I'm Not Dead Yet...Unlike These Zombies Over Here

Posting Location: My Home, Parma, OH.


Honestly, I'm not sure when I'll next get the opportunity to post to my blog (what with trying to find a job before now, and next month looking to be a busy one as well) but I didn't want my favorite holiday to go by without at least one post, so I figured I'd put this up. This is from about three years ago, so it no longer quite syncs up with my sense of humor, but close enough (I've edited out the most embarassing bits). Enjoy!

What Makes Costumes Scary

[]...I thought I’d do a little look at one of the holiday’s most well-known traditions: “Egging the crap out of houses that don’t give you candy.” Whoops, sorry, I meant “Dressing up in scary costumes and egging the crap out of houses that don’t give you candy.” Now, we all already know why we traditionally dress up in scary costumes on Halloween. It goes back to the Middle Ages, when people would dress as monsters on All Hallows Eve to frighten the ghosts and devils that came out that night into giving them candy. But exactly what makes these costumes scary in the first place? This is what I will explore in this week’s segment.

1.) Vampires: Vampires are undead beings that drink people’s blood, and were invented by Vlad the Impaler in 1889. They are vulnerable to sunlight, unless they’re wearing sunglasses. They’re vulnerable to crosses and holy water, unless they’re really really powerful. They’re vulnerable to garlic, buried wine, scattered grain, and cannot cross running water, unless you live in the 21st century. A person bitten by a vampire automatically turns into a pale-skinned person who dresses in dark clothes and attends LARP sessions. A vampire in the area usually means that you get vampire slayers, which are either sexy, quick-witted female slayers or silent, half-vampire male slayers. Either way, you get the fans associated with vampire slayers, which are typically enough to frighten Alfred Hitchcock.

2.) Werewolves: Half of the fear associated with werewolves comes in the uncertainty of what kind of werewolf you’re dealing with. Getting bit by a werewolf is like getting bit by a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re going to get. You could end up a Wolfman-type, you could turn into a normal wolf, you could turn into a half-wolf half-human, you could turn into a wolf that can open doors, you could turn into one of those Wolfos things from Legend of Zelda --- it’s a toss-up. The other half of the fear comes from the fact that they remind you of furries, which are always immensely terrifying unless we’re talking about Sonic The Hedgehog, or maybe StarFox.

3.) Frankenstein: Despite the fact that Victor von Frankenstein only made one Frankenstein Monster, you see literally hundreds of these things all over the place come October. While I at first had a “Santa’s Little Helpers”-type theory to go with this, I stumbled across the truth --- they’ve been warring across the millenia ever since their creation in the late 1800’s, following the mantra “There Can Be Only One!!!” And they’re all trying to become “The One,” and whenever one dies, all the rest get stronger!!! And it’s said “The One” will be able to fly around and dodge bullets and lead the human resistance to victory against our heartless machine masters!!! I think I forgot what I was talking about.

4.) Ghosts: For some reason, these creatures are immaterial enough to walk through walls and tell people they suck in Ouiji boards, but solid enough to kill one of your men unless you eat a power pellet first. They get even more frightening when you eat them and they’re reduced to a pair of floating eyes, however, because then they steal your sheets and cut eye-holes in them (sometimes too many, which results in them getting a lot of rocks). This, in turn, leaves your bed uncovered, thus making it easier for the alligator underneath it to sneak out and eat you. You can, of course, stop an alligator quite simply by holding it’s jaws shut, because the muscles that open the jaws are horribly weak, but the only way to do this without losing your hand is to become Steve Irwin. [EDITOR'S NOTE: Who's probably a ghost himself by now (*ba-dum tish*)]

5.) Skeletons: The human form, reduced in death to it’s basest component, the skeleton reminds everyone instinctively of Health class. This in turn frightens us with the prospect of recieving apples and other “healthy alternatives to candy” during Halloween. But the horror doesn’t stop there, for this in turn conjures images of exercise, developmental health, puberty, and sexuality. Soon you’re thinking of STD’s and safe sex and gods only know what other horrors from your youth. Skeletons typically dwell in graveyards, in dungeons, in closets, tacked on front doors, and sporting fashionable new clothes in Ambercrombie & Fitch ads.
Their lesser cousins, Skulls, are just as frightening, reminding us of Hamlet, pirates, and the Punisher.

