I Found a Penny Today, So Here's a Thought

"Something old, nothing new— much that's borrowed, naught that's true!"  From Motion Picture Classic, 1924.

The mystic virtues of the sapphire, from the eleventh century poem "The Lapidarium" by Marbodus, in Colored Gems by W. S. Ward, 1872

Hailed as "the best series running at this time" (thanks, Billy Brujo Show!), it's Grave Mood Rings.

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 This Is Magic: Secrets of the Conjurer's Craft by Will Dexter, 1958.

From Epigrams of Eve by Sophie Irene Loeb and illustrated by Ruby Lind, 1913.

"I'm married ... but I still need love."  From Screenland Plus TV-Land, 1953.  See The Collected Lost Meanings of Wedlock.

"Demonize, if you must": from "Undertaking Darkness," a twist on vampire lore in Grave Mood Rings.

Told to imagine himself three feet behind his head, the student asked, "Bare? or with shoes?"  From The Aberree, 1957.

From The Book of Shadows by Don Paterson, 2005.

From the Bombay Sunday Chronicle, 1937.

From Grammar of the English Sentence by Jonathan Rigdon, 1903.

From The Gates of the Future Thrown Open by Carlotta de Barsy, 1899.  See The Collected Lost Meanings of Wedlock.

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

A surrealist, dadaistic, even post-contemplationist spoof of slow-moving Gothic soap operas of the 1970s.

"A repulsive job, washing handkerchiefs."  From Movie Classic, 1931.

Many of us have been there, slumped in an armchair, the Ouija board on our lap upside down, our fingers tracing meaningless patterns over its surface ... our heads inclined at an odd angle, our eyes vacant, singing a little tune."  From Effigies by William K.

"Did I say something wrong?"  From Dark Shadows episode 670.