I am the shadow on the moon at night, filling your dreams to the brim with fright

Happy All Hallows' Eve, you guy(s). Been a while since I've posted anything, but then there's really not much to speak of that's going on in West Hammistan these days. I'm working two part-time jobs to pay my bills, while I'm busy looking for a real actual professional job. That's going like gangbusters, by the way... Thanks, Barney Frank!

So I've been hanging at my pad, giving out candy - and band aids, in one case - to the kids stopping by. Later on, I'm going to watch The Thing (easily one of the scariest movies I've ever seen. Also one of the coolest.) and then stay up all night playing X-Com.

Good times, eh?

After-action report: Costumes were a little disappointing this year. Last year, a kid built his own robot costume with metal hoses and crap. Had working lights and everything. Didn't see him this year, or if I did, he was another of the faceless hordes of Clone Troopers that darkened my door. (though in retrospect, if all those kids had planned being Clone Troopers together, that would have been an awesome concept.)

There was a big mob of rude kids, most of whom were dressed in nothing more creative than an old football jersey. (with players from like 10 years ago - seriously, a Cowboys jersey with Joey Galloway's name on it!) Listen kid, don't just grab a half-ass costume off your closet floor and think it entitles you to a handful of my Skittles. I'm not O'Bambi here, kid. I'm not going to be spreading any of my milk-chocolatey wealth around if I don't have to. In fact, I'm pretty bitter about clinging to my religion, guns, and nougat.

In more positive news, there was a little girl with a pretty good pirate outfit. Her brother was dressed as a ninja. I'm not sure if I should be extremely impressed, or extremely nervous that they're aware of the inter-tron's pirates vs. ninjas meme. For the record, neither one of them killed the other while they were at my house. I'll look for swaths of destruction and blood-drenched houses after dawn.

The edge of night, distract yourself

One of the blogs listed on the left over there posted the 12 Products From Hell list (which can be seen here and here - though it's up to you to determine which of them is the author, and which is a copyright-infringing dick-holster) for Halloween recently. I think it was Ace... but that's not really important. Anyway, I was just thinking that I dodged a bullet because I didn't see any of that crap in my trick-or-treat bag this year.

Or so I thought.

I got to the bottom of the bag today (hey, what can I say, I was hungry and I'll be damned if I'm waiting a half hour for Dominoes when there's gummi pizzas in my candy bag right fucking NOW) and I saw something rather curious. Now, I'm generally willing to give someone the benefit of the doubt, so long as it doesn't involve any effort of my part... but If I didn't know better, I'd say those "3 Muskerteerses" bars my neighbor was passing out are Chinese knockoffs. What do you guys think?
After trying to eat one, I can confirm that those sneaky Mao-worshiping bastards have without question the worst quality control standards in the world. (And yes, I fully realize that those are solid lead ingots in the photo... you have no idea how long I searched for pictures of ones with Chinese characters on them.)