I realize this is a bit late, what with thanksgiving happening next week, but I thought I'd finally put pictures up of my halloween pumpkin. Many thanks to Rob Cockerham of cockeyed.com for the inspiration.

In any case, I wanted this halloween to be special, so, after being inspired by one of Rob Cockerham's amazing creations, I set out to make myself a great pumpkin (no, not the one that Linus believes in). I wanted to get my revenge on all the people who made fun of me at prom. Oh, wait, I didn't go to prom. Well, in honor Sissey Spacek, here it is, the Carrie Pumpkin!

It is a glorious example of modern engineering. The two holes in the top of the head are continuously pumping blood-red fluid down the front of the face. Absolutely frightening!

Here's how I did it.

I was going to make it the night before, but I was lazy, so I ended up running out and trying to find stuff at around 5 in the evening on October 31st. Well, to get started, here is the pumpkin we got:

On the surface, not so impressive. Well, just wait and see! I was all ready to get going. Mary was not so involved in it, though. She wanted to see if I could actually pull this off!

I didn't have much time, so I got started right away. Last year, we bought a great little pumpkin carving saw that made short order of the pumpkin. After some ultra-fun cleaning of the pulp, here is what I had:

With the pumpking cleaned out, I had to get my insides all put together. I had originally gone to Pat Kattan's, our local craft store, looking for a pump, but they had stopped selling them. So, I ended up at Home Depot, which was okay, because they had some copper fittings to split the tube.

This was the original plan, to have three streams of blood, but the pump was having trouble getting the water evenly to all three tubes, so I settled on two streams. After drilling two holes in the head of the pumpkin, I inserted the pump and tubing:

After whipping up some cherry kool-aid, I turned on the pump and had a glorious Carrie Pumpkin! You made fun of me at my prom. Now you will die!!!!