For Halloween I'm Going to Dress Up As. . .

Eleanor Roosevelt. Every Halloween around these parts, empty store fronts are taken over by some opportunistic franchise that sells marked-up, made-in-China outfits and other spooky kitsch for the rush-rush to buy and then throw away. It's the same crap you'd see at Spencers: There's the sexy nurse costume and that zany, har-har Ob-Gyn costume for the adults and the cheerleader costume and the swordsman costume for the kids. There's the spooky dummy vampire guy who comes out of a coffin and makes some muffled, pre-recorded, See-n' Say-esque message that will 'scare' the dickens out of people. All this shit is made in some windowless factory in China. Little fingers assemble it all and load it into state-sponsored Chicom trucks that drive to the ports where it is all dumped into rusty sea containers by enormous cranes. The containers sail the seven seas and end up either in New Jersey or Long Beach, CA. They get unloaded by nicer looking American cranes; their contents are opened up and sorted by illegal immigrants. The goods are then shipped off to warehouses where more trucks eventually pick them up and drop them off at their final destination: that seasonal store run by that opportunistic franchise. The franchise employs barely legal teenagers to dress up in some random costume and stand outside the store holding a sign and waving to Mcpeople flying by at 100mph--all day. So far I have passed the following people/creatures: -Gorilla sitting forlornly against a tree. The sign was propped up against its feet and was leaning at an obtuse angle. Signs leaning at obtuse angles usually signify complete defeat; they also signify thoughts like: 'What the hell am I doing with my life?" -Scooby Doo doing cartwheels. Sign was planted into the ground. -Scantily-clad pirate girls dressed up as pirate men holding phallic symbol swords. No signs visible. No signs needed. -Kid in a Keystone Cop outfit leaning against the same tree that the gorilla was sitting against. The sign was on the ground. Game over there. -Frankenstein sitting on top of a branch on the same tree that the gorilla and the Keystone Cop were near. Sign was draped over his feet. Frankenstein kicked the sign up from time to time with his lumbering 'feet.' And so the child labor circle is thusly completed: little hands build it and little hands sell it. Big hands buy it and big hands eventually throw it away. That's how it works around here: It's all about instant plastic gratification followed by stinky post-coital rags tossed into black plastic trashbags.