Hello Internet!
I hope everyone is having a wonderful week. Halloween is growing ever closer, so you better get your Halloween Costumes together quick. Two easy costumes that I can come up with right off the bat is 1) Put a green diamond your head and be a Sim from Sims or 2) Throw together one of the outfits from Fortnite and do Fortnite dances all night. Neither of them are very unique, but it’s better than not wearing a costume. Anyway, my default costumes for Halloween (or any time I need to dress up as a character) are either Captain America or Ash Ketchum from Pokemon. Both were pretty easy to put together. I just ended up buying the large, plastic Captain America Shield from a Halloween Store and I bought the Ash Ketchum Hat and Gloves from someone on Etsy. Everything else I threw together pretty easily. Enough with Halloween costumes. Let’s quickly talk about all the pieces that were published this week on the Blog. Last Sunday, I published a Weekly Blog encouraging everyone to Stop The Candy Corn Hate! Whether or not you enjoy Candy Corn, I believe it’s time to stop the hate against Candy Corn. Read that Blog to hear my reasoning behind this peace treaty. On Wednesday I published a Poem titled “Haunted Life” which is about living with ghosts that plague our lives every day also known as Mental Illness. On Friday, I published a Writing Prompt piece titled Living With Evil. In this piece an Exorcist is called to the house to take care of a demon that is possessing a boy named Henry; however, the situation isn’t very black and white. Go ahead and read this Writing Prompt piece if you haven’t already. Finally, on Saturday, I published The ninth chapter of my Pokémon Heart Gold/Soul Silver Fanfiction titled Pokémon HGSS#9: Dances With Eevee. Jonathan and Beatrice have made their way to Ecruteak City where they run into Zuki who is one of the Kimono Sisters who raise Eeveelutions. What kind of trouble will Jonathan get into this time? I guess you’ll just have to read it to find out.
So like I said, Halloween is quickly approaching. Soon the town will be filled with creepy ghouls, ravenous zombies, and really bad mash-up costumes where people try really hard to make the pun work while also being semi-relevant in the internet age where memes last two or three days max. That’s a lot. But there is another Halloween staple that will be out more and more as we get closer to Halloween which is Jack-O’-Lanterns. These carved pumpkins usually with some kind of candle or battery-powered light inside. Apparently the whole Jack-O’-Lantern thing is a tradition associated with Ireland which was brought over to America by Irish Immigrants. Then it slowly became a holiday tradition where people of all ages take a pumpkin, cut a hole in the top, scoop out all the pumpkin guts, and then carve some kind of thing on the front. The most basic Jack-O’-Lanterns are faces with triangle eyes and nose and a toothy grin, but people take this to insane lengths. Name a thing and there’s probably a pumpkin with that thing carved into it or a pumpkin sculpted into the thing. It’s seriously crazy how people can take a pumpkin and treat it like it’s marble. One of the cool things I just saw this year (it might have been a trend for awhile…I don’t know) is a Jack-O’-Lantern with one thing on the front which displays something different on the back.
That is an example of what I’m talking about that was submitted to r/gaming by u/nucleardump. Isn’t that just incredible? I feel like whenever I carve pumpkins, it’s never that creative. Actually, let me talk about my experience with pumpkin carving for a minute.
I don’t know how familiar everyone is with this tradition. I assume that it’s fairly common since it’s become a common Halloween tradition that is brought up whenever people talk about Halloween alongside things like dressing up in costume and Trick-or-Treating, but for me, it wasn’t something I did a lot as a kid. When I was a child, we had pumpkins that sat up on the front porch of my parent’s house, but I don’t think we carved them. They seemed to last longer if they went “uncarved”, so we just sat them on the porch as decorations and when Halloween was over, they would be pushed off the porch into the flower garden where they would grow into pumpkin plants and produce the next year’s pumpkins for Halloween. It was a pretty good cycle and we didn’t have to go out and buy any new pumpkins unless we wanted more variety. That being said, I remember one year I really wanted to carve a pumpkin. So me, my brothers, and my parents all sat around carving pumpkins. I don’t remember how old I was, but I know I was little enough where I couldn’t really handle a knife safely, so all the cutting was done by a parent. Then the pumpkin was handed to me so I could pull out all the pumpkin guts and seeds. Except I didn’t want to do that. The pumpkins guts were gross. I mean if you spend any time carving pumpkins, you know what I mean. It was like pulling out actual guts and it was gross and I wanted no part of it. So basically it just turned into my parents carving pumpkins and me watching unwilling to touch any of the pumpkins seeds.
As an adult I’ve participated much more in the tradition of carving pumpkins. My one problem is that I always pick complicated designs that are too ambitious for an amateur like me. I remember one year I picked the Avenger’s A, but the arrow part was too skinny and broke off from the rest of the pumpkin so I used toothpicks to hold it up. The pumpkin didn’t last long. Another year I did the Switch symbol and used toothpicks to hold up the circles that would symbolize the joysticks on the Joy-cons. Toothpicks are kind of my go-to solution to fixing my carving mistakes, but it never last long.
That’s like the main problem with Jack-O’-Lanterns. Setting aside the fact that I’m not skilled enough with a pumpkin to actually create my artistic vision, they also don’t last that long. As soon as you cut into a pumpkin, the whole thing begins to decay. It’s shell helps a little bit, but as soon as air comes in contact with the inner bits, the whole thing lasts maybe a week. That’s why you have to carve them right before Halloween or the weekend the locals are having Trick-or-Treat, because if you carve them too far in advance, they just turn into mush before Halloween happens. Plus can I just say something that might make people upset? I don’t think Pumpkin seeds are that good. I know, I know. Start posting your hateful comments now. I just don’t get it. I’ve had a variety of people’s different recipes for pumpkin seeds, but they just never taste that great. I just don’t get their appeal. I’d rather toss them all into the garden so they can grow some more pumpkins. I don’t want to eat them. I’ll eat Pumpkin Pie or Pumpkin Roll or other things where Pumpkin is mixed in to some kind of dessert, but I’m not a pumpkin seed person. Sorry to all the people I’ve disappointed. Just know that I support whatever you want to carve into a pumpkin and you can eat as many seeds as you want. Just know that I’m still going to be a little grossed out by all the pumpkin guts.
Thank you so much for reading that Weekly Blog all about carving pumpkins and Jack-O’-Lanterns. If you liked this Weekly Blog, feel free to give it a like or leave a comment down below. Tell me whether or not you enjoy pumpkin seeds or tell me what you have carved or plan to carve into a pumpkin this year. I’d love to see all your wonderful designs. There are also a ton of other stuff here on the website so no matter if you liked this Weekly Blog or not, you should be able to find something else to read here on the website. There are some spooooky choices up above that I already mentioned or you can just spend some time on the website checking out the Weekly Blogs, Poetry, Writing Prompt Pieces, Fanfiction, and other creative writing on the website. There are over 300 published pieces, so I’m sure you can find something to read. Also I want to quickly say that this Wednesday is Halloween so instead of a regular Poem, there will be something special uploading to the website that day. Just keep an eye out for it.
Thank you again for all the support and I hope you have a Happy Halloween!!
-Allen_The_Writer
Header Photo Credit to Popular Mechanics
https://www.popularmechanics.com/home/how-to/a11336/how-to-carve-a-pumpkin-like-a-pro-17259309/
Allen The Writer 