Eyeballs on Sticks

Greetings, gentle readers!  I have returned, and I apologize for leaving you bereft of my dubious humor for so long.  No, I have no real excuse; I just haven't been posting.

But Halloween is upon us, dearest ones, and you can't spend every night watching The Walking Dead.  Unfortunately, my friend Christine was not watching The Walking Dead earlier this week, but attempting to leave the neighborhood when a car ran a red light, smashing into her car and destroying it utterly.  Luckily, the airbags in a Honda Fit saved Christine from a fiery death (okay, I don't know that it would have been fiery, but it's Halloween season, and all good Halloween car crashes involve flames.  Well-known fact), but unluckily the same airbags gave her a black eye.

So what, I wondered, can I do to make my friend and colleague feel better?  Buy her a new car?  Not on my salary.  Give her rides to work?  Already taken care of.  Use my healing magic to erase her bruises?  Unfortunately, I am neither ET nor Raven (no, not the character from "That's So Raven!"  Are you kidding me?  I'm obviously talking about the Teen Titan, and I'm ashamed that you thought otherwise.  Christine is probably ashamed of you too).  And though I searched an entire Hallmark store, I could not find a card that said, "Sorry someone crashed into your car and gave you a black eye, but at least you're not dead, so let's party!"

Though there damned well should be such a card.  I'm disappointed in you, Hallmark.

Speaking of parties, one of the best parts of Christine not being dead or maimed or anything is that she's well enough to hold her Halloween party Saturday night, which is One of the Best Parties of the Year and Worthy of Italics and Not to Be Missed Because a Bunch of Faculty Will Dress in Strange Costumes.  Evil fairies!  Gay Dumbledore!  A gas pump!  There is no telling what my colleagues will show up wearing, and if Christine had been dead, what would we have done with all of these costumes?!

Well, speaking only for myself, I would have called everyone and tried to convince them to wear them to her funeral because I think Christine would have liked that.

In any case, the party means that after a little thought I figured out exactly what to do to make Christine feel better about her accident and her black eye:  bring her a tray of eyeballs on sticks.

Because that's how good a friend I am, that's why.

Also, there's a kit for making eyeballs on sticks, and I happened to have one; it looks like this:

Another fine product from Target

Does that seeming frightening?  It did to me, but I love my friend too much not to take up the challenge.  Look carefully at the photo above, precious readers, for we all know that my eyeballs will not turn out so well.

A Step-By-Step Record of My Attempt to Make Eyeballs on Sticks with Illuminating Photographic Evidence and Humorous Captions

Step 1:  Have some whiskey so that making eyeballs on sticks for a car crash victim seems like a good idea:

The events of this evening are not the fault of the Jameson company.

Step 2:  Mix up some blood red cake, put it in the oven, and put the bloody bowl in the sink.

I am not a cannibal; I just have similar cleaning needs.

Oh!  Now we're cooking with gas!  Well, alright, I'm cooking with electric.  It's just an expression. 

Step 3:  Crumble up bloody cake, mix with a bit of icing, and roll out eyeballs:

What the inside of your eyeballs looks like

Step 4: Freeze the eyeballs and melt the mysterious discs that came in the eyeball kit.  This is what sclera is made of, apparently:

You've got to be impressed that I know the word sclera

Step 4: Dip the frozen eyeballs into the melted sclera to form eyeballs on sticks:

Note the jaunty jack o-lantern nightlight leering at the naked balls

Marvel that they are already deformed, being neither round, nor smooth, nor very white.

Step 5:  Realize that there is no way in hades that you can get twenty vertical eyeballs to Christine's house and also that the hardening sclera is cementing several of the eyeballs-on-sticks together.  Separate eyeballs and line them up horizontally on plates.

Step 6:  Attempt to add scary pupils, but run out of black icing and end up with just ordinary pupils:

Not even remotely eerie

Step 7: Try to add red, bloodshot veins.  End up with red squiggly lines on eyeballs and red drops splattered all over the kitchen:

Looking more like red-legged spiders than eyeballs

Step 8:  Figure out a way to get all of the not-very-eerie eyeballs on sticks on a single plate:

Halloween party game:  can you pull out just one?

Step 9:  Stop and look around and realize that, although the eyeballs on sticks are not particularly scary, the kitchen is a damned nightmare, with blood and viscera everywhere, and you'd better get it cleaned up before Mom wakes up and calls the cops.

Step 10:  Pick up a washcloth and go blog about about making eyeballs on sticks instead.