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10/23/2007: Feed Me, Seymour!

We had to pick up flowers for a relative a few days ago, and since it wasn’t the kind of occasion that required an all-out $75 spending spree at the florist, we just hit the supermarket for one of the cheaper bouquets that come wrapped in the less-glossy paper. And thank God for that. Our local supermarket has a fairly small flower section, but somehow, in the midst of all the “Happy Birthday” planters and little pots full of bamboo sticks with the requisite not-quite-Buddha statues, there was a section full of Venus Flytraps.

My first experiences with Venus Flytraps came by way of elementary school plant sales. I’m sure the plant sale is a familiar enough entity to most of you. For whatever reason, parents and students alike were invited into a plant shop converted from a science classroom, where we could buy flowers, seeds and all kinds of greenery for no steadily apparent reason at all. It was nowhere near as joyous as the school’s annual book fair, but any opportunity to skip class and blow Mommy’s money was a welcome one.

There wasn’t a heck of a lot for young, male horticulturists to indulge in at the plant sale. Even if some of us found the blazing yellows of a well-watered daffodil assortment striking, it’s not like we could’ve admitted that in front of our buddies. No, at the plant sale, it was all about the Venus Flytrap: God’s gift to every small boy who didn’t want the social connotations involved with buying a “sissy” plant.

The Flytraps we got back then came in containers somewhat similar to the one seen above, but the plants inside were always young and weak. I’ve read enough about Venus Flytraps to know that this particular fashion of distribution goes against every expert’s rules on how to keep ‘em alive, but somehow, the traps in this container looked healthy, active and ready to rain fire on any bug stupid enough to mistake them for lawn chairs.

Kind of pretty in their own little way, aren’t they? They need to be. Ugly plants might not seem as inviting to the many bugs that help make up a Venus Flytrap’s diet. The “trap” mechanism is amazing. When I gently flick the scary hairy fangs of the plants, the traps immediately slam shut. What’s a mere novelty act in my kitchen is actually how the Flytraps survive the “lean years” in their native environments: Bugs land in, shimmy around, find themselves trapped and are then slowly digested until nothing but a hunk of chitin (which looks like rat shit, but is actually an insect corpse) is leftover. If I was going to pick any plant to write about during the Halloween season, it had to be this.

Be warned: There are a ton of kits available that claim to let you grow your own Venus Flytraps, never mentioning how difficult this is for a novice, especially with the tools and directions supplied in such kits. It’s not an impossible mission for anyone who spends a bit of time studying up first, but don’t be fooled by those kits just because they’ve got neat graphics of killer plants on the packages. Even if you buy one “live” like this, you’ll still need to research a bit if you want your traps to live longer than a week. You can’t just throw it under the faucet and feed it dead bugs every few days, unless, by some chance, you’ve accepted an underworld bounty and have been charged with killing as many Venus Flytraps as possible.

As a second caveat, note that you’ll tend to consider your Venus Flytrap as being more “alive” and “feeling” than most other plants. There’s just something about them that makes you believe in all that shit about plants liking soft music. You’ll probably cry and consider holding a mock funeral when they die, so if you’re particularly prone to depression or separation anxiety, you might want to pick a plant that’s a little less awesome.

Almost as awesome as pirhanna plants. But hey get points for actually existing outside my video games.

If one of the flytraps die, does the enture plant die or just that particular flytrap? Cause one of them looks dead already.

I’m no expert, but judging from the photo, it looks like the traps can lose a brother but keep on truckin.

Wow, your flytrap looks lovely! I’ve got a flytrap that I named Rasputin, but he doesn’t look as good as yours.

OMG I have almost zero halloween spirit this year. I need to go to a haunted house asap. Maybe it’s because it was 80 freakin degrees yesterday. If I feel this way about Christmas I don’t know what I’m going to do.

I remember being in elementary school, and a kid who was prone to telling obvious bullshit stories always swore you could buy venus fly-traps at the local supermarket. He may not have been lying about that after all. I guess if there is a halloween plant, other than pumpkins, it would be the venus flytrap - but i just can’t get into the feel of halloween looking at them. In fact, I can’t get a feel for halloween at all this year. It’s way to warm, and I don’t like it. Damn global warming. Everyone buy the fancy spiral lightbulbs, and maybe we’ll get october weather next year.

This last summer, I got a packet of seeds for the sensitive plant, you know, those plants that curl up when you touch them, for an anime movie promotion. I figure they’re as hard as the Venus Fly Trap in raising from scratch. I always thought those were tropical plants, so when it does get cold over there, are you going to bring them inside, Matt? I haven’t the foggiest of how to even keep those things alive.

