Tag: halloween

#oneaday Day 146: Spooky scary brownies

It’s Halloween! I used to really enjoy Halloween, but as you get older it becomes more and more of a wet fart of a celebration, unless you have kids. For the last few years, we haven’t even had any Trick or Treaters visit — though we did have a couple tonight. For my sins, I spent the evening editing a 75 minute video about Atari games rather than actually playing the horror game I am in the middle of (Spirit Hunter NG) but such is the way of hyperfixating. I could have stopped partway through the project, but my brain kept saying “go on, you’re nearly done”, and before I knew it, I was done. I wish I could find that sort of motivation for anything that actually mattered.

Anyway, Halloween. I have a few fond memories from various years. The earliest one I can recall was from when we were in America. I talked a little about this trip to America when I revealed my longstanding (and mostly overcome) fear of the wimdotch wib hamdongs, but there were lots of other things that happened on that trip. One of them was spending Halloween with someone my parents knew. I can’t remember who the people were, what their names were or even if they were actually American or just British folks who had ended up living out there, but one thing I do remember is the lady of the house baking brownies.

I had never had brownies before this Halloween visit to this mystery family, and my introduction to them was with the most amazing home-made brownies I have ever tasted in my life. I have spent the intervening 35+ years trying various types of brownie from all manner of sources, and not one has ever matched the brownies I had that one October night in 1985. And I don’t know why. Surely a brownie is a brownie? All I remember that might be a distinguishing factor is that these home-made brownies had walnuts in, and as a fussy kid I didn’t think I liked walnuts. (I still don’t.) But baked into those brownies they were wonderful.

So yeah. I hope before I die I can have at least one brownie that is even half as good as the brownies I had that night. I will continue to feel unfulfilled until that happens.

Another completely unrelated memory is from a Halloween night at university. Scary Movie had just come out, and Scream was still fashionable, so, being a shy sort, I figured dressing up as the Scream killer would be a great Halloween costume. And it was! The really interesting thing I found was that by completely hiding my entire appearance, I suddenly had way more self-confidence than I had ever felt in my life. I was laughing and joking with complete strangers, doing the “WAZAAAPP” thing from Scary Movie, and I was having a thoroughly lovely time.

I can’t remember anything else about the evening other than the walk into Portswood, Southampton dressed as the Scream killer — I suspect once I arrived at my destination I proceeded to get absolutely twatted off my face on cheap cocktails — but that feeling of being nigh-invincible on the walk to the venue is something that has stuck with me ever since… and is a feeling I’d love to recapture at some point, somehow.

Anyway, my Halloween has been mostly uneventful, as you can probably tell, but it’s now ten past midnight, my video has finished rendering and I still have to work tomorrow. So I should probably go to bed, huh.

Sweet screams or whatever.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

1017: An Uneventful Halloween

I actually quite like Halloween, barring the whole “locking yourself in the dark to avoid terrifying teenage trick or treaters” thing, which I don’t have to do any more because I don’t live in an area infested with pikey scumbags. (Also, it was absolutely chucking it down with hail earlier, so any trick or treaters who actually braved the elements deserve a fucking medal, not some pathetic “fun size” chocolate. “Fun size”. What the fuck is “fun” about chocolate that is smaller than it is supposed to be anyway? Fuck off, pathetic chocolate. Gosh, I’m in a bad mood tonight. I apologise, and will take a deep breath after I close these parentheses.)

Ahem. Anyway. Yes. I actually quite like Halloween, though this is perhaps more due to my love of dressing up than the actual spooky day itself. Although there is a certain perverse pleasure in the amount you can get away with on Halloween. I won’t get into the whole “sexy costumes” thing now, but, well, no-one really bats an eyelid (no pun intended) if you’re dressed like a complete loon.

One of my favourite Halloweens was back when I was at university. It was around the time of Scream and Scary Movie, so the “black robe with mask” look was “in”. I participated, and went along on a night out with my friends dressed in full Scream regalia. It was an interesting experience, because beneath all the flowing robes and the mask that completely obscured my identity, I felt pretty confident for once, even going so far as to share a few Scary Movie– (and Budweiser-) -inspired “WAZAAAAAP”s with complete strangers. So that was fun. (Drinking through that mask was impossible, though, which kind of ruined the illusion somewhat.

I haven’t had the opportunity for a good Halloween fancy dress kind of situation for a long time now, though. When you’re in your early 30s and two hours away from all your friends, no-one seems to invite you to parties any more. (Not that I’m particularly fun at parties anyway, but still. Or perhaps it might just be that no-one’s actually throwing any parties.) I’m not really complaining — parties are rife with all that enforced socialisation, and if you feel like you want to leave after half an hour, everyone gives you weird looks, regardless of how awesome your costume was. Clearly what I need to do is to throw my own Halloween party and invite only people I actually like and who all know each other. That way the entire hideous situation can hopefully be avoided for everyone. And we can concentrate on doing something like playing board games instead.

Regrettably, it’s a tad late to organise that now, but perhaps next year. I propose an evening of horror-themed entertainment — perhaps an episode or two of something like Haiyore! Nyaruko-san early in the evening to get everyone warmed up, then some light horror-themed games (Chez Cthulhu, Lord of the Fries and Last Night on Earth spring to mind) followed up by a lengthy game of something like Arkham Horror into the wee small hours. With everyone in costume.

That sounds fun, right? It sounds fun to me. Sadly, for this year, I will have to content myself with the complete non-event that was Halloween in Chippenham, in which I spent most of the evening being by turns grumpy at the fact my brand new laptop apparently has a faulty battery (BOO to you, Novatech!) and quite depressed at the news that a games journalism freelancer killed himself earlier. He wasn’t someone I knew personally, but it’s still sad news to hear. But that’s a discussion for another day, I feel.

On a brighter note, tomorrow is November, and if you’ll recall my post from a few days ago that means a month of fiction here on this site. The stickmen will be taking a short hiatus while I aim to churn out a couple of thousand words a day, but they’ll be back at the start of December. (Holy crap, December. Where did this year go?)

I am rambling. So I will cut that short. Hope you had a good Halloween.