Ever wonder what it’s like inside your Jack o’Lantern? No? Really? Oh…

OK, did you just take a great shot of your prize winning pumpkin carving — Dr.Who on one side and Cthulhu on the other, but the exposure of its interior is blown out? This bother you… lots? Really? You, my friend, are truly obsessive — and my kind of Halloween geek.

Use this photo to fix your sad pumpkin photography mishaps. Just mask out your lost eyes and mouth(s) and use this cut-away pumpkin interior stock photo and all’s betterest (higher resolution up on Flickr).

Of course you can just print this on nice paper, too, I suppose… it is lovely in there, which still doesn’t explain the freakish nursery rhyme, however:

Peter , Peter , pumpkin-eater,
Had a wife and couldn’t keep her;
He put her in a pumpkin shell,
And there he kept her very well

Have we stopped writing & passing along nursery rhymes? Is the short form gone? Ahhh, I digress.

(thanks, Brainz, for 24 Terrifying, Thoughtful and Absurd Nursery Rhymes for Children)

So housesitting for Lynx is a balance of how much blood one has to loose in one-toothed, twenty-clawed attacks, and how many times one can watch the only DVD Reid owns (purchased used, mind you), “V for Vendetta”. Fortunately — for him at least — I’ve a high tolerance for both. Here’s a brief photo essay of the glamor that is his luxuriant K-town bachelor pad and what spending 132 minutes, once daily for a week, causes one to do.

An iota of restraint, true progress to my thinking, in that this time I refrained from framing my DVD protest in childish pranks, such as on my last stint of Lynx-sitting when Reid’s undergarments were mysteriously relocated to his bachelor’s fridge –freezer actually (plenty of room given the only other contents were Hot Pockets and three pair Chinese take-out chop sticks — told you he was cheap).

The lights! The costumes! The pageantry! The rental skates! Those lights! Like a Crayola “basic dozen colors” box melted under black lights casting rapid fire shadows of every color across the glossy boards.

Amazingly those kids went through a dozen costume changes — from cows ‘n cowboys, to zombies (Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” brought down the house), appropriately red, white, & blue May pole outfist… to boxes of frozen vegetables in celebration of those (hopefully bygone) Thanksgivings of my very ’70′s youth.

Pleased overall with this batch of photos, with all but Ludlow’s portrait being sans flash. Standouts would have to be the “tracking shots”. Threw the camera into “Time Value” Priority mode (marked “Tv” priority for you Canon kids), slowed the shutter way down, to 1/25 of a second, f8 (typical street photography aperature, nice ‘n deep). The zoom lens was backed out to wide-ish 24mm. (the Canon 5d is full frame, so no digital pseudo-zoom, it was a “true” 24mm focal length). Then it was a matter of focusing and trying to pan with subjects as they skated past. It was a bit like trying to get a nice ice cream curl … all in the wrist.

[Donorschoose.org] provides materials to needing classrooms. In this case, we are concentrating on classroom in Southern California that need art supplies. We are trying to help the next generation of artists!

Jonathan Stout and his Campus Five (campusfive.com) played from 7-11, with the dance floor filled the entire time. myspace.com/campusfive

12 Photos. My Flickr set has high-res versions.