All Hallows and Halloween

Okay. You may or may not be aware of this movement to replace Halloween with JesusWeen.

What is particularly laughable about this campaign, other than the rather unfortunate-sounding name, is the fact that clearly the organizers have no idea what the Hallo in Halloween means: It's from hallows. As in saints.

Because today, November 1st, is All Saints' Day.

All Saints' Day is a religious feast day in honor of all saints, "known and unknown." All Souls' Day follows it on November 2nd and, just like it sounds, is a commemoration of those who have departed. This is a very spiritually positive series of days.

So why do we associate the night before All Hallows' (Saints')---which would be All Hallows' Eve (Hallow'een)---with tricks and the devil and whatnot?

Traditionally this night was regarded as the best time for divination games, possibly as hold-over from the pagan holiday of Samhain, when the veil between this and the Otherworld was thinnest. These games often revolved around predicting the occupation of your future husband, something of vital importance to girls in the past, when they could not hold occupations themselves and their status in life would rely upon their husband's. (Such divination games led to the witch hysteria in Salem, by the way.)

It was also thought that spirits roamed the land during Samhain---not bad spirits, all spirits. But since the day was for saints, it is easy to see how the night might come to be associated with bad spirits.

In 20th century America, children would take the role of bad spirits and get up to mischief (Mischief Night) by playing tricks and pranks on their neighbors. The whole "bribe those children with candy" idea wasn't a nation-wide movement until the 1950s, when the night's emphasis was deliberately shifted from tricks to treats to make Halloween a more family-friendly (and less destructive) event.

So it's kinda funny that now there are people who think Halloween isn't family-friendly at all.

But what could be more wholesome than the traditional Halloween game of bobbing for apples, right?



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Witches of Salem

Witches have become an intrinsic part of Salem, Massachusetts.

You don't see ads like the above anymore, of course. Although that sort of positive, Witches Can Help philosophy is much present. Very unlike the ad I describe in HIDDEN HISTORY OF SALEM (an ad that uses the hanging of Salem witches to sell a product and can be found if you search my website - it's hidden).

You can't find the famous Witch Spoon at Daniel Low anymore (the building currently houses Rockafella's) but you can find all sorts of authentic experiences, such as at the Witch House

where witch trials' Judge Jonathan Corwin lived. 

Or you can sit in the Salem Witch Trials Memorial and commune with the spirits of those who died.

Each of the stones jutting from the walls represents a person, and is inscribed with their name and the date they were hanged (or in one case, crushed). We don't know where their actual bodies are, or even where they were executed (something I address in HIDDEN HISTORY).

You can also learn to be a witch from the Official Witch of Salem herself. 

No, not like that.

Witchcraft involves studying and classes and workshops. Not near Salem? Check out Laurie Cabot, our Official Witch on YouTube.

Of course, some would rather Salem not focus on the witch aspect so much, but when your local police department's official patch looks like this:

You should really just accept that witches and Salem go together and are here to stay.

Note: Interested in more Salem Police Witch stuff? Click here.

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Solving Bioshock Cats on National Cat Day

Today, October 29, is National Cat Day and to celebrate I shall share with you a partial SOLUTION to the BIOSHOCK Cats Mystery.

Including cats for the player to discover actually IS a game-within-the-game.

While it is still unknown who originally designed the black-and-white cat and put him/her in the original Bioshock, all the level designers of Bioshock 2 participated in finding fun places to stash kitties. And...

We have Steve Gaynor to thank for putting NAMED cats in Minerva's Cave.
All Hail Steve!!

There are THREE cats - one for each level of Minerva's Cave. The names of each feline honor someone important to the development of computing - which is of course very important in the Cave storyline. I found Babbage and Turing, you may remember.

Armed with this information, I set about to find the third kitty on my second playthrough - and discovered:

Lovelace

According to Wikipedia, Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace is recognized as the World’s First Computer Programmer, having written the first algorithm intended to be processed by a machine.

For whose computer did she write this? Charles Babbage’s.

Babbage called her the Enchantress of Numbers and wrote of her in his Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (1864):

I then suggested that she add some notes to Menabrea's memoir, an idea which was immediately adopted. We discussed together the various illustrations that might be introduced: I suggested several but the selection was entirely her own. So also was the algebraic working out of the different problems, except, indeed, that relating to the numbers of Bernoulli, which I had offered to do to save Lady Lovelace the trouble. This she sent back to me for an amendment, having detected a grave mistake which I had made in the process.

Fun facts:
 - Ada was the only legitimate child of the poet Lord Byron.
 - The computer language Ada created by the US Department of Defense is named after her.
 - The British Computer Society awards a medal in her name.
 - There is a movement to have an Ada Lovelace Day (which this year was October 7).

I didn't know any of that, so I am now a better informed person because of Bioshock's dead cats.  :)

Many thanks and virtual cupcakes to Steve for allowing me to interview him on the subject of virtual kitties. He's a wonderful fellow and you can follow his tumblr and his twitter.

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Vulpes + Veronica = ?

A while back I saw a prompt on the Fallout kmeme to write Vulpes/Veronica and took it as a challenge to see if it could be done and still stay true to the characters' motives and persuasions.

The result was THIS.

In the ensuing discussion of the fic on the kmeme, I hypothesized how the child of a union between Vulpes and Veronica would look.

And a gloriously wonderful anonymous artist drew me this.

I shared it elsewhere already, and - as part of my realization that I've missed posting a bunch of Fallout artwork - I'm posting it here too.

If the artist would like to identify him/herself, I would be more than glad to post credits and links.

Set Sail For Horror

I commissioned Francesco Francavilla for something Lovecraftian with cats

and this is the fabulous, wickedly brilliant picture he created for me!!!

So I thought I'd share it with you, since it is Halloween-time.

You can commission him, too, by the way.

And follow him on Twitter.