If you haven't seen Squid Game, it's a South Korean series on Netflix about a game show in which the stakes are very high- riches if you win, death if you don't. It's become a global sensation for its drama, violence, and social commentary... and the fact that it's available in dozens of languages. This Honest Trailer warns you of spoilers, but I doubt it gives away too much, in case you want to sign up for Netflix for Squid Game. Be warned that this Honest Trailer contains lots of violence. The entire first season of Squid Game is streaming now, and there's no decision yet on whether there will be a second season.

Vampires are supposed to be terrifying. The legends go back several hundred years of dead people who rise from their graves and stalk the living to drink their blood. But there was a sea change in the legend when vampires made it to the movies. Dracula was a well-dressed member of the noblity that struck the audience as kind of sexy. Hollywood ran with that idea, and made vampires attractive monsters that didn't always kill people, but could, so that they gave us the thrill of danger that draws audiences in. Even in supposedly scary movies, some are scarier than others.

As the vampire became an iconic movie character, comedies about them popped up. Vampires in comedies are not all that scary. Then there are movies that have entire families and communities of vampires, in order to give us something a little different. In these larger groups, there will be variations in how terrifying and how lame a character can be. You might be surprised at how many movies and TV shows have featured vampires, some of them horrifying, but others comically impotent, while a few are downright beloved. Read a list of the least scary vampires we've watched at Den of Geek.

The Merkins, who do horror film song parodies all the time, but espacially around Halloween, are back with a takeoff on Mötley Crüe's "Girls Girls Girls." Except the band is named Möstly Crüel and the song is "Kills Kills Kills." This one knocks it out of the ballpark, as the production values are top-notch, they've got the hair band moves down, the lyrics are, yeah, weird, and the music is good, too! Check out their previous slasher film parodies, "As Long as You're Bloody," "Every Life I Take," "I'll Kill You That Way," "Friends with no Faces," and others. -via Geeks Are Sexy

A lot of the mythic lore surrounding classic monsters only came about because of the movies they appear in. We have a distinct image when we think of Frankenstein, or more accurately, Frankenstein's monster, but it is nothing like the monster that Dr. Frankenstein brought to life in Mary Shelley's 1818 novel. We recognize a vampire by the costume made popular by the actor Bela Lugosi, but Eastern European vampire lore bears no resemblance to the Hollywood Dracula at all.    

Also, considering how many movies have used the same monsters over and over, certain characteristics about them have become canon in our minds, like slow walking zombies shuffling up to consume our brains. Why are they like that? It's the movies. They give us an image, and it sticks, so they use that vision in our minds over and over to make sure we recognize what we see on the screen. Read about the myths of monsters that Hollywood made up at Mental Floss.

Fashion trends of the past were often so ridiculous that we have to wonder whether future generations will laugh at what we wear today. Yeah, they probably will. Taking a look at some trends of the past, we see that they are often a scheme to flaunt one's status at the expensive of others. Sometimes that idea backfired spectacularly. BlueJay explains four really weird fashion trends from previous centuries in a rather amusing way. -via Nag on the Lake

Remember when buying a box of sugary cereal meant there was a free toy inside? Remember your brother spilling cereal all over the kitchen to get the prize, and then your siblings would fight over it? It still happens, but those prizes are fairly rare these days, limited to special movie premieres or something. The premiums began to appear in cereal boxes in 1948 and were often disappointing, but some were surprisingly cool. Mr. Breakfast compiled a list ranking the 50 best cereal box prizes, and some of them make me wish my parents had bought sugary cereal. Coming in at #15:

In the 1950s, Wheaties cereal offered a snazzy little 2-inch high microscope with an adjustable focusing lens designed by General Scientific Corp. "Kids! Explore the Wonders of Nature with your 6 Power Microscope Free in this Box! Magnifies objects to 6 times normal size. See things invisible to the naked eye on leaves, flowers, insects (and) rocks."