I finally got my Halloween spirit last night. I was near suicidal too from the dearth. The leaves have finally started falling/changing, I saw Nightmare Before Christmas in 3D, and I’m going to another horror movie tonight (The Tripper!). I’ve got one good week in NYC.

I image the’re kind of like orchids- they need to be humid and warm- like a schteamy bathroom or something.
And yeah- you all need to get in the spirit! It’s a week away. A WEEK AWAY!
I went to a punkin patch last Saturday and already carved a punkin!
I’ll probably do one tonight too.
yaay!

I am going to take my daughter to see Nightmare 3D tomorrow night at my IMAX. That might be the kick I need to feel Halloween goodness on my insides.

I love the flytrap but don’t think I have any bugs to feed it. We have a pest control service that comes monthly so we can kill the food supply for the scorpions that invade if you have any. Matt, do you think they like scorpions?

A few things I have been pondering…What do you suppose Knacks, Mary and Kuse are doing for Halloween? Do you think Mary dresses up all cute or do you think she goes for the slutty outfits? I wonder if they do the “couples” outfits or if they do their own thing? Ho-hum, I miss them.

I’m not too afraid of ridicule to admit that I would cry like a little girl who had to shoot her rabies stricken golden retriever in the head if I ever bought a Venus Fly Trap and it died.

I like the dead one. It looks so disturbing. Once these things are done circling the drain they may for a pretty cool decoration.
Great job Matt!

They DO seem more alive. First thing I noticed was the dead black one and felt weird looking at it.

Speaking of the weather.. getting tired of mowing the lawn well beyond the season needed for it (in NY). I heard it’s called a golden summer or something. Which means what, we’ll have a rusty winter? Or some other antonyms of golden and summer?

This is probably the coolest Venus Fly Trap I’ve ever seen. The ones that I always saw at Roses and K-Mart were sad, pathetic plants that were just in reach of death’s door.

The other item that I LOVED getting as a kid were the Mexican Jumping Beans. They were so much fun

Had my first real Haloweenish expierience of the season Sunday. My sister had a Halloween party for my Niece and like 20 of her friends. We setup a path in the woods around her house and proceded to scare the living crap out of 7 - 10 year olds for an hour. Nothing like running around in the dead of night in a Gorilla costume weilding a chainsaw to get the juices flowing.

That is the scariest thing I’ve seen so far this Halloween season. Incidentally, I must have one. You can get them at most Grocery Stores?

oh i still morn the day my mother killed Audrey III while i was at college… i havent been able to buy a new Flytrap since. the only other plant i remotely cared for was Lumpy Jones who i killed decorating for christmas. :sniff:

Had one of these when I was a kid. It didn’t last long, but in the few short weeks it lived it worked its way up to being one of the coolest things I have ever owned. I’ve had cats and dogs and fish, and you know what? Fuck fauna. Venus flytraps are the best pets in the world.

Incidentally, Matt, I think you should offer some sort of prize to the first person to come up with a really witty WKRP In Cincinnati reference. I tried like hell to think of one, but I’ve got nothing.

Very, Very awesome, Matt. The pokemon guys got Carnivine’s design DOWN cold for that! Damn, I want to call at least one of those plants Carnivine!

This is probably the coolest Venus Fly Trap I’ve ever seen. The ones that I always saw at Roses and K-Mart were sad, pathetic plants that were just in reach of death’s door.

The other item that I LOVED getting as a kid were the Mexican Jumping Beans. They were so much fun

1) I definitely agree about the K-Mart Venus Flytraps. I always wanted one, but I didn’t want them to die.

2) Mexican Jumping Beans can die too, they’re actually seeds with moth eggs in them. Nothing like finding out that your Beans stopped jumping and you find a dead bug in the little plastic box they came in.

2) It has gotten COLD down here in the South…it’s like the weather decided to go from Summer to Winter, without an autumn. So now I’m more in the mood for Christmas than Halloween. This upsets me.

I’ve killed every plant I’ve owned, including mint. Mint. You have to be a special kind of person to kill mint. Maybe I’m a superhero.

Jessica Marie: I say go for it. You can be Poison Ivy’s new nemesis. She’ll come up with a new breed of sentient giant rhubarb and send it rampaging through the downtown area, and you can put it on the windowsill and water it twice weekly and it’ll go down like Glass Joe. You’ll be a hit.

so far, the only plants I can grow are tomatoes and Cacti.
*shrugs*
Jessica Marie:
Did you Venus Flytrap survive off of hotdogs? The one I got died cause I couldn’t find anything to feed it- with two cats, they ate EVRRYTHING that moved.
Infact- I have a hard tome believing that they can SNAP CLOSE-mine never did.
Maybe mine was dead when I bought it.
gawtdam home depot.

