Getting ready for Halloween requires more than a pair of fishnets to freeze the rest of the night in. Many are making the evening memorable with a variety of morbid recipes.

Perhaps among the most interesting, the Robotic Snap-O-Lantern was at the recent Maker Faire featuring pumpkin robots (I'm coining the term "geekins"). With a couple of Duracells, the Snap-O-Lantern turns on to be quite the deadly squash.

Craftzine and Slashfood are spookifying your sweets with Spider Cakes and Punk Glow-in-the-Dark Cupcakes.

If Snap-O-Lanterns and sweets aren't enough to satiate, Suicide Girls tackles the unstoppable sexy costume scene. Seemingly, sexy-anything costumes are the ultimate undead.

Crabs, the intimately-natured itch that's not commonly sought out by those engaging in sexual activity, are in demand at a Dutch natural history museum. Although the news appears as a hoax at first hearing about it, the not-so-pleasant search for the parasite seems to be true.

"The Rotterdam Natural History Museum has appealed for somebody — anybody — to give it a single crab louse for its collection, amid fears they may be dying out."

What's more interesting about the article is the explanation for why the lingerie lice might be near extinction.

"The article, titled "Did the Brazilian Kill the Pubic Louse?" found that crabs rates had fallen first in women, and several years later in men in Leeds even as rates of other sexual ailments were flat or rising. The authors hypothesized that the bikini wax known as "The Brazilian" that removes all or most pubic hair, might be to blame. "Although initially predominantly seen in females, extensive hair depilation, including pubic hair, has become popular in males in the past few years," wrote study author Nicola Armstrong. "This, along with reduced transmission rates from female partners, may account for the recent similar reduction in male patients." Moeliker said that in essence, the lice's habitat is being threatened."

Yes, Brazilian waxes are threatening to put a species on the endangered list! The wonderful writer from the Associated Press of this article ended the story on an amusing note of how pubic lice are akin to house sparrows. Just remember, every time you wax, god kills a crab.

[Thx, Jeremy!]

Typically making news for the latest "toys", vibrations are powering much more than personal pleasure. Using kinetic energy from passing traffic, researchers are finding ways to power various sensors for bridges.

"This allows companies to monitor the bridge (ice conditions, traffic flows, health status, et al) without the need for battery maintenance, up to decades in theory."

The thought of energy going green by way of good vibrations is sure to pleasure the planet.

Made for traveling or long-distance lovers, the Hug Shirt helps you feel warm and fuzzy in more ways than one. The shirt consists of multiple sensors that react to SMS by way of Bluetooth.

"Embedded in the shirt there are sensors that feel the strength of the touch, the skin warmth and the heartbeat rate of the sender and actuators that recreate the sensation of touch, warmth and emotion of the hug to the shirt of the distant loved one."

Nominated as one of the best inventions of 2006, this mobile-focused fashion line has yet to hit the mainstream, but is currently debuting new models for 2007.

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Trying to tempt the viral nature of interweb videos, a few new ads from Elle Macpherson Intimates feature bored ladies in lingerie. The ads may also be an attempt at commercializing the increasing number of Justin.tv webcam girls that seemingly only sit bored in front of their computers as men boys unwilling to pay for PG-rated pr0n dare them to do silly things around the house. Attention-loving aside, the lingerie certainly doesn't go without notice. Adverbox points to other ads in the series.

The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks. Pictured: A business that puts out to let you in.

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Previously: Literally, A Web Log

Leave it to "dumb phone" consumers to be dirty minded. A few recent models of Motorola phones featured a 3D image of a clock face that some users selectively saw an image of a penis in. Embarrassed, Motorola quickly responded:

“The image that you see is actually the result of shading applied to the clock background graphic to give it more of a three-dimensional appearance, in line with the theme of the phone. The graphic is actually built as concentric circles stacked on top of each other, with a lighting filter applied to give it depth."

A sofa explores the concept of "dirty" in a social format. Users can make marks on the sofa that build on each other or easily be ironed out of existence. The "graffiti sofa" was created by Teruhiro Yanagihara to show scratch marks. The concept may be more revealing than intended depending on what your usual activities are on sofas. However, given the intentionally "dirty" design, it may be a more effective way of leaving a message for a lover than a steamy mirror.

We've seen our share of unusual condom usage over time, so the DIY condom "decor" should come as no surprise. Bored and perhaps a bit "frustrated", someone created an instructables-esque way to make a colorful flower vase. By rolling colored condoms over an appropriately-sized vase and cutting off the tip, you're left with a beautiful place to put flowers and weird out house guests all in one. Let's hope that the spermicide smell doesn't over-power the petunias.

Celebrating Italy's Eurochocolate in style, Sony created 150 PS3s out of chocolate. Obviously feeling late to the game from February's chocolate Wii controller, Sony decided to make a massive Sixaxis chocolate controller, alas lacking any of the equally delicious USB and vibration capabilities. With all the chocolate consoles, there may be some fierce competition for Engadget's next birthday cake contest. Geek and gamecakes better have their icing down to a T-ouchscreen.

A recent study shows that having sex everyday can help improve sperm quality. Though men are often told to control climaxing too often in order to keep their sperm counts up, a group of scientists down under (in Australia) have shown that it contradicts fertility.

