Halloween Proved Donald Trump Jr Is Stupid

Donald Trump Jr. took this Halloween pic of
his daughter Chloe to make a stupid political point,
and boy that did not go well at all. 

I got a chuckle over the mini-uproar reacting to a Tweet sent out by Donald Trump Jr., son of our "illustrious" president.

He took a sad pic of his young daughter Chloe at Halloween with this message: "I'm going to take half of Chloe's candy tonight & give it to some kids who sat at home. It's never to (sic) early to teach her about socialism."

As many respondents and The Guardian pointed out, this was a, um, flawed analysis of socialism. Of course he was also using his young daughter as a political prop and demonstrating his own selfishness, but we've come to expect that from the Trump family.

 A good response came from Elite Bear Agents: 

"My man, 'socialism' was her getting that free candy in the first place. You taking half for reasons she can't understand is capitalism."

Ouch!

Then there's nice from Nick Pettigrew:

"Your kid went begging from hard-working people for candy. The kid who stayed home got theirs because their parents worked to pay for it. In your simile, if anyone's the socialist, it's Chloe." 

I liked this response from Matt Blackwell, too:

"It's telling that junior thinks that 'walking around getting gifts from people' is a good metaphor for 'earning money.'"

The ever-reliable and wise J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, also responded beautifully with this sarcastic missive to Junior:

"Fill her bucket with old candy left by her great-grandfather, then explain that she has more because she's smarter than all the other kids."

I'll close with my favorite snipe at Junior, given the tax "reform" plan Junior's dad is pushing: Amir said this: 

"Or you could just take 99% of Chloe's candy, eat it, and tell her to wait for it to trickle down."

Perfect!

Intensive Care Unit Babies Become Superheroes In Kansas City

An itty bitty Batman rests in the NICU of
St. Luke's Hospital in Kansas City. Photo by Sally Morrow

I'm not a dad, but I can imagine how crushingly scary it is to have a newborn baby in the intensive care unit.

These parents really just want their kids to have a nice, normal childhood free of hospital stays and worries about health and death. 

You can't take ill babies out the NICU, but you can take them into Halloween, and the normal kid stuff they should enjoy today.

So, the NICU at St. Luke's Hospital in Kansas City and the March of Dimes teamed up to make sure these little babies had their own Halloween costumes, says Good Morning America.

The kids are too young to understand Halloween, of course. (Hell, I'm 54 and I still don't understand Halloween). But the parents get a little levity and "normalcy" for themselves and their kids.

Parents get to pick out the Halloween costumes, based on the personality of their kids. There's lots of superheroes and butterflies and princesses in the NICU, and a couple of the obligatory Kansas City Royals baseball players.

Additionally, the families get the following, says Good Morning America:

"......the volunteers and nurses provided the families with a 'trick or treat, smell my feet' card with the newborns' tiny footprints, a hand-crocheted pumpkin filled with treats and a Halloween book that the parents and babies can read together next year."

This is a great idea that I hope spreads to NICU's all over the nation.

My Choice For Halloween Music: Elton John's "Funeral For A Friend/Loves Lies Bleeding"

Everybody is playing dark, or humorously dark songs today as they play their favorite Halloween tunes.

It seems most people focus on "Monster Mash," and "Thriller."

Michael Jackson's "Thriller" is good, especially the Vincent Price spooky part.  

But the song I always turn to at Halloween is the epic Elton John classic "Funeral For A Friend/Loves Lies Bleeding."

I know Elton John and his songwriter Bernie Taupin weren't thinking Halloween when they came up with this song.

 It was about a bitter breakup. But the spooky synthesizer opening followed by the angry piano and guitar cords in the "Loves Lies Bleeding" second half just fit the mood of the day perfectly.

It's a long, sweeping song, but it's worth the listen today.

So here it is:

Ugh. Hallloween In July As Stores Keeping Pushing Seasons Earlier And Earlier

Just some of the extensive selection of Halloween
candy at a Shaw's Supermarket in Colchester,
Vermont on July 31. Couldn't find stuff
I needed for summer, though.  

Every holiday is getting earlier and earlier, at least in the eyes of retailers.

Sunday, July 31, I stopped into a Shaw's supermarket in Colchester, Vermont to buy, among other things, some sun screen. Because I work outdoors frequently and need the protection.

I finally found some buried on a back shelf somewhere, but it was hard. Why? Because there was aisle after aisle of Halloween candy, but nothing you would need for summer.

I'm not finding much good information on line as to why stores put out seasonal goods so early. I'm sure it's a way for them to make more money.

It's infuriating, though. I buy things when I need them. I think most people do. Around August 1, I'm apt to buy sun screen, bug spray, a new pair of shorts to replace the ones I ripped rolling around in the grass with the dogs. Things like that.

But most retailers have decided I can't buy this stuff I need. I'm expected to plan ahead, and know precisely how much bug spray and sun screen I'll need for the summer way back in March. I'm supposed to be psychic. Because we're required, say the Retail Gods, to buy things six months before we actually need them. 

The summer stuff is not on store shelves now, when I want and need it.

Merchants claim it's out fault, that consumers demand that they stock items ever earlier every year.

I don't think that's true, though. Oh sure, there's a few weirdos who like to shop for back to school items a month before school lets out in May. A few other weenies think it's all Christmas all the time and shop for the holiday year round.

What's really going on is they stock things way, way earlier, training us to buy way, way early. But then we misplace the summer stuff we had to buy in February, or the kids get into the Halloween candy in August, a month after we were forced to purchase it, so we have to buy more

That way, the stores make more money.

The early season stuff is also stores wanting to get our attention first.

"The marketplace is so competitive that they can't take a chance that people are going to spend their $50 somewhere else," Purdue University retail management pofessor Richard Feinberg told NPR in 2011. 