Well, I guess you can call this my first official post from the good ole’ US of A because, well, it is my first post from the good ole’ US of A! Sorry it’s taken me so long to write one because I have to be inspired to think up something to say. Anyway, I apologize because this post, like most of my others, have NOTHING to do with the topic. Anyway, here goes.

It would seem to me that unless you’re into scary costumes, candy, and decorations, there’s really nothing to get one into the Halloween spirit. I mean, the stores don’t have a special section for Halloween videos/DVDs like they do for Christmas. I can’t tell you how many stores I’ve been in and I haven’t found a lot, if anything DVD Halloween related. I couldn’t even find Fat Albert’s Halloween Special in the stores, and if I order it off of Amazon I don’t think I would get it in time for Halloween. Well, I did find something at Best Buy and that was the original Halloween on DVD. They also had the special “25 Years Later” two-disc set but it was in Full Screen (I’m a movie purist, everything’s gotta be in the original aspect ratio it was filmed in, so that would support my decision to allow most Classic Disney Animated movies to be fullscreen because that was the way they were filmed) and it seemed to support all the movies with their Special Features with Panel Discussions for II and V and a couple others. Besides, the one I had looked to have the better special features and the better price ($9.99 as opposed to the 25th Anniversary being $14.99). I then realized that both editions would be useful with the special features on the 25th Anniversary because I’m sure the version I had with the Widescreen aspect would be just as good of a print. However, in choosing one or the other, I chose the one that was cheaper and maybe buy the other one a little later. So, in went the 9.99 priced Halloween movie as well as the 2-disc Edition of A Clockwork Orange, The Jungle Book, and Meet the Robinsons for my little DVD spending spree at Best Buy. It looks like the original Halloween, Garfield’s Halloween, and two viewings of “It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown” (one on primetime on ABC and the other on my “It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown” DVD which would be followed by “Garfield’s Halloween Adventure”) will be as far as I go for Halloween spirit this year. Well, I would have an excuse being I just got back from Iraq but next year I should hope to go all out!!!! Oh well, this should show how much anticipation I will have for the Christmas season!

Okay, on another totally off-topic, did anyone happen to catch “E.T.” on Family Channel this weekend? I’m asking because when I saw the commercials advertising the movie, they were showing clips of the original 1982 print and not the Special Edition 20th Anniversary print. So, you had the animorphic real E.T. expressions instead of the CGI cartoonish look and, of course, the guns WERE in the scene at the end when E.T. lifts the bikes up in the air. It makes you wonder why they would show that version and not the Special Edition, especially when I remember hearing the 2002 version was going to be the only version ever to be shown from now on.

Anyway, one final note. I was driving around Austin this past Saturday (remember, I’m stationed in Ft. Hood, TX and Austin is only one hour and ten minutes from post) and came across a CVS Pharmacy. Thinking about the post Matt made about the Great Pumpkin set piece, I had to check the place out to see if they had any. To my dismay, there were NO sets anywhere in the store! A bit of a disappointment but oh well. If they weren’t sold out, they probably never even carried them. They probably only were available in certain areas and I’m assuming Texas is one of those states where the Peanuts are not very popular. Just hope the local ABC airs Great Pumpkin on Tuesday (saw on the website it’s the 30th and not the 28th as was mentioned earlier). It’s been a while since I last saw the special on network TV (1998 when it was still shown on CBS and they followed that with Garfield’s Halloween), so I’m looking forward to seeing it with commercials and whatever advertisements ABC wants to show during the airing. Well, that’s all I have for now so I’ll stop my rambling and read on with the posts.

No way would a Venus Fly Trap like soft music. They’re definitely Slayer fans.

I had a venus fly trap before!
It lived for about 2 weeks…
apparently it didnt catch enough bugs sitting on my window sill for a week. So i got the idea to put it on the porch. Not such a hot idea either. It got bugs…but it still died.
It made me sad too - i really liked that little fly-eating plant!
Maybe it died cuz i kept sticking pencils by it so i could see it shut…damn.

2) When I saw “Snap!” on the package, I thought it meant “Oh snap, it’s a plant that eats s**t! It’ll blow your f**king mind!!” But then I saw “Crunch!” and was a little disappointed.

3) My brother and I had a pretty wicked cactus when we were kids… It’s still alive, too, but neither of us has been brave enough to take it from our home to our respective apartments. All kinds of bad things could happen during that car trip.

