Oh, the irony!

Later that day, the very day I posted Dirty Dottie (see below), I went over to Darkwing Manor, our local Halloween "House Haunt," to work with the Baron getting an early start on mannekin maintenance. Most of the mannekins are mismatched, overused and zombified old department store freebies with fingers missing. At the end of the haunt each November, they get disassembled and piled into a shed with arms, legs, broken-off fingers and torsos all jumbled together in a ghoulish, post-mortem sort of mess.

Our first task was to reassemble each mannekin and match it with its stand. This entailed several hours of repeatedly jamming metal rods into the metal holes embedded in close proximity to the mannekins' buttholes, in an attempt to get a proper fitting. Once the torsos were fitted into their bases, the arms were then found and screwed on, if possible. Luckily, most of their body parts had been pre-marked with names like "Chucky-Starbucky" and "Jason Voorhies," and "Pris." There was a fair amount of epoxy, fiberglass and Bondo usage, but we managed to get most of them put together and ready for additional repair.

The irony was not lost on me. But unlike Dottie's ghastly husband, I found no pleasure in fondling the nude body parts of small children and young adults, even if they were made of plaster. I did however, have a great time repairing the broken fingers.

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