TOP TEN: Halloween’s almost here! Get slutty! Rob a bank! Show me them titties!

Things  to consider for Halloween:

1. If you’re too old to go out begging for heart disease, convince your kids they might be allergic to nuts. There’s so much hysteria…excuse me…”awareness” at school that your precious children will gladly give up the Oh Henrys without a fight. You’re implicitly threatening them with asphyxiation and a horrible death, after all. The rest of the year, you have to be much less subtle in threatening your children with asphyxiation and horrible death.

2. You want diabetes. You’re using Halloween to speed your way to your sexy, blind amputee fetish. I understand. But if you’re too old to go out and beg for dependency on an insulin syringe, at least put a lot of effort into the costume if you want candy from me. Occasionally some older teens will show up at the door on Halloween and they don’t have a costume at all. “Sullen, entitled teen” is not a costume. Do that and I’m going to have to see your tits before I give up the candy. (“Show me them titties!” so weirded out that bunch of seventeen-year-old boys last year, they probably gave up on trick or treating altogether. You’re welcome.)

3. And goths? You dress like that every day. Not a costume. Show up all smiley and “Up with people!” and I’ll reconsider. Or “Show me them titties!”

4. Slutty costumes. I’m no prude. Hell, I wrote three books with “sex” in the title. Still, Halloween used to be about scaring small children. When did the costume store turn into competition for a Stag Shop? It’s not that I object to sexy nurses, sexy firefighters and sexy veterinarians experimenting with animal husbandry. (I’m especially in favour of sexy nurses. In fact, I think that should be the rule whenever anyone goes to the hospital. Give those leukaemia kids extra motivation to make it!) But slutty is all the costume shop offers! How am I to terrify small children and haunt their nightmares? (Come to think of it, if I squeeze my ass into the sexy veterinarian’s costume, that might do the job.)

5. I’m sorry, but I cannot accept any representation from the Twilight series as an acceptable costume. If you’re going to go vampire, it’s classic Bram Stoker’s Dracula or Buffy or nothing. Edward is more emo whiner than vampire. Show up as Spike and you get extra candy bars. In a more perfect world, Buffy the Vampire Slayer would never have ended. Ever. And Joss Whedon would rule the earth as a benevolent dictator and the economy would be based on comedy-horror-dramatic entertainment alone and the world’s hungry would be catered to at the craft services table. Sigh.

6. Homemade costumes score more points and therefore earn you more candy. Mr. Miyagi made Daniel a costume with a shower curtain for the Halloween dance so he could hide from the Cobra Kai gang and that rocked. Then Mr. Miyagi beat the shit out of Cobra Kais that same night, which rocked harder. When I beat up local teenagers, people say it’s “wrong.” What is that?

7. The ninja thing? It’s over. It died when Sho Kosugi killed it with the movie Pray for Death in 1985. Let. It. Go.

8. To you, does Halloween mean throwing eggs and toilet papering houses and soaping windows and petty acts of vandalism? I feel for you, little buddy. For me, Halloween means shooting vandals with a double-barrelled .12 gauge filled with rock salt and then burying you alive in the local cemetery à la The Bride in Kill Bill Volume II. We’re misunderstood is what we are.

9. It’s Halloween. Don’t give out an apple or toothbrushes or pencils. This is about Death. Honor the holiday properly. You see all those pretty fallen leaves? Death is everywhere and we laugh at mortality by walking around the neighbourhood dressed as the ghosts we will all be someday too soon! We stomp and crunch the pretty orange, red and yellow leaves and tell ourselves that drying up and blowing away and dying means nothing! Nothing, GODDAMNIT! Ahem…excuse me. I seem to have something in my eye…

10. And finally, this Halloween is a great time to rob a bank. The economy’s lousy and let’s face it, the bank robbed you first. This Halloween falls on a weekday, so grab a mask (I like the V for Vendetta mask and cape), roll on down to your local bank close to closing time, and do the logical thing to feed your family and buy a new iPhone. (It’s so worth the risk because you can talk to the new iPhone and it will talk back, thus severing any need for human contact, friendship and all that icky interaction your family insists upon.) Have another costume ready in the getaway car to switch into and to throw off the cops. This strategy works best if you’re a midget so you can blend in with the early evening toddler crowd dressed up as princesses and doggies and pumpkins.

You’re welcome.

Have you read the free book excerpt from Self-help for Stoners, Stuff to Read When You’re High yet? No?

Click here to read about Legs Gabrielle’s quest for respect.