Hello and happy Friday! The Spooky Librarians are taking next week off to properly celebrate Halloween (as well as our anniversary), so posts may be slim or nonexistent until November. If we don’t post again, here’s wishing you a wonderful, safe, spooky Samhain/Halloween! 

Before that, however, here are some links… 

Room Rater continues to be my favorite new Twitter account, and as a bonus, it’s led to some artists! Check out Ernesto Ybarra’s work. 

Over in the music world, Tom Lehrer has released all his lyrics into the public domain. 

At Green-Wood Cemetery, an altar for Dia de los Muertos has been set up for visitors. 

And finally, someone asked people if they would rather be hot or cold, and then made a map of the results. (Those of you who would rather be hot are very strange creatures.) 

Have a safe and spiffy weekend, week, and holiday! See you soon.

Reclaim the Records has been mentioned here before as an amazing organization, fighting for free public access to data (and helping many a genealogist in the process). Now they’re taking on NARA! 

The AP’s Fact Check is a fairly balanced look at the false claims ricocheting around media at warp speed. Check out the weekly roundup, in particular. 

Today I learned that China is mad about Sherlock Holmes. Who knew? (Well, probably most Chinese.) 

The National Library of Luxembourg has, perhaps, the most amazing (analog!) sign system of any library.

 The Queen of Halloween herself, Elvira, has made a video about Halloween 2020. It’s definitely worth your time.

 One silver lining about all this has been the extra time spent on Halloween décor! We’ve got a lot going on outside our house, but EPBOT has some ideas for inside the home, too.

 I love that, along with the Egyptian discoveries mentioned in an earlier post, we’re still discovering “new” Nazca lines in Peru. As William Faulkner said, “the past is never dead. It's not even past.”

 Hello! Today’s rabbit hole subject: Kaspar Hauser.

 If you’re interested in bizarre stories about mysterious people, Kaspar Hauser is a good one. Was he a savant? An imposter? The truth is out there, somewhere. Aside from that, he was a fairly good artist, which I didn’t know until I saw this Public Domain Review’s post. (Also, Kaspar has inspired many songs, like Suzanne Vega’s “Wooden Horse.”) 

As a spinoff, Hauser’s Wikipedia entry links to a List of Unsolved Deaths throughout history, which is also fascinating stuff.

 Hello and happy Monday! Here are your arty links. 

Film/TV: The puppets from the old Rankin-Bass Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer are up for auction! The catalog is online and it’s wonderful. 

Architecture: Roof tiles that absorb energy and changecolor! What a neat concept. 

Visual Art: Thanks to Satori for sending a link to Michael Demeng’s website. If you like assemblage art, you will love this (I do!). 

Music: Vinyl is having a true resurgence, and Tedium explores the whys and wherefores. (Also, check out The Burning Ear for new vinyl releases.)

 

Happy Friday, everyone! Why not start the weekend with a discussion of the best horror movies of all time? Cassandra sent this in and I find it hilarious that #151 is Deep Blue Sea, put on the list only for this scene:

 

It’s also baseball playoff season, and one of the teams in the mix is the Houston Astros, known mainly these days for their cheating scandal. To that end, someone has made a great comic book cover!

 

Have a safe and spiffy weekend, everyone. See you next week.

Back in the early days of the pandemic, the Smithsonian offered some escapism via digital puzzles. Now there’s a fall edition for us!

Also from the Smithsonian: There are still more coffins and secrets being unearthed in Egypt. It’s unbelievable how much is buried out there. I’ve been reading up about ancient Egypt lately and this is a really fascinating article about why some statues and artwork were defaced or broken.