Halloween fun

What to do for halloween? One idea is to dress up as a scary clown, with an axe in one hand and a knife in the other, go to the ScareFest, get on the Smiler ride and hang upside down for an hour or two from your semi-amputated legs, making strange gurgling sounds and dripping blood on the firemen trying to rescue you. Another option is apple-bobbing.

https://www.rochdaleonline.co.uk/news-features/2/news-headlines/105513/creepy-clown-craze-spreads-to-greater-manchester

We should return properly to bonfire night and Guy Fawkes and leave the fantasy world of commercial Americanism to the clowns in America. All Hallows Eve is and always was a religious celebration laying down deference to the Gods and to those who believed, a very serious occasion not some frivolous clowning affair for commercial purpose. Halloween, as today portrayed, is meaningless.

The 'rules' of this americanised halloween are not yet clear. With the trend for armed killer clowns, it seems quite possible there will be injuries, one or two minor ones reported already.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-37634853

Armed killer clowns trying to steal a baby.?!?

http://www.examiner.co.uk/news/west-yorkshire-news/knife-wielding-clown-tried-snatch-12033471

How are the public supposed to respond to knife-wielding maniacs? For example, if you were strolling along and came across a group of knife-wielding clowns trying to steal a baby, with the family screaming for help, would it be appropriate to throw a brick at a clown? Or would that be frowned upon?

You cannot take the law into your own hands. The situation as you describe could be something completely different from that which is actually taking place. You call 999 and hope that somebody answers and does something. As a witness you then go into hiding.

Official advice for anyone attacked by a group of knife-wielding killer clowns, is to go for the juggler.

Police forces offer either no advice, or to ignore killer clowns unless there is clear danger. Ignoring isn't always a good idea. Those who set out to get a reaction from people may increase the aggravation if ignored.
Halloween has become a nuisance. As a commercial fiesta to sell plastic vampire teeth, it should be for children. Masked adults waving various weapons, real or fake, isn't everyones idea of fun.
A Swedish man is in the news for punching a clown who frightened his granny. Good for him, grannies are better than killer clowns.
The question that is puzzling people about 'killer clowns' is, what do they want? Perhaps the answer is - a custard pie.
 

They are people with a misguided sense of tom-foolery. It's one thing to openly portray as on a stage, quite another to surprise and thus intimidate - as is the intention. To attempt to amuse is fine. To attempt to terrify quite another. It's a criminal offence and should be treated as such. I regularly booked stage acts (vampire and werewolf) during my younger days to 'entertain' silly young females. Not one of those artists would have dreamt to utilise their costumes off-stage to frighten or upset anyone. There's a big difference. Idiots all.

I'm bored with killer clowns now.

As halloween crawls painfully closer, leaving a trail of blood and other body fluids, it seems that we are lumbered with it. Would it be possible to make a rule that halloween is for children only, and any adults dressing up and threatening people with knives, axes or vampire teeth etc are to be immediately sectioned under the mental health act.

No being the quick answer to that one.

Big business has its claws into it and will not let go willingly. It's not in the interests of the majority for the All Souls Party, commercialised and corrupted as it is, to be banned or have any part thereof messed about with. Sorry - but it's a non-starter. What makes money - endures.

Here's one I prepared earlier.
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/81QttuHd2FL._SL1500_.jpg

Yes. Amusing. But nothing whatsoever to do with All Souls Eve. Excuse for a party - no problem. But when did anyone require an excuse for that?

I've got the chainsaw ready, making an effort to join in with the fun.

The trouble is that today the fun-seeking is a continuous affair from one 'binge' to the next. It reduces the expectations and resulting amusement to a point where it all becomes a 'bit old hat'. One supposes that it is a sign of the times and that as such one must grudgingly participate in order not to be out of place. Or am I just getting very old -?

This years halloween didn't seem too bad. It seems to divide the population about 50-50, those who enjoy it and those who don't. That's ok as long as one lot don't try impose their idea on the other.
The music industry seems to strangely miss out on the halloween market, the last decent halloween record was the monster mash in 1962.

Yes. I remember buying it. Bobby Picket and the Crypt Kicker Thighs if my memory serves me well. I can still sing it and all the words - but you wouldn't want to hear that - unless of course it was outside your back door on Halloween.

Plastic. Bloody amputated limbs, green face masks, and all the other halloween garbage, plastic plastic plastic, from China? Horrible? Yes. A stupid celebration of toxic plastic.

Such is the way as modern societies meddle in the affairs of 'traditions'. Soween/Sowen as the ancestors would have it had almost nothing to do with a modern Halloween but given it was taken by the ancestors to the New World and refined into their concept of All Hallows Eve and returned to the motherland in such a crude form - what else can one expect? The tradition of the Bon Fuer/Bonfire and explosives has itself been altered but nothing like the Halloween. But one must go with the flow as they say. We had our day - and our day was great. We had to work for our 'fun'. Now the word 'work' has lost its meaning and all must be 'purchased' to enable what is now considered as 'fun'. The modern society will not gain by the change, in fact quite the reverse as indolence and a sedentary lifestyle produces the misery of illness and boredom - something man is not good at.

Perhaps you haven't seen the halloween section of a large supermarket lately? Enormous amounts of plastic dismembered bodies and so on, stretching into the distance. Not just tedious and annoying, more an organised plastic attack on the environment.

Such is the folly of man.

Given the amounts of ready-made crap now available through purchase, making it unnecessary for one to work at making one's own, the desires to 'have a party' - a fancy-dress party as lots do not seem to have Halloween as the major concession one makes - appeals to both young and old thus making the keeping of a tradition obsolete. It's for money and fun and will become even more so as the times go on. (Ref - robots and activities).

Plastic will only be removed either by legislation or a moral condemnation of the products by the general public or the production of a safer and a better disposable materials at a similar price. Plastic is used because of its moulding properties and weather resistant capabilities. A quickly biol-degradable plastic is what is required. We shall have to wait and see.