On one hand…something to eat all the darn bugs that somehow make their way into my apartment! I hope it eats mosquitoes. There must be more in here than there are out THERE.

On the other hand…I don’t take great care of the plants who live in here and don’t eat bugs. I’d shudder to think of what my brown thumb would do to the poor thing. Not to mention my apartment is perpetually dark, thanks to the huge grove of trees surrounding it. I almost lost a spider plant because it couldn’t get the sunshine it needed (I gave it to my uncle and it’s fine now). I wouldn’t want to do that to a “living” plant!

In North Carolina, where I lived for 9 years, it is illegal to pick Dionaea muscipula (flytraps) in the wild because they are a rare, endangered species. It can lead to fines of up to $2000 if you’re caught. the only exception is for botanists with permits and they must replant seeds from the plant in the same area where it was picked.

(b5) Possession of freshly dug Venus flytraps on the lands of another shall constitute prima facie evidence that the plants were taken from the same land on which the collector was found.

(c1) No person may sell or offer for sale Venus flytraps unless they have been lawfully collected, propagated from lawfully obtained stock plants or seed, or collected from one’s own land.

Sorry to sound like a smarty-pants, but I worked for the NC Wildlife Commission in college and we had to know these ordinances inside and out. Do any of you guys live in states where it is also illegal?

Man..I was eating when i read about the mutilated insect corpses looking like bits of rat crap.

Aww, I always wanted venus fly traps! They do look really pretty. =) Maybe I’ll pick some up, hehe. Do they need sun? ‘Cause I live in the foggiest place in the US. >.>

In the spirit of Halloween, I’m cheering on the sinister black fella, he’s awesome.

Off topic, but yesterday watching Spongebob I saw a commercial for Moon Shoes. Except for some guy singing the jingle, it was the same exact commercial as the original aired back in the day when kids jumproped… You guys remember jumprope? The video is here

Great post! That would be the ONLY plant I would buy for myself! My wife could run in horror… ok, maybe not, but I can dream

I like the dead one and I also like the one on the bottom left that seems to have turned cannibalistic. I guess that’s what happens when you leave them alone together in a plastic tube for too long.

You know, with the lack of Frank Miller or Grindhouse stuff I was going to skip the Scream Awards, but what the hell. I can wait until Saturday to record SVU. I suppose I could just record the Scream instant replay but I already have to wait three hours longer than everybody else

We didn’t have plant sales. We had book sales, of course, and we had a holiday store full of tacky crap every December that they always wanted the parents to send a blank check for. Never plants.
That dead little Audrey is creeping me out.

I knew these plants existed, but I had never seen one that was not cartoon before. amazing. I recently killed a plant that I had had for three years, and I have no idea how. But now I have a huge pot that needs to be filled.

I felt pretty bad for killing a very old bonsai tree. I think I would feel 10 times worse for killing something with a bunch of little mouths.

Who else woke up to cold weather this morning? I was pleasantly surprised. Too bad it won’t stick around for long.

as soon as i read this i had to have one, lol. i called three florists but then found a potted plant for 9.95 at one of them, and bought it… it had 5 “mouths” i fed him two spiders already, tomorrow i’ll have to look for a nice terrarium or something…. but i read that i should put him in the fridge so he can have his ‘dormant winter season’ i’d hate to have him go dormant now that i just bought him but they say he’ll die if he doesn’t go dormant…

GloomyJack
I woke up to 40-ish weather here in Texas. It’s only here because I brought it back with me from New Mexico. I was in Red River on vacation and it snowed and got down to 8 degrees. Nice!

Seeing this post reminds of one of my favorite children’s book series…”The Plant that ate Dirty Socks” by Nancy MacArthur. Anyone else read those? They’re short books for kids, but they’re fun reading…

I remember always wanting one of those plants when I was younger, My mom ended up buying me a regular plant, sucks but I had it for like 6 years.

Most high school classes choose the rose or sun flower as their class flower when the graduate.

I’ve always wanted a Venus Flytrap, but doubt my ability to catch flies for the poor thing. Besides that, I suck at caring for plants. I’m amazed that my beta fish, Spartacus, is 5 years old because I’m about the worst fish-mom ever. My cats seem fat and sassy enough, though, so I must be doing something right.

If anyone is interested, there are costume reviews for 2007 in my latest blog. It was hella fun to write, so I thought I’d share. Last time, I promise.

So….what DO you feed it, Matt? Or does it take care of itself pretty much? You don’t have to catch bugs everyday do ya?

