From the dead letter office…
I don’t know why I didn’t think of this sooner.

Subject: Carpet Adhesive

I think I purchased the wrong product. It said latex on the container, and easy cleanup. After applying the adhesive to my pumpkin it never dried. It is still tacky to the touch. I did put some talcum on it, and it really helped but my ridges on the pumpkin are still soft. What do you recommend I do to correct this problem, or is this normal?

Thank you,
Katrin, your newest Fan!

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Hi, Katrin!

Always good to have a new minion. Make sure to drop by HR to get fitted for your Dreadnought uni-tard. We’re switching to a new darker gray with rust red piping this fall. Capes are for formal occasions only, and you’ll have to buy your own. We recommend a tailor shop down on Broadway, and if you use him, we reimburse the cost. It’s just more efficient that way.

Ah, the tacky, yuck, sticky flooring adhesive question again. (I get this a lot) I must update the website with more information so folks won’t unnecessarily freak out over this stuff.

Okay, the good news is that your pumpkin is probably dry. Or, maybe that’s the bad news. You see, this flooring adhesive stuff dries tacky. Very tacky. I think the phrase “Anna Nicole Smith tacky” was used on the site before it was just a mean thing to say and not extraordinarily cruel. It’s going to feel like the inside of a zombie’s chest cavity for a long time.

Talcum powder (or plain old dirt) will take away the tackiness. You have to rub it in for this to work. Just sprinkling it on and dusting it off won’t cut it; and use a lot. Pretend you’re a 17 year old zombie getting ready for the big dance. A sprinkle a day helps keep maggots away, and that cute redhead on the debate team hates maggots. You’re used to them, and it’s no big deal if one or two drop off now and then. They wriggle off on their own errands. But sheesh! A couple of the little guys get curious at the lunch table and it’s pandemonium!

Try the talc regimen again, and rub it in good. An old paint brush can help to get it into all the little crooks and nannies.

~ Headspook

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Answers to a few other faqs on the subject:

– “Carpet latex” is just a generic term for “flooring adhesive”. It’s about the consistency of peanut butter, and you can get it just about anywhere (Wal-mart, Home Depot, Lowes). Try looking for Roberts 3300 Carpet Adhesive. Or buy it here!

– You either like carpet glop or you hate it.  It worked fine for me, but after migrating to white PVA glue (Elmer’s), I don’t miss it.

– Poly vinyl acetate. White Elmer’s glue. Get it by the gallon at HD.
Or buy it here!

Category: From The Undead Letter Office, Halloween   Tags: carpet glue, carpet latex, dead letter office, faq, roberts 3300 carpet adhesive

Here’s a corpse and a box to put him in.

If you could get this “action set” in the toy aisle at Kmart, then maybe there would still be a Kmart in our town. But, sadly, no.

Haunt friends Rob Carpenter and David Prochaska sent in these pictures. Carpenter’s screaming zombie is just chilling, and Prochaska’s carved plywood toe pincher is drop dead gorgeous. What a great set!

Category: Guest Haunters, Halloween   Tags: Monsters

“I’ll mow the yard. You get to work building my mausoleum.”

A more pleasant ambush of words, so sweetly spoken, I cannot imagine. Maybe if you tossed in a dune buggy and an abandoned amusement park.

Our proto-mausoleum, pictured above, exemplifies the good ol’ Clark Griswald spirit alongside a certain dyslexic understanding of basic geometry. The four walls were built and assembled in about four hours. The roof took three days. Give me the chance to confuse a pitch angle with a gable cut and I’ll take it every time.

Nevertheless, Spooky Hollow’s new luxury resort for reveling revenants should be open for business by opening night on October 10. What final shape it will take is anyone’s guess. At the very least, I’ll have finally found a suitable purpose for our vast collection of pool noodles.

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Neph’s 4×4 mausoleum plans kick-started this project.

Category: Halloween   Tags: mausoleum

A fair amount of meandering is about to take place.

Like the Star Trek episode that starts out with the Enterprise being destroyed after slamming into another starship, captained by Frasier incidentally, this should begin to make sense somewhere toward the end.

