Stuff: "They say that the Coconut Creme Swirl sleeps."

McSweeney’s online auxiliary has a fun spoof for fans of the deeply purple gothic prose of H. P. Lovecraft: Luke Burn’s "Selections from H. P. Lovecraft's Brief Tenure as a Whitman's Sampler Copywriter."

A couple of quick tastes:

Coconut Creme Swirl

They say that the Coconut Creme Swirl sleeps. But if the dread Coconut Creme Swirl slumbers, surely it must also dream. It is certain that while it dozes the Coconut Creme Swirl is absorbed by terrifying visions of exacting its creamy tropical vengeance upon mankind! Consume the Coconut Creme Swirl before it awakens to consume you!

Caramel Chew

There is a dimension ruled by a blind caramel God-King who sits on a vast, cyclopean milk-chocolate throne while his mindless, gooey followers dance to the piping of crazed flutes. It is said that there are gateways in our world that lead to this caramel hell-planet. The delectable Caramel Chew may be one such portal.

Toffee Nugget

Few men dare ask the question "What is toffee, exactly?" All those who have investigated this substance are now either dead or insane.

Dig in.

Stuff: Yum yum.

Halloween is about ghost and goblins. It is a time when we get make faces at the devils of our worse nature and play at evil. Its roots date back to ancient folk rituals of . . . blah blah blah.

Halloween is, first and foremost, about candy. You knew this as a child. And, admit it, you know it now as an adult.

Epicurious, the cooking web site, has laid out a spread of tasty articles on Halloween grub, decorations, and entertaining – and they've got a fantastic slideshow of some of this Halloween's neatest treats.

Above is a coffin featuring the bones of a white chocolate skeleton that you can assemble before devouring. Other notable sweets include chocolate cockroaches (crunchy on the outside, chewy on the inside) and chocolate Day of the Dead skulls "available in Venezuelan white chocolate, milk chocolate with gray sea salt and hickory-smoked almonds, and spicy dark chocolate with Mexican ancho and chipotle chiles and cinnamon."

Dig in, Screamers and Screamettes.

Candy: Wonderful Halloween Peep sculptures from Frankford.

Please forgive the low quality of the photo, but I was unable to find a higher quality product shot on the Web. These out of focus characters are the Halloween edition Frankford Marshmallow Pals. Basically, they're Peeps. But these cats are more like Super-Peeps, Ultra-Peeps, Peeps to the Nth Degree. Instead of being vaguely formed uni- or duo-colored marshmallow lumps, Frankford uses icing to decorate their candies, creating cartoonishly detailed figures. There are stitches on the forehead and bolts in the neck of Frankenstein's Monster. You can clearly make out the fangs on Dracula. Even the witch's hair has texture to it. I've seen toy figurines with less detail than Frankfort put into these little candies. And all this for $1.99. Even if you don't like Peeps, they're worth buying to give to some little monster on H-day.