Halloween Lights

In an effort to let things go back to normal and in a natural response to something I rant about every year, thus ends the streak of depressing, king-themed posts. (Not saying they won't be back, just saying i'm ending the streak :P)

I hate the lights people put on their houses. There are some neighborhoods where you can go and find nothing but tastefully decorated homes with an almost elegant air to the lighting. There are neighborhoods you can go and see nothing but stark lawns. My neighborhood is somewhere in the middle. Yes, that's right ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Twinkle-Town.

Now i'm not against the twinkle light. They're cute and they're sparkely and, hey, i used to have some that twinkled along to music. The problem, however, is that in a neighborhood like mine, no one cares that all 10 of their strands of twinkle lights twinkle at different times. There is always one, on a bush somewhere - net lights usually - that looks like the house is undergoing a spontaneous power surge while half of the twinkle lights on the tree in front blink on eight counts - one lone strand hanging in the middle that stays on all the time. Meanwhile, and in the same yard, there is a 6 foot tall inflatable santa illumniated by two spots - one red and one green - and two raindeer made entirely of lights and reebar that flash on and off. Then there's the icicle lighting that runs along the gutters across all of the eaves. Half the strands are blue and half are white, and not in any format or order. They only actually cover 2/3rds of the house and the strand over the living room window is dead. The ones that cross the peak are blinking appaplectically......

I hate the twinkle light installer.

And so, one would ask, why the rant about twinkle lights in the end of October. No one, not even Martha Stewart, is working on getting their christmas decor up yet. And thus we enter the realm of the Halloween Light.

I remember halloween lights from when I was a kid. You saw them in places where you normally wouldn't see an outdoor strand of lights - usually in a classroom when the teacher was trying to be festive and, in my very early teens, my parents bought a ton of them for a halloween party they threw. These were OK. They were a single strands, they all had a shape (a frankenstien head or a skeleton hanging off of the light like a shaped shade.) They didn't twinkle or dance. They didn't do anything.

Perhaps my neighborhood is becoming more ghetto and I just haven't noticed the speed at which it's happening but when I looked out the window last week, I realized that my twinkle light nighbmare was about to start beginnning two months early. Orange net lights - blinking bats - giant inflatable characters - glowing casper door decorations. You have to be fucking kidding me?

Halloween is supposed to be a little bit scary. Jesus, in better years, we hang severed witches heads from posts in the yard - illuminate it with torches along our styrofoam tombstone cemetary. Carved pumpkins and feet upon feet of artificial spider webbing. Hay bales, fake rats, spiders that fall from the ceiling when they register a noise, a ghost that responds to motion and cackles ghoulishly. These things are halloween.

Net lights? Net lights are for christmas time and college dorm rooms. Halloween is about being a little bit spooked - net lights are not spooky! And, in any case, any occasion to let Joe Homeowner put up another strand of lights that he can't seem to plug in at the same time as the other strand sof lights (EXTENSION CORDS PEOPLE!) is not an occasion i'm a fan of.

Please, i'm begging you, don't make me do this again in a month.