BS: Halloween

Subject: BS: Halloween
From: Donuel
Date: 31 Oct 18 - 08:56 AM

I am displaying a huge pumpkin that says The Great Trumkin

A stand up cardboard Trump with a removed US flag on his shoulder as he raises a gold flag with a T on it. (the T has been semi swasticised.)

A painting that says MONSTERS ARE REAL ! and a dozen small print sayings that I learned here. ( the exclamation point is a tiny Trump.)


The kids will not get candy but instead are promised a tax cut or a coal mine job. ;^/

Subject: RE: BS: Halloween
From: Donuel
Date: 31 Oct 18 - 04:06 PM

I have already had people at the door to congratulate or high five me on the decorations but not for candy.

I bet you thought I was kidding.

Well I was kidding about no candy.

Subject: RE: BS: Halloween
From: Rapparee
Date: 31 Oct 18 - 07:48 PM

I'm hiding the basement and Pat is in her office upstairs. After too many college-age people we gave up "doing" Halloween.

Fly the flag on Election Day!

Subject: RE: BS: Halloween
From: Donuel
Date: 01 Nov 18 - 03:14 PM

I made a gold Trump flag that will replaced by the American flag.

Subject: RE: BS: Halloween
From: Thompson
Date: 02 Nov 18 - 06:34 PM

I hear voting's started in Georgia and a couple of other places. Any word on trends?

Subject: RE: BS: Halloween
From: keberoxu
Date: 02 Nov 18 - 09:44 PM

Erm,
I don't think early voting ballots get opened in advance ...

Subject: RE: BS: Halloween
From: Acorn4
Date: 03 Nov 18 - 04:05 AM

From a UK perspective:-

"Bring Back Guy Fawkes!"

Subject: RE: BS: Halloween
From: keberoxu
Date: 05 Nov 18 - 05:42 PM

However, as regards early voting.

Just had the car radio tuned to NPR radio network.
The news anchor made the statement
that as of this date/time, this election year,
with the polls yet to open for the official Election Day voting,

thirty-five million people have already voted [early].

Now,as I understand it, all those voters -- as I did, this year --
put their completed ballot into an envelope, which they sealed themselves,
and then signed and wrote out their names on the envelope.

I presume that these sealed ballots remained sealed before Election Day.

Subject: RE: BS: Halloween
From: Donuel
Date: 05 Nov 18 - 08:31 PM

Acorn4...   V

Subject: RE: BS: Halloween
From: Donuel
Date: 05 Nov 18 - 09:57 PM

Depending upon the State, early votes are counted early and can be ready to be included on voting day with a remainder of votes coming in a day or so later. Absentee ballots are typically the last to be counted.

Votes in California are scanned then put on a micro chip and transported by vacuum tube to the tabulation room.


{where tiny elves count the votes by abacus} ;^?

Subject: RE: BS: Halloween
From: leeneia
Date: 08 Nov 18 - 01:33 AM

Our Halloween was a little chilly, so parents kept the toddlers and babies at home. Nonetheless, we had 105 trick-or-treaters, all of them cute and polite.

If anybody knows a good recipe for leftover Tootsie Rolls, please post it.

Subject: RE: BS: Halloween
From: Donuel
Date: 08 Nov 18 - 05:36 AM

Donate them to a barber shop

What was scary and unpolite; A Tired Trump in Montana rambled for 90 minutes telling people to sit down and walking away from the podium at what was billed as a press conference. The pathological display compounded by fatigue was as bad as it gets, we hope. Only a small amount of what he uttered made any sense whatsoever. :^\

Subject: RE: BS: Halloween
From: keberoxu
Date: 31 Oct 19 - 11:44 AM

Halloween, in my neck of the woods,
is being challenged by rainy, windy weather.

Some communities have postponed the trick-or-treat
children-and-parents
festivities,
until the weather improves.

Subject: RE: BS: Halloween
From: Donuel
Date: 31 Oct 19 - 12:58 PM

This year I made a 20 sq ft painting ; NATS WIN !

On the corner I display one headless* skeleton with a sin that says

Happy CHEAPO
bare bones
HALOWEEN

*The head is up its butt

Subject: RE: BS: Halloween
From: Donuel
Date: 31 Oct 19 - 01:04 PM

My front door is labeled Edgar Allen Poe

of course you know what question I ask when I open the door

Subject: RE: BS: Halloween
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 31 Oct 19 - 01:18 PM

We found out some neighbours refer to our home as the "Scruffy House",
because of the state of repair...