After weeks of feeling no Halloween mojo whatsoever, mine has finally arrived. Lovely, 40 degree tempreatures, huge, bright moon in the sky. Monster Fest playing on AMC. People finally putting up stuff in their yards (well, they have been for about two weeks, but now it’s all up and very visible). While the tempreatures are going to go up, the low for Halloween is supposed to be in the low 50’s. Perfect weather and shaping up to be one of the cooler Louisiana Halloween’s in recent memory.

My grandmother had, among the plants in her garden around 1990, a Venus Flytrap. I thought the concept of a meat-eater plant had to be the coolest idea for a living creature around, due to the T-Rex being dead. It was even more cool for an old lady to have one.

Ah, Nightmare Before Christmas 3-D. I was DYING to see it, but the damn thing isn’t playing anywhere in my state! The nearest locations are either Colorado Springs, CO or El Paso, TX (both about 4.5 hours away.) The only way I could see it would be if any of my friends wanted to go on a long day trip or short road trip for the purpose; and most of my friends are lame/even broker than I am so there is not much hope there

I’ve never heard of a plant sale…my schools never had them. but in fourth grade we had a class venus fly trap. we fed it hamburger every other day, but me and some other boys would catch as many flies as we could to put in it.

It’s nice too see that more people seem to be getting into the Halloween mood. I had better start thinking about a costume…

Also, Nightmare 3D is amazing! We took my girl’s 4 year old to see it, he actually tried to catch the snow!

Ooh, I’ve got Creepshow 2 recorded from AMC, I’ve never seen it. Already watched plain old Creepshow the other night, and now I keep expecting a zombie to pop out of every dark corner, demanding cake.

I always wanted one of those buggers but my mom would never let me have one. She was probaby right as I tend to get inordinately attached to my plants. My cacti and succulent garden on my sunporch is doing well enough (including the cacti I’m growing from seeds — courtesy of the gift shop at the Phoenix airport) but need to be moved inside once this horrid warm weather ends on the EC. And I think I need to repot a least two of them.

Creepshow 2 is awesome. It’s cheesy, but it lives up to its name. Some of the stories in there really haunted me as a kid.

Question: If you could have ONE horror movie playing in the background as people are over at your house playing RISK at the kitchen table and drinking/eating a lot, which one would it be?? I am thinking ‘Night of the Living Dead’ myself….I can only afford to buy ONE dvd, and I don’t want to play any of the ones I already own…..

Muppet Baby - I’m partial to Pumpkinhead. As a matter of fact, I’m convinced that its the single most perfect Halloween movie I’ve ever seen. I just watched it again last night, and I enjoyed it so much I had to watch it again this morning before I came into work. Its got everything: cheesy 80s clothes, a huge Stan Winston monster, demons, lots of screaming, an evil witch, black magic, damnation, fire, plenty of blood, crazy hillbillies, a cute kid getting killed, curses, and, believe it or not, a very good story of how a man is destroyed by his own need for revenge. There’s even a gravedigging scene in a graveyard that’s inside a pumpkin patch. Stan Winston put every Halloween trick in the book into this movie, and yet none of it ever seems overdone or hokey. Its never in your face, and for the longest time, I didn’t even notice how incredibly Halloween-centric Pumpkinhead is. Seriously, I love this movie. It’s a Halloween must.

Or, if you want to go a much lighter route, you need to get Ghostbusters. One of the best movies ever made. I watch it every Halloween, every year, without fail. Its the centerpiece of my personal Halloween tradition.

Muppet Baby, for that mix I would suggest the classic horror movie Shazam, starring Shaq as a genie… errr wait. To go with the board game theme, I’m going to suggest the original Witchboard! One of my favorite movies from the 80’s (horror or not!)

punkinhead, huh?
I’ve never really been into horror movies, except either super-cheesy ones (Sleep Away Camp, anyone?) or zombie flicks.
I may have to check that out- sounds like a good sunday-night, winding-down-from-the-weekend flick.

As for Venus Flytraps- maybe, now that I’m a RESPONSIBLE adult (hey, stop laughing!)… maybe I should try one on for Size. My cacti ain’t dead, and it’d be a good accent for the bathroom.

The trick is, keep them moist and in plenty of sun light. The bug thing really isn’t necessary. In FACT, it takes SO much energy for the plant to close, the movement makes the bud shrivel after only a couple of good closes. DON’T keep playing with them!

Oh my god… I caught myself quoting lines from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer to the cats this morning… Save me, Great Pumpkin! Save meeeeeee!

ugh…. stopped at the local Tim Hortons (like Dunkin Donuts type chain if you don’t know) for a coffee on the way home last night. They gave me a large coffee in a ‘festive’ cup. The Christmas festive cup….

