Recipe Shows of the Robotic Future. And BOO!

If the food network ever becomes like THIS, with commercial interruptions, then it means that the "modern era" has passed, and we are in a new era - the "monotone era of metric roboticism."

Here's that link again. Click here. Thanks.

Today was my day off, and it was Hallowe'en. I forgot to buy candy, because I didn't think ahead and figured I would be at work. Also, for the past two years I lived in an area where our closest neighbour was about 1/2 mile away, so trick-or-treaters were rather sparse. So this year, I did the noble thing - I turned off the lights and took a nap.

Halloween sucks when you have a dog, too. Especially a dog who goes crazy when someone knocks on the door. It's not a good thing to have a dog who jumps children in costumes. Although maybe the extra costume material would protect them a bit.

Also, my house is cleaned up on the outside, but it looked so scary before. It was probably the one place that the children of Hermansville skipped when they went out on their "begging spree." I wouldn't expect any less of them this year either. The house looks better, but there's still a big mountain of construction rubble and dirty mattresses in the back yard.

I did catch the very beginning of the pre-set trick-or-treating session, which I believe was 4:30-7:00pm here. There were kids out in their scary outfits, and their mothers (or fathers - sorry - I'm really not racist) were driving alongside very slowly. What the heck?

When I was a kid, the only thing my mother worried about when I went trick-or-treating was that I would get cold. So, she would make me wear a jacket, which always made me angry because it covered my hallowed costume! She didn't drive alongside - she sat at home and gave out candy, like mothers were supposed to (I don't remember what the fathers did; I do remember that some hid behind bushes and jumped out at the passing kids. That would probably get you arrested today.). And we would go out on the town for what seemed like 8 hours, hitting all the nicer neighborhoods where we figured the candy would be best. Then we would get home, sit on the floor, and sort through our 28 pounds of candy. Ah, the early 80s. The rolls of Sweet Tarts were always cast aside, and there were hundreds of them. I don't know of anybody who really likes SweetTarts. But that was what everyone gave out back then.

Of course, I'm probably just looking back and romanticizing. We probably only tricked/treated for an hour, and I just remembered it seeming longer. And costumes were just terrible back then. Remember them, in their cardboard boxes with the clear fronts? Mine was usually something skeery like the Count from Sesame Street. The costume "kit" was comprised of a face-smothering mask with two teensy nostril holes, and you just secured it to your face with the attached rubber band, which pulled your hair. The other part of the costume was sort of like a plastic apron, printed with your alter ego's body. Do the stores still sell those things? I think they were sort of fazed out when I was about 10 or so. Probably because a lot of kids died from oxygen deprivation, or they just didn't like getting their hair tangled in that rubber band.

I wonder what the children of past days meant when they originated the term "Trick or Treat?" Did it mean that, if you didn't want to pass out candy, you could do a card trick or something? Or some sort of exotic dance? That would be fun. I can do a little bit of a generic English jig. Or I could get a "Sweatin' to the Oldies" video, dress up as Richard Simmons, and really put on a show. I bet the children of today would love to see a man covered in body oil and glitter, wearing a sequined tank top and terrycloth shorts, dancing wildly to the tune of "Surf City." Step-and-clap-and-jazzy-hands.

God, I hope there's no toilet paper to clean up in the morning. In a community as small as this, every household is probably muttering tonight, "that new sonuvabitch didn't even bother to hand out candy."

(If you think my long, neurotic rant on halloween customs is bad, wait until Christmas comes around. Good night.)