With any luck our house looks so dilapidated, local children might fear it as the "Scary house"..
and will, as in recent years, continue stay away, not bothering to knock on the front door, ....

WE will sit in near dark and silence until approx 10'o'clock when they should all be off the streets back home..

If I could ever be bothered, I'd aspire to employ theatrical make up, lighting, sound, and fog effects
to literally scare the shit out of any children who risk approaching our front door...

Subject: RE: BS: Halloween
From: keberoxu
Date: 31 Oct 19 - 04:27 PM

Have a care, PFR.

If you ever could be bothered to do all of that,
you would have an attraction that
your community would insist on you
repeating year upon year ...

Subject: RE: BS: Halloween
From: DMcG
Date: 31 Oct 19 - 06:10 PM

I celebrated Halloween by going to see Northwrn Ballet's production of Dracula, which was streamed live to cinemas throughout the UK and perhaps abroad.

Excellent production - Northern Ballet used be called Northern Ballet Theatre because they took the theatrical side as seriously as the ballet. Of late, they have not, but this production was a spectacular return to that balance. if you get a chance to see it, it comes highly recommended.

Subject: RE: BS: Halloween
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 31 Oct 19 - 06:24 PM

Bollocks to Halloween. It's a nakedly capitalist exploitation of what should be something very small. Ask me later and I'll tell you what I really think.

Subject: RE: BS: Halloween
From: Donuel
Date: 31 Oct 19 - 07:14 PM

Its the holiday that addresses mortality

Most countries have one

Subject: RE: BS: Halloween
From: Raedwulf
Date: 31 Oct 19 - 07:21 PM

Bollocks to Halloween it's a nakedly, trashy, commercial, money-grubbing, tat-gift flogging piece of Ameri…

Sorry. No, it's not. It's actually a British festival. Originally. Thanksgiving? That's purely an American thing. But All Hallows Eve? That was once celebrated Over Here. As I pointed out earlier to the very nice young British Pakistani lady who forgot to take the tags off my whisky as she was serving me (because I was distracting her by waffling, presumably), the Founding Fathers et al took All Hallows Over There with them... where it survived. Over Here, I may be wrong (because I'm doing this from memory & not looking it up!), but I think it fell out of favour during the puritan Victorian era (and not the puritan Puritan era!).

So know you now. Or now you know. Or possibly not, if I've got this more than a little bit wrong. Hah! But you're going to go & check. Or come back to see if someone else (Steve, probably) has gone off & done the checking for you, you idle buggers...

What we have now is the "nakedly, trashy, commercial, money-grubbing, tat-gift flogging piece of..." which is what it seems to have become in the US & certainly is what we have imported back. But it was a British festival orangeally… Originally... Whatever! ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Halloween
From: ChanteyLass
Date: 31 Oct 19 - 07:25 PM

It's 7:20. I'll leave the lights on until 8. So far I've had 3 children: a pair of siblings and a loner. I know there's one neighborhood child who hasn't come yet. His parents may think he's too young. By now he might be in bed. I'll knock on the family's door tomorrow to ask what's up and drop something off.

The count here is usually low. Some years nobody comes. As a former elementary school teacher I'd be happy to see more but not to be inundated.

Subject: RE: BS: Halloween
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 31 Oct 19 - 08:42 PM

I'm more concerned about my old mum who lives on her own
being disturbed after dark,
or the front of her home getting pranked by malicious children...

She has dementia, and is too trusting of anyone who calls at her house...

Thankfully, she says she hadn't been aware of anyone knocking at her front door,
when I pnoned at 10.00pm to check up on her...

Subject: RE: BS: Halloween
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 31 Oct 19 - 08:47 PM

You mentioned America, I didn't. You like Halloween, good for you, get on with it. But a small thing this side of the Atlantic has been opportunistically grabbed by naked capitalism. The shops have been full of Halloween shite for weeks. Millions of PLASTIC masks and inedible pumpkins. It's wrong, it's unsustainable and it's capitalist. Bollocks to Halloween.

Subject: RE: BS: Halloween
From: Rapparee
Date: 31 Oct 19 - 08:50 PM

We ignore it. Too many college age and upper grades high schoolers have come a-knocking in the past. And the practice of bringing carloads of kids from other neighborhoods really annoys the living fill-in-the-blank out of us.

