B-sides, vol. 6

Yep, you guessed it, some more "Takes on Life" quickies not worthy of a full version:

• Remember those old, recurring Looney Tunes cartoon props? A huge, red rocket; a glass cutter; a box with a spring-loaded, fist-clinched boxing glove? I loved 'em. The fictional distributor of these animated common goods was Acme, but I have no idea where their existence and design was stereotyped. I mean, when was the last time you saw an actual red-painted, white-tipped, U-shaped magnet? Me? Oh, about the last time I came across a long-wicked black bomb shaped like a bowling ball/hockey puck hybrid.


• In speaking of Looney Tunes, I always thought as a little Claude that you could in fact pick yourself up by your shirt collar or the scruff of your own neck, as depicted by Bugs Bunny and friends. I tried this several times in the house -- and failed. I also thought you could actually burrow a treaded circle in your floor if you paced around long enough. I also tried this several times in the house -- and failed. Needless to say I thankfully grew too discouraged to ever try running off a cliff and testing my ability to suspend and return to the cliff before realizing my impending doom.


• I often hear people wondering aloud if God has a sense of humor. I don’t know, the fact that we lose hair where we want hair and gain hair where we don’t want hair seems like a pretty good sign to me.


• If being obese was considered attractive and healthy, how awesome and delicious would life be?


• Recently, while driving on the interstate, I saw a digital, flashing message board that read "Distracted driving is deadly driving" in scrolling text. Oh, you mean like trying to read a warning on a digital, flashing message board that also uses scrolling text while driving?


• I wonder if any Jehovah's Witnesses have one of those "No Soliciting" signs above a door to their house.


• We are such a nosy bunch of people, man. Whenever there's a car accident, traffic stalls. Why? Not because the mangled cars are in traffic's way, but because all the drivers in the traffic want to ogle the damage. They need that payoff glance, so much so that they're willing to perpetuate the delay for all -- as if they've never seen a car accident before. You know, it'd be one thing if the drivers were actually looking to see if any help was needed, but, nah, they just want to tap their brakes, survey the carnage, and hurriedly rush back to 80 MPH. It's like a tour of Christmas lights in the park suddenly popped up on the freeway. I actually make a concerted effort to not look if at all possible. What emergency response teams should do is bring out an enormous curtain stand with the ambulance to wrap around the entire scene like a surgery room so that there's nothing to see.

Halloween

If I may be unapologetically honest, I've really grown disappointed with how holidays have evolved. Commercialism and political correctness have successfully soured everything that was ever fun and personal about any choice holiday.

Except Halloween.

Halloween is one "holiday" that has actually benefited from the marketed hype. It's a day to not be taken seriously in any regard. With free candy, ridiculous costumes, a celebration of pseudo-sadism, and for many an excuse to combine "cute" with "slutty as humanly possible," All Hallows Eve is no longer a day of evil spirits and endless fear but rather just a running gag. It's a day that makes fun of itself -- a self-deprecating joke that never gets old.

That is why Halloween is phenomenal: it will never run out of steam because it only gets more absurd each year. And in Halloween's case, absurdity is the lasting tradition.

Take for example my grocery shopping trip on Halloween this year. While I'm pushing a cart of frozen pizzas around, I scoot past the following costumed people: a black cat, a Bob Ross imposter, and a very obese person in very, very short jorts. (Check that -- I'm not entirely certain that last one was a costume.) And my fellow shoppers' reactions? Complete nonchalance. There is no other calendar day where this happens. Wear an ultra-low-cut Rainbow Brite outfit on October 31 and you're hilarious and curiously sexy; wear it on November 1 and you're a sociopathic whore. And that's the beauty of it. You get one day annually to look, dress, and act as big a fool as your imagination can devise, and the general response from any given passerby is total tolerance. Suddenly the typical freaks are customary and the typically customary are freaks -- and lame.

Imagine working the 11pm-3am shift at Taco Bell or White Castle on Halloween night. Could that not be the greatest gig? Employees must fight for that shift. If I worked there, I'd put in my request for that shift around July. Of the previous year. Think of all the celebrity impersonators, fake blood, outlandish wigs, overflowing cleavage, and costumed innuendos -- most of which reek of booze and other influencing pastimes -- you'd encounter all night. Something about a guy in zombie flesh paint and a mullet made of horse hair sincerely trying to order a beef and bean burrito strikes me as endless entertainment and far better than any Halloween throwdown I've been to.

Which leads me to a shrewd, marketable suggestion to all the late-night joints: throw a Halloween party. Think about that, an all-out Halloween bash at your local Waffle House. Man, they wouldn't be able to cook the batter fast enough.