10.06.2004 - 12:01 p.m.
Wednesday
Halloween is fast approaching, as is evident by the massive spill of pumpkins in front of our local grocery store, and the ELEVENTY THOUSAND bags of point-laden candy inside. In every damn aisle. Waving at me. Calling my name...singing the sweet siren song of chocolate...peanut butter chocolate....
Anyway. I love Halloween, always have. I especially love poking around in those goofy shops that materialize out of nowhere during the month of October, the ones that sell costumes and rubber bats and styrofoam gravestones. Every year I drag JB through one and make him pick out what he would wear if we were going to a party ("How about...a pimp! Yeah, pimp! Aw, come on, it even comes with a big floppy hat! ...What?") - a moot exercise, really, because we always stay home on the 31st annihilating vats of Fun-Sized Butterfingers and watching horror movies rented at the last-damn-minute. Which isn't a bad ritual, really, and I'm frankly glad we don't attend yearly masquerade balls or whatever ("I've got big balls, dirty big balls..." - sorry, just a little AC/DC for you there) because I do NOT approve of JB's suggested costume choices for me, which are as follows:
- Slutty cheerleader
- Slutty Red Riding Hood ("Oooh, Mr. Wolf, what big....")
- Slutty Mother Superior
- Slutty crack whore (goes with the pimp outfit)
Do you sense a theme? Hmmph.
Years ago I had a friend who was a member of - the Elks? Masons? United Daughters of the Confederacy? I can't remember, some unlikely organization - and every Halloween they gathered volunteers to put on a haunted house. Two years in a row I pitched in, spending evenings hammering dusty particle boards together to make several extremely shoddy stage sets housing the Freddy Room, the Disturbing Surgical Procedures Room, the Mangy-Ass Werewolf Room, etc.
When the house opened for business, I had two jobs. One I really enjoyed: I was in the Hellraiser room, covered in sticky fake blood and shackled to the wall with, I don't know, aluminum foil chains or something. People were ushered in while the room was in total darkness, then a light was flipped to illuminate my friend, who was dressed as Pinhead. He would mumble something vaguely threatening, typically soliciting giggles from the crowd, then the room was darkened again. We waited just long enough for people to start shifting back and forth uncomfortably, then another light shone directly at me, at which point I unleashed the loudest, most Janet-Leigh-shower-scene-esque scream that I possibly could. This always, always scared the shit out of everyone. Sure, it was kind of a cheap gag, but it was deeply satisfying nonetheless. The part that sucked was right after my scream, where I had to just sort of stand there, trying to look like anything other than an embarrassed girl covered in tinted Karo syrup.
The other job I had was Chainsaw Victim. I was supposed to casually join a group when they were in the second to the last room in the house - the point being that when I was grabbed by a rubber chainsaw-wielding guy in a Jason mask (?) in the last room, people would be extra freaked out because the victim was....one of their own! This never actually worked, because some yahoo always had to call me out when I slipped into line. "Hey," a bullet-headed frat boy would say, pointing at me, "SHE wasn't with us earlier." I was then viewed with suspicion until my "brutal attack", at which point people would laugh at me. The Chainsaw Room was definitely not one of the high points in the Corvallis Haunted House.
(Now that I've taken myself on a little old stroll down memory lane, I'm totally in the mood to check out a haunted house. I'm thinking the KUBE 93 house this Friday night. And maybe a showing of Saw afterwards. Eeek!)
So apparently Workplace is going to have some sort of costume shindig this year on the 30th. I am not exactly filled with a burning anticipation for this party, mostly because I can think of about a million things I'd rather be doing on a Saturday than hanging out at the damn office. Like plucking my eyebrows, for instance. Or vacuuming the coils underneath my refrigerator. Besides, I really need to get an early start on those Butterfingers.
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