postal scrotum: prizewinning pumpkin art

My brother David writes in:

Every Halloween our building has a pumpkin contest. Each tenant is given a pumpkin and on the 31st all of the pumpkins are placed on tables in the building lobby for judging by everyone that works in the building. This year I volunteered to lead the pumpkin effort but since I was (and still am) tired and not wanting to think very much I was leaning toward this one suggestion given to me by a vegetarian coworker: put the pumpkin on its side, the "handle"/vine becomes a tail, get a stuffed pig-shaped animal and cut off the head, place the head on the opposite side of the tail, then carve a hole out of the middle of the pumpkin and hang from the inside strips of raw bacon and ham. She also wanted a recording of a pig noise playing in the background. Our sign would say "Pig or treat!"

But in the end I thought that was just too gross and even though she denied that she was trying to make a personal statement (since she's a veggie-eater) I decided on the 30th to dump the pig idea and come up with something else. The idea I came up with involved turning the pumpkin into a mini Weber charcoal grill, complete with grill stand and simulated smoke compliments of my mini water-based fogger. Then a coworker that was helping me out with this suggested that we grill body parts - so that's how we came up with our entry, the Gruesome Grill. It was actually pretty awesome - complete with body parts covered in real BBQ sauce and a bowl with BBQ sauce marinating some other parts.

The photos attached don't do the smoke justice - it looked awlsome in person, but if you look carefully you'll see wisps of smoke coming from the grill. Pumpkins were judged for three categories: silliest, most creative, and scariest. In the end, we won the scariest category - Hager Sharp's first pumpkin win, ever! YEAHHH BABY.

I'm proud of my brother's victory.

_