More Creative Ways to Prevent Halloween Vandalism

Whoa. Never in the history of the Goo have I received as much traffic as I did last night. The peoples are all up in arms over Halloween. Oh, and fat kids.More on fat kids later; today let's just stick to Halloween.

You know who else is all up in arms about this Halloween thing? Really, really up in arms? The English.

"Like many other forces, the Cheshire police in northwestern Britain have been distributing no-trick-or-treating posters for people to affix to their windows. Fifty-eight percent of homeowners in a recent survey by the Norwich Union insurance company said they had hidden in the back of their houses and turned off all the lights on Halloween, pretending that no one was home.

A similar question came up last weekend, in a Halloween discussion group on Mumsnet, a popular mothers' Web site here. The tips being traded were not about how to make pumpkin soup, but about how to repel would-be trick-or-treaters. 'I've thought about removing the cover from my doorbell so they electrocute themselves," one participant wrote.'"

Well, for all you people freaking out there about the kids and the Halloween candy, The State provides a pretty good solution: more materialism and straight up bribery. "Parents can purchase a bag of fun non-candy goodies and make a game of swapping sweets for non-edible treats. Or leave the candy out for the Great Pumpkin on Halloween night who will deliver a toy or game in exchange for the candy." That all sounds well and good until the kids see the mangled squirrel-masticated pumpkin on November 1st and start to wonder about the fate of the Great Pumpkin.

If the parents out there are really upset about all the commercialism and candy making their kids fat, they can always go to Hell House, an evangelical Christian "Haunted" house depicting "...a grotesque and shocking imagining of contemporary secular culture, an extreme version of the way some very conservative Christians may think the unsaved live. Reading "Harry Potter" turns a young boy into a school shooter. Going to a rave gets a young woman gang-raped. In its most graphic scene, "Hell House" depicts an abortion. Blood covers the walls, the woman screams in pain while her doctor smokes a cigarette. Tiny body parts are everywhere." Because when benevelont parental authoritarianism doesn't work, demonic visions of hell will teach the li'l rugrats not to binge on their candy!

I relate the most to this article from the San Francisco Gate. Last year was my first year in my DC apartment. I bought heaps of candy while my roommate stood by with a little smirk on her face. Come Halloween, I told kitty to put on his most adorable face and we stood by the door, waiting for Trick-or-Treaters. An hour later, the doorbell rang, and two dudes with the best homeless-guy costumes I've ever seen asked for candy, and maybe some soup or twenty bucks. Kitty was unamused. I think he was hoping for some Harry Potter costumes. See you in hell, kitty!