Like Wren Boys, it has a long history.

Subject: RE: BS: Halloween
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 31 Oct 19 - 09:04 PM

The long history is fine. I've got nothing against that. But the usurping by profiteers in tbe last twenty years or so is disgusting.

Subject: RE: BS: Halloween
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 31 Oct 19 - 09:16 PM

Steve - with you on that, and bloody school proms...

Subject: RE: BS: Halloween
From: Raedwulf
Date: 01 Nov 19 - 03:47 AM

Typical Steve, misunderstands straight away & gets snotty about it. No, I don't like Halloween & for exactly the same reason that you don't. The modern UK version of it, like Father's Day & others, is just an excuse for cheap-tat makers & anyone who sells their trash to make a profit.

My point is that an awful lot of people (& I used to be one of them) think it's yet another imported American festival when, actually, it's a British festival originally. Again, I haven't gone & looked it up, but from what I remember having done so in the past, it fell out of use over here as a combination of Victorian xtian moral disapproval* and the proximity of Guy Fawkes night taking over.

* The same as an awful lot of "fairy" tales got Bowdlerised because they were too nasty / had the 'wrong' endings. Hansel & Gretel got stuffed in the oven originally, if memory serves, not the witch - the story was, effectively, a warning about not wandering off into the forest!

Subject: RE: BS: Halloween
From: BobL
Date: 01 Nov 19 - 04:29 AM

Subject: RE: BS: Halloween
From: BobL
Date: 01 Nov 19 - 04:40 AM

Oh b****r, clicked the wrong button...

Anyway, Halloween goes back a long way and was known throughout Europe - at least according to Wiki.

I agree absolutely with Steve about the commercialisation though, and I don't like trick-or-treaters. Last time they called I said "you can have the trick" and fired me starting pistol. Never been bothered in the thirty years since.

Subject: RE: BS: Halloween
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 01 Nov 19 - 09:31 AM

Snotty, moi? All I've done is given you from the hip, straight as a die, what I think of Halloween. My nose is clean. Anyway, it's All Saints today. I should be at Mass. See you later. :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Halloween
From: leeneia
Date: 01 Nov 19 - 11:19 AM

We had 45 trick-or-treaters, despite the low temperature. They were all friendly and polite (cute, in other words). Not only that, many were pleasantly excited. How exciting to have a costume! How exciting to be out at night! How exciting to meet strangers who like them!

All had parents nearby. Our Halloween lights were purple strands that the DH had suspended from nails, making graceful loops. I think we had the most elegant lights around. Inside the front window a ceramic pumpkin glowed, raised up on the unabridged dictionary.

The DH doesn't like cheap candy; we gave out Hershey's kisses.

Subject: RE: BS: Halloween
From: banjoman
Date: 04 Nov 19 - 06:22 AM

I am very much with Steve on this one.
Its essentially a Religious Feast observed by those to whom it has some relevance. Otherwise its just another capitalist exploitation.
We refuse to have anything to do with it unless we are able to celebrate in church.
We also refuse to have anything to do with the shops who have all their Christmas displays out in October..
One of my neighbours even has a Christmas tree in the window (1st November)

Subject: RE: BS: Halloween
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 04 Nov 19 - 07:24 AM

A few years ago in Morrisons I overheard an old lady asking an assistant why such-and-such (I forget what she was after) wasn't in its usual place on the shelves. "Ah, well, you see, we've had to move everything round. It's Christmas."


It was October 4.

Subject: RE: BS: Halloween
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 04 Nov 19 - 07:31 AM

And the Christmas spirit usually takes a few weeks off in the frenetic rush towards Christmas. A few years ago, in the same shop, a woman who was trying to muscle her through the melée at the checkouts grabbed my testicles. She hadn't a clue that she'd done it but I assure you that I kept very still for at least four seconds...

Subject: RE: BS: Halloween
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 04 Nov 19 - 07:31 AM

Her way!

Subject: RE: BS: Halloween
From: keberoxu
Date: 17 Oct 20 - 08:24 AM

How does one Halloween during a pandemic?

Subject: RE: BS: Halloween
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 17 Oct 20 - 09:10 AM

Hopefully not, and hopefully no fireworks to scare dogs.

