. Spike is a bad boy with an accent, what more do you want?

Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer: Don’t get me started on Bella (and we’re not even going to discuss Breaking Dawn)… but Edward is a pretty cool vampire. I absolutely love his family — Esme and Carlisle (“mom” and “dad”) are great! Meyer certainly brought her own twist to vampire lore, which is refreshing. Instead of all vampires being bloodsucking, soulless monsters, the Cullens are “vegetarians”: instead of hunting humans and being nomadic, they pretend to be humans and hunt large mammals.

I’ve never seen HBO’s “True Blood” television series, but MTV.com has this to say about it: “True Blood,” based on the Sookie Stackhouse novels by Charlaine Harris, also has a very different metaphor to offer — vampire as outsider deserving equal rights — but the heroine is someone Twilighters can relate to. Like Bella, Sookie is an outcast in her small town, and she’s plunged headfirst into a supernatural world when a hot vamp walks into her life. Edward is intrigued by Bella because he can’t read her mind — Sookie is intrigued by Bill because she can’t read his.

The Count from Sesame Street is awesome. One…. Two…. Three…. Jim Henson. ‘Nuff said.

My Vampyric Goals

I intend to read Dracula by Bram Stoker. One day, somewhere down the road, I will read this classic!

Are you a spine breaker? Or a dog-earer? Do you expect to keep your books in pristine condition even after you have read them? Does watching other readers bend the cover all the way round make you flinch or squeal in pain? [Suggested by Mariel]

It makes me sad when people bend the covers, break the spines, and dog-ear pages. I mean, some general wear and tear is to be expected, but you don’t need to abuse the book. Everyone likes to read books that look pretty and are nice to hold, not feel like you’re holding something that lives on the street.

Am I being too bitchy about this? Pristine isn’t necessary, but neither is destroyed. I like to keep my books in a decent condition — I use bookmarks, only open them as far as is comfortable to read, and I try not to throw them about (although I toss them in my purse on occassion).

It started out with me trying to take some “artsy” photos of the autumn colours in my neighbourhood:

Well, then of course I accidently left the door open (Henry is an indoor cat) so he ventured out onto the porch (without his harness!) to inspect what I was doing:

Happy Whiskers on Wednesday everyone! Pop on by to check out the other “Halloweeny” submissions!!

TEASER TUESDAYS ask you to:

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page.
• You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given!
• Please avoid spoilers!!

“He’s on the main road, the one where the streetcars used to run. The south side of the street is piled high in places with barriers to shield cars and pedestrians from the hills to the south, thought there are still places for a sniper to sneak a bullet through. He’s heard foreigners call this street Sniper Alley, and this makes him laught, because it seems to him that every street in Sarajevo could have this name.”

The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway

We had a fabulous time! We were a little late so I went down the parade route on my own. There were so many great costumes!

ETA: I totally forgot about the videos I took. (scroll down!)
ETA2: YouTube has been giving me a hard time!! I think the videos are fixed now.

Bad Bear and Good Bear (Adrian and Ginger — friends)

We had a bunch of carrots with us (and one rabbit disguised as a carrot)… and we met a tomatoe and a corn-on-the-cob at the parade! Had to take a Produce Photo!

No-Face from Spirited Away

Calvin & Hobbes (Rachel), Good Bear (Ginger), and I Do Believe in Fairies (Monica)

Marionette & Stilt-walker

My favourite house along the Parade Route

Jack and Sally

Fire Show (check out the video below!)

Me, Laura (Dead Girl), and Rachel (minus the Calvin, just the Hobbes)

from Pan’s Labyrinth

VIDEOS:

Here’s the progress on my costume. My skirt is almost done:

(Sorry my dad isn’t the best photographer… he moves the camera too soon.)

But I did finish embellishing my store-bought wings! I like how they turned out. I did want to do it with glitter, but they’re actually strands of sequins. The hot glue gun is my costume savior! Anyway, as you can see, Henry needs to be a part of anything that happens on the floor (his territory)… it reminds me of Sissy when Chan is trying to take photos of her knitting!

I feel a lot more confident that it will be ready for tomorrow night! I can’t wait for Parade of the Lost Souls. I’m really looking forward to seeing all the neat stuff I helped out with in action.

Everyone gathers at 6:30pm, the Parade begins at 7pm through the neighbourhood, and then there is dancing in the street until 9:30pm. They’re doing some neat new digital stuff this year… between 6:30 Pacific Time and 9:30pm you can watch live streaming video from the Parade!

Every so often I see a great question and suggest it to Deb at Booking Through Thursday. Well this week, I’m famous! And I made Literary Feline famous too!

Monica suggested this one:
Got this idea from Literary Feline during her recent contest:
“Name a favorite literary couple and tell me why they are a favorite. If you cannot choose just one, that is okay too. Name as many as you like–sometimes narrowing down a list can be extremely difficult and painful. Or maybe that’s just me.”

Now to answer my question!

I absolutely love Rhett and Scarlett from Gone With the Wind. The novel is still on my TBR list, but they are a fabulous love/hate story in the movie. Their story is very compelling, Rhett loves Scarlett, but she loathes him, which turns him on even more. You want what you can’t have!

Romeo and Juliet are one of those famous couples that everyone tends to like… but I don’t! Juliet is honest, but Romeo is fickle. He just ditched Rosaline who he was totally in love with at the beginning of the play!

I also don’t like Bella and Edward… well Edward is alright, but Bella is annoying. (If you’ve been living under a rock, I’m talking about the Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer).

ETA: I totally forgot about Richard and Kahlan! My boyfriend got me hooked on the Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind. It’s really great, epic story of good versus evil. Richard loves Kahlan because she is unlike anyone he has ever met; Kahlan has never loved anyone because her powers would destroy them (true for all of her kind). But Richard has special powers of his own, and when they finally discover that they can be together, Richard isn’t destroyed by Kahlan’s powers! I’m not ruining anything (don’t worry) because it’s obvious they want to be together, and this is a sub-plot.

I got this in my email just as I was trying to figure out if I had any pictures stored on my blog of Henry. Today is Whiskers on Wednesday, and with going to work all day, and class in the evenings, sometimes I forget to schedule blog posts! Anyway… this popped up in my email, and I thought HAPPY HALLOWEEN everyone! Lets go CAT BOWLING!

Broken is Daniel Clay’s first novel, and immediately I knew it was set in England. Just the language, the slang, and the style took me straight back to the UK.

I also really enjoyed how honest the book was. Sometimes it was narrated by Skunk, other times it was just 3rd Person Omniscient. The base of the story is around Skunk growing up: the family in her life, the people at school, and her neighbours. It’s a really interesting story — we’re first faced with Skunk in a coma, and we start at the very beginning, with Broken Buckley.

Broken was a really interesting book — I definitely got the sense of a “To Kill a Mockingbird” influence, and when I read the “thank you notes” from Clay, To Kill a Mockingbird was in there! I think it was their names more than anything: Skunk and Jed. (Scout and Jem from Mockingbird)… anyway, it was interesting material and it kept you guessing.

I really liked how when Clay changed characters or perspectives, there was a seamless flow into the next thought. Sort of like, “And there he sat, wishing he was dead. In another part of the square, Broken also was wishing he was dead.” Very good segues.

It’s a really difficult book to describe, but it is interesting, a good read, and well-written. So here is an excerpt from the publishers.