Posted in Halloween, writing

Gracie and Skully

Posted on by D. D. Syrdal

I couldn’t resist this as I was about to leave for work this morning. Gracie perched herself so perfectly with the Halloween decor on my dining room table. Normally I would shoo her off the table, but I couldn’t have gotten her to pose like this if my life depended on it. Strike while the iron is hot, and all that.

Gracie with Skully

That’s the Skull o’ Cookies (it’s a cookie jar). I told people they had to reach in and eat the brains when I brought it to work. Big hit in the office, as were the chocolate chip cookies that I filled it with.

Author:

Writer of vampire stories and science fiction. First novel, "Revenants Abroad", available now at Amazon. If you like a vampire you can go out drinking with and still respect yourself in the morning, I think you'd like Andrej.

22 thoughts on “Gracie and Skully”

  3. She’s lovely 🙂 I love black cats. Ours is a tuxedo but she was doing some nice Halloween cat stretches the other day to my daughter’s delight 🙂

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  7. What a bewitching tableau. And that cookie jar is to die for!! (as I’m sure the cookies were, too) I love all the fall holidays ~ Halloween, Thanksgiving, Sukkot ~ maybe it’s just the change in the season, but they really do feel almost pagan in the worship of earth’s harvest (and decay). But I will confess I hate those inflatable lawn ornaments of sanitized characters that are all over the suburbs these days. Give me a ghastly homemade lawn scene of ghouls, tombstones and gore!!! That shows some real imagination and effort.

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    1. I must admit – there’s a big inflatable ghost holding a doughnut at our local Dunkin Donuts, and it makes me smile every time I go in there.

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      1. They’ve just always struck me as the lazy man’s way to decorate, but I can see a business using them. Businesses have always liked using balloons of all types to draw attention. I’ve seen some online that are more elaborate and interesting than others (there’s a coach of death at Grandinroad.com, enormous thing, costs a fortune).

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      2. I’m willing to make an exception for a ghost that promotes doughnut-eating. To take it further, I’m more to the side of DD when inflatables are used for attention-getting business promotion or free speech. I love those skinny tall tubes with arms that wave wildly in front of my local Jiffy-Lube… and in NYC you see the inflatable rat outside buildings where there are union/management disputes.

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  8. Hi Rosie!

    It’s very pagan, honoring the wheel of the year as we approach the dark half of the year and the last of the harvest festivals. The earth will sleep while Persephone is in the Underworld, we mark the passing of those who have crossed over this year (many pagan traditions believe those who died during the year actually cross over at Samhain, and for some it also marks the New Year).

    I’m more Addams Family than Nightmare on Elm Street with the decorations, but I’m with you on the inflatable atrocities. Ick.

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    1. I’ve always figured if I did get a cat, I’d want black one. 😉

      Speaking of the Addams Family, do you remember a while ago we were discussing the Addams vs The Munsters? Well, I bought the first season of the Addams Family, and shockingly- I’ve been converted to their side! 🙂

      Although I still love my Munsters, too 😉

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      1. Now, I could live without the skinny tube-shaped things, but I love the rubber rat! We had it on campus last year: I think something to do with the way the University was treating food-service workers.

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      2. I briefly dated a guy who believed that women seem to prefer the Addams Family, whereas more guys like The Munsters. I like ’em both, but I must admit that the way the Munsters treat their “unfortunate” cousin Marilyn is a really hysterical comment on American society’s narrow standards for beauty, then & now…

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  9. You have to admit, Carolyn Jones as Morticia had far more sex appeal than Yvonne de Carlo as Lily Munster. Same goes for their respective tv husbands (Gomez vs. Herman). I did hear there is going to be a reboot of The Munsters, I think Guillermo del Toro is directing. The Addams Family was just cooler, somehow, with their tacit acceptance of all things macabre and weird as “normal.” Thing, Cousin It, Lurch… funny, yet weird and mysterious all the same time. One thing I liked about them was they were original, they weren’t just established ‘monsters’ (like vampires Lily and Grandpa, Frankenstein Herman). It was hard to know what to make of them and their ‘goth’ lifestyle before goth was even a movement or fashion statement.

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    1. The Addams kids were much slyer and cooler than Eddie Munster, but I sort of loved Herman M’s hamfisted vaudevillian sweetness. Fred Gwynne was also swell as the judge in “My Cousin Vinnie”

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  10. you know, i think both the Muensters and Addams families were just perfect for 60’s style B&W sitcom TV: that sexual banter between Morticia and Gomez still made it past the censors and showed them as a very healthy example of a successful marriage. And Gomez was one of the only sitcom Dads who wasn’t treated like the family idiot…. the old-world Muenster family fretting over the younger generation (and marrying off poor Marilyn) ~ writing that today would be quite a feat. (But I’d insist on filming in B&W.)

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    1. Absolutely, B&W is the only way to do those shows. Gomez and Morticia were adorable together, maybe that’s why women loved the show, if that is in fact the case. John Astin was so perfect as the cheerful nutjob, you couldn’t help but love him.

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    2. I can tell Rosie wrote those posts right before lunch b/c she spelled Herman & Lily’s surname like the cheese. 😀

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