"Among men whose fertility problems stem from genetic damage to their sperm rather than a low sperm count, abstaining from sex can make their difficulties worse, research led by David Greening, of Sydney IVF, has shown.

The pilot study of 42 men whose sperm showed significant DNA damage found that daily ejaculation reduced this by 12 per cent. While the results are preliminary and no direct effect on fertility has yet been measured, they suggest that certain men could benefit from having sex more often, or from abstaining less before providing semen for use in IVF."

We might not drink 8 glasses of water each day, but we most definitely won't disobey doctor's orders on this one.

Going off of Leeroy Jenkins invading advertising, it was only a matter of time until advertising invaded LOLcats. Yes, advertising has now penetrated and confused LOLcat lovers, the cute cuddly trend that confuses serious cat lovers around the globe. Dubbing this LOLvertising, advertisers have successfulled 1-up-ed ICanHasCheezBurger commenters with their Cingular txt commercial reference. Prepare yourself, it's only a matter of time before KFC runs spots for "where's mah bukket?"

Leeroy Jenkins invades advertising.

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Arse Elektronika, a conference about pr0nnovation kicked off tonight at Kink.com's Porn Palace in San Francisco. The opening speech by Johannes Grenzfurthner of Monochrom was considerably delayed due to, not surprisingly, a porn shoot that had run two hours late earlier in the day. After cleaning up spots and stains, Johannes apologized and took the stage. Opening the speech with looking back at a patent for a condom containing a computer chip that played music, he asked, "is this progress?". To some perhaps, to others, the envelope needs to continually be pushed, or in this case played with.

From polaroids to VHS to virtual reality, technology has always been quick to appeal to porn consumers. Johannes pointed to films like the Lawnmower Man (a movie he says is more outdated looking than Tron) and his experiences with an iPhone (the first thing his friend showed him on it was porn and said "you can even zoom in!"). Talking about merging sex with technology, a wise crack from the crowd yelled "I gave up my penis for an iPhone!".

Up next was a short film about overhead projectors. The film began with "Overhead projection is a dying medium. The only way to save it is to explore porn possibilities." A man then proceeded to masturbate using an overhead projector to document his "results". Somehow, I felt my years of grade school lecture notes being violated.

Skipping the Electric Orifice Orchestra due to technical difficulties, the Moaning Lisa was proudly propped up on stage. A modified mannequin of sorts, the Moaning Lisa is a life-size (and in some areas, augmented life-size) "doll" that contains sensors in an assortment of places around her body. Matt Ganucheau explained that partially due to the Nintendo Wii, alternative controllers on a public scale made people ask what can we interact with to enhance experience? As such, the Moaning Lisa's controls are unique, and like the female orgasm, there are no instructions. Photo sensors in her eyes detect presence and others around her body make her moan. The moaning is generated by the sound of 200 pleasured women. Why 200? Matt says it just sounded cool.

More from Arse Elektronika to come, the Flickr album can be viewed here.

Having a passion for popping can take on multiple forms. Apparently, bubble wrap celebrated it's 50th birthday recently. Violet Blue kindly points to who is receiving pleasure from 50 years of insatiable popping. From bras to bikinis, and "kittehs", too, bubble wrap has laid a foundation in becoming a fetish. While many leave their lust as casual habit, there's always those who prefer it hardcore.

Previously: Popping her chocolate-covered cherry
Nervous habits go mobile

Documenting dynamically, Graffiti Archaeology is a site that traces street art over time.

"The core of the project is a timelapse collage, made of photos of graffiti taken at the same location by many different photographers over a span of several years. Most of the photos were taken in San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles over a timespan from the late 1990's to the present."

The site is currently welcoming submissions and has also set up a Flickr group for more 'fiti viewing fun. [via]

Previously: The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal

Everyone loves doing data. Now in life-size, you can truly carry out your lust for line graphs. EMF Displacement (pictured left) is a 10'x12' sculpture of the electromagnetic field generated by a FPL substation. Other projects that construct everything from flight paths to GPS drawings can be seen here. Sadly, there's no glory holes in these graphs.

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Dressed up in drag, GM a couple months ago gave into an unusual team building experience. Mary Spies, a vehicle line director took her male team out to "learn" about what women "have to go through":

""We dressed him in a garbage bag to simulate a tight skirt. We gave him rubber gloves with press on nails, a purse, a baby, and a baby stroller and some chores like loading groceries." With all female handicaps in place, the men were then required to go through what women do routinely every day."

A bit shocked that there isn't more negative publicity about this, here's a heap of criticism. Firstly, "female handicaps" can't quite be seen as anything but an offensive phrase. The entire article tries to spin that this exercise at GM was to make their vehicles less male focused. By the article stating that babies and purses are "female handicaps", that alone already makes GM that much more discreditable. However, the most irritating idea in the entire scheme is the fact that GM comes off as so insulting of a company that they choose to dress the men in drag to gain female "insight" instead of, say, oh, hiring *female engineers*.

Advertising gets violent with a recent accident. The blogosphere had a hayday with headlines about the giant RAZR that crashed into a Mercedes. From "RAZR 2 Makes a Big Impact in Russia" to "Using Phone While Driving Kills You Big Time", we can only wait until the phone/driving jokes quiet down. Motorola may be setting the pace for future marketing with this kind of coverage. Don't be surprised to see massive PSPs crashing into planes as advertisements try to aggressively take back electronic product banning.