I paused, blinked, and looked at the guy and said “are you serious? a Christmas cup before Halloween?” … he sighed and said “yup, thats Tim Hortons for ya, seems to be early everywhere this year..”

You’re not really supposed to feed your flytraps things like raw hamburger, hot dogs, or anything in the way of people food, kinda like a regular pet. But if you take real good care of it, and treat it well, it just might explain the structure of an atom in a way you can understand.

I think it was three days ago now, that I woke up to find it snowing outside. Ahhh, Colorado, where it snows at least once before, or on Halloween. Fuck, I’d rather be home right now where its in the 70s. Snow just screams “LOOK ITS CHRISTMAS TIME!!!!!!!!! JINGLE BELLS, JINGLE BELLS!!!” There is still patches of that evil white stuff hanging out in shady corners where the sun cant get at it!

Thanks for the ideas….I would totally play the original “Nightmare” game if I could on Wednesday.

Matt my friend had one of and I swore up and down it was fake, until I saw a dead fly on the window sill and picked it up with a piece of paper. I fed it, and needless to say I felt like an idiot. They look plastic!

Shoutout to kittymao for the Sleep Away Camp reference. Angela effin’ rules!

If I had to make another reference, I always go with The Shining. It’s long, you can pick it up at any point, and Nicholson is so delightfully batshit. The only downside is that it’s more of a winter movie, due to the snow. If you want to go the Troma route, I’d suggest Redneck Zombies.

Sleepaway Camp, which I saw for the first time at the age of 23, had an ending that kept me awake the whole night after viewing it by myself in a dark room.

Keep in mind, I’m a horror nut. I’ve seen it all. Italian zombie stuff, Japanese stuff, good ole’ American shlasher flicks…And yet Sleepaway Camp’s ending fucked my shut up but good.

As for a good horror movie to have on in the background…Re-Animator. Any movie that features a severed head performing oral sex on a woman is bound to be a crowd pleaser.

matt, I think some of the images got switched around, or else that is one BIG venus flytrap in the first image (Dinosaur image from a few weeks ago)

Is it just me or were the pictures of the venus flytrap replaced with dinosaurs?

Wukong:
When I saw it- I just sat through the entire credits with my mouth agape, mouthing the words “What the F*CK…”
I wasn’t expecting it. at ALL.

Ooh, what about C.H.U.D.? That’s some creepy-bad Halloween fodder right there. I want to find them all cause they’re so BADLY GREAT.
House Could be good too. I saw the second one when I was 7, i think. I had a brother who was 9 year my senior and had this thing about torturing us when he babysat us. I have that “monkey brain” scene from Faces of Death ingrained into my brain since I was 5.
Woohoo for Psych-O Families!

bytheway,I’m hanging out cause matt said he was goona write about some awesome mystery booze and I’m WAITING.
*taps foot*

Be sure to pick out the dead ones entirely. I’m not sure what brought about this stupid tip, but if I recall properly, leaving them there is unhealthy to the plant.

I have no idea why a few of you are seeing dinosaur images in this post. Is anyone else?

PS: Original Halloween on AMC right now, and the horror movies are continuing pretty much forever. Some good ones, too.

So how many Venus Fly Traps would you need to dispose of, say, a 200lb human corpse?

Reading through the blogs I noticed someone mentioned “The Ghost With the Most” I can handle a lack of countdown, but I would love to see one of these before Halloween.

According to the first fly-related hit on Google, your average housefly weighs 40 mg. 200 pounds is a shade under 91 million mg. So 200 pounds of flies is equal to approximately two and a quarter million insects. Since it takes a Venus Flytrap around ten days to digest a house fly, we’re talking a scale of tens of thousands of years for a single trap to digest 200 pounds of tissue.

So if you get your hands on a hundred thousand traps and a decent meat grinder, you can get the job done in twenty-two days, although I don’t think they’ll have much luck with the bones. You’re probably better off sticking with pigs.

Several hundred thousand you say? Hm. What if I just wanted to maim someone for getting drunk and pulling my hair?

kb, did you see this?
AMC is ruling my universe right now. This will actually be my first time seeing Halloween.
Muppet Baby, Pumpkinhead is indeed a good candidate, but I’m going to be predictable and suggest Planet Terror (some people may not have seen it yet, lots of attention-grabbing crowd-pleasing (and squicking) bits, and you don’t have to follow the plot to enjoy it). But if you’re strapped for cash, I can tell you that I picked up Night of the Living Dead along with two other zombie movies for a cool $3.00 at Big Lots. Not sure if you’ve got those up there though…

Oh, well. If it’s a simple maiming you want, just a couple will probably do. Depending on how high up you are when you drop the pot.

