halloween sucks...

Kids at your door - money wasted on lousy candy that is a true detriment to anyone's health - not to mention that it is just a lousy pagan ritual! Halloween sucks big time indeed... Halloween traditions of trick-or-treating and jack-o-lanterns were brought to America in the 1840s by Irish escaping the Great Potato Famine. On Halloween, Irish peasants begged the rich for food and played practical jokes on those who refused. To avoid being tricked, the rich handed out cookies, candies, and fruit - a practice that turned into our present day trick-or-treating.
Jack-o-lanterns trace back to an old Irish tale about a man named Stingy Jack. Unable to enter Heaven because of his stingy ways and turned away by the Devil, Stingy Jack wandered the world, searching for a resting place. To light his way, Stingy Jack used a burning coal in a hollowed out turnip -- hence the name "jack-o-lantern." The first jack-o-lanterns, in fact, were carved out of turnips. Only when the Irish tradition reached America did turnip carving turn into pumpkin carving.
Witch means wise one. It comes from the Saxon word wica. Witches were thought to be wise enough to tell the future. (WELL... THERE'S BETTER WORDS IN PORTUGUESE TO DISTINGUISH THINGS... WISE ONES ARE "CURADORS"... WITCH-DOCTORS OF SORTS... "FETECEIRAS" ARE MINOR EVILDOERS, LIKE THE SMURFS' GARGAMEL... AND "BRUCHAS" ARE OUTRIGHT ABOMINABLE UNSPEAKABLE EVIL ON TWO WRETCHED LEGS! SO... WHO CARES ABOUT SAXON WORDS? SAXON SUCKS - LIKE HALLOWEEN SUCKS! BWAH-HA-HA!).
Orange and black became Halloween colors because of orange is associated with harvests and black is associated with death.
Halloween is the 8th largest card-sending occasion. There are over 28 million Halloween cards sent each year!
There are many variations on the history of Halloween, but it's generally believed that Halloween dates back to 700 B.C. to the Celts, a rural society in northern England, Ireland and Scotland. On November 1, the first day of their new year, the Celts celebrated a festival called Samhain ("sow-in").
SAMHAIN - BABY... SOW SOW SOW THE WOUND... SOW IT DEEP AND IN... DEEPER DEEPER DEEPER DEEPER - TIL YOU HEAR A SCREAM!!! ROTFLMAO - LOL - BWAH HA HA - HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA - HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
Chosen to signify the end of the harvest season and the onset of winter, Samhain was also thought to be a day of the dead. Because it was the end of one year and the start of another, the Celts believed that past and present werelosely linked, allowing ancestral spirits to join them.
On the eve of Samhain, October 31, the Celts dressed in costume, lit bonfires, and offered food and drink to masked revelers. Many say the costumes and fires were used to drive away the spirits, and the food given to placate the dead.
October 31 came to be called Halloween when the Christians proclaimed November 1 as All Hallow Day. Unable to stop the pagan ritual of Samhain, the Christians made it a day to celebrate saints who had no day of their own. The night before, or All Hallow Eve, was later shortened to Halloween (had the pagans known it would have inspired lousy filmography with one Michael Myers, they would have never shortened it at all!). *LOL* Now - November 1st, the New Day of the Dead, is also Sadie Hawkins Day... now who in blue blazes is Sadie Hawkins? The actress who played a paler-than-pale gory Lucy Westenra in Francis Ford Coppola's version of Bram Stoker's Dracula? Uh... no, that was Sadie FROST (appropriately enough). So - who is Sadie HAWKINS? Find out... here.

Funny how things are...

My favorite country = Portugal
My favorite color and fruit = Orange
Portakal = Orange in Greek and Turkish...
(Yes, I can be partial to Greek cuisine and Turkish Delights also...!)

My favorite sports team = Boston Bruins
My favorite super-hero = Aquaman
The artist who created Aquaman -Paul Norris- used to also work on golden age character BRICK BRADFORD... and the Boston Bruins just selected as one of their entry draft picks a player named BROCK BRADFORD.

My favorite writing style = sardonic, satirical
My favorite such scribe = well... I had none...
until the day I found out that I had a namesake in the earliest times of our era - Lucian! He mocked the Greco-Roman gods still popular in his day - daringly, defiantly and fearlessly! My kind of scribe indeed - since I adore going against the grain myself, of course...

