Although this is ironically the most harrowing time in human existence, with the seeming constant threat of extinction looming once, you know, the food shortage crisis starts poppin’, somehow humanity hasn’t become more durable against the end times called now so much as increasingly lily-livered and hyper-concerned with everyone’s feelings as they try their best not to say the wrong thing or somehow unwittingly offend someone peripherally or directly involved with gun violence (oh how one misses the time when guns could be used liberally for the purposes of visual art as opposed to shunned and censored with disdain and outrage thanks to the unwell minds of a bevy of basement white male archetypes).
Alas, rather than focusing the collective energy on bothering to, you know, pull this strange realm back together with the spit and glue called not being a selfish prick toward the environment, it seems the strange population of the U.S. (mainly the ones with children that should actually be more terrified than anyone of a future centered around hunger games than what goddamn day Halloween falls on) has chosen instead to fixate on a new frivolous pursuit: getting All Hallow’s Eve to shift from its accepted Day of the Dead date of the 31st. Billed, wholesomely, as the Saturday Halloween Movement, their demand is “simple”: Rip Halloween from its time-honored day as a means to extend the “fun” to an entire weekend all in the name of “safety.”
If the intent is to be able to party “for a safer, longer, stress-free celebration,” it seems somewhat antithetical to the parental attempt at allowing one’s children to trick-or-treat without the apprehension of some bizarre Hocus Pocus fuckery happening so much as the assurance that they can all act as devil-may-care as Jenny Dennison (Stephanie Faracy) in her Blond Ambition Tour costume while the world around her children crashes down unsupervised. Assuming that the intent to protect one’s spawn was real and not merely an excuse for the millennials fast transforming into progenitors to get fucked up without the worry of making it to their co-working space or whatever before noon, what good would it do to protect one’s children from these supposed “Halloween-related injuries?” If anything it would be more injurious than letting them experience the alleged “dangers” of a traditional October 31st Halloween–whenever that date might happen to fall, even if it’s on (gasp!) a Monday. For, after all, at this point, nothing potentially fatal can be bad in terms of preparing for the ultimate Day of the Dead called the apocalypse. If anything, the soundest of parenting would be the kind the baby boomers got from the Silent Generation, throwing them into the lion’s den of the 1960s and 70s without much in the way of helicoptering or lawnmowering (parenting styles that sound more like sexual positions than methods of “rearing”).
But no, denial is at least ninety percent of how humans have decided it’s best to cope with all of the overt signs of being closer to the brink of non-civilization as we have been since WWII. Thus, the petition from our precious Saturday Halloween Movement has officially earned enough signatures to actually be reviewed by the White House, the result of which will purportedly be revealed before (real) Halloween of this year. Showing their swiftboating tendencies, Snickers, one of many candy brands that makes most of their revenue in October, has decided to smear the holiday they once allegedly held sacred with the offer, “A Thursday Halloween? Not Satisfying. Halloween on the last Saturday of October? Satisfying. If the Fed Govt makes it official, we’ll offer 1 million free SNICKERS to America. Join the petition!” It’s not really clear how that one million would be distributed, but then, neither is the reason why this “movement” has gathered so much steam. Save to further provide yet another concrete example of the pussy times we live in, where one can’t even say “pussy” without it being deemed antifeministic because it is using the symbol of the vagina as an emblem of weakness (but it has to be quid pro quo if all obscenities involving some variation of the words “dick” and “prick” refer to a vile and inconsiderate human being as only a man can embody).
Should the petition gain its desired aim of moving Halloween to the last Saturday of the month in October, it will, perhaps most pussily of all in its “cuteness,” be billed as National Trick or Treat Day. Because sure, it’s all for the benefit of the kids despite one of the uncredited statistics concluding with the “pièce de résistance,” “51% Of Millennials say Halloween is their favorite holiday, why cram it into 2 rushed evening weekday hours when it deserves a full day!?!” Because Satan forbid a millennial and their even weaker progeny should be denied their unfortunately not razor blade-laced candy (from an era when mass hysteria was handled with dignity) and to eat it, too.
