I'm in an interesting and confusing position. I'm a vampire. Sometimes I'll go so far as to brag that I'm THE vampire. And yet...  we don't really celebrate Halloween in Australia. Thank god for the global community of Second Life, eh? Because that gives me a chance to waltz around the graveyards with an Undead beauty on my arm and celebrate all that is witchy, wicked and wild. I had three Halloween costumes for this year - one for Role Magazine, one to make Achariya wet herself laughing on her personal blog and finally the one that I actually ended up wearing for the day. Yes, I crossed to the even darker side for the Samhain and became a World of Warcraft elf for a day.

Creepy crawlies, grim ghouls, and all that goes bump in the night have slithered out of their haunts and into our realm as the 31st of October looms on the horizon. Halloween has come knocking to 2009, and few can deny its call: for one month, the world celebrates the dead, deviance, and - above all - being different. This holiday, the throne for the favorite fiend has a number of competitors, offering the living a variety of options to create their own unique monstrosity-

Special things for Halloween include my family's yearly viewing of the three Oceans movies, anticipating a Lord of the Rings marathon in a month, and bracing for the onslaught of family in December. October continues to rain down lovely frocks and skins, including this new release by L&S, the Leila_Johan Hex costume in honor of a certain movie. The skin is only 66L for the Halloween season from GeEs! It's one of the Tara Reloaded skins, and it's named the Pierrot Halloween Spezial. It's the perfect tattered finery to wear to a zombie ball...

It isn't remotely autumn where my real life body lives. It's still in the 90s outside, and when I listen to internet radio I get weather envy. I try to focus away from it by going somewhere chill and autumnal in Second Life. Today, I trotted my avatar to Octoberville to try my luck at the game. As usual, my attention span was about 30 seconds before I found something shiny and got distracted... But I've heard the game is well worth completing.

Green and orange totally match; or at least they do in October. In this case, I'm wearing a fairy frock from Tomoto with a special edition orange tattoo from Otaku Designs. The skin is perfect and green and new from Cupcakes, part of their Halloween line. The rose hair clip and necklace are especially beautiful -- new creations from Illusions, color-changing for every fairy mood. Back to skipping the stones of Octoberville!

Plastik makes some of the finest little sheath dresses around with perfectly fitting crotch prims, and MiaSnow's makeups are always brilliantly colored and creative. I'm a complete sucker for Halloween kitsch (like pumpkin-print shirts or what have you) and I still can't believe that Aikea of Plastik actually makes it work in a sexy, interesting way. Combined, the orange and green of it all makes me feel like a pumpkin patch at midnight, never a bad sensation! The little mesh leggings from TheCloset work well with the 80s micro-mini look, as do the pointy Scene-style type flats. The hair is a current favorite freebie from Rotten Toe, out at Zombiefest.

I'm overjoyed that it's October -- so many good things are happening to me this month (like, say, a new job) that it's worth pausing to write about. Happy turn of the year! Now if only Orlando would get cold...

Straight and sleek, some Halloween looks are eternal. There's something unearthly about hair so flat that it looks ironed, and paired with a figure-hugging sheath dress, the effect is Mortitia-esque. Plastik just released a series of perfect Halloween skins in which the skeleton very subtly shows through the epidermis. Creepy and pretty, the grey skin tone is a fitting colorless background to the lightly edged bones.

Along with this skin, Schadenfreude's new Tish hair is long and straight and evocative of a certain gothic lady... The hair highlights the bare shoulders of this dress by Sangre Noir, "12", a nicely textured gown for those primly sexy days.

I am wearing mythic things today. My hair is SLink's Ophelia, drawn to float around one's head as if your avatar is immersed in a watery grave. The lines are beautiful, thick strands interspersed by floating ones, a nimbus of messy beauty. It sits above a dress with a number of lines and options, Schadenfreude's Striga. Striga has a mermaid skirt in two kinds, an a-line skirt, and a system skirt or dress option, a plethora as usual from Allegory. The outfit is beautifully constructed, and named after an ancient evil. The Striga looks human enough, but preys upon the life-forces of young children, leaving them in a death-like coma...

I've always loved Babbage. There's a dedication to all things industrial and steamy and dirty and Victorian there that tickles my city-loving heart. When hyasynth sent out a notice that there was a ~silentsparrow~ Babbage gown, I hopped right over and snagged it. The gown has a nice rusty ochre plaid, and accompanying ribbed striped tee. Hunting through my October folder, I found a few perfect things to go with it.

My resolve to not blog cracked under the pressure of a few things, including the beauty of October and all of the pretty things in it, needing L for said October's beautiful things, and the sheer sorrow of not blogging. Allegory accused me of being addicted, and I think she's right -- there's something beautifully mind-clearing about dressing up my 3D paper doll and showing off her outfit, and I totally missed it. Anyway, here's an October moment for you, full of beautiful things.

The Louvre version:  Grande Odalisque, also known as Une Odalisque or La Grande Odalisque, is an oil painting of 1814 by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres depicting an odalisque, or concubine.

The Rezzable version is at Black Swan.  I've included a few pictures to show what a 3d painting looks like.  But you will get a better idea if you go to the display and walk around it.  

A bunch of us Hobos went over to see it as soon as Bettina Tizzy told us about it.  Our critical evaluation was "OMG!,"  "WOW!,"  and "Never seen anything like it!"  It was offered for sale at about $60 USD.   That’s gutsy pricing.  But two of us hobos bought copies on the spot.  Mine is displayed on Cookie now.