• after a couple weeks the novelty will wear off
• we rarely see our own fashion flubs
• despite the danger on this road, if you drive it often, you probably feel very comfortable traveling it
• there’s a bigger, more important challenge out there and we've all overlooked it
• your story won't write itself
• most of us have something, or occasionally two things, that keeps us off the cover of Vogue
• you don’t need to sit in unusual positions
• the holidays are not a sprint
• in some cases, it’s not fun to have rules
• deep down, we all want to do the right thing
• traveling can make us crazy
• work friendships are largely geographical in nature
• shoving the negative emotion aside only buried it
• we all lie about something—our ages, IQs, how many nights a week we watch dance programs on TV
• you can't let the power freak you out if you're going to use it
• your life is full. And if you don't realize that... then you're just like the rest of us, but that's no excuse

From The Film Daily, 1929.

A collage of stills from Grave Mood Rings, courtesy of Dare-g on Tumblr.

From The Book of Shadows by Don Paterson, 2005.

What if a vampire ...

[Tidbits gathered through the course of our research.]  See Bullet Lists.

"And despair and further confusion."  From Dark Shadows episode 248.

"Occult hooligans."  From Byways of Ghost-Land by Elliott O'Donnell, 1911.

Mixing vampire humor and 1970s tropes (like pet rocks, lava lamps, disco music, bell-bottom pants, mirror balls, and of course mood rings), the web series Grave Mood Rings pokes fast fun at classic slow-moving Gothic soap operas like Dark Shadows and the Canadian series Strange Paradise.  In addition to a vampiric Viscount, a castle is home to a groovy Doctor (a phlebotomist, naturally), a jolly housekeeper with her own laugh track, a werewolf Vicar, and an arch-nemesis riddler wearing a Sphinx mask.  Corny wordplay, the occasional bizarre sing-a-long, and haunted doughnuts punctuate the proceedings, in the tradition of the sketch comedy of MadTV, Kids in the Hall, and SCTV.

From Flying Saucer News, 1958.

"How long is the road to Perfection? What must we go through in life to reach our goal, whatever it is? And by what means can we lose our way?"  From Mystic Magazine, 1954.  

A Grave Mood Rings homage to Dark Shadows.

"Peter Puck wants to know if marriage ties are worn on wedding days."  From The Children's Newspaper, 1925.  See The Collected Lost Meanings of Wedlock.

"They know any minute they might have to fight."  A collage of two elements from The Gateway, 1969.

From The Old Line, 1949.

Mixing vampire humor and 1970s tropes (like pet rocks, lava lamps, disco music, bell-bottom pants, mirror balls, and of course mood rings), the web series Grave Mood Rings pokes fast fun at classic slow-moving Gothic soap operas like Dark Shadows and the Canadian series Strange Paradise.  In addition to a vampiric Viscount, a castle is home to a groovy Doctor (a phlebotomist, naturally), a jolly housekeeper with her own laugh track, a werewolf Vicar, and an arch-nemesis riddler wearing a Sphinx mask.  Corny wordplay, the occasional bizarre sing-a-long, and haunted doughnuts punctuate the proceedings, in the tradition of the sketch comedy of MadTV, Kids in the Hall, and SCTV.

A still from Grave Mood Rings, courtesy of Dare-g on Tumblr.

From the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals' Our Dumb Animals magazine, 1955.