It was just a 20 minute side project; maybe half an hour, tops. Three hours later you’re reseeding a squid-shaped spot on the lawn that was incinerated after you tightened the truck’s oil plug, dropped the wrench, and accidentally sent a spark into the drip pan that ignited a fire three inches from your nose. Mysteriously, the truck was parked in the driveway, a good 20 yards from the burnt spot. More mysteriously, you hadn’t intended to change the oil at all. You just wanted to play your MP3 player through the auxiliary channel on the stereo.

Things started off fine. You pulled the stereo, installed a new cable, and everything worked great. After reassembling the dashboard, you decided to get the dust wipes and do a little cleaning. Then out came the window cleaner, the vacuum, and before long you were detailing the center column with a Q-tip.

It wasn’t until hours later, at the end of an unintentionally productive afternoon, that you ignited the drip pan. You kicked it out from under the engine compartment, but it caught a basketball unawares and stopped just out of reach where the flames began licking a tire.

You somehow scrambled out from under the truck without leaving too much of your scalp behind, raced around the front, and with the grace and agility of the most accomplished NFL kicker, launched the whole boiling conflagration out into the yard where it exploded on impact like a cartoon appendix.

While your heart pounded out a drum solo, unplayable by any percussionist who has never changed his own oil or been accidentally locked in a closet with a curious bat, you stood at the edge of your driveway and watched the burning mass melt into an enchilada shape and slowly expel the last of its contents onto the turf. You were reminded of a documentary about Hawaiian volcanoes that periodically belch liquefied rock into the frothy blue ocean, thus slowly and impressively adding to the island’s size. Your frothy lump of petrochemicals produced an impressive billowing cloud of noxious blue smoke.

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Not being overly shy, your old pal Spook will, from time to time, take a few minutes to review a product or service in the interests of growing the pool of honest and independent consumer opinion. Few things are as annoying as reading obviously counterfeit product reviews that carefully balance between the optimum number of spelling mistakes and subtly phrased company-speak.

I was into the third page of my Kenwood CA-C2AX – Audio Cable review before I heard that little voice say, “Whoa, horse. Pull it back.” Below is the abridged review without (as many) of the oblique meanderings (above).

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A hardcore propeller-head or audiophile probably already has the bits and pieces needed to make his own auxiliary cable. However, if he’s that obsessive, then his car audio equipment is probably more up to date. In fact, his stereo and speakers are easily five to 10 years newer than that smoking Festiva or Subaru Justy he’s driving. And by smoking, I mean the blue clouds of carbon monoxide following him around are lowering his IQ bit by bit each day and altering his DNA.

Perhaps you’re not an engineering nerd. If you’re not interested in downloading pin-out diagrams, if you’re doing well just to pull your car stereo out of the dash without starting a fire, if circuit breakers pop in salute when you walk by, then this is a quick and easy little upgrade that will allow your compatible Kenwood boat anchor to play audio from your portable MP3 player.

Installation…
• Step 1: Remove stereo from dash.
• Step 2: Treat electrical burns, replace blown fuses.
• Step 3: Plug cable into CD changer/Aux receptacle.
• Step 4: Route the other end under the dash somewhere. Mine’s in the glove box.
• Step 5: Plug the audio jack into your MP3 player and switch the stereo to AUX.

The first thing you’ll notice is that your MP3 player probably won’t produce the volume that you want even at maximum. The second thing you’ll notice is that all those crappy MP3 files you’ve collected from gawd knows where over the years need to be normalized to a single volume.

Don’t be smug. You know what I’m talking about. Or, you will when you crank the head unit to 35 to rock some old “Apollo 100”, but forget to turn it back down and blow your ears off with the next “Freezepop” song. Even worse is leaving for work in the morning, turning on the radio for some news, taking a sip of coffee, then slinging it out the sun roof, cup and all, as the local weatherman BLASTS YOU INTO THE BACK SEAT. You forgot to turn the volume back down the night before. This is a cycle that repeats and feeds on itself as you grow older, more forgetful, and steadily become stone deaf.

But the cable works fine.

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Cause And Effect – Season 5, ep. 18 (Star Trek: TNG)
On Youtube…

Category: Stuff   Tags: Kenwood CA-C2AX - Audio Cable, oil change fire, product reviews