Written by Jonathan Wojcik

   After more than two hundred something days, it's likely you don't remember what a "Halloween" is, but the criminally under-viewed EVTV Weather puts it all more eloquently and accurately than I ever could.

   "Halloween" begins immediately after Halloween decorations start shipping out to retail stores, as demonstrated by our local Michael's year after reliable year! Skeletons! Mummies! Wooden owls! Nonsensical and grammatically confusing rip-offs of internet memes! They also had some of those red, oozing things that make your eyes tickle but those never show up on film for some reason. What are those called, again? I always just thought of them as "Roy."

   The opportunity to make a Halloween purchase as early as July 30th was one I simply couldn't pass up, and this spider-legged skull in a funny hat felt like a modest, but acceptable start to the twelve-plus weeks of spooky gooblies I'm about to force upon a largely indifferent internet. Besides, the twitchy tooth guy in the ceiling picked it out, and you know how that guy gets when you ignore his shopping advice.

   Assuming I'm still alive and/or human by then, October 31st, 2013 is set to be my thirtieth birthday and thirtieth Halloween in our current continuum, as well as the only 31/13 we'll be getting this century, fundamentally the spookiest calendar date of our lifetimes, and I am determined to make it a season to remember. Thirty is the age I always used to associate with other people's old, bald dads - the age by which I once sincerely thought I might have a career lucrative and meaningful enough to focus my attention beyond rubber spiders and baby shows for dummies. Instead, here I am suckling parasitically and unashamedly off our floundering government, still worming a slug-like, uncertain pace through a broken education system, barely evading diabetes on my patented peanut butter cup diet and scraping together what little earnings I can by listing fish or drawing ticks. In other words, "adult" life has proven to be even sweeter than I had ever dreamed. Sweeter than any wine, sweeter than any candy hidden just under that soft spot on a baby's head. Can it get even sweeter still?

   Of course it can! It can because Mutant Day on Neopets comes every August 25th, and this year I sent them a series of threats suggestions they are almost 2% likely to acknowledge, if they know what's good for them.

  It can because they're entering season two of Nickelodeon's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in September, and if you weren't aware of what they've got planned I'm not even going to begin to spoil any of the Baxter Goddamn Finally a Giant Fly Again Stockman Something Something Giger Squirrels Cat Made of Ice Cream Mutagen Man. Not me!

   It can because a new Mantenna action figure is shipping in October for the Masters of the Universe Classics figure line, which makes one Mantenna action (or "staction") figure for every ten years I've existed, so who's to say my lifeline isn't inexorably intertwined with plastic Mantennas? We will never know until ten years finally pass without one and I shrivel up like Dorian Gray.

   You know, nobody told me turning thirty years old would feel almost exactly the same as turning eleven. I'm glad nobody spoiled the pleasant surprise. Will Skrelp have an evolution as adorable as it warrants? Will any new Halloween doo-dads live up to the singing maggots and bug-eyed mummies of my past three decades? Will the elusive Skilevak make a return appearance? These and many other stupid questions may or may not be answered over the three months to come, and I'm brewing a number of special surprises to share along the way. Special, idiotic surprises that aren't always going to make a whole lot of sense. Not with what the shudderers have been doing to your frontal lobes, anyway. In the meantime, get your sorry ass in the GOD DAMNED SPIRIT: