What a phantasmagorical and cosmic aligning of the stars. It’s Halloween, Daylight Savings Time and a national midterm election, all colliding. What shall become of us? Shall Earth wobble off its axis? Will cats and dogs peacefully slow dance together? Liberals finally awake to declare, “Climate change is actually just — weather?”
“Who am I?” is an ancient and existential question. Halloween provides, for many, a day to dress up and not be who we are. Baseball player. Werewolf. Princess. Pirate. Prostitute. I’m guessing never, ever, a Certified Public Accountant. This begs the question. What do witches dress up as on Halloween? At the very least, dental receptionists get to hang spider webs and black, spell-rich paper cauldrons around the office as some token acknowledgement of our connection to the macabre and forbidden.
How come Halloween?
My own, lower-case medicine man observation is that most of us stumble through lives of humdrummia, holding our breath. In previous parentheses, our Daily Things To Do list held but two items — Kill or Be Killed. Being chased by a 2-ton cave bear releases gallons of adrenalin, more so than say, lightly swaying our shoulders and humming Creedence Clearwater Revival’s, “Rolling On The River” while performing the Republican Woman Overbite Dance. Besides waking wide-eyed with the realization, “I married WHO!?!?!?!” I can’t remember screaming at the top of my lungs over much of anything. Tallying 10 minutes on the exercycle counts for something aerobically. But, it’s not the same as a terrified, run-for-your-life, get-the-heart-pumping shriek while a saber-tooth tiger nips at your heinie. A scream? It’s that essential realization of, “Phew! I’m alive …!” Well. For the moment.
Psychologists ponder that Halloween helps us face our fears and the countless (and often necessary) taboos hanging over us. Is it a form of a higher consciousness within, reminding that life rolls along forever and death is nothing to fear? We can even, for a day, laugh at seeming mortality. Granted. Too much fascination with death, decay, horror, the smarmy and the macabre can go way too far in many people.
There’s that adverb — “too.” In my highly interesting life, I’ve noticed something. Society seems intent on expanding Halloween far beyond the boundaries of Oct. 31. Aided by social media and the fraying of morality’s not edges but very fabric, we’ve become unreasonably fascinated by the vile, violent and pornographic. What happens when every day is Halloween? Humans are, by nature, builders. In our daily, unaware prayer, we’ve create Super Halloween. People walk around with toner cartridge colored hair. Bolts and bones through the nose is the daily dress of choice. We scream at strangers. Costume-wise, there’s not much room to express if one already identifies as a vampire. Or California senator.
Psychologists also point to the sanctuary of anonymity as an attraction to Halloween. We are emboldened when our identity is hidden either by costume or a pseudonym on the web. People can be ugly and monstrous in chat rooms when no one knows their driver’s license identity.
One of the byproducts of this toxic and low-class morality is that we’ve misplaced the profound and holy pronoun of, “We.” The concept of “We” used to, at least in principle, unite us. “We the people,” conjures visions of good-hearted souls rolling up their sleeves, banding together. Our everyday labor is to build the noble castle on a hill. There’s a mindless, destructive energy afoot, a mob mentality to not just curse and tear down, but stupidly destroy our own castle. I’m beginning to suspect that the word, “wicked,” appears more than 450 times in the Bible as a darn good warning.
What is it about that odd aspect of human nature that worships mooncalves and village idiots? Elections are in a few minutes. Certainly in some cases, the rare good and wise public servant will step forward and be chosen. But, yet again, the American public, falsely labeled as, “smart,” in sleepy hamlets to megacities, will dully vote in the same batch of booger-eating morons. At the same time tragic to highly slapstick, these crooks and imbeciles make no secret of their ineptitude. Their very public record shows 67 miles of burning highway behind them. Yet? Decade after century, nincompoop after clodhopper somehow still keep getting elected. We’re not learning from our mistakes. We’re not getting better.
Rest assured.
If there were a measure on Tuesday’s ballot making it California law to take a running start and kick every voter in the baby-making plumbing followed by spray-painting their tongues Rust-Oleum Truck Engine Purple, the referendum might not pass. But, you know what? It’d still get 24,000,006 votes and that’s after the ballot description notes the bill is proudly endorsed by The American Nazi Party, the KKK, Teachers For Human Sacrifice and, of course, Rust-Oleum.
Then, O However Will We Survive The Next Four Days, we have to set our clocks back an hour.
Or, in neighboring Palmdale, where cannibals still canter across the high desert, two-thirds or so of a week.
For some strange, Stonehenge reasoning, proponents of Daylight Savings Time point to the lowly bovine in some pretend, Aristotelian reasoning. Supporters of time monkeying sagely spout that cows will benefit from sleeping in the extra hour. I’ve asked around. My feedlot baseball cap-wearing agrarian pals assure that cows don’t possess the capacity to tell time. Cows, ironically, also have the tragic inability to choose capable leaders.
Elsewise? They wouldn’t keep ending up as cheeseburgers.
Tomorrow, it’s Samhain. Halloween. Perhaps, yet again this year, I’ll honor The Least Effort Principle and celebrate All Hallows as a cowboy. Sunday? I’ll wake when I wake. And, Tuesday? I’ll vote. Sigh. Despite my best efforts and dire warnings, come Wednesday, duly-elected monkey buckets will be regarding their hairy navels and pontificate in swivel chairs …
Do pick up “Naked Came the Novelist,” John Boston’s sequel to the international bestseller, “Naked Came the Sasquatch,” at JohnBoston-Books.com. A lifelong SCV resident with 119 major writing awards and nearly 12,000 columns, Boston is Earth history’s most prolific humorist and satirist.
