Originally published at Thus Sayeth the Lord…. You can comment here or there.
Halloween has come and gone, and I’ve considered a couple things.
ROBERTS’ RULES FOR HALLOWEEN
1) Home made costumes will ALWAYS, no matter how poorly made, beat out store-bought ones.
2) You are allowed to trick-or-treat, no matter how old you are if you remember the following things:
A) You MUST wear a costume. Next year, I’m going to have two buckets of candy: 1 full of good stuff for people who have costumes, and one full of bits-o-honey for those who do not.
B) Trick-or-treating is not about the candy. I’ma repeat, so’s you get it: TRICK-OR-TREATING IS NOT ABOUT THE CANDY. It’s about the pageantry. Seriously, the fun of Halloween is going door to door in your cool home-made costume, walking around in the dark, moving with the ghosts and goblins and heroes in the darkness.
Heavens, sounds like an SCA event. . . Lightning bolt! Lightning bolt! Lightning bolt! 
3) Kids have to approach the door, and ring the bell themselves. See above– it’s part of the fun.
4) No leaving candy in a bowl on the porch with a sign “Take one.” And no sitting out on the porch with the candy, it defeats the purpose of #3. Duh. Actually, I broke this rule this year because Inkling was sick and fussy, and needed to be fed. I couldn’t distribute candy any other way. Forgive me, you trick-or-treaters! I am sorry for ruining your Halloween.
5) If you come across a stray bowl on the porch, DO NOT TAKE MORE THAN 2 PIECES OF CANDY. We had some greedy, non-costumed hoodlums snatch our whole bowl of candy whilst I was refilling Inkling’s bottle. Silly me for leaving it out there, but come on!
That’s all.
**************
On Saturday evening, I got the chance to sit down and watch some anime on the cartoon network. I saw. . . hmm. . . lessee, Boboboboboadnaseum, Zach Bell, Naruto, Inuyasha, and Full Metal Alchemist. That is a lot of wide eyed, wide mouthed, freaky blonde haired. anorexic teens, lemme tell you.
Bobbobobobobobobobobobob– caught the last ten minutes. Beyond silly.
Zach Bell– another in the Pokemon vein. Bleh. I don’t understand the whole obsession with power-by-proxy.
Naruto– you know, the premise is cool. School for Ninjas, this Naruto kid has some ultimate evil possessing his body, and everyone’s afraid it will burst out. It falls into the same trap as the Poketrash– it winds up being about what cool moves the kids can pull off rather than about the kids themselves. Half the time is spent in exposition so that they can explain just how cool their technique (tekniq? how are kids spelling this word these days) really was. Because it DOESN’T look cool. It looks like a still frame with a bunch of black lines.
Inuyasha– some good drawing here, and an attempt at characterization. I couldn’t get into it though. The dude with the ears– femmi-feli-male, or whatever. I mean, WHY ears and claws? What’s the point? No one else has any weird bodily mutations. Like Naruto, it had a problem with too much exposition.
Full Metal Alchemist– Aha, good stuff in this show. It’s not original certainly, but the execution is quite good. Elements of modern fantasy abound, and it’s dark enough to have bite, but safe for the teen crowd, mostly.
There was another show on called ‘Hide and Seek,’ but I got too creeped out by it in the first, oh, five minutes. I’m a terrible coward when it comes to movies– the Village gave me nightmares, honestly, an
d the Sixth Sense made me a basket case for a good three days.
BUT, speaking of cartoons, I’ve got to plug my current favorite– Avatar, the Last Airbender. I feel a little silly for liking this show, but it’s quality. Go take a look– comes on Fridays at 8p EST on NICK.