(Revenge of Son of) Halloween: "Floats," "Fun Size," "Pumpkinstalk," & "Porkies for Pinhead"

As of writing this post, my master plan is to have all four of these, along with the previous post ("An American Werewolf in Alaska") appear on the same page in the pre-Halloween edition of the paper. Coming out only five days before is better than the day after, especially since as a consumerist society we've collectively been immersed in in it (as every holiday) for months of marketing, so the viewership audience is primed.

This is largely on account of the glut of material that's backed up, in the Nuggets pipeline of production for print, and in the archives for uploading, so time for a little flush o' funnies. These are a collection of jump scares jokes that all rally around the stake.

I mean, given that the previous couple posts in a row were also on this same topic, you'd be forgiven for thinking that this is my favorite holiday. Also the fact that it's one of the only two I routinely pay attention to in real life, much less come up with thematically related cartoons. Also several of this season's batch (and a couple here: Stephen King's "It" and Clive Barker's "Hellraiser") are specific pop-culture references that are rather dated - though not nowhere near as dated as some fables and myth that I routinely employ.

The reality is it's close to being the saddest day of the year, second only to my birthday/xmas (which I often joke about being on the same day as the fastest way to get the two most depressing days of the season out of the way at the same time). I never like participating in the usual rituals, preferring to ignore them. And that guilt manifests as mentally picking at the scab that never heals, so in turn triggers a paradoxical hyper-awareness of associated topics, which flows out the other end of the pen onto paper. And so the stain spreads, a telltale heart beating louder until the page is turned on the wall calendar.

Long synonymous with the Halloween, scary movies have been a perverse, nostalgic comfort zone to me. I once read a psychological explanation for how constantly replaying movies is a way to exert an illusion of control in an unpredictable world, and additionally a method which to resolve the existential horror of consciousness, if not actual incidences of trauma. 

Sounds like the theory that humor is a buffer zone against reality, and that those who "get" the cosmic joke are perversely more well-adjusted than the rest of us stuck going through the motions on the hamster wheel of pointless destiny. In which case, wow am I ever a winner, having the absolute best of both worlds with Halloween cartoons.

I also have the annual excuse to play in the drawing studio during classes the hours of soundtrack scores to all of the classics need (hat-tip w/severed head to John Carpenter).