Nope:
today tens of thousands of kids are dressed as furries and identifying as princesses and pirates in our schools but the mainstream media won’t tell you that
— world famous art thief (@CalmSporting) October 31, 2022
Cute, but not scary…
Happy Halloween. Here's a short film entitled 'H. P. Lovecraft Goes To Asda': pic.twitter.com/51GcZp4P7f
— Alasdair Beckett-King (@MisterABK) October 28, 2022
YARRRGGGHHHH!…
Charlie Kirk calls for his audience to post bail for Pelosi attacker: "If some amazing patriot out there in San Francisco or the Bay Area wants to really be a midterm hero, someone should go and bail this guy out…Bail him out and then go ask him some questions" pic.twitter.com/EkMqFIYUn1
— Jason Campbell (@JasonSCampbell) October 31, 2022
War for Ukraine Day 250: Imperative! This Is the Kobayashi Maru 19 Periods Out of Altair VI…
Steeplejack
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
NotMax
Probably been a decade since any Halloweeners graced my threshold, yet every year I buy a bag of candy just in case.
Steeplejack
Steeplejack
@NotMax:
What kind of candy? Hope you like it.
Dangerman
@NotMax: A fine idea; not only do you end up with a big bag of candy (there are worse fates), but I’ve had people walking up to the door just as I’m running out of candy (i.e. no time to turn off lights, lock the door, and hide). Getting caught with one’s pants down (figure of speech!) is no fun. Curiously, it’s the adults/chaperones that don’t understand such things, the kids could give a shit because they know there might be a haul next door.
sab
@NotMax: We have hundreds in our neighborhood and my husband refuses to participate. Sort of a Halloween Grinch. Next year we will be doing it even if I have to tie him up.
sab
When I first moved to the neighborhood I had a lovely German Shepherd, and Halloween was the high point of her year. I took the top screen out of our door so that I could hand out candy without opening the door. Dog would lurk underneath and jump up to scare kids.
One time a little shit tried to chop my head off with a light sabre, and the German Shepherd jumped up and roared at him. He shrieked and ran away
ETA In her defense, I don’t think she knew she was scaring kids, except for the light sabre kid.
eclare
@Steeplejack: I’m shocked, shocked! Claude Rains voice.
opiejeanne
We haven’t gotten any kids for several years. The houses are pretty spread out, most are on at least an acre, so it’s a long walk to go house to house. I think most kids are attending “trunk or treat” parties at their churches and schools.
eclare
@sab: Perfect!
opiejeanne
@sab: I really miss living in a neighborhood where lots of kids came trick or treating.
eclare
@opiejeanne: I live in a neighborhood where kids do come by (one of my neighbors had lights up in September), but as a single female I don’t feel comfortable opening my door to strangers.
When I had a dog I would. Best costume I saw was a little girl as Medusa. She had plastic snakes in her hair.
VOR
The number of kids was way down this year despite good weather. I’d say less than half last year. Of note, the older kids like teenagers were missing. I do wonder if the Fox News fentanyl panic kept numbers down.
sab
@eclare: Wow! I will suggest that for my grand-daughter. She wanted to go as a devil this year but she got sick and was stuck at home.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Steeplejack:
Nobody pushing that BS has ever answered why drug dealers would willingly give out expensive drugs for free. Especially to kids who have no disposable income of their own
sab
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Cops do work hard to scare themselves over nothing. You would think reality would be scary enough, but no… they have to exaggerate. Fentanyl is an actual anasthetic. If it was that toxic you would expect anasthesiologists to be dropping like flies, but they don’t.
Phylllis
@VOR: We noticed that we didn’t get the usual ‘second wave’ of older kids once it got good and dark. Likely due to it being a Monday and those kids having sports practice and other afterschool commitments.
Splitting Image
My concession to Halloween was to buy myself a bag of jelly babies last week. They didn’t have them in the stores around here when I was a kid, so I was never quite clear about what exactly the Doctor was eating.
I can get ahold of them now, though, so they have become one of my preferred ways to cheat on my diet.
sab
@Splitting Image: Licorice jelly beans for me.
sab
@Phylllis: My city has beggars’ night on the last Saturday in October, so we always get the older kids.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
Last night’s Halloween turnout was YUGE in my locale.
Not a whiff of economic anxiety.
Nelle
We have Begger’s Night on October 30. We had about as many middle schoolers as little ones. It is tradition for them to have to tell a joke. So many groaners. The weather was perfect, the kids sweet, and a good time had by all. Why didn’t the skeleton cross the road? He had no guts.
bjacques
In one candy bar I found small copper ingots of low quality.
Expletive Deleted
First Halloween at our new house and I was pleased with how many trick-or-treaters we got, it’s pretty suburban here but also the UK so I wasn’t sure. Almost all were in scary costumes, too – which made me happy.
