Things that make you go "Boo"

Well, another Halloween has come and gone, and this one was a real downer. Mired by my self-assigned workload, I had no time for parties, no time for horror movie marathons, and no time for costumes. It’s good that I didn’t bother with a costume, though, since I stayed at home to pass out candy to the kids. Allow me to explain.

It was my first Halloween at home in my apartment complex, so I had to perform some candy estimates. There are six hundred units in my complex, and several other complexes on my road, and many times that on the surrounding streets. So, 600 x 4 x 4 = 9,600 units. If 50% are filled and 25% have children and 50% of those children are of trick-or-treating age and are not controlled by domineering xtian freaks who want to spend the holiday on their knees begging god for forgiveness for celebrating Satan’s designs, then that still leaves six hundred homes with eligible children. Given America’s current standard of 1.5 children per household, I can estimate 900 trick-or-treaters. Therefore I need 1,800 expensive chocolate bars because I like Halloween and I’m not a cheap bastard who hands out Pixie Stix or homemade popcorn balls or (shudder) apples. Assuming each bag contains 24 bars and costs an average of $2.59 plus tax, we can calculate it will cost me about $204 (including 5% tax) to purchase 75 bags of candy. Factoring in my budget which was recently blown on the Bunny and Katrina, I cut the estimate back to six bags and sincerely hoped I wouldn’t get flooded by the denizens of neighboring apartment complexes.

So, I’m sitting in my apartment on Monday wearing my Drop Dead t-shirt with the skull on it, and I get (drum roll, please) NO trick-or-treaters. That’s right. Zero. Zilch. Diddly. I’m stuck sitting on six bags of assorted name brand chocolate bars, which is bad since I no longer eat that sugary stuff.

I blame this fiasco on all the xtians around here who have allowed that narrow-minded, paranoid, suffocating zealotry they call parenting to rule their children’s lives. They’ve ruined the best holiday of the year, the one that was all about having fun, the one that wasn’t mired with emotional baggage, the one where you didn’t have to gather with your family and could instead hang with the people you actually like, and why? Because they’re afraid of the astronomical chance they might bite into a candy bar with a needle in it? According to this article on Snopes, there have only been ten legitimate claims of this happening over the last fifty years, and in most of those cases it was one family member pulling a mean prank on another. Ask yourselves, are the chances that good that your kid will get to school safely each day? Play sports without injury? Attend church without being anally raped by the clergy?

(Warning – old man rant ahead). Halloween in my day was fun. I grew up on the mean streets of Louisville, KY, and I still remember my first Halloween at age four. We were poor, and those cheesy store bought costumes were for chumps anyway, so we made the traditional ghost costume – dug an old white sheet out of the closet, cut two eye holes and two hand holes, added some fluorescent paint for safety and decoration, and then waited for dark before we hit the streets. That’s right – we didn’t start until sundown. Fun is always more so in the dark.

Parents walked their kids door to door, but stayed on the sidewalk as the children ran up the driveway, rang the bell, made their empty threats, and were rewarded with candy. If the front light on the house was off, we skipped it and continued to the next one. Actually, if the light was off, the house was most likely coated in eggs, shaving cream, and toilet paper. We stopped by every house within walking distance and didn’t care if we knew the owners. Everybody was your pal on Halloween. At the end of the evening we went home, dumped out our buckets on our beds, and sat in our bedrooms trading candy and comparing our hauls while the adults partied downstairs, those idiots with their rock music and beers. We had the good stuff upstairs, and wouldn’t need to come down until Christmas.

And now it’s over. The fun has been quashed by the nagging media (“There could be a needle in your child’s candy bar. It could be sneaking up on you now! Details at eleven.”) and the morons eager to believe them. Xtian parental fools! I will destroy you!

For starters, I’m boycotting xmas this year. Don’t buy me any gifts and don’t expect any in return. If this fails to shake society to its core, then I guess I’ll have to go on some kind of killing spree. We’ll call it the twelve deadly days of xmas. “One the first day of xmas, my true love gave to BLAM BLAM BLAM AIIEEE CALL THE PARAMEDICS!”

Perhaps you think I’m joking. Perhaps you are a fool.

On a barely related note, I would just like to announce to the blogging community that I do not, technically, worship Satan, although I probably do a lot to further his plans. I think everybody missed that question on my personality quiz. That was my fault really, even though I did once blog my religious leanings (here are parts one and two). Apparently I joke about it so incessantly that everybody took it as truth, which makes me wonder about all of you. You actually thought I was a disciple of Lucifer and yet you still liked me? Even those of you claiming to be Christians yourselves? How do you explain that? “He’s a decent enough guy…tends to worship the devil a bit, but at least he’s kind and courteous.”

Boo, out