Every year.

Every damned year the commercial juggernaut winds it’s spring a little tighter and steps up the date, that invisible line that denotes the winter holidays, most notable amongst them being Christmas.  For criminy’s sake, we’ve barely broken Fall’s hymen… give us a chance to break her in a bit before we kick her to the curb to let Winter’s icy feet warm beneath our sheets.

There’s no disguising the fact that I am a Halloween fan.  I love the Fall season and Halloween is the greatest way to celebrate it — give the devil his due, so to speak.  Halloween is a voluntary holiday, widely recognized but not federally mandated.  There are no bank closures; no government employees get the day off (which is a bit of a shocker there).  Everyone is allowed to take or leave it at his or her own discretion.

Halloween is a time of year when folks can let their guard down and have some fun, to let their inner eight-year-old bubble to the surface and help them take life a little less seriously for a while.  It lets people be silly without a license, and that’s a dandy thing to be every so often.

Christmas is a mandatory holiday.  Regardless of your level of recognition and celebration, it still seeps into your life.  Businesses, banks and governments shut down.  The stores transform into shark infested waters that you dive into with an albacore tuna strapped to your back — cut, bleeding and chumming the waters.  It becomes a sales fiesta and common decency is a piñata that gets beat to hell with a frenzied stick.

The biggest kernel stuck in my craw is this: it seems that no sooner do the stores put out Halloween decorations and other accoutrements, then they are shoving it down and back to make room for Christmas crap.  Truly, it’s ridiculous.  You start to see Halloween stuff around September 1st, with the hardcore push starting around the end of September — 2 months worth of exposure, and that’s being generous.  With Christmas, product is on the shelves in mid September with the first rush hitting November 1st, and the really big push happening after November 26th.  All told 3½ to 4 months, and it starts earlier every single year.

I don’t want to see a happy, jolly little elf sitting on a shelf (and getting top billing, no less) next to the pumpkin that bleeds from the eyes when you plug it in.  It’s just wrong.  Unless of course you make the elf bleed instead.  From the ass.  Santa’s little elf-whore that got gang-banged by the other elves when they "circled the wagons" in the North Pole elf dormitory.  Plug him and watch the red fountain flow… see the animatronic rictus of pain writhe across his face.

Ahem.

Don’t even go looking for Thanksgiving merchandise.  While I don’t necessarily buy up all the turkey and Pilgrim crap I can find, nor do I really decorate for that portion of the season, I do think that all holidays should be allowed fair representation in the stores for those that do.

Don’t get me wrong.  I enjoy Christmas, but obviously not for the "birth of Christ" aspect of it.  At the very least, it should be a reminder to spend time with your family and friends.  After all, the government has designated it a federal holiday so you should have a good chance of having some time off to do so.  What it should not be — and I know this is a trite and well-traveled path — is an excuse to be a decent person for a few days when otherwise you are an outrageous, unmitigated asshole.  If you’re going to be decent human being, it should be 365/24/7, or at least as close as possible.  It’s a life-choice, not a seasonal change.

The commercialism of the Christmas holiday is not what bothers me so much as the steamroller effect.  Hell, I embrace being able to buy what I like to celebrate how I like.  If Halloween had no commercial element, I wouldn’t be able to get all the groovy decorations and effects that I love so much… and let’s give a great big hand to Don Post and the other people who have been releasing more and more gobs of realistic horror and gothic designs to the Halloween market each year (I have a tendency to steer clear of the "cute" decorations).  I freely admit that I’m a consumer whore.  I live in a capitalist nation and I embrace that.

But…

Don’t shove things down my throat.  Don’t overshadow one (or more) perfectly enjoyable holiday in favor or another, especially if the holiday taking precedence offers a bouquet of peace in one outstretched hand and a Louisville Slugger of animosity in the other hand hidden behind it’s back.  Retract the creeping commercial glacier dates a bit and let Halloween catch its breath.  Don’t assault me with black and orange on one side, and red, green and white one the other.  Keep Christ in Christmas and out of my candy bowl.  Take a lesson from Jack Skellington.

Good night kiddies, and unpleasant dreams.

Suddenly I feel very old… and very happy at the same time.

I would like you to kindly recall my challenge in the comments of THIS post to anyone with children of the specified age to garb their rugrat in one of several very special costumes that I found enormously funny and drag them along to the Halloween party.

Apparently, not everyone finds these costumes as amusing as I do.  Some people have ISSUES they really need to work out.  I suppose that they fear that dressing their kids up like a hooker from the roaring 20’s or a pimp that is more reminiscent of TV’s Huggy-Bear than some coked-up, assault happy malcontent will transform their pre-pubescent white suburbanite knee-biter into a formidable criminal resident of the Vice Squad’s holding tank who scrapes the last bit of crack resin out of her pipe when she’s been skipped on by a John and has to fork over her folding money or else taste the blunt end of a cue-stick, or worse, the wrong end of straight razor by her "manager", or even into the pimp himself who regularly sends his fleet of disease ridden man pleasers out onto the streets to dole out their fair share of affordable love and venereal nastiness that would make Osama Bin Laden envious of the efficient execution of germ warfare.

*inhale*
*pant*
*gasp*
*cough*

I mean, c’mon.  It’s fucking Halloween.  The concept is to dress in a costume that skirts, or even better, escapes reality.  A kid in a pimp or ho’ costume will no sooner become one, as a kid in a Frankenstein costume will sprout spark-plugs from his neck, an industrial zipper on his forehead and sashay around the countryside in size 27 shoes wreaking havoc, killing villagers, and escaping torches and pitchforks.  Ok, so we can’t rule that particular scenario out, but I mean it’s still such an infinitesimally small chance.

Lighten up, people.  Forcibly remove the sticks from your collective asses and enjoy a national public holiday that allows you to dress up in a silly costume and show it off to your friends and neighbors without fear of having them shoot you in the face with a 12 gauge as soon as you show up on their doorstep.  It’s planned, nonsensical fun.  Look at yourselves and have a belly laugh at how ridiculous you sound.  C’mon, you see it… you HAVE to see it.  It’s as plain as the big rubber nose on your big rubber face.

Mensa and I were talking about Guy Ritchie this morning, specifically two of his movies: Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch.  These are both pretty good movies — good storylines, a twisted plot, entertaining characters and good character relationships — bit what makes them so good is that they are infinitely quotable.  Hell, we’ve been using the "It’s a deal, it’s a steal, it’s the Sale of the fucking Century!  In fact, fuck it Nick, I think I’ll keep it!" quote for years now.  Allow me to pepper you with a few of my favorites… some of them are lengthy, but worth it for the context.  Snatch is my favorite of the two, but they are both excellent movies in their own right.

Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels:

Eddie: They’re armed.

Soap: Armed, armed with what?

Eddie: Err, bad breath, colorful language, feather duster… what do you think they’re gonna be armed with?  Guns, you tit!

————————–
Rory Breaker: If you hold back anything, I’ll kill ya.  If you bend the truth or I think your bending the truth, I’ll kill ya.  If you forget anything I’ll kill ya.  In fact, you’re gonna have to work very hard to stay alive, Nick.  Now do you understand everything I’ve said?  Because if you don’t, I’ll kill ya.

————————–
Gary: Shotguns?  What, like guns that fire shot?

Barry the Baptist: Oh, you must be the brains of the operation.  Yes, guns that fire shot.

————————–
Nick the Greek: What else does it come with?

Tom: It comes with a gold-plated Rolls Royce, as long as you pay for it.

Nick the Greek: Dunno. Seems expensive.

Tom: Seems?  Well, this seems to be a complete waste of my time.  That, my friend is 900 nicker in any store you’re lucky enough to find one in.  And you’re haggling over 200 pound?  What school of finance did you come from Nick?  It’s a deal, it’s a steal, it’s the Sale of the fucking Century!  In fact, fuck it Nick, I think I’ll keep it!

Nick the Greek: Alright alright, keep your Alans on!

[peels off notes from his wad]

Nick the Greek: Here’s a ton.

Tom & Eddie: Jesus Christ!

Eddie: You could choke a dozen donkeys on that!  And you’re haggling over one hundred pound?  What’re you doing when you’re not buying stereos Nick?  Finance revolutions?

Nick the Greek: 100 pound is still 100 pound.

Tom: Not when the price is 200 pound it ain’t!  And certainly not when you’ve got Liberia’s deficit in your skyrocket.  Tighter than a duck’s butt you are.  Now, lemmie feel the fibre of your fabric.

Snatch:

Brick Top: You’re always gonna have problems lifting a body in one piece.  Apparently, the best thing to do is cut up the corpse into six pieces and pile it all together.

Sol: Would someone mind telling me, who are you?

Brick Top: And when you got your six pieces, you gotta get rid of them.  Cause it’s no good leaving it in the deep freezer for your mum to discover, now is it?  Then I hear the best thing to do is feed them to pigs.  You gotta starve the pigs for a few days, then the site of a chopped-up body would look like curry to a pisshead.  You gotta shave the heads of your victims and pull the teeth out for the sake of the piggies digestion.  You could do this afterwards, of course, but you don’t want to go sifting through pigshit, now do you?  They will go through bone like butter.  You need at least 16 pigs to finish the job in one sitting, so be wary of any man who keeps a pig farm.  They will go through a body that weighs 200 pounds in about eight minutes.  That means that a single pig can consume two pounds of uncooked flesh every minute.  Hence the expression ‘as greedy as a pig’.

Vincent: Well, thank you for that.  That’s a great weight off me mind.  Now, I mean, if you wouldn’t mind telling me who the fuck you are, apart from someone who feeds people to pigs, of course.

Brick Top: Do you know what ‘nemesis‘ means?  A righteous infliction of retribution manifested by an appropriate agent.  Personified, in this case, by a horrible cunt: Me.

————————–
Turkish: Fuck me, hold tight.  What’s that?

Tommy: It’s me belt, Turkish.

Turkish: No, Tommy, there’s a gun in your trousers.  What is a gun doing in your trousers?

Tommy: It’s for protection.

Turkish: Protection from what, ‘Zee Germans’?

————————–
Bullet Tooth Tony: So, you’re obviously the big dick, and that on either side of you, are your balls.  There are two types of balls: There are big brave balls, and there are little mincey faggot balls.

Vincent: These are your last words so make them a prayer.

Bullet Tooth Tony: Dicks have drive and clarity of vision, but they’re not clever.  They smell pussy and they want a piece of the action. And you thought you smelled some good old pussy and have brought your two little mincey faggot balls along for a good old time.  But you’ve got your parties muddled up.  There’s no pussy here, just a dose that’ll make you wish you were born a woman.  Like a prick, you’re having second thoughts.  You’re shrinking, and your two little balls are shrinking with you.  The fact that you’ve got ‘REPLICA’ written on the side of your gun, and the fact that I’ve got ‘Desert Eagle .50’ written on the side of mine, should precipitate your balls into shrinking, along with your presence.

Stupidity, thy name is Kaiju Big Battel.  Don’t get me wrong, I love a good dose of stupidity and this is exactly the kind of Supreme Idiocy I can get behind.

Check out the VIDEO section for a peek at what I’m talking about.  The best way to describe Kaiju Big Battel is like this: it’s the illegitimate love child of GWAR, WWF, backyard wrestling and Sunday-morning monster movies (ala Godzilla and UltraMan).

This train wreck is the brainchild of a coupla’ twisted art students from Boston back in 1994.  It has evolved into a slightly migrational show that has performed on both coasts, with a core of eight folks that expands to thirty come show time.  You can tell that these guys are having a hell of a lot of fun putting on this show.

I say we pepper these folks with email until they crumble under the pressure of our whining and come down here and stage an event.  I’d be there in a heartbeat.

This warms the cockles of my Halloween-loving heart… even the sub-cockle area.

Did you feel it?  That little cold front that blew through this past weekend that blissfully knocked us out of the path of not one, but two nasty storms?  Did you notice that it blew in on Friday the 13th?  Did you feel the extra sensation that piggybacked with it?

I sure as hell did.  But then again, I’m hypersensitive to it.

That cool weather was the calling card for my ultimate favorite time of year — the supreme holiday season to me.  It was a steel-toed-and-cleated boot to the head that shifted my perspective 45 degrees.  It was a hand engraved reminder that Halloween is just around the corner and that I should get cracking on preparations for the big party and the opportunity to scare a whole new neighborhood of people.

The weather may have warmed back up, but it is not enough to banish the demon stirred up inside.  My clock-spring is wound and I’m ready to go.  The weather inside my head will remain comfortably fall-like.

It’s time to create heaven and hell.  I suggest you all get started too.

I am in one supremely fucked up mood today.  Can’t explain it, let’s just call it a bad batch of poorly mixed brain chemistry.  I’m agitated, mildly hostile and a little on the sad side — and on that note, I will leave you with two very moving quotes (for me) from the two movies I watched today.  They nearly threw themselves off of the shelf at me so that I might watch them.

The first one is from Conan The Barbarian.  Conan stands in an ancient burial place, about to do battle with an outrageous number of foes.  He offers a short prayer:

"Crom, I have never prayed to you before — I have no tongue for it.  No one, not even you, will remember if we were good men or bad, why we fought, and why we died.  All that matters is that today, two stood against many.  Valor pleases you, so grant me this one request.  Grant me revenge!  And if you do not listen, to HELL with you!"

The second is from Hair.  Burger has swapped places at the Army base with Claude so that Claude might go and spend time with the Sheila before he has to go off to war.  While Burger is still on the base, the call to move out has been given and Burger, a pacifist and un-trained civilian is hustled in his guise as Claude onto a troop transport.  While marching to their fate, the soldiers in formation begin to sing about their fear and disquiet about what faces them.  The song is called The Flesh Failures:

We starve, look at one another short of breath
Walking proudly in our winter coats
Wearing smells from laboratories
Facing a dying nation of moving paper fantasy
Listening for the new-told lies
With supreme visions of lonely tunes

Somewhere, inside something, there is a rush of greatness
Who knows what stands in front of our lives
I fashion my future on films in space
Silence tells me secretly everything, everything

Eyes look your last
Arms take your last embrace
And lips oh you the doors of breath
Seal with a righteous kiss
The rest is silence

It’s all the rage.  Everybody’s doing it.  C’mon, you know you wanna’.  It’s not habit forming. 

It’s not gonna’ hurt.  Ok, it only hurts a little the first few times.  It gets better the more you do it.  You’re gonna’ want to do it all the time.

*sigh*

Those two innuendo-riffic paragraphs apply to the very same thing.  Exercise.  And on that note, here we are again after a long while.

The last time we saw our hero, he was attending Kuk Sool Won classes in an attempt to lose some weight, regain some of his old dexterity and have some fun learning a new ass-whoop skill.  Then he went and bought a house.  The house sat in the passenger seat, grabbed hold of that Kuk Sool Won emergency brake and yanked with all it’s might.  It took everything our brave hero had to keep from going through the windshield as the exercise vehicle skidded and shuddered to a noisy halt with the tires smoking and going molten.

So, at least for the near foreseeable future Kuk Sool Won is off the menu as it costs more than I have to dedicate to it these days — both in terms of money and time.  With travel figured in, every Kuk Sool Won session would gobble upwards of three hours of my day, several days a week.  I know, it’s oh so easy to rationalize and justify not attending an exercise program.  I feel like such a cop-out.  One day I’d like to get back to the classes as I was having a pretty good time while I was there.  Don’t ask when, I dunno.

So, now you’ve been brought up to the present day.

What with the seeming whirlwind movement by some of you towards the "get healthier" and "move around more" camps, I’m going to give in to the modern day incarnation of peer pressure.  I’m going to be weak and crumble under the weight of the need to become stronger.  And lighter.

But I’m going to do it on my terms.  I’m going to get violent.

When I was a kid, I used to box.  I’d wrap my hands, don the gloves and knock the ever-loving shit out of another human being (who incidentally was trying to do the same to me).  I had formal training, learned all the moves, the form and how to jump rope.  It was a good time and it was hard work.  It’s a lot more than just swinging your fists till you connect with something solid.  Ok, it IS that right up to the point where you get knocked loopy and decide to learn how to duck & weave and how to plant a glove squarely and accurately in the face of someone who is doing a lot of the same calculated wiggling you’re up to.  That’s the part that takes a lot of work.

Here we are many years later.  I know myself well enough to know that a headlong rush into an ironclad and rigorous exercise regimen will have a shorter life span than a fart in a wind tunnel.  I need something that I can do at my own pace and doesn’t come with a laundry list of instructions, that I will enjoy, that costs relatively little, that doesn’t rely on another human being, that can be done in any weather, and doesn’t require an extended road-trip to get to.  This is the building block that can and will — if successful — lead to further vigorous movement that will get and keep me in shape that hopefully can be described as something better than "doughy".  What can I say… I’m inherently lazy.

After a metric ass-ton of research, pricing, driving around and looking at equipment (and subsequently being shocked at how relatively inexpensive the gear is) I have bought an 80lb boxing "heavy bag".  I’m going back to my roots.  Punching the heavy bag is the portion of boxing training that offers the most thorough all-body workout and development of strength.  It does not require me to buy a roomful of fancy equipment and weights and it’s moderately cheap and simple.  Eventually I will mooch off of "Club Mensa" over at GonzO and ShortBus’ place for weight training, but that is a plan for later.  The accessories include wraps for your hands, a decent pair of heavy bag gloves and a jump rope for warming up and getting some aerobic exercise (boxing being anaerobic in nature).

So now I’m geared up.  The bag has been hung and a few test pokes have been made at it.  Pretty soon I’ll be beating the crap out of it, but first I need to reacquaint myself with the basic forms and techniques.  I still mostly remember them, but it’s gonna take a few sessions of practice to get back into good habits.  Good habits are necessary if you don’t want to fuck up your wrists.  Good equipment is necessary if you don’t want to walk away with broken fingers.  Fun!

I’m also looking forward to using this as a stress reliever.  Jebus knows I’ve demolished enough shit over the years when I’ve been pissed off.  Now I have a device created for the express purpose of absorbing physical abuse.  I just need to continually remind myself not to use knives on it.

*sigh*

I swear, the cake fumes must be getting to me.

Here I sit on the eve of the big anniversary/birthday BBQ fiesta.  I’m taking a break to shovel some food into my mouth.  Not wanting to put on the TV for fear of getting hooked into a program, I sit and surf for a minute of two.

I run across THIS LINK.

I laughed myself silly for a solid five minutes — big hearty guffaws complete with snorts, while bordering on drooling on myself.  Really I have no excuse, it’s probably not all that funny.  The picture of the completed hot dog just cracks me up beyond all belief.

I WILL have one!

You are all blatant alcoholics — you can’t lie to me.

HERE’S your chance to at least practice the fine art of keeping yourself upright while being fucked up and attempting to walk.