Subject: RE: BS: Halloween
From: Black belt caterpillar wrestler
Date: 17 Oct 20 - 09:48 AM

Not "trick or treat" more "track and trace".

Robin

Subject: RE: BS: Halloween
From: Senoufou
Date: 17 Oct 20 - 02:52 PM

We're not 'doing' Halloween in our village. But the lady vicar is doing a Halloween story/sing-song with the children in the village hall (suitably masked and socially-distanced)
I'd be so glad to see the end of blooming fireworks Bonzo. Terrifies the dogs, cats, wildlife and panics the livestock in our fields. Also, I'm always worried about our oil-tank full of kerosene. Smouldering rockets shower down and could cause a fire.
We were in the supermarket today, and the ghastly Halloween tat on sale was ridiculous. Aisle upon aisle of plastic rubbish. (But wicked husband found a large rubber spider and dangled it in front of me. Cue piercing screams and the whole of Tesco staring. I could have died of shame. Isn't he naughty?)

Subject: RE: BS: Halloween
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 17 Oct 20 - 04:32 PM

Yes but you need something to laugh about these days!!

Subject: RE: BS: Halloween
From: Mrrzy
Date: 17 Oct 20 - 05:10 PM

People here are inventing ways of getting candy to children; pvc pipe is going like hotcakes...

We are doing our usual pub crawl but a] only 6 of us at a time, b] only pubs with outside service., and c] masks as well as masks. We are also having a zoom get togwther to at least admire costumes.

My costume consists of carrying an oar and wearing a pair of those waterproof pants-over-your-pants-and-shoes garments that people wear to go fly-fishing. What am I?

Subject: RE: BS: Halloween
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 17 Oct 20 - 07:55 PM

I don't understand whinges about fireworks and dogs. Just for once, keep your bloody dog in your cosy living room. Bejaysus, we're talking about a couple of chilly November nights. The rest of us have trample your dogshit 365 days of the year. And fireworks should be restricted to a couple of nights around 5th November. Then everybody's happy.

Subject: RE: BS: Halloween
From: Mrrzy
Date: 18 Oct 20 - 09:35 AM

Come on guess my costume!

Subject: RE: BS: Halloween
From: Senoufou
Date: 18 Oct 20 - 01:23 PM

Darth Wader?

Subject: RE: BS: Halloween
From: Mrrzy
Date: 18 Oct 20 - 10:33 PM

Close! Remember the oar! I might *carry* rather than wear the waterproof footy pants, in the other hand...

Subject: RE: BS: Halloween
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 18 Oct 20 - 11:38 PM

Obviously you don't have dogs, Steve, or you'd have your radar tuned to the explosive nature of the week (at least) prior to and AFTER the date in question. It's downright torture to listen to two weeks of the kids out breaking the law with the firecrackers while the dogs and cats quake in fear. I wish they'd start tracking them down and writing tickets.

Halloween doesn't happen to be a noisy holiday in the US. But there are several others. I rarely have trick-or-treaters, so none this year will be par for the course. And even the more reason why I shouldn't buy the little Reese's peanut butter cups or KitKat bars. :)

Subject: RE: BS: Halloween
From: Senoufou
Date: 19 Oct 20 - 03:51 AM

Scull in Wader? (ie Skull Invader?)

Subject: RE: BS: Halloween
From: Senoufou
Date: 19 Oct 20 - 03:57 AM

We don't have a dog but many of our neighbours do. Obviously they keep them indoors, but the terror caused by firework explosions is awful.
And the livestock out in the fields gallop about in panic (cows, horses, pigs, sheep) Some try to jump over or climb the fencing and hurt themselves.
We don't have any naughty village children chucking bangers about or posting fireworks through letterboxes etc but some areas do.
I think people could enjoy a public display put on by the local council in a safe field with protective barriers and fire-trained personnel, and only on one evening (the 5th). They don't need to have private noise-fests at home or in the street.
Fireworks should not be on sale to the general public.

Subject: RE: BS: Halloween
From: Jos
Date: 19 Oct 20 - 04:23 AM

I thought Hallowe'en had been promoted some years ago in Britain as a distraction from the uncontrolled fireworks and children begging on street corners with "guys" (stuffed figures like scarecrows, or sometimes real children pretending to be "guys") demanding a "Penny for the Guy" to get money to buy fireworks.
I haven't seen those for a long time, but we still have the fireworks and now Hallowe'en as well.