Mark Morford: "Ten million bloody plastic eyeballs...Hello, Chinese factory worker! Thank you for...

[Amerigo Vespucci]

my little bag of spiders"

Ten million bloody plastic eyeballs
Hello, Chinese factory worker! Thank you for my little bag of spiders

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2009/10/21/notes102109.DTL

My first impulse was the little bloodshot eyeballs.

At least a bag or two of them, maybe 100 tiny plastic eyeball toys that were actually little bottles of bubble-blowing soap (hey neat!), but then I realized I bought some of those for my Halloween party last year and they weren't all that great, a bit of a dud really; the tiny bubble-blowing ring thing didn't really work, the soapy goop leaked all over and you pretty much had to give up after a few tries and go back to your drink, as you thought, "Dammit, why can't someone make a decent, tiny, bloody eyeball bubble-blowing toy in this modern day and age?" Which is, when you think about it, sort of weird.

I also passed over all the "creepy" motion-activated candy bowls, the cheesy light-up black cats and the full-sized plastic skeletons. Mostly I stuck with the basics, a couple bags of shredded cotton "spider web," a bunch of plastic spiders, some black and silver tinsel stuff and, OK fine, one bag of marble-sized plastic skulls. Because you can never really have too many tiny plastic skulls. I mean, obviously.

Last, but not least, I loaded up my gaping Target shopping cart with nearly a dozen of those ridiculous pumpkin carving "kits" that are probably worth about 34 cents but costs $4 because you're a sucker and it says "Pumpkin Masters" on it and claims to be "America's Favorite," and when you serve alcohol and everyone's laughing and half naked and well lubricated, you want to have as many cheap plastic serrated knives that break in about two minutes as you can find. I mean, obviously.

[aquart]

1. I wanna go to his Halloween party.

[AndyA]

2. Some people really go all out for Halloween.

I turn on the porch light and yard lights out front, and put candy in a Cognac-colored bowl for the kids. That's it. No costumes, no scary audio, fake cobwebs, spiders, skeletons, or anything else.

I do buy the "good candy" though. I figure if the kids are going to eat the stuff, might as well be the good stuff, none of that cheap off-brand crap at my house.

[Brickbat]

3. What a lazy column. He bought it all anyway, even though it could have been made by child-slave

workers. That's OK, Halloween's FUN! What're ya gonna do?

[badgerpup]

4. Maybe I'm the year-round version of a grinch...

:rant: alert...
...and maybe it came from being on a fixed income and not having the $$ to take care of anything more than essential stuff...but holee shit, do we really NEED all this crap?
:wtf::banghead:

Little plastic skulls, fake spiders, pumpkin-shaped candy pails in orange, black and green...or skull-shaped ones if you want to be 'different'...and don't even get me started on the 'costumes' and 'masks'...:nuke:

good gods...all the money that gets laid out for instant garbage makes...or should make...the mind boggle.

And most places don't have recycling facilities for plastic (yeah, I've got a bug up my ass about recycling).

So much WASTE just really ticks me off. :grr::nuke: