Going Crackers

Mrs. Macabre loves her Britcoms, the favorite being "Are You Being Served?". I on the other hand, don't get them...at all, except my favorite which is "Waiting For God"; Diana Trent on this series is positively wonderfully evil, I aspire to be like her when I'm old and bitter. On the other hand, I personally think that a prerequisite to laughing at anything Monty Python is 2 cases of beer and a bunch of weed. But before we get ourselves into a flame war, something on "Are You Being Served" piqued my interest: Christmas Crackers, a kind of English Pinata sort of thing. Off to TJ Maxx I go and find some. I do have to say that they are beautiful.


They do make a nice *CRACK!* when you pull them but the junk they put in them is, well, junk...
and this was a better one with the little phone book! You get a tissue paper hat (which none fit my big #$%#@& head!), a prize and a piece of paper with a joke or riddle on it (this one was 'what has a bed but does not sleep and a mouth but does not eat? A river'. Somebody stop me before I hemorrhage from laughing. BUT wouldn't it be nice if we could make them more...personal, dark, sinister? HALLOWE'ENY?
Of course we can, we're all darkly brilliant here, I've seen many of your works in your blogs, you're all wonderfully creative people. So let's get started shall we?
First of all, a cracker isn't a cracker without a crack and thanks to the wonders of the Internet, we can purchase them, here! rather inexpensively too! You can buy all the rest of the materials to make them there too but I just bought the cracking mechanisms, I can supply my own toilet paper rolls. There are instructions too!. My goddess of domesticity, Martha has her own version, but without the cracking mechanism. I would use the cracker company's instructions personally. Filled with cool things like rubber spiders, dark foreboding fortunes, fall candy and generally cool things like that and I think that we can give the English a run for their money at their own game.
I will post mine when I make some.