|
Digital Slob Curt Brandao |
Get creative
with pumpkins
on Halloween
We're only days away from Halloween, the once highly mystical night of the dead originally celebrated and/or barricaded against by the ancient Celts.On this night, it was believed, spirits returned to Earth, damaged crops, harassed sleeping cows and generally made Druid priests clock a lot of overtime building bonfires and policing their beats -- sort of like a ghost ship on shore leave.
Since then, thanks to numerous hostile mergers of religious traditions over thousands of years (Jesus + rabbit = Easter), modern-day Respectable People are understandably conflicted about how to commemorate this event, a kind of piety potluck.
Some place scarecrow witches on their porch swings and pass out fun-size Snickers to kids dressed up like either Alien or Predator, Lilo or Stitch, or in more progressive neighborhoods, Will or Grace.
But despite the canonical compromises made by Pope Boniface IV in the 7th century to build a bigger tent, some still don't like their religious tenets mixed together buffet-style, especially when Oct. 31 lands on a Sunday.
They want their family traditions ghost-and-goblin free, though they often make allowances for more forward-thinking fairy-tale figures year-round.
Icons like Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and Cupid do promote more positive messages, after all. They also take much better care of their skin.
Yet other Respectable People embrace this holiday full force, acting as if the whole world becomes Sin City for a night, packing bars and nightclubs dressed like they've come from an adult-movie convention.
It's ironic, then, that when Digital Slobs hunker down and refuse to play along -- sealing our windows with tin foil to make our homes go dark and getting all our audio-in via headsets to avoid being detected by prepubescent candy crusaders -- our natural xenophobia is actually more in line with ancient customs.
Granted, it's not that we're particularly reverent as much as the only Snickers we have lying around are king-sized -- put one or two of those big boys into circulation and within minutes you'll have the final mob scene of "Dawn of the Dead" re-enacted on your doorstep.
Still, for those Slobs who think they also need to put a jack-o'-lantern out front to ward off evil spirits, here are some low-effort options, representing some modern-day menaces:
2) For Slobs prohibited from holding carving knives due to a court order, simply take a plain pumpkin and affix a hand mirror to one side. Place it on some exterior structure, approximately at eye level so trick-or-treaters can see their own reflection, and pierce it several times with expired credit cards, letting them partially stick out, creating "identity-thief-o'- lantern."
3) Place an eye patch on a standard jack-o'-lantern and shove as many recordable CDs as you can into its mouth, all with names like "Metallica," "Britney Spears," and "Beyonce" scribbled on them in Magic Marker to create "music-pirate-o'-lantern."
Well, that and maybe one of those King-Size Snickers.