Saturday, October 31, 2009

I Sired A Werewolf

All Hallows' Eve PSA: Hey, kids. This Halloween, don't forget to shove sugar into your face until you turn into a monster.
And if you get a mail-order werewolf costume and the shirt attached to it feels like a polyester nightmare, rip out the furry chestal area and then sew it into a nice, soft thrift store shirt that you got for 50 cents and tore up. Or have your mom do this while your dad kind of freaks over the mask, which is genuinely creepy and scares him every time you leap out to surprise him. Careful, he might poop his pants.

Better you should scare your fellow classmates, many of whom showed up in the Scream outfit that apparently was massed out at Target. Do not breathe of the Scream mask, which smells like a PVC meltdown amid cultural decline.

Try to uphold the old traditions, such as trick-or-treating with Isabelle, the girlfriend you've had since pre-school, who dreamily combines her first name with your last name, like something out of a beach bunny movie from the mid-20th century. She's half angel and half devil, and that can be a pretty good combination.

Be a good werewolf. Show up at your girlfriend's house with flowers.

And have a very happy Halloween.

4 comments:

Bryn said...

Wow, he is really scary! Except in the last pic, where I can see his eyes. Then he's just cute :)

scotland said...

What if: I woke up this morning, hopped out of bed, and before opening my eyes realized the floor was no longer there. Something like that shows the comfort we take from at least a small amount of predictability in our lives.
However when it comes down to playing more serious games,games like hunters vs the hunted, that same assurance of constancy when it is a pattern in our own behavior is often the one weakness that is exploited to our downfall.
Take a walk into our favorite "Always Low Prices" store by 10:00 PM. Oct 31st; and you'll see the transformation from Halloween to Christmas already underway. The thought that the last remnants of our spiritual culture,our festivals, now belong more to retailers who provide the necessary votives for the rituals show a desperate need for us to change in order to survive as a valid culture in this regard.
I prescribe creating your own magic and practice it in such a way that it keeps you one leap ahead of those who would not only use you for the weakness of your sincerity and shared commonality but would enslave you to empty ritual.

Or herald and sing the age's song.

"Do not Disturb I'm being all Consuming. "

Yes and that's something to be afraid of...

Jasph said...

I hear your discomfiture with consumer culture, Scotland. But I like a good, scary werewolf costume.

And believe me, the only "empty" ritual for Jonah here is vacating our own relatively childless neighborhood for the fairer climes of Isabelle's Halloween-obsessed subdivision, where people deck out their houses with unbelievably imaginative tableaux, including staged tragic accidents, fog machines, holograms, talking skeletons, crypts, enormous mechanical monsters.... fantastic stuff. We've done this for five straight autumns now, and it's better every year.

scotland said...

I agree with you...Abraham and I have put our hearts into halloween adventures every year since he was a "free" year old. He's 12 now and every year we've (meaning me) made a home grown costume. We even weigh him with his bag of goods when we return home to see what his take amounts to. Last years haul was a record 8.5 pounds not counting the rubber we've worn off the bottoms of our shoes.
We often reflect about the particulars of each halloween as the day approaches,recollect the various costumes, and whowe went with and such.
This year he wasn't sure if he wanted to go...as he was feeling a little silly about dressing up in a costume. In fact that afternoon he decided he thought he'd pass that year. Well, I told him we'd go out for dinner in town anyway and get some candy at the store for goodies. After eating Chinese Tofu we get to...(Shame) Walmart, where seeing the Halloween stuff around the store, he says he'd like to go to a few houses after all.
He thought for a second then decided a masqueraders mask and a funny hat he had along would be sufficiently "un" embarrassing, so we hit the trick or treat trail once again.
With my previous comment I'm not suggesting giving up festivals or ritual I'm saying that we need to give them more heart and energy and freedom to be creative with them on a personal level. Hell, have and share a little Christmas everyday and I guarantee it will become habit forming. The laughter of God must be cultivated of that I'm convinced and it is not found along a drudges pathway. But it is "There, there, floating on the hills of space the laughter of God." You're familiar with my friend Samuel Lewis... aka Sufi Sam... he can be quoted as saying " We celebrate the feasts of all and the fasts of none." In the immortal words of Wavy Gravy, "Toward the Fun".