Found it!

Sorry I've been absent lately.

I have been trying to get some video for everyone -- it's footage from decades ago at Gram's house and it's really cool -- but I've wasted two days trying to convert the .vob files to any other type that will work with my video editor and is compatible with Blogger's uploading scheme.

After much hair pulling, I've decided to let it go for now. It's probably a matter of uninstalling/reinstalling something or other and rebooting a trillion times, and I'm not in the mood now!

BUT on a much, much happier (and constructive!) note, I've found a very elegant and exciting (to me anyway!) answer to my 'what's the main theme for this year's display?' question.

See, the past decade's been pretty easy as far as coming up with a theme -- most of the time, I'd already been aware of things like upcoming anniversaries of my favorite films, the Haunted Mansion, blockbuster movies, and so on.

But so far this year there wasn't anything like that especially looming on the dim, misty Hallowe'en horizon, and other than my odd little robo-skeleto-mad-doctor head, I hadn't made anything new yet. A little strange for me, and it was getting worrisome.

But last night, a dream insinuated itself into my slumberous oblivion, and as if it had been inked by the very same quill he did himself use to scrawl his masterpieces, a vision came to me... let me put it so:

Once, upon a summer's evening

While I labored, nearly weeping

Over many a corrupted codec bit of editing bore;

From out my scalp my hair was falling

With all the un- and reinstalling

Suddenly, I felt a calling --

A calling to my pillow...  *snore!*

Into my slumber, at first dreamless,

There came a sudden vision seamless --

Tombs and skulls and reddened Death and long-lost-loves in tow;

And in this dream, my house and gard'

Became a poet's dark boneyard --

My theme this year will be the Bard of Horror:

E. A. POE!

(Bill Murray should've portrayed him when he was the right age!)

It was an incredible dream, where among the usual props and decorations, there stood a pendulum, and a recently un-bricked wall behind which slumped a dead woman and a living black cat; tearing from her coffin a sickly woman buried prematurely; and nearly hiding along a far wall, under a red lantern light, a scarlet-robed figure of Death "untenanted of any tangible form."

I woke up just about jumping out of bed. 

No special reason for the theme, I suppose, except that Edgar Allan Poe rocks and other than the well-known daguerreotype portrait here in the Gallery (over there to your left, give it a click!) I've never really tributed him before.

Maybe Uncle Forry will recite The Raven, or maybe the Great Pumpkin will do it. Or maybe... oh! that's an even better idea than either of those... this is going to be great!

Lost Lenores and Berenices,

Ravens, cats and other species

Haunting, stalking, brooding from the quill of their creator.

I can't wait to start the task

-- "Can you do it?"

--  Need you ask?

I promise pictures, and maybe (maybe!) video to come later!

(source)

I was trying to fit 'nevermore' in there somewhere but... my brain hurts now!

Glad I've found my theme. Now the work play begins.

DDSPoe!