Holidays

The 7 Deadly – or Semi-Annoying – Sins of Halloween

Everyone knows that Christmas is the holiday of meaningful life-lessons, dancing cartoon dogs and spending a month pretending you’re going to become a better person, but Halloween can be just as poignant. Below are seven ways this magical season can bring out the best of the worst in all of us:
womens-catch-me-honey-costume#7: Lower the lust quotient, ladies. Hey, Skanky McBooberson! You’re not fooling anyone with your sexy Pikachu costume (gotta catch ’em all takes on a whole new meaning when your boobs are hanging out). Combining an innocent childhood character with hooker heels and a push-up bra doesn’t counteract the slut-quotient. If anything it just confuses men and brings up their suppressed childhood feelings for Elmo.

#6: Free candy can bring out anyone’s gluttony. Admit that candy is delicious and you would easily steal it from a baby. In fact, you have. If you take your baby trick-or-treating and the pillowcase full of candy weighs more than the kid then you’re not fooling anyone. Just admit you’re going to eat all of the candy yourself and leave your 8-month-old in the wagon on the sidewalk. It saves everyone the time and effort of you spending five minutes waddling them up the steps and trying to get them to say “twick-ow-tweat.” Adorable… now move it along I’ve got teenagers in a hockey mask who need a Reese’s cup.

#5: The wrath of the haunted house is hilarious. Yes, it is funny to see your friends almost wet themselves. BFF or not, watching a chainsaw wielding maniac make your friends squeal like a little girl is just plain good entertainment. They have a heart condition you say? That just adds to the potential hilarity factor.

#4: It’s easy to embrace your sloth side when choosing a costume. Deodorant. Check. Milk. Check. Halloween costume. Check. Remember the days when people used to put thought and effort into their Halloween costumes? Or was that just me because poor kids are forced to be creative? Either way, nowadays you can just grab a plastic bag with a plastic costume in the aisle next to the plastic bags. $5 worth of fabric and labor for the low price of $59.99. Make sure to pick up some Christmas lights while you’re there. They’re on the next shelf over.

#3: Have a little pride in your costume. The “funny” section of the costume shop should just have a giant flashing arrow that says “Douche bags! Shop here!” I want to tell guys that it’s not even remotely funny to dress up like a giant sperm superhero named “Super Sperm” (I can’t imagine the hours it took to think up that name), an unkempt female lifeguard called “Anita Waxin” (your mind must be racing right now to picture that one) or “The Shocker” (yes, it is exactly what you think). However, I can’t direct men away from these costumes because I like knowing where the idiots are. It’s like giving them a name tag that says “Hi my name is Douche Face. Steer clear.”

#2: Company greed isn’t just for Christmas. Sure, Christmas decorations start showing up in October, but over the past few years, Halloween has started creeping into stores next to Back-to-School supplies. Halloween is now the second biggest money-making holiday after Christmas. Which is great, because Americans need another excuse for excessive spending. So gather round the Halloween tree, kids! It’s time to celebrate spending hundreds of dollars on an outfit we’re only going to wear once (just getting them ready for their wedding day, I suppose).

#1: We like to watch people in situations no one would envy. Watching murder and torture to celebrate a holiday? Fun. I know there is nothing more relaxing to me than curling up under a blanket and watching a woman get disemboweled. Pass the candy corn. Actually, don’t. Candy corn couldn’t even be made more disgusting by a attached-to-the-end-of-a-human-centipede situation.

So what’s Snarky Self-Helper’s point? Halloween is the best holiday. Obviously.

PHSD – Pre-Halloween Stress Disorder

It’s almost Halloween. That means this time last year you were screaming “next year will be different” while sobbing into the used lingerie rack at a thrift store. 

But alas, Halloween is one week away and that slutty Mr. Potato Head costume option is looking better and better. 

This is the time of year when Google’s top Halloween search terms go from “fun costumes” and “cute couple costumes” to things like “last minute costume ideas,” “how to make a costume out of a sack” and “sweet baby Buddha I need a f&*%ing costume NOW!”

People always talk about the stress of “the holidays.” The dread of spending Thanksgiving being hit on by crazy “Uncle” Charlie or maxing out five credit cards at Christmas buying 100 memberships to the Sausage of the Month Club. But what about Halloween?

More than any other holiday, Halloween comes with the pressure to be “clever.” You’ve got to come up with a clever costume, carve a clever pumpkin, write clever things on your fake Styrofoam tombstones. Here’s a fun fact: most people aren’t clever. Way to point out how lame people are, Halloween. That’s a bitch move right there.

At least Beggar’s Night is nothing but fun with all those adorable little princesses and ninjas carrying their tiny plastic pumpkins. That’s until a 17-year-old football player in a ski mask shows up trying to get free candy. Tell me any other time of year when roving bands of teenagers in masks trying to get you to give them free things is a fun family event. October 31: good holiday fun. November 1: turn off the lights and call the cops.

The practice of leaving decapitated, decomposing produce all over the house is a whole other can of crazy. If you had a neighbor who liked to carve human faces into Papayas and then leave them on his porch, I doubt you’d be strolling over to ask for a cup of sugar. 

Luckily we have soothing, feel-good holiday movies like Halloween, The Exorcist or Nightmare on Elm Street Part 89 to calm our nerves. Weeks on end of watching 20-somethings be skinned alive is just plain good for the soul.

