I'm Bluebeard!

Get it? I'm Bluebeard because my beard is blue! Ha ha!

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr... matey...!

Okay. That was just too much fun. Let me see if I can settle down now.

There's no photoshopping there by the way. That's blue hair paint.

Want to see my pumpkins?

No, that's not a euphemism. It's a redundant question. You're going to see my pumpkins whether you want to or not. Meet Squiggy McSquigglesteen:

Goopy and Oopy:

Jack and Jacqueline:

Oh dear. Don't you just hate it when you're shooting your pumpkins and you accidently catch the neighbor playing leap frog with her recycle bins? Every goddam time I tell you.

I was planning to get seven pumpkins but Biodad was squirming as I loaded the fourth into the shopping cart.

"How many pumpkins are you getting!!"

"Enough to feed every orphan in Africa," I said but then quit after one more. Which was good because after carving five, the fun - and my back - were wearing the hell out.

How Halloween became Easter

I bought three different kinds of candy so that I could give each little gremlin one of each or else three of a peanut-free product to anyone declaring a peanut allergy. But as I sorted the candy into three separate bowls I started reading the labels and found out that among Reese's Pieces, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and Oh Henry bars, there ain't a nut-free product among them. Who knew?

Here's the lucky part. Upon delivering the three bowls to the front porch where I'll be celebrating the warm weather with a good book tonight, the one bowl I dropped was the one bowl that is non-breakable! Cool beans, eh? Of course a bunch of candy then spilled off the porch and into the garden below where I had to go hunt for them. And that's how FWG invented Easter.

So... I'm Bluebeard. Charlie is a dog and Biodad is the Karate Kid. "Step-mom" Judy had to work evenings so she couldn't participate. Actually I should confess - Charlie is in fact a dog - like 24/7. He's of a canine species. He's not in costume. Sorry to have mislead you. And Biodad doesn't even know that he's Karate Kid. But he's wearing a bathrobe every moment, presumably to remind us all that he's ill, and he makes all kinds of grunts and groans with every step he takes - like some kind of weird little quiet low-key martial arts guy, so you get the idea.

I wasn't even going to participate myself (haven't in years) but I've been reading October Dreams, a marvelous anthology by the likes of dear beloved Ray Bradbury and by Peter Straub, Poppy Z. Brite, Thomas Ligotti, Micheal Marshall Smith and many, many others, and it's got me totally in the Halloween spirit. I'm saving the last four stories for tonight!

Oh - and while we're talking Halloween, whatever the heck is going on with the Google banner today?

Is that razor blades and syringes I see in that pic? Excuse me but should we really be celebrating syringes and razor blades as Halloween icons? Isn't that kind of tasteless? This is the worst Google banner I've seen since the Giant Swimming Sperm of Beijing. Crazy bastards.

Well, that's all for now. I got kids to feed and stories to read. Goodbye and happy Halloween from all of us here at Mission Control!