Halloween Candy From Hell

And Happy Halloween. Halloween is a weird-ass holiday if you're asking me. It's like the ultimate in contradictions when raising a child. You drill things into your child's head (Not literally! Yes, I know it's Halloween, but cranial drilling of one's offspring is never acceptable.) to keep them safe. Things like the old "Don't take candy from strangers." Then, after the kids think that they're clear on the concept, along rolls Halloween and BAM! Confusion runs amok. Not only are they going to be taking candy from strangers on Halloween, they're going to be encouraged to do so. AND they don't even have to wait for the strangers to come to them! No, they can randomly go to people's homes, knock on their door and ASK them to give them candy! And the strangers comply!! OH, but wait! There's a catch! You must ask strangers for candy only if you are dressed up in some sort of scary-ish garb. That's it? That's the catch? Deal! And the merriment begins!

Now if you're a grown-up, or you play one on TV, or even if you stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night, it is your job to get candy for these small people that you do not know. My advice is simple: Don't screw it up. You must remember what it was like when you were a child and you went Trick-or-Treating and ended up with horrible candy at the end of the night. It's not pleasant. And as a child, you really feel like you were ripped off somehow by coming home with a bag full of crap. You need to remember that feeling and make sure that you don't continue to pass it around to the hopeful and unsuspecting youngsters who will trample your flowers instead of using the perfectly good walkway as they traipse to your door in search of sugary handouts.

Thus, here are several items that you need to avoid distributing to jovial children who have donned bedsheets for the evening.

• First up are the inexplicable Boston Baked Beans. These are not good. Why someone thought that they could make a candy that looks like and is named after a picnic side dish is beyond me. No one wants candy that is pretending to be a bean. Beans aren't all that fun.
  


• Next up are the Dum Dums. First of all, Dum Dums are way too small for any good use. Second, they never taste like the flavor that the wrapper says. And third, you almost always, for some reason, end up with the cream soda flavored Dum Dums or the pineapple flavored Dum Dums. Probably because the folks handing them out took out all of the good ones. If you're going to hand out lollipops, go with a Tootsie Roll Pop. You can't go wrong with those

• Necco Wafers. From what I can tell, Necco Wafers are Tums antacid tablets that have been flattened out and dusted with sugar. They do not taste good. Contrary to what the waxy wrapper says down there, they are not "an American Classic" and the "flavors" are not "great." Avoid at all costs.

• The general assortment of hard candies. As a rule, if it is a candy that is typically found in a grandmother's purse, you really want to avoid handing those out on Halloween. Especially the butterscotch ones. Children to not like butterscotch. Adults do not like butterscotch. Those elderly women with the candies in their purses? Right, even they don't like butterscotch, that's why they're always giving it away.

• One of the more perplexing candies out there, the Idaho Spud. This is a candy that is supposed to look like an Idaho potato. The thing is, it doesn't really look like that. It looks more like....well, um....OK, fine I'll say it, the thing looks like poo! And no one wants poo on Halloween. Ever. Hand out Necco Wafers before you hand out poo-like treats.

• Now we arrive at the Tootsie Roll. If you must give out Tootsie Rolls, give out a bunch of them to each kid. Those of you who give A Tootsie Roll to A kid are just angry, angry individuals who should probably seek counseling. You'll feel much better about things if you toss a handful of Tootsie Rolls into a kid's bag and watch them shriek with joy (until they realize they were just Tootsie Rolls). It's a lot better than watching them stare at you as you drop A Tootsie roll into their bag. Much better.
  

• Another candy that is not for children and is barely for adults is the Big Hunk. Big Hunk of what has always been my question. This thing is disgusting. It's like some sort of conglomeration of leftovers from another candy making process. Look at it! No one wants that.

• You want to see how close you can get a kid to crying on Halloween? Hand out raisins. What a waste of a walk from the sidewalk to the front door only to be given a very tiny box of raisins which you will not eat. You will use them as ammunition for torturing siblings. You will also use them as a counting aid when trying to figure out how many of them will fit up the dog's nose. You will not eat them.

• Finally, we arrive at the "feel good" treats. Oh, but they're not making the kids "feel good". No, they're making the smug, sanctimonious treat giver "feel good". Those kind of people like to be "practical" on Halloween. (Liking to be "practical" also seems to equate to "liking removing rolls and rolls of toilet paper from the front yard foliage the next morning." Go figure.) There is no place for anything "practical" when a bunch of people under four feet tall and running around the neighborhood, anticipating free candy AND getting it. Nothing practical about that and that's how it should be. Thus, no pencils, erasers, or any other type of school supply. If that was what the kids were after, they just would have gone over to Office Max and knocked on their door.

