Spooky, Scary Skeletons

Fall semester: day fifty

If you want to hear a song that'll get stuck in your head all weekend, that's the one.

My Halloween weekend isn't anywhere near as exciting as a bunch of animated skeletons from 1929 dancing in a graveyard. As it is, yes, still fall semester, I'll be reading and writing once again this weekend, making lesson plans and reviewing draft essays (my students' second paper is due on Tuesday) and generally spending the weekend much as I always do: working alone in my house with my cats. As much as I love Halloween, I have no plans whatsoever for it, as I'll be working/reading/etc. The only thing about it I'm looking forward to is 50% off candy at Walmart on Tuesday morning.

As you may recall, last year I went to a Halloween party as Superman. Full costume, tights and all, with a roll of socks stuffed into the red underwear that I called my "super-cock."

I do strange things when drunk.

Yes, there are pictures.

Anyway.

There are some good things to report, really -- it's not always just work-work-work for me. As luck would have it, four good things did happen to me this week:

1.) At long last, I will have my lit-course-free semester. My schedule was approved by my advisor, which means I'll get to take the three courses I planned to take: editing, workshop, and the visiting writer. I've been cleared to register for everything as well, so once November 14 rolls around, I'll be able to sign up.

2.) Tim O'Brien (yes, The Things They Carried Tim O'Brien) is doing a reading and two lectures at my university next Thursday. This is, needless to say, a big deal to the school and to Wichita's literati in general; the city only gets one or two big "literary celebrity" visits per year; last year it was David Sedaris, who did a reading/book signing at Watermark Books. This year it's O'Brien, who is making an appearance at the university, not somewhere outside it. Because his big reading is at 7PM on Thursday night -- the exact time of my Middle Eastern/Asian Lit course -- class has been canceled so that we can go to the reading if we want. Depending on how tired I am and/or how much work I have to do, I'll probably go to it. If not, he's doing a smaller meet-and-greet that afternoon at 2PM that I can go to. Regardless, it means my weekend starts earlier than usual, and that I can relax a bit on my reading for that class since I'll have an extra week to do it.

3.) I got a perfect 15/15 on my midterm exam in that class, and a 14.75/15 on my Midnight's Children paper that I'll be revising/adding to for the end of the semester. This should certainly make things a bit easier as I continue to work on said paper in the coming weeks.

4.) My car has been performing better than ever. It's not leaked a single drop of coolant in a week, and I broke my own personal speed record in it on Wednesday night: 103 mph. She could've gone faster, but I didn't want to press my luck and end up blowing a gasket or something. She likes top gear, though, and it's a shame I don't get the chance to drive that fast more often. I think I could make a good living in life as a street racer.

In addition to all of that, I also got paid today. This is good because I have to pay the electric bill soon, as well as get some minor foodstuffs. Today I made another pot of chicken noodle soup, using the last of the canned vegetables as well as the rest of the pasta I had in the house...so, yeah, I need to replenish that stuff, as my survival as a single man who rarely cooks is on the line, I suppose.

When good things happen, I'm generally put into a better overall mood, and this weekend is no exception thus far, as I was immediately put into a good mood for the day when I woke up and the first news I saw was that WVU has been accepted into the Big 12, starting next year. This is good because it virtually guarantees every WVU football game will be televised out here in Kansas for the foreseeable future, especially when they play the powerful, important teams in the Big 12 (Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas, Texas Tech, etc). They'll more than likely lose, of course, but it's going to be awesome to be able to watch them lose in HD on my flatscreen TV instead of a somewhat-pixelated streaming broadcast on ESPN3's website.

Before you say anything, yes, I did go to WVU. I was born and grew up in Morgantown, and have been a football fan since shortly after birth. But their football program is going to have to bust some ass to get in shape enough to take on giants like those Texas and Oklahoma teams, as well as the ever-up-and-coming, currently-undefeated Kansas State. I've fully resigned myself to seeing a losing season or two before they can get up to speed to be competitive, because they'll have a ridiculously rough football season. Maybe not as rough as they'd have had they joined the SEC instead, but still. Rough.

