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Tag: Halloween

The Merits of Quitting

Every time Halloween rolls around, I have a problem. See, I like some of the Halloween trappings, and Gothic tales (Crimson Peak!), but I’m a wuss when it comes to horror, whether gory or psychological. Finding movies to watch that fall in the sweet spot? Almost impossible. Especially because my spouse and I have developed a bad(?) habit of quitting. See, when we met, he was a Film Studies major and I was an English major and film buff. We’ve seen a looot of movies together. We’re also both storytellers, so what we generally do is watch a movie and then dissect it. By now, we’re having trouble finding movies that engage us. It doesn’t help that we prefer science fiction and fantasy, which is currently dominated by the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) and we grew tired of that several phases ago. So looking for spooky seasonal enjoyment, we tried: We didn’t last longer than 15 minutes with any of them. And it’s not a matter of attention span — we both read novels still. It’s just…have we seen too many movies in our lifetime? Has all that dissecting meant that we can spot the lines of the Matrix from a mile away and can’t blur them back into an entertaining tale? Every once in a while, we happen on something we enjoy enough to watch to the end. (And then still dissect, because it’s fun.) It doesn’t have to be a “perfect” film, whatever that means. It just has…

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Halloween in COVID Times

Hi, friends! It’s October, best month of the year! The weather’s finally cooling off, the leaves are turning (and hopefully will get all the way done before a snowstorm kills them all), I can wear boots without looking like a crazy person, etc. And normally there’s Halloween! I mean, there’s still Halloween. But this year it’s a bit anxiety-inducing, isn’t it? What’s safe? What isn’t? How do I still make it fun for the small, mobile ones? They’ve recommended against trick-or-treating, and it feels like the trunk-or-treats have the same issues (which, I’m assuming, are “lots of people touching the same things” and also “the potential for someone COVID-positive to spread a lot of germs and make it near impossible to contact trace”). Next Door has announced their Halloween map for the year. Normally you can mark that you’re giving out goodies and any specifics (for example, I normally take part in the Teal Pumpkin movement, where having a teal pumpkin set out indicates you have alternatives for kids who can’t eat candy due to allergies), but this year your options are for having decorated, doing a costume wave parade (where, I’m assuming again, you stand outside and wave at the kids and admire their costumes?), or having put out pumpkins. Sad times. I know people who are still planning on handing out candy to trick or treaters (bad idea, but I’m not surprised), or doing an alternative like setting individually wrapped candy out on a table (if you think…

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