Crazy lady yelling at my Halloween decorations (1 Viewer)

[Cees Alons]

If this article is right, it stems from Europe in the first place. Ancient Europe even....

Basically, blame the Irish.


Cees

 

[Kevin T]

that's what i always say. last month, my car was leaking fluid because my coolant outlet box had a hole in it. F*%KING IRISH!!!!

kevin t

 

[Bob McLaughlin]

Okay, here are some images of what drove this woman to madness. So far, no incidents tonight. By the way, the ghost is lit up with black light and has a motor that makes it slowly float up and down. Like I said, this looks much better at night.

This was too panoramic to show in one picture, so I have a "left" and "right" picture. You may have to click on the image itself to make it full-size.

[url=http://img419.imageshack.us/img419/6504/all17sw.th.jpg] [/url][url=http://img429.imageshack.us/img429/8884/all20sk.th.jpg] [/url]

 

[Kevin M]

Why......you......FIEND!!!

 

[Henry Gale]

Yes, and not just her.

It's NOT the decorations that are upsetting her.
Good taste prevents me from clarifying this.

Pittsburgh eh?

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

I think that it might have been the headstones that set her off.

The yard looks great, I love Halloween, too.

 

[John Nelson]

Nice job Mark. Especially love the giant spider. You've got to find some way to make the front two legs move up and down as your next project. Well done!

 

[David Galindo]

Man, that is one killer setup you got there. Nicely done!

 

[andrew markworthy]

Yes, but in the UK it was largely confined to sweet innocent pasttimes such as ringing doorbells and then running away (ah the days of childhood - and in any case, why confine that sort of activity to one night in the year? ). Interestingly, the places where the Halloween tradition is still strong in the UK seem to be remote rural areas where probably inbreeding is still rife. Draw your own conclusions.

Seriously, I think that Halloween dropped in popularity in the UK because of competition with Bonfire Night on November 5th (fireworks, bonfires, etc, to celebrate foiling Guy Fawkes's Popish plot to blow up the British government 300+ years ago. I should stress that any religious connotations were lost long ago - I would guess that not one Brit in 100 could tell you that it was originally an anti-Catholic demonstration).

I suspect that the rise of Halloween in popularity is that greater exposure to American culture is taking its effect. Heck, I even saw pinatas [have I got the right spelling? - those paper donkey things you hit until they disgorge candy] in my local supermarket the other day (I thought this was something completely alien to the UK). On top of that firework displays are no longer just on November 5th but any time in the fortnight around it (a symptom of modern working life - mom and dad may not be able to fit a party into their schedule on November 5th, especially if it's a weekday).

 

[Bob McLaughlin]

Thanks guys! Yeah, we Pittsburghers like our spooky stuff--after all, this is the town that brought you George Romero and Tom Savini, "The Silence of the Lambs" and "The Mothman Prophecies" (and, uh, "Flashdance"). I bought a lot of the masks you see in my display at the Monroeville Mall where "Dawn of the Dead" was filmed...to me, it's just the mall.

 

[Bob Turnbull]

Of course, you're going to Hell and will burn for all eternity Bob, but the spider sure is cool.

 

[Joe Szott]

Andrew - Until I hear a Brit correctly pronounce "Tortilla", I think you guys are keeping the culture creep at bay pretty well. So far, I've not heard the proper pronounciation even once.

 

[Paul Padilla]

Love the pictures!!!! We've been in our house 3 years and we always dreamed of doing things like that. We keep running into this or that, but we're definitely getting at least a few things up this year.

Not quite. Cees's link before describes it pretty accurately. The Celtic festival of Sowen is the root of Halloween and pre-dates Christianity by nearly a millennia.

 

[Bob McLaughlin]

The anti-Catholic demonstration Andrew was referring to was Guy Fawkes day, not Halloween.

Thanks for the compliments on the decorations!

 

[MarkHastings]

The best part of the article (that Cees linked to), is this: AMEN!!!

 

[Paul Padilla]

My bad.

 

[Robbie R]

Great decorations Bob. I love the giant spider.

 

[Max Leung]

I really like that spider. Does it have millions of little baby spiders inside it? That would be awesome to have that spider split open when someone rings the doorbell, and have all those cute little 8 legged freaks spilling all over the hapless trick'er'treat'er.

(BTW, what is with the mixed brackets Andrew? [it reminds me of LISP BTW - silly programming language])

 

[andrew markworthy]

It's because I type pretty quickly but have an Achille's heel about brackets for some reason. Sorry! If it's any consolation, I drive the sub-editors at my usual publishers mad with it.

Tortilla is pronounced 'tor - tee- ya' isn't it (with not too much stress on the 'y' sound)? However, beware that an American discussing how to pronounce words is on dangerous ground.

Back on topic - love the garden and especially the spider. It usually takes me the wrong sort of painkiller and a high temperature to see things like that.

 

[Max Leung]

No need to apologize Andrew! It was amusing - I used to do that all the time but now I use the 'dash' instead - not quite as distracting as brackets, you see?