Anyway, as I'm sure very few readers of my blog are interested in football (Jay is about the only one I know who cares about this sort of thing as much as I do), I'll move forward.

I briefly considered going to a few local fast food places, taking as many ketchup and/or mustard packets as I could and bringing them home....then giving them out to trick-or-treaters. It's dark. It looks like candy. They wouldn't realize the ruse until they got home and dumped out their bags to assess their collective hauls.

I must reiterate again that I am probably a horrible person for devising plans like these. And I'm certainly sure I've not built up enough good karma points to do something so blatantly evil without some sort of retaliation.

Then again, the phrase is "trick or treat." I'm pretty sure that would fall under the "trick" category. Maybe the "evil and cruel trick" category, and probably under the "get my house egged" category as well.

Do kids still egg/toilet-paper houses? Soap windows? Corn people?

Note: for those of you who don't know what "corning" someone is (and I didn't know it myself until I asked my mother several years ago), it's waiting beside a dark road, waiting for a car to pass, and then throwing full ears of corn at the car or its windshield. Apparently it was a big thing in the 70s and 80s, but I've never seen it happen, nor have I ever heard of it happening to anyone aside from my mother.

We're in a down economy -- eggs, toilet paper, soap, and corn are all expensive these days.

Someone could soap my car windows if they wanted to; they actually need a good cleaning. The whole car needs to be taken to the car wash before winter and given a good soapy scrubdown. I haven't washed it since July, and now it's almost too cold to do it again before the snow/ice/shitty fall-and-winter weather hits us here in Kansas.

Could be worse, though -- everyone back home in WV/MD is getting pounded with snow this weekend. Yes, snow. First snowstorm of the year. My parents and most of my friends are supposed to get 5-9 inches tonight and tomorrow.

Again, reason #784 why I never want to live in West Virginia ever again. It was 65 and beautiful here today.

I've been seeing people on Twitter and Facebook talk about their first and/or their favorite Halloween costumes ever. My first Halloween (that I was costumed, anyhow) was 1984. I was Spider-Man. I was 1.9 years old. There are pictures. And I remember it.

Yes, though I was born in December 1982, I was too young to have a costume in October '83, so my parents apparently skipped that year.

I have a few costumes I remember well, mainly because I either spent a lot of time on them or because they were just awesome. There were a few lean years, though, when I had a fairly shitty costume -- such as the Dollar Tree cape-and-Dracula-mask costume, or those $3 cheap vinyl costumes, of which I had at least two -- one Batman, one ALF.

Yes. ALF. I'm not kidding.

I'm pretty sure there was a shitty Superman costume in there somewhere too.

Anyway.

The best costumes I had were always the ones I put together myself. One year in middle school I was taking a Home Ec class, and we were on the unit on "sewing" around Halloween. I was able to raid their fabric closet for pretty much anything I wanted to use to sew with. Instead, I found a ton of fake fur (probably for lining a jacket with, or something), cut sheets of it into shapes I could apply to my body's exposed skin, and bought a werewolf mask. I wore the fur, the mask, and torn pants/torn shirt and was an awesome werewolf. I may have been a horrible student in middle school, but damn was I inventive.

Then there was a hobo costume I got from a garage sale, complete with stick and bindle. I purchased a hobo mask too. I'm sure there are pictures of this somewhere. It may be the most elaborate costume I ever had other than the werewolf.

I had a few more interesting ones -- Darth Vader, a wraith (twice), a demon, The Crow, Frank-N-Furter from Rocky Horror, in full drag and makeup, at Morgantown High School (loved that one, but regrettably have no pictures even though some were taken), a ninja, etc. I went pretty balls-out for the Superman costume last year, though, going as far as to sew the cape to the collar so that it looked authentic and not tied-on. This year? I got nothin'. Sitting at home with the cats, like I said, hoping that my friends who are hot women will take a lot of drunk, embarrassing Halloween party pictures of themselves in slutty costumes and post them on Facebook. Yeah. I'm that guy.

On that note, I'm getting off here to take care of some things around the house before bed. So, g'night folks.