I've seriously miscalculated the time it will take to do what I need to do before going to sleep tonight, so this entry will be short. I've long considered myself the kind of person who cannot do good work unless I'm fending off a deadline, but I'm starting to think that that's all bullshit. I'm a horrible procrastinator, and I'm about to pay for it.

Thank you Mr. Wonka! It's rare to find any decent new Halloween stuff so late in the season, and I was certain that I'd have to survive on the fumes from junk I bought four weeks ago but deemed unworthy of reviewing. Not so! At least not until later in the week!

This SweeTarts Squeez tube is a holiday spinoff not unlike that wintery-themed version I reviewed last December. What's most admirable about Wonka's foray into the haunted forest is the flavor's title: "Cherry Gooey Blood." Blood! Candy makers lost their zeal for being edgy and hardcore long ago, and it's become unusual to find candy that connects with blood in a stated, literal way.

Sure, there are plenty of sweets with gooey red centers that are very clearly intended to mimic blood, but few companies are willing to say it outright. Wonka, you hero. I now completely forgive you for that gratuitous scene of Grandpa Joe dancing in response to getting an invite to the Chocolate Factory during Burton's vision of your weird little story. Okay maybe not completely.

The imagination of children is vastly superior to the imagination of me or you. They're able to merge fact and fiction seamlessly, and thus, I sincerely envy the many seven-year-olds who eat this sugary crap and convince themselves that blood really is an ingredient. I can't tell you how much my crotchety mood would improve if I could fool myself into believing that some man or animal died to feed me SweeTarts.

The collective palate of those same seven-year-olds, unsoiled by years of tobacco and liquor and irresistible urges to do the 9-Volt Battery Tongue Trick, is probably best suited to a candy like this, but even my old tongue thinks "Cherry Gooey Blood" is mad serviceable. It's as close as you'll get to tasting a cherry Slurpee without actually tasting a cherry Slurpee. It's the astronaut food version of a cherry Slurpee.

Sharing a consistency with sandy toothpaste and packing enough of a sour bite to make my brow furl, the SweeTarts Squeez "Cherry Gooey Blood" tube is a welcome addition to the parade of goofy crap I've eaten this Halloween season. I won't give it an A+, but it's somewhere close. Let's say B+.

Assuming that X-E's current devotion to an all-spooky motif has attracted some readers from the various covens dotting the outskirts of Verizon FiOS's range, I'd like to ask any witches who might be reading a favor: Do the spell that makes tonight last for 75 hours. Please. I promise to kill a chicken in your name tomorrow.