The Annual Sugar Rush

There's a poster at the Uni campus emblazoned with the words "Why Do We Fear?" which immediately put me in mind of our innate human nature wherein we are aware of our own mortality and try desperately to distract ourselves from the fact in our day to day lives. Eventually I concluded that the concept of fear simply boils down to just anticipation of a bleak or unwanted future in terms of the situations we may happen to face or those which happen to fall upon us through no choice of our own. However, it quickly occurred to me that the poster was really just put up to advertise a lecture to be given quite simply because it's Halloween.

As I type, I'm sitting in a cold house with the only heat in the room coming from my body itself and remnants of me using a hairdryer to quickly and effectively make a damp T-shirt suitable for wearing later on. I'm facing a Tesco Halloween make-up set of which I can guarantee that only the black, white and red blocks of the palette will be applied to my face and a vial of red food colouring which I intend to add to golden syrup to fashion an oozing, yet extremely edible, fake blood. Behind me are old clothes with which I've finally come to terms with the fact I don't wear any more and have set about ripping up. For tonight's drinking-excuse festivities, I've been informed to dress as a zombie.

The funny thing about University is that fancy dress evenings are a lot more strict than one would probably expect. All dressing up must be done to adhere to a specific theme whilst also proving wacky enough for the wearer to not present themselves in public in the same way on any normal day. This makes scouting around, spending money on clothes and accessories one would not normally wear on a daily basis necessary. Furthermore, after the night in question, the chances of such clothing props being used ever again slim to none.

It is at this point in the typing process that I find myself distracted by the TV and losing whatever train of thought I had with this thing for me to continue in such a way that the whole thing doesn't feel like I'm just grasping at straws or some other lazily constructed metaphor. I'm also in the middle of playing The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword and am feeling a burning desire to ignore the rest of this and carry on with that again. In the same breath however, I don't possess nearly enough hypothetical money in-game than I have real money in reality so at least I feel like a king in this life as opposed to returning to a life of drudgery hacking away at things with a blade in a bid to find a girl in a pink dress who can't stay still long enough for me to find her.

Fortunately, the fancy dress themed evening of binge drinking and loud social merriment comes at little cost to me today further fuelled by the fact that I'll be vacating my current dwelling during the dark hours meaning that I won't have to suffer the clockwork knocking at the door of children in plastic masks holding out Asda carrier bags in the hope of experiencing the annual sugar rush. This didn't stop me from having to deal with some of the little tykes last night who seem to have decided that they don't like the way the Gregorian calendar is currently set up and figured All Hallow's Eve would be better suited to them a whole twenty-four hours earlier.

Once again, I come bumbling to no point whatsoever so in accordance with the reputation Halloween night has to uphold, I'll round off with some vaguely sounding scary words and frightening themes: ghoul, banshee, ectoplasmic, blood-curdling, fangs, the Monster Mash, daemons, fundamental extremism, Amy Winehouse.