Pointless Halloween

 A completely pointless Halloween quiz … can be found here courtesy of Brian 😉

1. What are your thoughts on green pea soup?  It’s soup and better than bread and butter most days.

2. Would you rather be Bette Midler, Kathy Najimy or Sarah Jessica Parker?  Kathy Najimy

3. Do you carve pumpkins or do you consider it to be a violation of their civil rights?  Hmm, when I have a knife in my hand I am always verbally reminded by R of the day I cut an avocado and cut my finger… and of course I end up cutting myself. So carving is certainly not allowed in my house and anyway it is a violation of civil rights!

4. Have you ever screamed whilst watching a horror movie? (Legitimate screaming, not mere gasping or knocking over your wine glass.)  Yes. And that ended my horror movie days

5. Who was the actual killer in the original “Friday the 13^th” movie?  No idea – never seen the movie

6. As a young child and presumed trick-or-treater, did you carefully plan the streets and houses you would conquer, or did you rush up to each one you could find, full of great expectations, thus setting you up for a lifetime of disappointment?  Never done trick or treating … 😥

7. As an adult and presumed non-trick-or-treater (not judging if you still do), have you ever turned off your porch light on Halloween night because you just weren’t in the mood and/or somehow forgot it was Halloween despite the candy displays that have been in every grocery store since Labor Day?  As an adult I make sure everything is dark as often as I can …

8. If dared, would you stand in front of a mirror and repeat “Candyman” five times? Do I get candy?

9. Do you remember the time when you could safely eat anything in your collected stash of treasures without fear or worry?  Since this is not a big activity here, my stash is always safe

10. Do you remember the time when those treasures might be popcorn balls or candied apples because grownups made an effort to do it up right for the children of the neighborhood? And we would say thank you, ma’am, and really mean it? We say thank you always, otherwise there is a clip around the ear.

11. Do you believe in ghosts? Spirits? Lingering traces of what once was? Yes – there is a blog in there somewhere

12. Have you ever read “Something Wicked This Way Comes?” (Because Ray Bradbury is a master, and you should.)  I should and will (and wanders off to update kindle)

13. If you were raised in a country or culture that doesn’t observe Halloween, do you have a similar holiday or time of year? We all have shared experiences, but they often go by other names… 

14. Did you (or your parents) make your own costumes as a child, or were they store-bought? We always made our own, because we were broke-ass poor most of the time. (Slight exaggeration, but not by much.) Example: I once sauntered out as Dolly Parton, using slightly-deflated soccer balls to represent her signature anatomy as well as my own mother’s green-velvet mini-skirt, because it was the 70s and women actually had such things in their closets. It took me a few years to come out of my own closet…  I still don’t get the costume thing … even besides Halloween. Why be something else when me is scary enough?

15. What are your thoughts on school systems and communities having “Fall Festivals” instead of “Halloween Parties”? My opinion? The overwrought religious folks who want to dilute the innocent fun of Halloween (because it’s all about Satan!) are doing a disservice to the very children that they are pretending to protect. Let the children use their imagination, because it’s the most important thing about them, and without that imagination, we stagnate.  I agree. We are so focused on being PC that we are forgetting that imagination is what fuels all new discoveries.

16. Did you ever read a scary book, in your bed and under the covers, with a flashlight?  Yes (and still do) and while its raining and storming it’s even better.

17. Who is your favorite horror author, if you read such? If you don’t, why are you still taking this quiz? Just kidding. Sort of. (Alternative question: What author best reminds you that life is far too short to read anything that isn’t worth your time?) John Connolly, Stephen King, Dean Koontz. And to answer part two – Any Barbara Cartland or Mills and Boon (I’m taking this to read as bad and pointless books)

18. What horror movie series starred a young Johnny Depp in the first installment?  Do NOT watch horror. Will read it with absolute enthusiasm… watching nope.

19. Would you rather walk through a remote cornfield in the middle of the night, talk to a clown that you discover in a sewer grate, be the winter caretaker at the Overlook Hotel, live in the last house on the left, sign the guest register at a questionable motel that features a taxidermy theme, or use an ATM in the bad part of town at 3AM?  I’d walk through the cornfield to talk to the clown and go bed for the night in the last house on the left and possibly if a usual bout of insomnia struck I would get the cash from the ATM. I don’t like winter so caretaking is out and taxidermy relates to the pumpkins and civil rights theme. *The clown bit I get, one of my personal favourites

20. If you were to write a horror story about your own life, would you change the names of the people who did you wrong?  If I give it a name it can’t scare me anymore …

21. If you were offered the chance at everlasting life, albeit with some not-so-good side effects like having to suck the lifeblood out of innocent people who happened to be in the Ikea parking lot at just the wrong time, would you do it?  Eternal life is a little overrated – the ennui after century 3 or 4 would be suffocating in the extreme. Give me a good 2.5 centuries, looking young and healthy and the option to bow out once I have seen and done it all and I’m in.

22. Of all the people who have passed before us, known or unknown, who would you most like to see sitting across from you at a table in a tapas restaurant in southern Spain, with that golden sun making everything surreal yet perfect, and you can just talk and talk and talk? 

I would like to have a conversation with Manfred von Richthofen, Adolf Hitler, Winston Churchill, Ghengis Khan, Margaret Thatcher, Marilyn Monroe, Charles Darwin, Vincent van Gogh, George Orwell, John Connolly, Leo Tolstoy, Amelia Earhart, Mata Hari, Cleopatra, Marie Curie, Ts’ai Lun, Karl Marx, Plato, Rene Descartes, Voltaire, Asoka – and the list could go on. My choices can be viewed as controversial, but conversation with these people would prove so interesting and enlightening.

On a personal level – my kids, my gran and my partner.