The Grinch of Halloween

I don't really like Halloween.

There, I said it. It's just not my thing.

When you say you don't like Halloween, people look at you as if you just said, "I hate kittens," or "My hobby is exposing myself to young children," which really is unfair.

When I was a kid, my parents bribed me out of participating in Halloween. They always go to church on Halloween because they are God-fearing Roman Catholics, and it's the vigil for All Saint's Day, a holy day of obligation. So when I was 7, they made me a deal. If I didn't go out trick-or-treating, I would get any toy I wanted. Being a savvy consumer from a very young age, I knew a good deal when I saw one, and I agreed to it. So every year we went to 5:30 mass and then to the toy store. One year I got a pound puppy.

Luckily the driveway to 23 Broad Street is six and a half miles long and there's no light at the end, so I kind of accidentally got to live in a trick-or-treater-proof apartment without even realizing it when I moved in.

I mean, I am scared to go down the driveway, and I already know what's at the end. Uh, which actually is a little bit scary if you consider my colorful neighbor Paul, who wears overalls without a shirt underneath, is a dead ringer for Shrek, and owns three shotguns, but I digress.

My point is that the little candy-beggars are too scared to come knock on the door. So I don't have to participate in supporting their sugar highs.

Most of the time, the little bastards are too lazy even to say "trick-or treat" anyway! When I have given candy out in the past, I don't give any to the ones who don't say it. One year a yellow power ranger thought he was entitled to his fun-sized milky ways even though he refused to say it. Needless to say, I squashed his attitude right at the door when I gave each of his trick-or-treat-saying becostumed companions candy and gave him nothing but a life lesson.

Hey, I don't make the rules. I just enforce them.

Quite possibly the most friendly, pleasant, and likeable girl in the world works at my gym. Her favorite holiday is Halloween and she has practically been exploding with excitement that it was rapidly approaching. She looked absolutely gutted when I told her I'm not a Halloween person. She gasped and put her hand over her heart. I didn't even consider mentioning that I'm not really a fan of holidays in general and that I think Christmas is "just OK."

Anyhow, another woman working out with us mentioned she doesn't like halloween, either, and I thought I finally had an ally in this. Turns out the poor thing had a harrowing experience as an 8-year-old when some older trick-or-treaters stuck a stick in her back like a gun and robbed her of her candy-filled pillowcase.

I admit she has a much better reason not to like Halloween than I do.

But I still stand up for my right not to like Halloween, regardless of the fact that I wasn't fake-mugged for my candy as a child.

And even though my parents stopped proffering toys on October 31 years ago, I still keep the tradition going strong. Tonight I will head straight to Bloomingdale's after work, and I will definitely leave with a treat.

I don't even like mini Snickers bars: pilarrrgh@gmail.com

The Dark Times are Over

I am offering a free box of tissues to each and every one of you to dry the rivers of tears that no doubt flowed during my brief absence from the bloggosphere.

It must have been dark times for you these past two weeks. I know you depend on 23 Broad Street to get you through the day. And I do apologize.

But I was busy making this fancy wedding cake, see?

You may not have known that my talents stretched this far beyond being a cute, witty blogger. Oh, but they do!

I definitely can satisfy any sweet tooth you've got...with my sparkling personality, or with a hunk of chocolate cake.

All this, and she can cook, too: pilarrrgh@gmail.com

My Brilliance Comes in Flashes, and Usually over E-mail

Stacy from work and I were just emailing, a conversation about how most Tiffany silver jewelry (like the dog tags or that typical tiffany ring) is kinda ugly and definitely ridiculously overpriced for a hunk of sterling.

For that kind of money, I said I'd rather have diamonds from one of those diamond stores that advertise on TV late at night. Stacy agreed and said she likes the silver jewelry from a hippy shop better.

I mean, God bless you if you love the Tiffany stuff, but it's just not my thing.

My exebf (ex English boyfriend) sent me a knockoff of the stupid Tiffany heart necklace once when he was going to France for two weeks where there wasn't a phone. I guess it was to make me feel like he was with me while we were apart and couldn't talk.

Beautiful sentiment, ugly necklace. I opened the package when it came in the mail and I was like, "What the fuck is this?" Not because I'm ungrateful, but because I'm not the sort of broad who wears dainty heart-shaped necklaces. But I wore it anyway because at the time, it reminded me of him more than it reminded me of how ugly it was. Of course this was back when being reminded of him didn't make me feel like crying, puking, and throwing myself a party all at the same time.

But I have strayed off course.

Stacy was saying she wished aquamarine had the same staus of a diamond, "because it is so sparkly and light blue." Then she could have an engagement ring that is an aquamarine.

Aquamarine is about to become a huge theme in this post and I didn't even realize it would. Because my birthstone is aquamarine (that makes me a Pisces, for those of you wondering what house my moon is in right now). And I have a friend named Jill who got a giant aquamarine engagement ring instead of a diamond. Which is weird because aside from maybe peridot (Leo's birthstone), aquamarines are like the least glamourous birthstone ever, and I had never heard of anyone coveting them before Jill got engaged and Stacy sent me that email.

