I admit it: You had no chance of guessing what was in yesterday's mystery picture. BDBull came the closest: "Looks like someone forgot to write an entry." Touche and ouch, motherfucka. Actually, the picture was a failed attempt to snap proof of my local grocer's ability to start celebrating Halloween in early August. There was a whole spread of Halloween candy -- and not just bags of fun-sized candy bars, mind you...REAL Halloween candy -- in the center of the store, and all this week, I've been seeing other stores and establishments following suit. It's exciting in some ways, but as a person who buys Halloween things and writes about them, it kind of sucks to have to judge whether to buy-and-hoard or buy-and-write-now. Especially because I'm already finding good stuff.
Reason for the mystery picture's mysteriousness: After many years of fine service, my cell phone's camera now only takes pictures that look like a surveillance screen on a busted Russian sub. Oh well, I needed a new phone anyway. I'll buy a Razr, add some tufts of faux brown fur onto the case and puppet it around town to ask other phones where Tokka is.
I know there are a few people who hate the site in October due to a lack of affection for Halloween, but for the most part, we're all holiday junkies here. But, while it's awesome to see pumpkins and ghouls alongside inflatable pools and sunglasses, it's definitely too early for this. By the time October rolls around, everything in stores will seem old hat, and by the time mid October rolls around, everything in stores will look like Santa Claus. At least, that's my theory based on doing the Halloween Countdown for all these years. By the time the calendar smacks 10/20, it feels like store chains are totally about Christmas and totally over Halloween. It sucks, because we the public look to store chains for direction in our life. It's hard to celebrate a holiday when they're already celebrating the next holiday.
On the other hand, I'm really stoked to have orange and black M&M's with little pumpkin faces on them. In August. Especially when they're peanut butter M&M's, and especially when they're peanut butter M&M's that come in bags featuring M&M's dressed as Dracula.
Grinch Night - Texas Chainsatari Massacre - Hallo Decorations, 2002
This is your Saturday Night Thread.
Posted by Matt on 08/05/2006. E-mail me!
Chestnuts roasted by 
Tony, I was gonna say that too. There are Hy-Vees all over Lincoln. The funniest part is that there are the cheap, crappy ones where everything is low prices (and kinda dirty), and the newer ones in the "rich" part of town where the same product is twice as much. Genius!
I was in a junk store last week, and they had an Easter display out. I spent five minutes trying to decide if it was new Easter stuff for next year, and they’re super early, or it was old stuff from last Easter and they’re just lazy. Then the store manager came over, offered to give me everything on the table at half off, so I ran away. He smelled like cabbage.