Then I remembered that my dad was a science teacher and we had a full-size microscope. Here's #5, from 1989 or 1990:

To have a send-away offer to get a watch from a cereal wasn't unusual, but to have a working watch actually inside the box was very exciting for kids. To make matters even more incredible, it didn't display just the time. It could also show the date! From what we could find looking at pictures, there were as many as 8 different styles available over a couple years. The best ones had the Honey-Comb logo and graphic interpretations of the cereal pieces.

Yeah, you can imagine that toys containing batteries didn't last long considering the expense, but they have resurfaced as recently as 2008. Check out the list of the top 50 cereal box prizes for a walk down memory lane or a glimpse at what you missed out on. -via Fark

Halloween will be here in three weeks, and the theaters are full of horror films. But you don't want to go out. The TV schedule is full of horror films, but you don't want to spend the time. Why bother when you can get everything in them in about a minute?

Alasdair Beckett-King (previously at Neatorama) presents a horror movie about a haunted house that has everything that every haunted house movie has, except maybe the long slow buildup that you already know from seeing all the other haunted house movies. There, now you've saved yourself a couple of hours. If you were expecting a surprise twist, you may notice that the husband and wife are the same person. Surprise!

In 2003, Starbucks introduced its Pumpkin Spice Latte. It became an enormous sensation, even after we found out that there is no pumpkin at all, or even butternut squash, in the drink. The entire flavor came from the spices, a combination which cooks have known as pumpkin pie spice for a long time. It's a blend of flavors we adore because 1. it tastes good, 2. it's associated with autumn, which we love, 3. it has no real connection with Halloween, so it can be enjoyed through the other holidays and by those who don't do Halloween.

You may get the idea that the pumpkin spice craze has gotten out of hand, but even when it dies back, and it will sooner or later, we will still consume the flavor combination one way or another. Possibly in a pie. Read a history of pumpkin spice at Moss and Fog. -via Nag on the Lake

Every year, Tom BetGeorge of Tracy, California, pulls out all the stops to entertain us with his Halloween and Christmas light displays. You can find an archive of them here. These public performances are all charity fundraisers for McHenry House, a local family shelter, which goes a long way in assuaging the neighbors during the stressful holiday season. It's a challenge for BetGeorge to impress us a little more each year. This year's Halloween show features "Wake Up" by Rage Against the Machine to accompany the final scene of The Matrix. Another part of the show gives us "Smells Like Teen Spirit" from Nirvana.

The spotlights on top direct us in our head banging. The scowling pumpkins give the song an appropriate snarl to take us back 30 years to the height of the grunge era, when the album Nevermind was released.

If you are nearby, you can drive through and see the Halloween show live. Check the schedule for this year's performances.

In 1890, jealousy and envy destroyed two brothers. Isaac Sawtelle of Boston served time in prison for rape and assault. When he was paroled, he returned to his hometown to find that his younger brother, Hiram Sawtelle Jr. was running his late father's fruit store and managing his mother's inheritance. Hiram was a responsible man with a wife and children, while Isaac the older brother was an ex-con with nothing.

Isaac had a friend, though. He had met Charles Lewis Blood in prison. Blood had no official training, but he presented himself as a doctor to sell patent medicines. He even sold "oxygenized air" as a cure-all. One might feel a bit of trepidation for consulting "Dr. Blood," but that is neither here nor there. Blood knew about Isaac's predicament, and offered to arrange for the elderly Mrs. Sawtelle's business interests to be put into Isaac's hands for a mere $500. He had a grand scheme that involved kidnapping Hiram Sawtelle's seven-year-old daughter.

If you've seen a few movies, you know that the scheme did not go as planned, and soon police in both Massachusetts and New Hampshire were looking for the missing Hiram and the suspicious Isaac. Read the story of brotherly jealousy that led to murder at Geri Walton's blog. -via Strange Company

My Finances: pic.twitter.com/SasbwqAIRD

— Andrew Hilary but spooky 👻 (@AndrewHilaryUS) October 8, 2021

This is the cutest story you will see today. These kids and their cryptocurrencies!