I regret not dressing up myself, was tired from weekend festivities, but next year I’ll definitely dress the part.
lowtechcyclist
Last night was the first night in several years (going back well before Covid) that we’d given out candy. 25 years ago, our street was swarmed with little kids on Halloween, but those kids are long grown up, and most of the parents are still here. But we did get some families with kids moving into our end of the neighborhood in the past year, so we turned the porch light on and had candy ready.
Had maybe eight or nine kids come by. We might have gotten more, but a light rain started around 7pm or so, and there we no more feet on the front steps or knocks at the door after that.
Frankensteinbeck
Someone went and checked: The poisoned Halloween candy thing? It has never happened. Ever. There is not one report of anyone ever getting dangerously rigged candy, going back as far as we have newspapers. It isn’t even incredibly rare, it’s 100% a hoax scare.
@sab:
Anesthetics are extremely dangerous. Anesthesiologists exist and get paid big bucks because of how very, very easy it is to kill someone with an overdose.
@bjacques:
Ea-Nasir was here and he owes me money.
Central Planning
We only had two middle-school aged kids stop by. In unison they shouted “Trick or treat!” with huge grins on their faces, knowing they would get something. I only wish I said “Trick!” first.
I held out the bowl of candy and one of them asked “One or two?” Without thinking I said “Two.” As they walked away realized I should have said “Five, because you were polite and asked”.
Maybe I’ll remember that for next year.
different-church-lady
Wish I could laugh about any of this, but I think I’ve gone past my tolerance limit on insane malicious assholes with big audiences. (And quite a number of other things too.)
Dorothy A. Winsor
@sab: Our dog Roxie loved Halloween too. When I opened the door, she’d run out on the porch and stick her head in the kids’ bags. She never took anything. She just wanted to look.
different-church-lady
@Steeplejack: Well just make some up then. It’s all the rage.
Tenar Arha
I bought waaay too much candy, But the one batch of 11/12 year old boys with their older minder did come back for more after 8:30, so I have much less left this year thank goodness.
I keep on forgetting it’s really not as big a thing for the young teenagers to go out which means I need much less candy. Only had one wave, basically of the young trick or treaters out with their parents around the neighborhood. The wave is when it’s not worth sitting down in the kitchen bc you have to walk from the back of the house to the front while the kids pile up at the door. It was warm, so I sat out in my budget Michael Jackson costume (all black clothes, with an old felt fedora of my father’s & the remaining left sparkly glove liner of my mother’s) with the Thriller album playing. I enjoyed it. Now I get to go back to be less social & just nodding at the neighbors.
Geo Wilcox
We’ve been here for 25 years and have never had anyone come to our house for trick or treat. Of course we live on 22 acres in the middle of bum fuck SE IN so that may be why. All the farm kids, including my daughter, went into town and the small burbs for trick or treating.
I still remember trick or treating in La Grange IL in the early 60’s. Damn that was so much fun.
gene108
My mom likes getting trick-or-treaters. She likes seeing the kids in their costumes.
Since she retired and moved to the same town as me, she doesn’t get them anymore. Talking to her yesterday evening, she sounded sad about this.
Seems parents are taking kids to people they know, I guess.
I used to buy candy. First couple of years, I got some trick-or-treaters, but the number decreased. Now I just decide to work late and avoid having to worry about it.
Rusty
@Expletive Deleted: We lived in the UK from 2005 to 2009 for my job. The first Halloween there was very little Halloween celebration, there was an occasional house that put something out. The next year costumes showed up at Tescos, by the 4th year almost half the houses in the area of the village we lived in had their lights on and something out or answered their door. In typical British fashion, the village had given out flyers that you could put out to say you were participating, you only supposed to go to homes that had the flyer on the door. It was fun to watch an American cultural export arrive in a different country. There was a definite generational difference, my older colleagues couldn’t understand it, the younger with kids were enthusiastic participants. Thank you for bringing back some good memories.
EarthWindFire
Our neighborhood is serious about Halloween. Lots of creative decorations. Since we’re a townhouse development, we get kids from the single family home areas who have figured out more houses in less space equals more candy in less time. When it isn’t raining, adults distribute candy from our yards while enjoying each other’s company and, if inclined, an adult beverage. This year it rained but we had a good crowd of kids until it started pouring around 8.
We didn’t get to do our usual walk around and see the neighborhood decorations tradition though. One house is legendary for waiting until the last minute, getting their supplies on sale, and going all out. They built a carriage for Nosferatu one year. Sorry I missed their creation but overall, a good Halloween.