I’ve got my hands on a fistful of Silent Hill ACTION, and I’ve decided that Halloween isn’t ending on the official day. The season will be extended until I see fit, seeing as it’s mainly taking place in my head and bedroom anyway

I’ve been plenty jazzed (as I’ve said before) but I’ve been really quite busy, and my friends have been as well. We’re doing our Jones Halloween Party next Thursday.

This weekend is just going to be a good, generic fall time. I’ve gotta hit IHOP after the Bacon and Sausage thread at Shrine, and I think I’m going to take my mom with me to see Dan in Real Life. It just seems up my alley in all the right ways.

The new EGM arrived in my mailbox yesterday, and it has a review of Clive Barker’s Jericho. It got Shame of the Month, with scores of 3.0, 4.5, and 4.5. Now I feel bad about hyping it.

Wukong, kittymao: Was sleepaway camp that good of an ending or horror flick? I haven’t seen that yet and like you I fancy myself a horror lover… reason is I’ve introduced my daughter to horror a couple years ago with Freddy and Jason and now she is willing to take on all comers daring a movie to scare her. If it’s as good as you people say I may have to pick it up for rental.

The one that popped my horror cherry was ‘Evil Dead I’ when i was like 7 or 8 I think. Had nightmares for months and the passion bloomed from there.

Jedoc - I’m totally going to make myself a superhero on the Hero Machine. Good call!

it’s basically the crying game of cheezy super low budget 80s horror flicks. i’d prefer something like slumber party massacre personally

Slumber Party Massacre is great, especially the one with the rockabilly dude. Two, I think?
I was wondering if you guys could help me figure something out. I’m trying to come up with any horror or even other genre franchises where a hero definitively dies at the end, but they were back for the sequel anyway. Obviously there are plenty of villians that fit the criteria, but I know there’s got to be at least one example of a time where the filmmakers couldn’t let a good actor go just because they happened to kill them off. The only thing I can think of so far is how they’re bringing the actress who played Laverne back on Scrubs, but that’s as a different character, so not really what I’m looking for. Thanks for any ideas!

that’s an interesting question. I’m usually pretty good with spotting actors in roles… but I can’t think of any at this moment. Lemme rattle my brain…

Any horror fan should see some original William Castle films at least once. He brought us the original House on Haunted Hill and 13 Ghosts back in the day. Not to mention the great gimmicks that gave his works loads of Geek Chic. 13 gave out glasses that, depending on whether you had the colored filters up or down, enabled you to see the ghosts on screen. Just like the goofy goggles worn in the film. Some DVDs have the effect and glasses to go with them. Wonder what a remake of The Tingler would look like…

King: yeah that was the spookovision or something so if you got too scared you could filter out the ghosts.

Squee - Evil Dead part 1, you assume the tree kills him at the end but he’s back for part 2. Not sure if that counts.

Hey, Jason and Kruger among others are on the South Park episode Imaginationland Episode II.

How awesome are carnivorous plants! When I was about five my grandfather had a Venus fly trap and he showed me how it worked by baiting it with a pencil. I believe I spent the rest of the day crawling around the yard looking for sacrificial ants. I probably made the plant obese.

The first plant I ever had was a flytrap. I got it after seeing Little Shop of Horror on tv one day. I loved putting dead flies inside it’s mouth.. can it be called a mouth? Anyway, mine never snapped shut it.. more like closed in slow mo, but even so it was great to watch. I don’t remember what exactly happened to it, but I probably got sick of having to take care of it, I was only 10 or 11 at the time, so my mom probably threw it out. This makes me want to go out and get another one. On a side note… I was looking around you tube a moment ago and found a Halloween movie I forgot about. Halloween is Grinch Night. Granted it isn’t as wonderful as the Christmas one (the Grinch is voiced by someone else in the Halloween one) but it still is fun to watch, kinda puts me more into a Halloween mood oddly enough. Does anyone else remember seeing this too?

Primus
I want to SO see that episode- I had to hear the play-by-play blow from my BF as I drove home from work last night.
Also hear that Kurt Russel gets assaulted by the “Critter Christmas” squirrel.
f*ckin sweet.

Yeah, Matt’s all happy with this thing now, but wait until it starts dating his sister. Then we’ll see his true colors.

Arrrgh! I am cursing the cosmos with my terrifying claws!!!! My Dish TV dude was supposed to hook me up with some blazin’ HD channels so I could watch AMC and all these horror movies. But no luck, cause the contractor sucks. So I go cable-less for another few days, as rockin’ horror movies fly into the ether unseen. Positive side up? My new sony surround sound system arrives tomorrow. Woot.