Andrew Hilary drives an ice cream truck. When a little girl wanted to pay for an ice cream with a blue rock, he couldn't resist. He mentioned that no one should tell his boss, but the viral Tweet that resulted is worth its weight in gold. In the followup comments we find that the rock is plastic and glows in the dark! Speaking of being worth its weight in gold, Hilary has been offered $5 for the rock, and $500 for an NFT of the above picture. I don't think he's going to part with the rock.  

Other commenters admired his shirt and noted he could enter a Seth Rogan lookalike contest. A day later, we learn the rest of the story.

The sun is shining, I’ve got one of my best shirts on, and thanks to a kind stranger who saw my tweet and venmoed me, I just got to give a bunch of kids free ice cream!
(Note: do not send me money, i am super irresponsible😅) pic.twitter.com/lJzwqgLgJh

— Andrew Hilary but spooky 👻 (@AndrewHilaryUS) October 9, 2021

-via Fark

Ze Frank is back with a True Facts video that we know he's been collecting facts and jokes about for a long time. This one is about the most horrible killer animal on the planet: the Moscow-ito, er, the mosquito. We hate them because they are both annoying and dangerous, but they have a rather unique physiology and lifestyle that we should know about. Even the larval stage gives us mosquitos that breath through their butts and cannibalize their neighbors. And then there's the jokes. Anyway, that's why this video is longer than a normal Ze Frank video, but well worth your time, even if you have to watch it in installments. The visual horror show starts after the four-minute mark, when the adults emerge to spread their misery. By the time it when gets to the biting part, you should be ready for it.   

Has anyone ever accused you of relying on ellipses or dashes too much? Have you ever wondered if you use too many exclamation points? We now have a way to visualize the answers to exactly those questions.

Clive Thompson made a tool that strips all the letters from a passage of writing and shows you only the punctuation. Why? Because you can learn a lot about style that way. In explaining the application, Thompson himself realized that he used a lot of parentheticals, long ones with punctuation inside them, which indicates he digresses from the subject more than he would like. In another example, look at the image above. On the left is the punctuation in Adam J. Calhoun's analysis of Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. On the right is Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner. It only rakes a glance to see how the writing styles differ, just by punctuation.

You'll find the tool called just the punctuation here. I put in some of my own writing, and found that I don't use nearly as much punctuation as I expected to see. This is all the punctuation from an entire Mental Floss feature article from years ago.

' . ' , , , , . ' ? , , . , , , . , - , . , . , ! , , . ' , ' . , , , . , ' , . . ( ) , . , . . . . . , ' . , . , . , , . . , . . . . , ' . . , . . , , . , . ; ' . . ' - , . . , . , ' ' , . . ( ) , .


-via Metafilter 

The hit 1956 movie musical The King and I was based on the 1951 Broadway musical of the same name, which was based on Margaret Landon's 1944 novel Anna and the King of Siam, which was based on the 1870 book The English Governess in Siamese Court by Anna Leonowens. There were also other movies based on the same story, one in 1946, two in 1999, and a TV series in 1972.

With so many iterations of the story over 150 years, you wouldn't be surprised to learn that it has historical inaccuracies. One would think that going back to the original 1870 memoir by Anna Leonowens, who really did work for King Mongkut of Siam (now Thailand), would give us the true story, but even that account was highly fictionalized for dramatic effect and to push Leonowens' feminist and abolitionist views.

Maybe it would be better to simply read about Leonowens life. That's where we find that Leonowens had begun fictionalizing details of her life long before she ever went to Siam! Read about the real Anna Leonowens and how she crafted her own life story at Historic Mysteries. -via Strange Company

Remember when you were a kid, and thought the very idea of combining cheese and cake was ridiculous? Several fellows from a remote area in the province of Punjab, Pakistan, had never eaten a New York cheesecake before, but they were willing to try. While they aren't big on showing surprise in facial expressions, they have a wonderful way of conveying their delight by their word choice. Note- those who speak the language have pointed out that the one guy who wanted to eat a whole cheesecake on a riverbank also said there would be a campfire there (although the subtitles left that out). Such a simple description conveys the idea of "heaven" no matter what language you speak. -via reddit

And now you are craving a slice of cheesecake, aren't you? Sorry.