6.) Mummies: Mummies are a sign of the end times. It was because of a mummy that The Rock became a film actor [EDITOR'S NOTE: The Doom film only further validates my opinion that this was a bad thing]. It is because of mummies that we have mummy jokes (“Who did the monster cry to when he stubbed his toe?”). It is because of mummies that we have a Food Pyramid instead of a Food Groups now. But possibly most frightening of all, a person dressed as a mummy symbolizes a complete lack of toilet paper at their house. *shudder* If you disturb a mummy in their tomb they curse you for a thousand years, but the joke’s on them because most people cursed by mummies don’t even last the next couple months!!

7.) Witches: These servants of Satan fly around on their broomsticks at night, dressed in their pointy hats and black dresses, to do evil to us normal humans. [EDITOR'S NOTE: Poorly executed jokes confusing the Halloween witch with real-life Wiccans and other Neo-Pagans removed to protect the guilty.] Witches were invented by The Dark Prince working through William Shakespeare when he wrote about the Three Old Witches in his immortal 1996 classic, William Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet. In that movie, the witches made the Titanic sink, which shows you how evil they are!!!

8.) Devils: Although one might argue that devils are more sexy than scary, they are traditionally capable of summoning something truly frightening: Radical Christians Convinced Halloween Is Dedicated To Worshiping Satan. With every new devil sighted on Halloween, our fear of getting Harvest Time Cross-Word Puzzles and WWJD Bracelets in our bags increases. (If any of our readers actually do this on Halloween, then I’m very sorry. I’ll make sure not to go to your house for candy this year, and instead skip right to the hiding in [your] basement with a roll of duct tape and an untraceable cell phone. I mean I don’t trick-or-treat anymore. I mean I don’t hide in people’s basements on Halloween to scare the crap out of them on the phone and tape up their pets. I mean...fuck, okay, which is worse, trick-or-treating at my age or the duct tape thing?)

9.) Pirates: These high-sea thieves are the predecessors to cyborgs. When they lose a limb, they replace it with something else --- much like the use of prosthetic limbs today --- but their substitutes are twisted mockeries of the human form. Instead of a fake hand, pirates get hooks, which they use to rip through their enemies and terrorize horny teenagers at Make-Out Ridge (he’s only got One Hand!!!). Instead of getting bitchin’ prosthetic metal legs, they fashion peg legs which they use to stab opponents with great efficiency in their Pirate-Fu. And instead of glass eyes which look really creepy but really cool when you tap them with a pen, they get eye-patches that steal your soul. Sometimes you get skeleton pirates, which make you think about having safe sex with cyborgs.

10.) French Maids: Aside from reminding one instinctively and uncomfortably of Fran Dreschner, french maids are cold-blooded killers. I’ve read one or one murder-mystery novel before. I’ve [played] Clue and Clue Jr. And I can tell you, if it’s not the butler that did it, then it was the maid!!! This kind of thing is so common that I would go so far as to say that the body-count associated with the average French maid is greater than all the escaped psychos, undead spirits of revenge, possessed dolls, hockey goalies, and people in Scream masks combined. If you ever see one in the Conservatory with a Lead Pipe, run like fucking hell.

11.) Cardboard Boxes Painted To Look Like Robots: I swear those goddamn cardboard boxes are getting smarter every year. Although their plot to take over the world has so far been unsuccessful [...], they are rapidly adapting to new scenarios. Their plot to hide all our new stuff under fuck-tons of paper popcorn has been failing due to their underestimation of the human will to dig around for shit, so they have now upped the ante by pretending to be robot costumes to gain our trust. DON’T BE FOOLED!!!

12.) Clowns, Scarecrows, Med Patients With Their Butts Showing, Yu-Gi-Oh Characters: Do you really need an explanation on why these are terrifying?

13.) Zombies: Now this one I don’t get. I mean, I can’t think of anything cuter than a flesh-eating zombie! Unless they’re Nazi zombies; that’s, like, the ultimate enemy right there. I mean, let’s face it, no matter how much you hate someone, if it comes between fighting that person and teaming up with them to fight a bunch of Nazi zombies, you’re going to team up with them and fight the Nazi zombies!!

Ah, memories.

Happy Halloween everyone!