Primus, you not the only one that been having trouble loading the blog since I been having trouble viewing the blog 3 weeks ago. Other than that, kittymao, man-bear-pig was also in yesterday South Park episode.

It got cold here, yay. But for some reason, it’s starting to feel like Thanksgiving/Christmas already, which is LAME.

Also, I’m missing out on AMC’s horror movies AGAIN this year because my stepbrothers have been marathon-ing some Tiger Woods game for the last three or four days. This is the worst Halloween season ever.

Y’know, they don’t actually eat the flies. They jes suck the Nitrogen out of them. Cause you usually can’t get Nitrogen in the rainforest.

Squee : I would say the Terminator movies, cause Arnold is back for Terminator II and III as a good guy, but they’re technically different robots so I don’t know if it counts.

This is pointless because I will probably be spam filtered again for some reason or another but Squee, always stick with Pet Semetary or my personal favorite, Creepshow 1 and 2. If you go with Creepshow you only have to tune in for 15 minute increments.

Fuck. Of course the one time I sound like an ungrateful dickhole I get posted. Sorry Matt.

I was in CVS today, and they were just beginning to begin the Christmas section…and they have a Christmas version of the Halloween Peanuts thingy that Matt reviewed.
And I was thinking jeez, I love early holidays more than anyone, but this is early. But I think that these stores wouldn’t know what to place in that section for a month between Halloween and Thanksgiving. Cause, we don’t really decorate for Thanksgiving.

I might go with ‘Planet Terror’ as a background movie now, since its newer so fewer people will have seen it, including me! Thanks for the suggestion!

I read the Bruce Campbell autobiography “If Chins Could Kill” and it was awesome.

No prob, Bill. I know the spam filter can be frustrating. (Though I don’t know why it targets you so often…perhaps you moonlight as a virtual penis enlargement salesguy?)

Ummm has anyone else noticed that the pictures in this blog entry have now been replaced with the pics from the “walking with dinosaurs” post from last week?

Man, I hear everybody on the “feeling like Christmas sneaking up”. Weather just didn’t get nice/chilly early enough, so weather hosed Halloween. NOTHING on TV, I’ve already eaten my ENTIRE box of Halloween Crunch and cannot find more. Damn, Halloween already seems over and its WAY too early for Christmas. I was pondering if it was just people approaching their thirties (me) that was not feeling it this year. Whadda I got a do, drink some freakin apple cider? I WANT HALLOWEEN FEELING NOW!!!

I’ve got a rule in my house. Absolutely positively NO Christmas ANYTHING until the day after Thanksgiving. Then you can have Christmas until Jan. 6.

Terror Claws Cole - I know exactly what you mean.

I have come to the conclusion that yes, it is the stupid ass weather that fucked everything up this year. Even I (who recently turned 30) can’t get into the Halloween spirit, and I specifically took a weeks vacation right at the beginning of October just so I could do halloweeny things! Did I do them? No!

I did half-ass carve a pumpkin the other night, though. *sigh* I even bought a half gallon of apple cider, and it’s damn good, but… it’s just missing that Halloween essence to go with it.

Well, it did start to get cool here last night, so maybe there is some hope yet.

maybe some good horror sites will help get in the halloween spirit, these were mentioned on g4 today haven’t checked them out yet, if anybody knows some good horror blogs (especially 70s/80s type stuff) i’d like to check some out

I don’t care much for The Fury so I popped in Carrie while I was waiting for my hair to turn a lovely shade of pink. Now I’m a blonde. Damn. I followed the directions on the package. Oh, well.

So I made my obligatory less-than-a-week-before-Halloween run to Target today. I have a list a mile long of things that I want that are too expensive now but will probably come down after the holiday.

And get this: one employee was moving costumes off one isle and another employee was moving Christmas stuff over. Pathetic.

Thanks for all the movie suggestions. Those are exactly the kind of things I was looking for. I knew I could count on you guys

Yay, Muppet Baby! I feel like I’ve done my little part. I finally have my own copy of the steelbook edition on the way as of today, thanks to ebay. Aaand now I see it’s finally available on the Best Buy site. Stupid!
Speaking of Planet Terror, Quentin and Robert (and Zoe) totally got robbed at the Scream Awards, no? I mean, 28 Weeks Later? At least they got a little recognition. I was totally eating a giant mouthful of sushi when they showed the QT’s Planet Terror clip, which was funny. I don’t remember them showing as much of the gory stuff last year, am I just imagining things?

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