But still, I've not reached my point. When I read Stacy's idea of an aquamarine engagement ring, I got one of my patented Flashes of Brilliance™. I mean, I don't even like rings. My fingers recoil in fear when they see a ring coming at them. They feel trapped and suffocated wearing rings. Look at that, turns out I can blame my fear of commitment on my fingers. I'll have to remember that.

So back to the Brilliance™. I decided that if I ever allow someone to marry me, I will not accept an engagement ring (aquamarine or otherwise). No, no!. I'll get an engagement Mini Cooper! In electric blue, which is kinda like aquamarine, with a checkerboard roof and mirrors. And all the fixins.

So if I ever get that bf who's willing to folllow me into the dark, he'll have to be quick because I'll be speeding away in my Mini.

Let's motor: pilarrrgh@gmail.com

Friday's Gold Medal for Beautiful Song Lyrics Goes To...

Death Cab for Cutie's "I Will Follow You into the Dark"

Here's a taste for you:

Love of mine, someday you will die
But I'll be close behind
I'll follow you into the dark
No blinding light or tunnels to gates of white
Just our hands clasped so tight
Waiting for the hint of a spark
(Chorus:)
If heaven and hell decide
That they both are satisfied
Illuminate the "No"s on their vacancy signs
If there's no one beside you when your soul embarks
Then I'll follow you into the dark

It's a nice idea, isn't it, someone loving another person that much?

If you think the lyrics are beautiful on their own, you should hear Ben Gibbard lilt them wistfully against a barely there acoustic guitar. Download it for a mere $0.99 and put it on your iPod to listen to on one of those cold, gray, autumn saturdays spent under a blanket on your couch.

Applications being accepted for a boyfriend who would follow me into the dark: pilarrrgh@gmail.com

"We'll All Get Raped and Robbed": A Subway Story

Nothing can make a bunch of upper-middle-class white people nervous like making them take a ride on the subway.

Each weekday morning I rise before the sun, pull myself together, and highttail it to the local train station where I catch a 7:16 regional rail train to the City of Brotherly Love. It's a nice ride. I can't complain. Much safer than allowing me to control a potentially deadly weapon (my car) in rush-hour traffic.

The people who take my train mostly are affluent white folk over the age of 40 who need their big-city, white-collar salaries to pay for their manicured suburban lifestyles. They wear freshly dry-cleaned suits and carry thick, Italian leather briefcases; they wear 3-carat diamond boulders on their important fingers and clickity click on their laptops and read the Inquirer on their ride to work on the train.

Mostly. I mean, you have your commuting students, your blue-collar laborers, and your under 35-ers, but we're the minority. Oh, you have your occasional people of color riding the train, too, who range from students to high-powered business folk. They're the minority (go figure) too, 'cause the suburbs I come from are pretty much white-toast places. And it's the white people I'm gonna talk about.

This morning, two stops from center city, our comfy commute was interrupted by an announcement that there was "police activity" in the regional rail tunnels (that's public-transport-speak for bomb threat) and that we'd all be getting off the train at Fern Rock where we'd have to take the subway the rest of the way to the city.

Fern Rock sounds like a lovely place, doesn't it? You're thinking of a mossy forest floor and a gray boulder with velvety ferns growing around it, perhaps next to an idyllic stream or creek. You're close, but with less moss and more pawn shops.

But either way, no big shit, beause none of us pampered commuters were going to have to leave the train station, just switch over to the subway.

Being that I work in a section of the city too ghetto to be serviced directly by the suburban Regional Rail lines, I have to take a subway every morning anyway. So the smell of human waste, the paralyzing humidity, and the people who aren't "just like me" riding on the same vehicle as I am are de rigeur. I just take shallow breaths and put a miserable look on my face (so really I just keep my normal look) like everybody else. No big whoop.

But you should have heard the pissing and moaning from the white folks on the train. Mind you, they were completely unconcerned that there was a bomb threat in the tunnel our train usually goes through. They were up in arms that they were expected to take the subway.

"THE SUBWAY!?!? We'll all get raped and robbed." (A fake-redheaded woman in her 60s with 10 pounds of yellow-gold and diamond jewelry on and all leopard-print coordinating accessories, even her shoes)

"I'd rather take my chances with the bomb than ride in a train with the people who take the subway." (A 40-something man in a three-piece pinstriped suit: pocket square, cufflinks, and permanent sneer included)

"I'm not getting off this train. We'll get shot walking from here to the subway station." (A 50-something frizzy-haired blond with inch-long acrylic nails and a 25-year-old's breasts, courtesy of her plastic surgeon)

And these comments were made out loud. Sometimes even directly to other commuters. Because these people are that sheltered and that prejudiced. As if the smell of urine in the subway station wasn't doing enough of a job on me, these people made me want to barf.

Despite their whining, they all got on the subway anyway, didn't they. And they all got to work safely, didn't they.

And the people who usually take the subway every morning who got on the train at the subsequent stops were really nice to them and offered them directions and help determining which stop to get off at, didn't they. Yes. They did.

