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A Turkish Delight of musings on languages, deflations of metaphysics, vauntings of arcana, and great visual humor.
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Today — March 31, 2026

I Found a Penny Today, So Here's a Thought (permalink)

Nobody Said It Would Be Easy, Not Even For Demons

Her hair, the color of flames.  Her eyes, wickedly gleaming.  Her demeanor, as mischievous as the little bat wings sprouting from her head.  Could a true creature of darkness ever be as comical as tv presenter Melevill, Puerto Rico's first horror host?  Could a true comedian ever be as demonically sinister?  Melevill sometimes describes herself as a "fictional horror character," but there's a problem with that.  Fictional characters in fact possess a special sort of reality.  Just as Shakespeare's witchy Weird Sisters are real characters who are taken on by actors, and even as a spirit manifests itself in the person of a Vodou priest, Melevill absolutely exists.  Melevill may not be a "real" person, but that doesn't rule out that Melevill is a fiendish entity.  She certainly has some grievances, stony-faced as a gargoyle.  

Speaking of gargoyles, the demonic life isn't all Hollywood glitz and glamor.  Just imagine someone like Melevill trying to get a beloved avian familiar through customs.  We might have told her not to be dressed in her best pirate garb while crossing borders, as it could easily send the wrong message, but then again we might have kept our opinions to ourselves and our eyes humbly downcast. Only a bona fide horror character, upon having her pet bird confiscated, would seize the opportunity to raise awareness about the plight of cryptids.  La Gárgola is a Puerto Rican monster with gargoyle-like features.  This red-eyed, winged humanoid is said to drink animal blood and scream like a 1980s metal head.  But it hasn't been seen in Puerto Rico since 2018, and Melevill deduced why: it was banned from returning due to the island's strict avian influenza laws.  Wasting no time in mourning, Melevill found renewed enthusiasm for taking over the entire Caribbean with the assistance of gargoyles and other winged creatures.  When you hear her blood-chilling maniacal laughter, you know she's serious.  

Melevill and her alter-ego Melanie Ramos can be seen regularly on Neo-Pulps, a venue promising DIY punk aesthetics for lovers of pulp, horror, fantasty, and the bizarre.  
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Restoring the Lost Sense (permalink)
From Wee Wisdom, 1953.
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Images Moving Through Time (permalink)
From First Lessons in Nature Study by Edith Patch and illustrated by Robert Sim, 1926.
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I Found a Penny Today, So Here's a Thought (permalink)
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Restoring the Lost Sense (permalink)
From The Patchwork Girl of Oz by L. Frank Baum and illustrated by John R. Neil, 1913.
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Restoring the Lost Sense (permalink)
From Animal Life, A First Book of Zoology by David Starr Jordan & Vernon L. Kellogg, 1902.
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Restoring the Lost Sense (permalink)
From Where Our Ways of Living Come From by Howard Wilson, 1940.
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Restoring the Lost Sense (permalink)
Here's why a shadow puppet can do anything but turn around on the stage.  From The Heroes of the Puppet Stage by Madge Anderson, 1923.
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Restoring the Lost Sense (permalink)
From The Children's Newspaper, 1919.
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Restoring the Lost Sense (permalink)
She wants to live as a rabbit but can't get into carrots.  From Good Times on Our Street by Gates, Huber, Peardon and Salisbury, 1945.
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Restoring the Lost Sense (permalink)
From Whitney's Choice of Emblemes by Henry Green, 1866.
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Old News (permalink)
"Revision a nightmare."  From the Duluth Evening Herald, 1905.
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Yearbook Weirdness (permalink)
From Elon Colleges 1927 yearbook.
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Restoring the Lost Sense (permalink)
From Child-Library Readers Primer by William Elson and Lura Runkel, 1923.
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Yearbook Weirdness (permalink)
From Wheaton College's 1969 yearbook.
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Separated at Birth? (permalink)
Our custom widget that checks for duplicated images suggested this unlikely pairing.  Click each image for its source.
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Yearbook Weirdness (permalink)
From the University of Southern California's 1910 yearbook.
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Restoring the Lost Sense (permalink)
From Chatterbox, 1916.


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Yearbook Weirdness (permalink)
From the United States Naval Academy's 1917 yearbook.
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Restoring the Lost Sense (permalink)
From Pinocchio, The Adventures of a Marionette by Carlo Collodi, 1904.
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