I love Penny Arcade, but this situation is not the Apocalypse. It is, to quote Eric Flint, simply a problem to be solved.
And we have solved it. Two wide-aperture three-foot cardboard tubes, secured with duct tape, and fixed to our stoop’s bannister. A box at the bottom to collect the candy. The angle is steep enough that the candy can and does travel freely to the bottom. There! Social distancing achieved, and problem solved. We even have cardboard tubes for our neighbors.
Kids helped my wife, and I think it came out nice. Positioning, and all that. They have pretty good eyes for positioning and whatnot.
Honest Trailers was mostly “it was all right” about Halloween (2018)…
…but when they got to the true crime podcasters in that movie, well. Honest Trailers had views on them, let me tell you. Somewhat waspish views, too. The kind that professionals have when Hollywood gets the technical details wrong. Seriously, listening to said views was what made me put this one up.
It was for the Secret World Legends poetry contest, which is why it may seem a bit obscure. Still, I rather liked writing it. PDF at the public Patreon.
Have you embraced and chased the Broadcast’s Lord?
A hiss of static truth, Presenting lore
Profoundly hid in math’s relentless chord,
Placed close to deaths; which warns what is in store.
You’ll search in graves, walk with the restless dead
Half-trapped between this clumsy world and next;
And when their numbers burn inside your head
Look then to get a sane man’s frantic text.
Long trip you’ll make, to vampire-haunted lands.
On Gaia’s quest you’ll be, to put down ghosts
Who picked unholy halls to make their stands;
Excise them all, confront their tattered host.
Extend this Age’s grasp, and end His reign.
No dead may rule. Not even at Samhain.
I think that they had the right idea, here. Just hack away everything that wasn’t the first Halloween — ah, the first-first Halloween movie — and go on from there. Continuity? Heh. Slasher movies, my friends: slasher movies. Call it an ‘alternate timeline’ if you like, and go on from there.
Besides, I hear that the suddenly-only sequel is pretty good. That makes it easier to get away with this sort of thing.
This was surprisingly difficult to find.
Not everybody has been that nice about it, but Movie Web behaved itself. The trailer to the new Halloween movie is not yet available. The trailer, in fact, is being doled out in incredibly small doses so far. But one thing is definitely true, here: it is a sequel to the first Halloween. And the first movie only. Everything else has been, heh, ruthlessly hacked off.
Slasher flicks aren’t actually really my thing, but this one tempts me. It doesn’t hurt that Jamie Lee Curtis is one of those people who hit the genetic lottery, either.
We didn’t even really get kids until about 7 PM, and there’s a 8 PM curfew around here. Not many people put up decorations in the area this year, either. It was a little weird. Still, my kids enjoy giving out the candy and operating the fog machine, so there’s that.
Oh, right, I should probably bring that back in.
I’m trying that out. …Not working, huh? Yeah, probably not working. Anyway, got the glow-in-the-dark skeleton in the mail and finally up (with any luck, it’s not actually radioactive or anything). All the candy has been gotten, and not a single bag opened ahead of time! The eldest is going on a field trip tomorrow (which I’m chaperoning, for my sins), so I had to run to the supermarket, but I think that everything’s ready to go.
Although my kids are probably expecting me to take the car to school tomorrow. Which I would, except that then I can’t give the crossing guards their Halloween candy. Full-sized Hershey bars. It’s really hard to go wrong with that*. Continue reading One day to go until H-DAY.
