My Halloween

First of all, a cultural fact: Halloween is not worthy to tongue-polish the boots of Guy Fawkes. Much as the Spanish birthday song beats the hell out of our pitiful little ditty, Britain's morbid fall holiday kicks our morbid fall holiday's ass. Kicks it hard.

Halloween drives me up a wall. Little kids ring your doorbell at odd intervals, and you have to go to the door and give them candy. Net result: me getting extremely torqued off because the little brats are rewarded for being insufferably annoying.

But that's enough of a diatribe about Halloween. Actions speak louder, right? So here's what I did for Halloween.

I live in a condo complex, which is more or less like an apartment complex plus a smallish suburban neighborhood. I've seen kids here and there playing or getting into and out of cars and trouble, and I am therefore uncertain whether trick-or-treating goes on in this locality.

Not that I give a damn. I'll be violently buggered before I sit in my own home rewarding pushing a doorbell button with processed-sugar pellets. It's like some god-awful Skinner box. So, for all the little kiddies, I set up the Bastard Bowl.

What is the Bastard Bowl? The concept and construction are very simple, and using it requires no effort. First, one makes a sign on the following model:



Then, modify the sign along the following lines, for which I used a red Crayola crayon:



And now the part which works best if you have neither a love for children nor a conscience. Attach the sign you have made to a bowl, and place the bowl outside your door, like so:


I put three chewy Jolly Rancher candies in the bowl, and two on the gravel surrounding the bowl. The rest of the bag I actually ate at a sitting a couple of nights ago, but that's beside the point.

The point is: you set up the Bastard Bowl, and a number of amusing consequences ensue.

First, you have evaded the "treat" part of trick-or-treating, because the Bastard Bowl requires only a modicum of actual candy.

Second, you have evaded the "trick" part of trick-or-treating; even the most hardened child hooligan will not deface your house upon seeing the Bastard Bowl. He'll just wish that he had gotten to it first.

Third, you are liberated from your house. Go anywhere you want, and those damned doorbell-ringing kids will just have to suck up their tears and go to the next door.

And finally, you will have brought about in your neighbors the discomfiting knowledge that somewhere in this neighborhood live some very naughty children. People start mistrusting each others' kids: they might be the daemon spawn who did that awful thing on Halloween. People start mistrusting each other, for that matter, for what kind of parent (or what manner of person, for that matter) produces that sort of evil child?

Ah, domestic tranquility.

Coming up next in this two-parter... my Guy Fawkes!