All illustrations by the boy Sam Taylor
All Hallows Even doth approach, and the only thing I fear is a lack of shareable, list-based content. Actually, that's a lie: I have a ton of fears, just that one is the main one. I mean, these aren't even half of them, in no particular order:
CONCISE LIST OF ALL THE THINGS I AM CURRENTLY SCARED OF, ACCURATE AS OF OCTOBER 16
— Being found out
— Bridges
— Heights in generally, but bridges are included in that still
— I had a nightmare once where I was a kid and the curtains in my room—I had these heavy, deep red velvet-effect curtains, the kind you touch and they put every nerve in your body on edge, so they were kind of a horror already—and the curtains in my room contorted and folded their way into a huge terrible face, a lot like Zordon from Power Rangers but mad at me, and the curtains just shouted at me for a bit, told me what a bad kid I was, why I was a disappointment, why I'd never amount to much of anything much at all, that I was just a pissy-pants baby, and honestly I've been wary of red and/or velvet effect curtains ever since, because can you really trust them
— Dogs, which in my opinion are just tiny bustling sacks of muscle constantly primed and ready to execute a perfect vertical leap and bite me clean on the dick
— Being sued for defamation by light entertainment quiz geniuses
— Been really thinking about death a lot lately, like: the precise moment of death. Can you imagine those few last seconds before death, when you know it is coming—you are wheezing desperately at your last few lungfuls of air, your heart is going through its last ever beats, your brain is slowly blacking out at the edges, this is it, this is the end for you and you know you are dying? Can you imagine any greater fear? Any more panic a human being can experience? We all go through this. We all have to have it happen to us. But when I die, man. Man. I am really not looking forward to that
— Undercooked egg whites
— A lack of shareable list-based content
So anyway, here's some shareable list-based content. Please share this. Please. I'm going to get found out soon. They are going to find me out. The more you share this, the more that day gets pushed back. Please. I have rent to pay. I have to eat. Please.
DON'T: ACTIVELY BUY SWEETS FOR CHILDREN
I'm not saying children are a sort of organized gang at the moment, but I do feel a lot that children are an organized gang at the moment, and if you drop $10 on supermarket special bumper bags of Haribo and hand them out cheerfully at your door then the child army shall mobilize, messaging each other through whatever apps kids use—Pokémon Go, or whatever—saying how they found an easy mark, sharing your address, putting your details on Club Penguin, and soon hordes of tiny humans in harrowing costumes will claw at your door demanding candies. Here's a thing: when was the last time you sorted out your spice cupboard properly? When was the last time you got in the back of your fridge and saw exactly how many bottles of ketchup you had? Halloween is the one way it's socially acceptable to palm these gifts—of chewy cardamom pods, of clumped Nando's salt, of half a bag of oats—off to children under the guise of holiday-motivated charity. Take full advantage.
DON'T: UPDATE FACEBOOK OR TWITTER WITH THE STATUS 'DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DRESS AS THIS WEEKEND—ANY IDEAS? SOMETHING CHEAP. HELP!'
Motherfucker: nobody knows what to dress as this weekend. Nobody has any ideas. Nobody wants to spend money or time on an adequate costume. They just want to go to the nearest house party they have been invited to on a Saturday night and get really, really drunk and then fingered by Dracula. Stop asking them to do your thinking for you and just go wrapped in a loo roll and say you are a mummy, just like everyone else.
DON'T: ACTUALLY LINE UP OUTSIDE A COSTUME SHOP, THOUGH
Don't know how this works in other parts of the country where the sensible people live, but in London on Halloween proper a fun thing to do is walk down to your nearest costume shop with a bag of chips and maybe some beer and just laugh and laugh and laugh at the people lined around the block outside, waiting desperately for hours for a go on the one-in, one-out system. There are bouncers on the doors of a costume shop for these people. We are talking about folks turning up at 4 AM or camping like it's a Supreme drop. People getting legitimate kidney infections because they don't dare piss and lose their place. All just so they can, finally, dash into a store, look at the bereft shelves and, in a panic, drop $80 on a costume that nobody at the party actually gets.
DO: FUCKING COMMIT TO YOUR COSTUME
Three kinds of costume:
— Barely-be-assed Dracula fangs-'n'-cape or a Frankenstein's Monster forehead and a load of hastily applied greasepaint; costumes that are so shoddy and half-there that I actually respect them;
— Tried really hard and it actually looks really good and cool, but also like, you spent four weeks collecting cardboard from supermarket dumpsters just to make a gigantic heart-eyes emoji, sort your life out;
— A snide costume-without-a-costume that fits the base parameters of a costume
– a T-shirt with "Global Warming" written on it, or something; something bullshit like that—but that isn't actually a costume, it's just you pretending you're too good to dress up and have fun, and if you're too good to dress up and have fun then what is wrong with you.
DO: AT LEAST TRY TO WASH THE FAKE BLOOD FROM BEHIND YOUR EARS BEFORE YOU DO YOUR SUNDAY MORNING WALK OF SHAME
Halloween is actually underrated in terms of what it does to people's sexual freedom, and it's time we woke up to that. Like: you know how everyone is really down to fuck on New Year's Eve, because New Year New Me, and because they don't have work in the morning? Or: you know how kill-or-be-killed Tinder goes on Valentine's Day and the lead up to Valentine's Day? Halloween is like that: there's some sort of weird nationwide loss of inhibition because everything is literally dressed as an Other, and so mentally something eases round the gears a touch and you start acting like a different person—a better you, a more confident you—and, long story short, you just woke up in Lewisham, still in your cat eye contacts and with your ass cheeks glued together, and god, oh god: shamble out into the light with all the other up-with-the-cockerel just-shagged zombies and try to make it home before the sun truly rises and everyone can see clearly which strands of hair are clumped together with fake blood and which are bound with actual jizz.
DON'T: HARSH ON THE SLUTS, MY GOD
"Oh, right, and what have you come as: a slutty cat? Yeah, real original"—you, dressed as Jon Snow with a scratchy mascara beard, propping up the corner of the kitchen at a house party where all the actual action is happening in the front room, bathroom, and yard, and you are alone drinking the three cans of PBR you bought yourself before going home to jerk off.
"You people know you don't have to dress as sluts, right! Why don't you dress as an inspirational woman, such as——like Marie Curie, or something? The scientist!"—you, the guy who spent $40 on a cross-town Uber to a party you were only half invited to, and your costume of choice is "the same black jeans and black T-shirt you wear every day, only with a skull mask to accessorize," and everyone has done a cocaine order but very pointedly not asked you in on it because nobody even knows who you are but you keep putting Avenged Sevenfold on the Spotify playlist and saying to people "No, really listen to the notes."
"Heh: are sluts meant to be scary, or something?"—you, the person whose greatest fear is female sexual autonomy.
DON'T: DRESS AS ANYTHING NEWSWORTHY FROM 2016
It's 2 AM and you're in the garden drinking a lukewarm can of Red Stripe watching Donald Trump wrestle Harambe to see who got the most "Heh, yeah! I totally get it! Who... who invited you?" comments at the party. You're better than this. We're all better than this.
DON'T: GO ADULT TRICK-OR-TREATING
I once answered the door to two 17-year-olds in shabby Reebok hoodies and over-the-head masks who gruffly said "trick or treat," and for some reason I didn't fear being stabbed to death that day so I said "do you have a trick," and they looked at each other silently—nothing quite so eerie as two motionless skull masks twisting in the dark towards each other, eyes blank beneath—then turned back to me and said "no." And I thought: I have never seen two more pathetic people in my life. Do not be those people. As soon as you can buy your own sweets without having to rely on pocket money, do not go trick or treating, even ironically.
DON'T: TRY TO COERCE ACTUAL PEOPLE INTO YOUR HALLOWEEN VIBE WHEN THEY'RE JUST TRYING TO QUIETLY GET HOME
Halloween is really fun when you're dressed as an undead cowboy and drinking six cans of Desperados on the train and all your friends are excited and full of fun and someone is passing a decorative pumpkin full of sweets and chocolate around, but it's absolute bullshit if you're just getting off a ten-hour shift and want to get home to watch Fright night X Factor without some asshole in a sheet jumping out at you and saying "boo!" when you're trying to top up your subway card. Do not be that guy.
DON'T: DO A NAIL BUMP OFF THOSE GLOW-IN-THE-DARK WITCH FINGERS YOU GOT OFF AMAZON, THAT IS HOW PEOPLE DIE
Come on, man. EMTs already have enough of a time trying to tell who is actually bleeding and who is just covered in corn syrup. Don't make their night worse.
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