• The only folks who are allowed to hand out dental floss, toothbrushes or toothpaste are dentists and other professional individuals who do business inside of the mouth (preferably those with degrees and licenses, not hanging out on street corners under neon blinking lights that say "Massage"). But even then, they can only hand out those things at their office! At their home, they're not a dentist, they're a candy guy. So keep your floss to yourself and fork over the Snickers.

See? It's very simple. Avoid the stuff on this list, hand out stuff that kids want, and you'll be fine. Most importantly, whatever you do, just have a good time and just have good candy.

What's Cookin' On Labor Day?

It's Labor Day and that means picnics and barbecues if you're into that sort of thing. And if you're not into that sort of thing, then it simply means that it's Monday. But as I thought of all of the great grub that can be had at your typical American Labor Day feast, it made me really glad that I don't live in other countries where the grub isn't what I would call quite so great. I'm sure these countries are fine places to visit, but I can't that I'd want to live there with some of these items on the menus.

Take Peru, for example. Every year, they hold a festival dedicated to the guinea pig. And when I say "dedicated", I mean dedicated. Dedicated as in that's what they're cooking and serving up. Behold!

It's called cuy. Pronounce that however you'd like whilst you're trying not to gag. Maybe I would find it to be a little more appetizing if it wasn't just dumped in the fryer all whole like that. I don't want my food to have a face that can look at me. Ever. Nor do I want my food to have a discernible tail. Behold!

Served at a wild game restaurant in Guangzhou, China, those would be cooked field rats. I have no idea what the sauce or the outer coating on them is or is supposed to be. I am curious as to what purpose the tail serves. Is it like a built in stick, so you can eat 'em like a state fair food? I don't get it. Nor do I want it. Other things I don't want on or in my food? One of those things would be more than two legs. Behold!

Those would be deep fried spiders being sold in Vietnam. According to The Daily Telegraph, "... The fist-sized arachnids are crunchy on the outside and taste like cold, gooey chicken on the inside." An excellent description, though I'm not sure that I know what cold, gooey chicken tastes like, nor do I know why I would want to. They are 10 for two dollars which is quite a bargain. Still seems a little bit steep for me, however. Then again, any price to eat a deep fried spider seems like it would be too much for me. And it also seems like it would be a steep price for me to pay for anything this grotesque that is packaged in a can. Say, like these silkworm pupae that come in a can in Korea. Behold!

OK, see, I was going to say something about the "foods" before this one that alluded to there possibly not being a lot to eat in those countries and so they make do on what they have. But this kind of kills that theory. You would have to go out of your way to have this. It's not like you could just find the critters out in the barn like you could those field mice. (OK, fine. Out in the field. You knew what I meant!) That's just gross. Even with the sparkly toothpicks, they're just gross. You know what else is gross that sparkly toothpicks likely wouldn't help to be more palatable? Fish mouths! Wait. Yes, you heard me. Fish mouths. Behold!

What kind of fish have teeth like those?! No fish that I am aware of! Certainly not anything that is fit for consumption. Do you eat those little teeth things as well? I guess if you're at the point where you're already eating fish mouths, a few teeth aren't going to bother you much. I guess it would kind of be like if you were eating a cookie full of wasps, their little wings wouldn't bother you much either. Behold!

That would be what is called a digger wasp rice cracker. It is also called Jibachi Senbei. Neither terminology is going to make it look any better to me. Apparently, how this atrocity came to be was when "A Japanese fan club for wasps has added the insects to rice crackers, saying the result adds a delicious scent to the traditional fare." I don't want bugs in my food simply for a "delicious scent". No, thanks. And who has a fan club where the thing that you're a fan of becomes your lunch? If it was a Hello Kitty fan club, would they have kitten cookies with real kittens? It frightens me to think of what the answer to that might actually be.

And finally, just for something completely whack-a-do that really makes me glad that any chicken I might consume on Labor Day will be prepared on a grill and not in the fashion in which a restaurant in China prepares their chickens. That is, the fashion in which they kill the chicken involves having a snake bite its neck. Behold!

Oh, what the hell is that? It's just like what it looks like it is. It's a snake biting the neck of a chicken so that the chicken can be served in a dish called (wait for it) Snake-bit Chicken. Catchy, no? No. Now, I don't know if this is prominent all over China, but it was the specialty fare for at least one restaurant last year. The restaurant "...defended the controversial practice...saying the resulting dish was healthy and kept the customers flooding in". How is that healthy? Couldn't a chicken that did NOT have to be bitten by a snake be just as healthy? I'm thinking it might be MORE healthy to have it done that way. You know, without all of the snake and without all of the biting. You know what else I think? I think I'm going to be very thankful for whatever is being grilled around here for Labor Day.