Why yes, those are life-sized Tetris™ pieces.

Friday was Bellarmine's Second Annual Haunted House Party -- so my housemates and I put away sacred texts and midterms to pick up fake cobwebs, black plastic, strobe lights and those Spooky Sounds CDs that live up to their names. Borrowing a page from a Haunted Porch my teaching comrades and I put together on the Tohono O'odham Nation in '97, I was a creepy face straining through a basement window. We also had falling corpses, moaning ghouls, creaky staircases, slamming doors, flying rats, surprise ghosties, scraping shovels (seriously scary!) and -- because this is a Div School party after all -- a Pope threatening excommunication and a jack-in-the-box Mormon missionary.

Scores and scores of people showed up in costume (Mary Catherine Gallagher, Superman, King Tut, "Smartee™ pants," a cowgirl sheriff, McDreamy from that TV show everyone watches but me, Steven Colbert complete with left ear sticking way out, and a whole troop of mousketeers leaving Tootsie Roll droppings all over the house) . . . but the party really got started when the martyrs showed up.