Tuesday, October 23

The Debunker: How Was Dracula Killed?

by Ken Jennings 8 months ago

The poet John Keats called autumn a “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.” Let’s leave the “mellow fruitfulness” for November - October is all about the season of mists. We’ve asked Jeopardy! smart-aleck Ken Jennings to fact-check the spookiest Halloween lore he could dig up and fill us in on all these monstrous misconceptions.

Spooky Myth #4: Dracula Was Killed By a Stake Through the Heart.

A wooden stake through the heart is often said, in vampire lore, to be the only way to kill one of the pesky bloodsuckers. But apparently Bram Stoker, the Irish novelist who created Dracula, didn’t get the memo. At the climax of his 1897 novel, Mina Harker describes Drac’s death like this:

Kludge-O-Ween: The Woot-Off Where Anything Can Be A Costume

by Jason Toon 8 months ago

What do you do when you can't do it right? You kludge it. Generations of engineers, adventurers, programmers, and backyard MacGyvers have been kludging the world together for years. Now we're bringing that honorable tradition to Halloween.

Presenting the Kludge-O-Ween Woot-Off: two days of ludicrously resourceful suggestions for last-minute Halloween costumes for you to throw together. Some of these items will only reach you in time if you overnight them, and some won't get there in time at all. But a true kludger doesn't whine about shipping times! He or she looks around for what's at hand, cranks up the imagination, and cobbles together something semi-acceptable. When those trick-or-treaters show up, don't freak; you've probably got some oyster crackers or something in the pantry, right?

We hope Kludge-O-Ween inspires you to kludge together a costume, or to show us your improvised costumes of the past. Keep an eye on our Facebook page for our own getups kludged completely from offrice supplies. And most of all, have a very happy Kludge-O-Ween, whether you've prepared for it or not.

Tuesday, October 16

The Debunker: How Blind Is A Bat, Anyway?

by Ken Jennings 8 months ago

The poet John Keats called autumn a “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.” Let’s leave the “mellow fruitfulness” for November - October is all about the season of mists. We’ve asked Jeopardy! smart-aleck Ken Jennings to fact-check the spookiest Halloween lore he could dig up and fill us in on all these monstrous misconceptions.

Spooky Myth #3: Bats Are Blind.

Bats do have amazing ways of getting around that have nothing to do with eyesight, as you probably know. One suborder of bats, the microchiropterans, can echolocate, which means they emit high-pitched squeaks and listen for the sound bouncing back to help navigate and detect tasty nearby bugs. But echolocation wasn’t discovered until 1938, so it has nothing to do with the popular saying “blind as a bat,” which goes back to Shakespeare’s day. Maybe the cliché originally derived from the confused flailing of bats trapped indoors, or from the assumption that a nocturnal animal like a bat would be, in Bruce Springsteen’s words, blinded by the light.

Monday, October 15

Crap or Treat: Piece of Crap Giveaways from Woot & Archie McPhee!

by Jason Toon 8 months ago

Put this in your plastic pumpkin and BOO it! All week long on Woot's Facebook page, we'll be giving away single-serving Pieces of Crap with a festively Halloween theme. We're calling it Crap or Treat and all you have to do is "Like" our Facebook page, watch for the twice-daily sweepstakes posts, follow the instructions, and you might be one of the lucky winners!

And thanks to our pals at Archie McPhee, the world's greatest emporium of mondo bizarro, these aren't the kind of lame "treats" that will still be rattling around your bucket in mid-November. No Bits o' Honey. No circus peanuts. No nickels. Just premium Halloween weirdness from the vast McPhee vaults of WTF.

Whatever mask you're wearing, we hope you can see through the eyeholes well enough to watch Crap or Treat unfold on Woot's Facebook page, all week long! And we better not catch you trying to TP us - or YOU might be the treat in next year's bag!

Tuesday, October 09

The Debunker: Were Witches Burned at the Stake at Salem?

by Ken Jennings 8 months ago

The poet John Keats called autumn a “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.” Let’s leave the “mellow fruitfulness” for November - October is all about the season of mists. We’ve asked Jeopardy! smart-aleck Ken Jennings to fact-check the spookiest Halloween lore he could dig up and fill us in on all these monstrous misconceptions.

Spooky Myth #2: Witches Were Burned at the Stake at Salem.

Before I get into this one, let me stipulate right up front that every Women’s Studies paper on the Salem witch trials was exactly right. The trials were a fascinating and tragic confluence of screwed-up religious, political, and sexual dynamics, and twenty people were executed for the stupidest of reasons.

Wednesday, October 03

The Debunker: Do Your Hair and Nails Keep Growing in the Grave?

by Ken Jennings 9 months ago

The poet John Keats called autumn a “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.” Let’s leave the “mellow fruitfulness” for November, with its harvest festivals and frost on the pumpkin and whatnot. October, on the other hand, is all about the season of mists: mystery, sinister doings, ghouls and goblins, thrills and chills. In honor of the season, we’ve asked Jeopardy! smart-aleck Ken Jennings to fact-check the spookiest Halloween lore he could dig up and fill us in on all these monstrous misconceptions.

Spooky Myth #1: A Corpse’s Hair and Nails Keep On Growing.

Boy, what a huge untapped market this would be for the styling industry if it were true, especially as those preening baby boomers begin passing away. Permanent Waves and Mani/Pedis of the Living Dead!