If I was one of the people bitching about the subway and the "kind of people" who ride it, I'd hang my head in shame. Shame! But the same people who minutes earlier were stereotyping and name-calling took the advice and help of the subway regulars without a single grain of irony.

Me? I still got to work, close to on time, and without being bombed on the way (which I appreciated), just like the complainers did. Only I wasn't a raging asshole on the way.

Looking for a carpool: pilarrrgh@gmail.com

When Emoticons Don't Convey the Emotion You're Going for

My boss uses this face all the time in his emails:

:>)

I hate it. Instead of it making me think of him smiling, therefore infecting me with enough pleasant, smiley feelings to make me smile as well, it makes me want to scream and punch a hole in my monitor.

Tell me if you know a good therapist: pilarrrgh@gmail.com

Putting The O.C. in OCD

I wouldn't say I'm a computer genius, but I did manage to download an episode of the-very-best-TV-program-in-the-whole-wide-world-ever, The O.C., last night.

I have to give an O.C.-style fist-pound to my peeps, xxxx_Rachel_xxxx and doodleeatsffs from the IMDB O.C. message board, for introducing me to the world of downloading freaking TV shows off the Internet.

In just 1 hour and 8 minutes I was able to have, playing on my very own computer screen, episode one from The O.C. season 3, "The Aftermath." I wept.

Because you don't understand. We had missed the first two episodes of this season! Desperate times, my friends. Until the nice folks on the IMDB boards answered my plea for help in getting my paws on them.

Let me backtrack slightly. You may recall that the consequences of my partying it up in the Houston left me in sad shape for a couple of weeks.

I decided that while I was recovering, I'd start watching the DVDs of a television program that looked like something I should have watched from the beginning, but that I'd missed the boat on because I was stuck keeping house and cooking bland food for my hairy ex-boyfriend in freaking England when it premiered in the summer of 2003.

So one night I called up Kelli and I was like, "Let's not go to the movies; let's rent The O.C." She also had missed the boat, although I don't think a furry foreigner had anything to do with it. But Blockbuster didn't have all the discs we needed. And there were seven of them and it was going to cost me millions of dollars to rent them. So I decided to buy them instead.

I had no idea that one trip to Best Buy could change my life.

Because, since that day, The O.C. has become heroin to us, such is the hold it has over our lives, such are the lengths we will go to in order to watch it. Kelli and I watched something like 20 episodes in a single weekend. I rushed out and bought season two after that. And it's only taken us three weeks to watch them both. The best part is that we've dragged other unsuspecting people down with us. Ariel and Kate also now have soap-opera-worthy addictions to this soap opera, this television smack that keeps us coming back for more.

I'll leave it at that because if I told you the lying, sneaking, abandoning, and breaking-and-entering that have gone on so that we could watch The O.C. on DVD as quickly and as often as possible, you'd stop being my friend. And not just 'cause you'd find out I dicked you over last Tuesday to watch the Chrismukkah episode for the fifth time. It's almost shameful.

I came to the show for its clever writing, its smart storylines, and its soapy goodness, but I stayed for its brooding bad-boy, Ryan Atwood.

I have already informed Kate that if we ever meet Ben McKenzie (the actor who plays him) I will cut her and push her into the gutter in order to get to him first. In a totally normal, breezy, not-psycho way, of course.

I am well aware that women my age should not have glitter- and streamer-adorned 14-year-old-girl crushes on TV stars, but the brooding! I can't resist a man who can brood. And his bite-worthy biceps do not hurt, either.

Let's just say this: I'm a vegetarian. But for Ben I would make an exception.

And, I mean, last season it was all left up in the air. Ryan almost died! I had to know what happened in the premiere! I had to see if his biceps would be OK, if he'd live to wear another wife-beater.

Enter the reason I'm writing this post, which is because we live in a time in which, well yeah, we fight real wars for fake reasons, but we also can download missed episodes of our favorite TV shows from the Internet.

And really, isn't that all that matters!

Let me know if you have the Tiger Beat with Ben on the cover: pilarrrgh@gmail.com

Falling in Love Again

I have a feeling in the pit of my stomach.

It's that slightly nervous, bubbly, kinda queasy, almost hollow feeling that makes me feel sick and euphoric at the same time.

I know what it is. I'll come right out and say it. I'm in love.

Right now it's all brand new and everything I feel tingles a little bit. We're still trying each other on to get used to how it feels, and every moment together amazes.

"I will stare at you until my eyes fall out."
"I want to hold you close to memorize your scent."
"I can't believe how soft your skin is."

We can't tell if the relationship will always be this punch-drunk and comfortable, if we'll rub each other the wrong way, or if we'll be able to stay together over rougher terrain.

But that's the thrill. Will my investment pay off? It's safer not to invest at all. But the potential -- the potential that the gamble might just pay off -- it's just too tempting not to let myself fall.

Can something this delicious and beautiful be supportive and reliable? Or have good looks enticed me into going "all in" before I've seen enough cards dealt?

Today I don't know. And I don't care. I'm just glad to have the chance to find out. Because I might never find something this perfect again.

Ask me if I got blisters: pilarrrgh@gmail.com