What’s the point that is Snarky Self-Helper is trying to make? Relax. Halloween is super fun. If you’re feeling too stressed out, go stare at the Christmas light display that’s been at Target since September. Then eat a bag of Kit Kats. When the real zombie apocalypse comes, you’ll miss those Pocahottie costumes. 

You’re Lucky the Irish Have a Good Sense of Humor

Do you know where the phrase “Luck of the Irish” originated? It began when Irish immigrants started to do well in the U.S. and work their way out of the ghettos. People started saying that it must be the “luck of the Irish” because the Irish were too lazy and stupid to have actually achieved anything on their own. How’d ole Patrick O’SullivanMcFlanagan get that fancy new hoe? Must be luck. Patrick O’RoukeMcKelly couldn’t possible have been smart enough to earn the money to buy it himself, by Blarney!

The Irish have faced a ton of adversity. I bet that sentence made you snicker. It’s true though. But overall, we’re a pretty jovial people. Perhaps it’s the beer and whiskey. Aw… see what I did there? Implying all Irish people are drunks. Horrible, horrible stereotype. The Irish aren’t drunks. We can handle our alochol.

That leads me perfectly into the mess that is St. Patrick’s Day. I have never gotten especially excited about St. Patrick’s Day. The specials they run on the History Channel about the potato famine are more exciting to me than green beer and kegs and eggs.

I actually kind of abhor St. Patrick’s Day. I lock myself up in my apartment and wait for the droves of idiots in green bowler hats and shamrock glasses to stumble back home and out of my favorite, normally quiet, local bar.

They may say “everyone is Irish on St. Patrick’s Day” but they aren’t. Everyone is a drunken idiot on St. Patrick’s Day (and noooooo, that doesn’t describe a normal person of Irish heritage thank you very much). When you really think about it though, it’s slightly offensive to imply – or outright state – that being “Irish” means drinking until you pass out.

We Irish don’t complain nearly as much as we should or could. Well, I’m complaining, but I don’t represent all Irish people. I mean, could you imagine if we celebrated other holidays just by choosing one giant stereotype of that ethnicity and running around saying that, by doing that one giant stereotype, we are now one of those people? Black History Month? Cinco De Mayo? Chinese New Year? Sounds like a Family Guy episode in the making.

What’s the point that this Snarky Self-Helper is trying to make? You’re not Irish on St. Patrick’s Day. If you want to drink, take a lesson from someone with real Irish heritage, just drink whenever you want to. Everyday is St. Patrick’s Day for us. Wait… I think I just perpetuated the stereotype I was trying to fight. Crap. Oh well. Even if you drink a lot, you’ll never be as pale as me. Take that.

Why Black Friday is Scarier Than The Walking Dead

We all know the familiar scene. Bloodthirsty, heartless, brain-dead drones attacking helpless victims en masse.  Little did that victim know that he would soon be slashed – price slashed – and consumed by a violent mob. That poor, innocent Xbox never saw it coming.

But, seriously. Have you ever watched a zombie movie or TV show and wondered just how they really took over EVERYTHING. I can see a zombie virus taking out a hospital staff quickly or running through a little town in Podunkville, USA, but the entire Military? That slow walking corpse took out the whole police force? Even the less common and ridiculous marathon runner zombies seen in movies like 28 Days Later should be defeatable be a whole police squad, right? Those men are trained to stay cool and calm and handle these kinds of situations. Oh… wait…

And before you Walking Dead fans say anything, yes, I call them zombies. You know why? Because they’re zombies. The fact that they refuse to ever use the word “zombie” is the least realistic part of the whole show. Are we to believe these people never saw a zombie movie in their entire lives? Come on! The dead coming back to eat the living? Yeah, sure. But a world without the word zombie? Homey don’t buy that.

Just get a few hundred people together for a mediocre deal and you can easily see why we will all eventually die in a zombie apocalypse. After hearing some of the stories of Black Friday 2011 I’m not totally convinced that there aren’t a few of the infected already out there.

Police pepper spraying shoppers, shoppers pepper spraying shoppers, pepper spray policing shoppers, dogs hugging kittens; it’s all a sign that we’re going down.

If a cop can’t even handle some housewives with too much time and not enough money, there is no way they’re going to calmly obliterate a zombie hoard.

And there is always that one character in the group of survivors that starts out okay, but has the crazy eye. You know the one. You see him and think “that boy ain’t right” (or “something is amiss with that young man” – individual thoughts depend on your level of hillbilly). But then that guy goes totally nuts and kills a bunch of people. Well, it would seem, based on Black Friday, that it should really be everyone just running around shooting each other in the neck.

People on TV calmly band together and find antibiotics for their friends. People in real life face palm their grandmother to get $100 off an HDTV. Which is scarier?

So what’s the point that this snarky self-helper is trying to make? If the world gets taken over by zombies, we’re all screwed. I’m talking I Am Legend even-the-dog-gets-it kind of screwed. Not Night of the Living Dead One-bad-night-and-then-we’re-playing-hit-the-zombie-with-a-rock-in-the-backyard style screwed.

What’s that? You didn’t need me to tell you that? You better hope I don’t become a zombie or I’m gonna crazy zombie bite you so hard…