Matt McIrvin
There’s a Washington Post article pointing out that Brazil got election results instantly because they have all-electronic voting, and since having a long delay means Republicans have more time to drum up FUD about supposedly rigged elections, maybe we should do that for the sake of the stability of our democracy.
In other words, because they ginned up bogus fears about mail ballots, we need to adopt the voting method they can most easily manipulate to reduce access (whoops, we only have the budget for one voting machine for all 100,000 of you; we all have to tighten our belts, you know).
It seems to me like the problem with capitulating to bullshit is they can always make up more bullshit. There were already the assertions that Democrats rigged Dominion Voting’s machines.
Maybe they can figure out some way to assert that elections are only fair if Democrats vote blindfolded.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Brazil, I believe, also doesn’t allow states to administer elections.
ByRookorbyCrook
We received a good amount of Trick or Treaters last night, despite the rain. Had maybe a half dozen after 7:30 so early evening too.
The Candy myth has an origin. It was 1974 in Texas and it wasn’t a stranger giving the candy but the father of the child, Ronald Clark O’Bryan.
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin: Was that an article or an op-ed piece?
kalakal
Our neighbourhood always get a lot of Trick or Treaters, a little down this year. As it’s Florida it’s warm so everybody sits out on their drives to hand out candy. I like it, when it died down we went and chatted with the neighbours till the last stragglers left
Jinchi
@EarthWindFire: One of the my son’s friends has run a “haunted house” in his backyard for the last 4 years, with 6 other kids and his grandparents being performers. Local trick-or-treaters cycle through with their parents on their way down the block.
Scout211
Today is Día de Los Muertos and time to remember those we have lost.
My SIL is from Mexico and my daughter is a bilingual teacher so they both participate every year and teach their children the tradition. It’s really a beautiful day for honoring lost loved ones.
Link
JML
I only got one batch this year. Oh well. Nice kids, good costumes, and one of them even asked about the sign on my door (it’s in Elvish). They walked away telling each other “we got some really good candy here!”
Ken
The Lovecraft video reminds me of “Lovecraft’s Brief Tenure as a Whitman’s Sampler Copywriter“.
Wanderer
The neighborhood was buzzing last night. We had a lot of children but I still have much left over. I had some full size double packs of peanut butter cups mixed in and was so impressed when more than one child said that was enough to take and didn’t want to take other candies despite my encouragement to do so (did I mention I have a lot left?). The kids most certainly are alright..
the antibob
@Frankensteinbeck: Perhaps technically true, if you’re talking about candy handed out to random trick or treaters. But I was living in Houston when this happened in the eighties:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Clark_O%27Bryan
SFAW
@Ken:
Holy shit, that’s hilarious.
SFAW
@Wanderer:
We often have that problem. I find making them into soup and/or croquettes makes the children leftovers less boring.
Paul in KY
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Freaky hippies steal the rainbow fentanyl from hardworking drug dealers and then once they’ve gotten as high as the moon just give em out to kiddies to help them ‘expand their minds’, dontchaknow.
MobiusKlein
Got at least 100 kids last night at our place.
Gave out full sized bars till we ran out, and used mini sized. Gave out nearly 60 cups of hot spiced cider, with optional spirits for adults.
That was a hoot, and talk of the block. About 4x more visitors vs 2021
WaterGirl
I hope Charlie Kirk gets a nice visit from the FBI.
Paul in KY
@MobiusKlein: You are the kind of person I would have gone to twice back in my youth. Always carried 2 costumes for such an occasion.
libarbarian
I had an idea to see how dumb & gullible these jackasses are and start a rumor that
and just see if they are dumb enough to bite.
Paul in KY
@libarbarian: You would, sad to say, get some bites.
StringOnAStick
Our neighbors behind us and their nextdoor neighbors had a fire pit feed and candy distribution party on their front yard; we were invited so we donned our costumes, took our bowl of candy with us and went, bringing thermos’s of hot cocoa to contribute. We had a great time with various other neighbors arriving as well, and made sure every kid who stopped by took candy from each household bowl. I absolutely love our neighbors and neighborhood, we lucked out enormously when we bought this house based on a FaceTime call.
It started snowing at midnight and that continues, 3″ of heavy wet so far so I have been taking my bamboo pole and knocking snow off trees and shrubs because most things still have all their leaves. Early storm, and the ski area forecast 20 miles to the west is for 83″ over the next 10 days.
Wanderer
@SFAW: You gave me a wonderful chuckle. Thanks for that. I remain undecided as to what to do with them😉
CliosFanBoy
I grew up in Ohio so I was used to Trick or Treating on “Beggars Night.” When I moved to Virginia and asked when “Beggers Night” was no one knew what I was talking about. Neither did my New Hampshire-native wife. They all just went out Trick or Treating on the 31st, even if it were a school night.