Let's face it. Retailers hate us, and just want our money. They don't want us to buy things during the season when we need it, because that's not much of a money maker.

Retailers and their season creep sucks.

Giant Horror Pumpkin Attacks Arizona Town!

When pumpkins attack. The scene in
Peoria, Arizona last week. 

Halloween is over, but we're still picking up the pieces.

Like they sort of are in one town in Arizon.

Here's the story: On a recent windy day in Peoria, Arizona, a Halloween horror struck:

Watch this giant inflatable pumpkin ATTACK!

The giant 25 foot tall pumpkin damaged some traffic signals, but didn't injure anyone, says 12News.com. The pumpkin was eventually corraled in a neighborhood park.

This kind of reminds me of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man scene from "Ghostbusters."

Baby Owl Dances To Monster Mash Because It's Halloween

Oakley the owl, right, and his stuffed counterpart
grove to "The Monster Mash."  

This video is a few years old, but you can't beat a baby owl dancing to Monster Mash on Halloween.

The baby owl is named Oakley and he liked to cuddle with his favorite stuffed owl.

Oakley was raised at the Eagle Valley Raptor Center in Kansas and has since been released to the wild.

Watch:

Shoot! We're Going To Carve A Pumpkin!

Kirsten Joy Weiss shows off the Jack O'Lantern
she made by repeatedly shooting it. 

I betcha a lot if people have carved or will carve a Jack O' Lantern for their Halloween celebrations this week.  

If you haven't I can show you one pumpkin carving method that I don't recommend. Unless you're a total expert like Kirstin Joy Weiss.

Weiss is a well known sharpshooter, and she shows us how she carves a pumpkin by repeatedly shooting it.

Don't try this at home! The Consumer Products Safety Commission says there are about 4,000 injuries annually from carving pumpkins. Shooting would just make the carnage worse.

Even so, as you'll see in the video below, the the gunshot Jack O'Lantern turns out looking not half bad.

Here's the video:

Worst Halloween Crime News: A Telletubbie Break-In

How would you feel if this broke into
your house in the middle of the night?  

In the latest case of Halloween depravity, a Telletubbie broke into a Pennsylvania house, took leftover Chinese food from a refrigerator and dumped it into something called a "man purse."

The Teletubbie is better known as Terez S. Owens, 20, a Lehigh University student from Florida (of course, Florida, where else).

He faces a criminal mischief and disorderly conduct charge, says Lehigh Valley Live. 

The victim of the break in at first declined to press charges, but I imagine there is something disconcerting about a big yellow Teletubbie bursting into your house and dumping Chinese food into your purse or whatever.

Local police reassure us that "Not that many teletubbies get arrested."

Phew!

Over The Top Halloween House Gives Us A Bohemian Rhapsody Scare

Talk about over the top Halloween decor!  

You see a lot more Halloween decorations on and around houses than you used to years ago.

I guess people have really gotten into it.

But nobody can top the owner of a Naperville, Illinois home for Halloween enthusiasm. For the past few years, they've had epic light shows set to music.

This year's is the most spectacular yet.  Trick or treaters are being greeted by a Bohemian Rhapsody holiday scare on a grand scale.

Hat tip to my sister Lynn for alerting me to this. Watch and be afraid. Very afraid. Or at least amused:

Here's What You Look Like In A Haunted House

A rite of October, I guess, is to go to a "haunted house" to celebrate Halloween.

You pay admission, and all kinds of fake ghosts, zombies and assorted monsters pop out of the dark corners to give you a big scream and scare.

One of those haunted houses is the Nightmares Fear Factory in Niagra Falls, New York.

"Fear is fun and we'll scare the crap outta you!" is their catch phrase. Yeah, it's that kind of place.

Nightmares Fear Factory also has cameras helpfully installed in their creepy house to take photos of people getting the crap scared outta them. A few of the photos are here, only because they're hilarious and I thought I'd share.

And it's more calming than wandering through a haunted house.  If you want to see more, go to their Web site.  

The Scariest Halloween Prank In The World Might Be In Poland

We have to acknowledge Halloween today with the tried and true holiday meme of getting people to stop and look at something and then somebody or something unexpectedly jumps out and scares the bejeezus out of passersby.

Add caption

It's a staple of every haunted house and Halloween party out there.

And so it was on some street in Poland, but with a twist. Add some bad dance music and some shiny gold colored tights and you'll really get a scare.

Trust me when you watch this video, you'll really lose it at "Wrecking Ball."

Hat tip to Gawker for this video:

Sensible Horror

Halloween season is here, which means its the peak time for really, really, really bad horror films.

Nice looking young people not going into
the haunted cabin. Beautiful, and not so dumb.  

They all feature people doing things that no sane person would do in that situation. You know, be a scantily dressed, um, healthy young woman who goes into the basement alone to see what that noise was.

Or have a beer party in a graveyard. Or not run very, very, very fast away from that strange man with the knife. Or the chainsaw. Or the hockey mask. Or the rotting flesh that's falling off from him.

I guess horror movies would be boring if the people in them weren't so stupid, but they'd be a bit funnier.

Here's a video with an example of how rational people should behave in a horror film. Not the most suspenseful, but still a lot of fun:

Horror House Photos are Funny for Halloween

I found a series of photos on Buzzfeed of people in a Buffalo, New York haunted house that are too funny. 

The Haunted House, the Nightmares Fear Factory in Niagra Falls, Canada, snaps photos of a particularly scary corner of the haunted house.

People look funny when suddenly spooked, don't they? I just had to show a few of the photos to get you in the proper Halloween mood.

If nothing else, the faces on these people might give you ideas as you carve your Jack 'O Lanterns.