UPDATE 2007 - 1st Draft
It doesn't get ANY funnier than this - so I just had to add it HERE!
I just caught this game show on TV - a game show I rarely watch at all because it simply GETS ON MY NERVES... It is called "Le Cercle" - in other words, "the ring" (no, the horror film did not inspire it - I think!!!)
A number of contestants form a circle around the very annoying host - a question is asked and, if any participant gives a single wrong answer, he or she is unceremoniously and abruptly eliminated! Until there is only... well, four actually! Then a new kind of elimination process is used...
Ironically, the host, the execrable Charles Lafortune - was told at the beginning of this episode that he had not one, not two but four namesakes (or, as they call them in French, "des homonymes") across Canada - one impostor being in Mississauga, where my equally execrable auntie, hubby and family used to reside, lo, some time ago...
And there were 4 of them too! (But that is another story...)
The host apologizes then to his namesakes across the land, stating (very important to specify) that he is deeply sorry for the trouble with the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT over income tax (that the mere fact that these guys share the same name as Charles Lafortune MUST have occasionated...)
Of course, he is merely showing off there - being well-off, having steady employment doing 5 different things for the TVA television network... Having won over the public (who voted him male personality of the year recently) - AND his name does mean THE FORTUNE...!!!
Lafortune's cohort on this game show, Paul Houde, is one very annoying man too - he dances behind his pulpit like a merry leprechaun and always delivers the bad news when a contestant did NOT have the correct answers...
(To be fair - IT IS HIS JOB DESCRIPTION!)
Now, back to the game though - the synchronicity here that got me to KEEP watching was really the fact that one of the contestants was named... LUCIANO!
And what he was playing for - what he hoped to win - was 5000$ too!!! The very same exact amount that is haunting me ever since TAX SEASON 2007... :-w
Luciano (the other one) got to the final four by never being caught with any wrong answer, evidently... Then came the special elimination round for the final four - it determines the finalists who will be duelllists in hopes of being THE ONE who gets to play the very final round for those 5000$...!!!
Each of the final four guys (alas, all the ladies in the game had been found at fault earlier, yes...!) were each asked to provide 5 answers in a very limited amount of time - 20 seconds tops, I do believe... Two guys provided 3 out of 5 - Luciano had 4 correct answers and then his time elapsed... And a certain YVON (not Of The Yukon but from New Brunswick actually! LOL) was near-perfect - providing 5 answers in only 18.2 seconds! /:)
(Sidenote of sadness though: YTV is no longer airing this series...
Y... oh but Y... Don't they see that their very NETWORK belongs to him - to Yvon - it is Y-TV!!! Yvon's TV!!! :((
Ok - I am digressing again - back to LE CERCLE!)
So - it was down to LUCIANO versus YVON...
It had come to this... [-(
YVON had gained control, due to his flawless performance in qualifying for this showdown - so he tried to bluff his way to an easy 2 points over Luciano (such is the method at this point - whomever scores 2 points goes to the Big Finale...)
The first question was about coming up with the maximum number of words ("des noms communs") that ended with the letters TRAGE... YVON thought poorly of my Italian namesake - he was convinced that he could not find many words like that. Yvon was also convinced that he was going to score an easy point by trying to come with 3 such words - and my namesake relinquished his right to keep the bluffing (or waging really) going, allowing Yvon to go for it with only 3 words required...
I must admit that I believed then that it was my namesake who was underestimating his opponent - and had committed a major mistake in the process! But Yvon made a bigger blunder - coming up with two correct words but fumbling the ball on the third - his second had been "FILTRAGE" and, for some reason, he chose to go with "DÉFILTRAGE" for his third choice... And the obvious one, LETTRAGE, had not been his first choice either...!
:-? Hmm - maybe this game was fixed?
Although, nervousness can make us commit the dumbest mistakes some times, of course...! 8-}
Yvon did not score the point there - it went to Luciano by default! My namesake was one point away from the Finale... And he got there brillantly too - naming 5, count 'em, 5 countries from the 14 that Canadians visit the most (Italy was among them - France, the U.K., the USA and Spain were Luciano's other choices I believe...)
How could Yvon really expect Luciano not to be able to come up with FIVE COUNTRIES Canadian "snowbirds" flock to - uh?!? Blatant underestimation of his opponent there... [-(
Luciano got to the Finale hence - blowing Yvon out of the water by a score of 2-0! <:-P
There were three questons in the final round, with a potential payback, again, of 5000$ - and I couldn't believe what the questions were!!! My namesake was first asked the ABBREVIATIONS of, quite ironically, the professions I despise! (Ok - I only despise two out of three...!) DOCTORS... (DR.) "MAÎTRES" (which are LAWYERS and/or NOTARIES...) - the abbreviation is ME. - I knew it, but my namesake didn't!!! :( The 3rd profession he was asked the abbreviation of was a MONSIGNOR - MGR. is it, of course an Italian would know that!!! But, by then, I already knew that my namesake would not win - and that, oh supremely distasteful and bitter irony, he would lose because of a ME. - !!! To add an even MORE bitter ironic twist to all this - the other question he was asked was to name the director of a Peter O'Toole film... Lawrence of Arabia! [-(
He could not remember the name and, quite frankly, neither could I...!!! Despite being such an avowed film aficionado - I drew a blank too right there and then! :-??
Of course, the answer is DAVID LEAN - who also directed DOCTOR JHIVAGO...
The bitter ironic twist in all this?
BOTH of these films also starred an actor who was, evidently, a favorite of Lean's - OMAR SHARIF!
My father's lookalike... [-(
And my namesake LOST the 5000$ - seemingly foreshadowing that I would indeed lose the 5000$ too - the money that once belonged to my dear father's Estate... :-!

Hence, to make a long story short (and make no mention of that money stuff that annoys me so) - I was *Mister Coincidence* before I settled on being *Luminous Luciano*...
And it still comes back to haunt me, some days...
Usually weekdays...!

My obsession with synchronicity (iow significant coincidence) is making a comeback though... Who says I can't have many monickers anyway?
It worked out fine for a certain scribe named Mick Foley - no? *lol*