Tag: Halloween candy

Witness to Stupidity

Many moons ago I dated a D.C. cop, and he used to say that only the stupid criminals get caught. Today I saw proof of that with my own eyes.

While on a walk through one of the District’s wealthier and more quiet neighborhoods, I witnessed a thug getting ready to break into someone’s house. He had climbed up the front of the building—yes, the front, in broad daylight—but apparently he was too much of a klutz to manage it and was dangling by one hand from a second-story window ledge. Truth be told, I might not have noticed him had he not let out an aggravated cuss.

At first I thought it was an attempted robbery, but he didn’t have a sack or backpack slung over his shoulder to suggest that he was about to make off with someone’s hard-earned valuables. All he carried was a large butcher knife.

Oh, this isn’t good, I thought. Not good at all.

Then I saw the dog. This numbnut had brought his dog with him to keep watch while he broke in. It was a mean creature, snarling and crouching as though ready to leap forward and rip open the throat of the first person who chanced by, like me.

Fortunately I was across the street and downwind from this ridiculous crime in progress, and rather than get mauled and quite possibly eaten alive, I ducked behind a car and took a few photos. I couldn’t get the guy’s face, though. He hung facing the house, unable to pull himself up to the window but unwilling to let go of the ledge and drop to the porch.

Come on, look over your shoulder. Show me your face.

No luck. This guy was quite frankly an idiot and very obviously stuck, so I punched in 911. It took the police five minutes to arrive, and you’d think that by then the guy would have just let go and fled. Nope. Only the dog had that much sense, running off into some nearby woods when the black-and-white pulled up. The perp hung there until the police helped him down and arrested him.

Yep, only the dumb ones get caught. Here he is:

And now for today’s candy: KitKats! I love these things, maybe a little too much.

Except I probably wouldn’t love these next ones. Orange? Ye gods, I hope they aren’t pumpkin-flavored. That would be a sacrilege.

Headstone Faux Pas

On old cemetery headstone next to a headless statue.
Image: Gary Meulemans

While I was clicking around Unsplash tonight looking for poetic inspiration, I noticed this headstone. This is a peeve of mine. If you’re going to join the ranks of the fanged, at some point go back and put a death date on your headstone so people don’t start asking questions. Sheesh!

And now for today’s candy, Chuckles! I haven’t had them in years, but back when I was commuting to and from Manhattan, I would stop at a newsstand and pick up a pack before I boarded the train home. When I was a kid I favored the red and black ones, but in my 40s, I fell in love with the green ones. Does taste in candy mature?

That’s all for tonight, kids. I’m low on energy and need to get some hemoglobin in me because I’m doing some daywalking tomorrow and need my strength. Wink-wink, nudge-nudge.

Brain Fun

Oofta, my friends. Spent a little over two hours tonight putting together a console table. Now it houses my coloring and art supplies and I’ve largely reclaimed my dining table but for the pencils and book I’m currently using. Still much to do, but I’m going to squeeze in an art walk on Saturday with friends (and hopefully get some good photos of Halloween decorations for you), and perhaps check out the props/costume sale at Shakespeare Theatre Company on Sunday. I also need to get a new phone as mine is about seven years old and I’m starting to run into compatibility issues with apps. Galaxy S8, I’ve loved you well.

In the meantime, I’m trying very hard to resist buying any Halloween or spooktastic games. I’m a member of Big Fish Games after taking about 10 years off from casual gaming, and they’re having a sale where you can buy bundles of games. Of course they’ve bundled three of my favorite series: Puppet Show, Redemption Cemetery, and Dark Tales, which is based on Edgar Allan Poe’s works. Three games for 15 bucks—and I have no time to play any, boo hoo! I recently told a friend that if I won the lottery, I would have to play all of the series I used to play, in order, including catching up on all the insallments I’ve missed. It would take me a year if I worked at it like a full-time job, heh.

Ooh, this one looks good. A creepy carnival!

It reminds me of some of my favorite casual games of all time, Madam Fate and Fate’s Carnival. They’re old but they’re surreal and the puzzles are some of the weirdest I’ve ever seen in a game. They’re difficult, too. Most of the puzzles in casual games are intuitive to some degree. Not these. Some of these are just off the wall. Imagine opening a screen and this is what you see:

That’s it. You have no idea what the objective is or where to start. You basically have to just click on something, see if it does anything, and go from there.

At any rate, I may have to carve out some time on Sunday night or Monday to play a creepy casual game. Cracking the puzzles makes me feel smart—which brings us to today’s candy: Smarties! I used to love those. I’d devour them and then bounce off the walls because they’re all sugar. Really, it’s a wonder my pancreas didn’t explode and I still have any teeth.