Pumpkin carving. Horror movies. Garfield cartoons. Stormy nights, sweater weather, hot drinks and inflatable lawn ornaments. Candy, everywhere. Freddy, Jason. Vampires and gutter sleaze. Thunder and wonder.

It can only mean one thing. October has arrived!

Thought I'd commemorate the occasion by spelling out "IT IS OCTOBER" with Boo Berry cereal:

...but making words out of Boo Berry turned out to be harder than I thought. I hope you will accept the abbreviation.

This is an exciting time, for me and for you. Every night has a chance to be remarkable. Beyond every corner lurks a new ghoulish treasure. Inside every pharmacy sits tons of black nail polish and little Snickers bars. You don't need to be a hardcore Halloween nut to appreciate this.

After all, October 1st marks the official start of that gloriously annual three-month spread where we can hide our collective pain and suffering under a blanket of hot holiday action. From pumpkins to turkeys to snowmen, there is now a moratorium on frowning until January. Yes yes yes!

My spirit's been up -- way up. This year, Halloween has not failed me. I can't speak for you, though. Those who represent the holiday spirit can be picky with their arrows, and sometimes, you just can't seem to feel it. It happens. Lawd knows, it's happened to me many times, with the evidence in X-E's archives.

But I can help you help yourself:

Damn right. Longtime readers will remember X-E's dreadful 2007 Halloween Countdown. I puttered out early and couldn't even muster the oomph to fake it through a couple of paragraphs about bat-shaped Peeps. It was awful. I can't remember what my real life issues were at the time, but if I couldn't find joy in spooky Peeps, things must've seriously sucked.

I never did get myself back on track in 2007, but I came pretty close, all thanks to a special wonder called a Halloween Mood Table. For those curious, here's the original entry. As the witches have their religious shrines, we too need something to keep our dedication unwavering. Not to the gods and the spirits, but to the ghosts and the banshees. Maybe they're the same things, but my kind deals more in Kit-Kats and rubber spiders.

All you'll need is a little table. A coffee table, or an end table. Anything that is a TABLE will suffice. If it already has stuff on it -- get rid of it. Empty it entirely. To make a Halloween Mood Table effectively, you must begin with a blank canvas. Shown above is mine. It's tacky, it's tiled and it's falling apart. If any table needs a boost, this is it.

Your mission: Saturate your chosen table in Halloween goodies. Everything you have, whatever you can find, and all the things that make you happy. Your Halloween Mood Table will ultimately serve a decorative purpose, yes, but the main goal is to put something in your field of vision that will annihilate any lingering notion that Halloween sucks. Because Halloween doesn't suck. All month long, your table will remind you of this.

(click here for the super-sized version)

My Halloween Mood Table contains everything needed to guarantee that the 2010 season remains great. At least, when I'm at home. And I usually am, because the world is scary.

At first glance, it just seems to be a mess of random spooky stuff. And, well, it is, but it's more than that, too. Separately, the treasures on this little table aren't worth much, but as a singular unit, they're impossible to ignore. So long as this table stands, there's no way I'll wish Halloween was over.

Upon closer inspection, my Halloween Mood Table paves way for night after night of foreboding fun. To start, it's littered in candles and novelty lights, and who wouldn't be lifted by that sort of illumination?

I've also topped the table with a stack of creepy DVDs, with the inference being that I must watch each one of them before Halloween. I've seen some of those movies a thousand times. Others, never. But because the Halloween Mood Table demands it, I will watch them all, no matter if it's a first viewing or a 576th viewing. Yes, the table has that power.

Squint and you'll notice a fair amount of candy on there, too. That's partly an offering to the disembodied spirit of my Halloween Mood Table, but it's mostly there so me and my guests will have something to eat when we're watching Child's Play 2.

Then there are all sorts of decorations and toys, running the gamut from lumpy gourds to cans of Ecto-Plazm, all serving to improve the presentation, and to give me something to play with when playing is necessary. I even threw a mutant pumpkin on there -- the thought being that soon, before it gets too slimy, I'll carve it into something photo-worthy.

When I created my first Halloween Mood Table back in 2007, I did it for me. I needed it. This year, I'm okay, but maybe you're not. If that's the case, get on it. Make. Your. Table. It will work. Really. I've never lied to you, except about finishing Advent Calendars and updating you on the progress of my Triops. You have to trust me on this.

And that's just one of a thousand ways to make your Halloween season rock. I've mentioned it a lot this year, but I feel like I really learned some important lessons, even if they're not actually important at all. There is nothing that cannot be made Halloweeny with a little effort. Not even sandwiches.

Like Fluffernutters? You're pretty great. And you should be advised that Wal-Mart sells big tubs of Halloween cookie cutters for seven bucks.

General rule: If it can cut through cookie dough, it can cut through bread, peanut butter and Fluff.

And so, lunch becomes something worth sending seventeen people text messages about.

Happy October 1st. You only get one a year.