I've been Smashing Pumpkins before the Smashing Pumpkins were Smashing Pumpkins.

Finally, the ZCCNL has caught up thanks in no small part to this month-ending October Halloween Special! I'm sure your thoughts after reading that sentence range from 'mildly amused' to 'where's that delete button'....but nevertheless I shall press onward, delivering a substandard newletter that will reach sub-humor and sub-sandwiches in no time. As a side note, I prefer both my newsletters and sub sandwiches loaded with cheese...

And for once, I can enter into the brief 'Zach's monthly update' section with some fairly exciting news...since most of you know I got them already, I'll just say Butters and Lexus are doing great...thankfully they already use the litterbox and don't (as of yet) tear up everything they encounter to shreds. The one thing they need to work on is their urge to chew on my nose and what counts as facial hair while I sleep...

I have to say Halloween is one of my favorite holidays...I mean what other holiday's purpose is to hide your appearence and gorge upon piles of grossly unhealthy mass-produced candy items? Awesome. I went sans-costume this year, but I can assure you tomorrow night I will break my diet and eat junkfood all night...yessss everything is falling into place...

Honestly, I think I have as many fond memories of childhood Halloweens as Christmases (Christmi? whatever). Especially the days in grade school when Halloween was a day to do nothing after lunch but file around the school in your costumes. Yes, I vividly remember visiting many a classroom to be paraded around like livestock, allowing our teacher to intoduce us to the other students while no doubt having an underhanded bet founded in the teacher's lounge riding on which small child would soil theirself and burst into tears when seeing the sixth graders' gruesome costumes. The parade I remember the most was Kindergarten...I was a ghost, accesserizing with a massive multi-colored bow tie to boot. I was parading in a first grade classroom (in fact, the first grade classroom and teacher I'd enter into the next schoolyear...I still can't believe I remember crap like that) and as my teacher introduced me as "a ghost ready for a night on the town" I looked out over the students, lifting my arms to sure inspire terror in their hearts...the next thing I knew I was on the ground, having tripped over the leg of a free-standing corkboard. My sheet tangled my legs and I lay paralyzed in a white billowy prison that smelled like Downy laundry detergent. I was quicky helped up by a fellow student, though my spirits (no pun intented) were crushed, also no doubt casuing one of the teachers to loose $80 on the side bet they made on which kid would fall down and hurt themself first, I walked out of the classroom with my head held high. A word of advice to future parents of children wanting to be ghosts for halloween: Though it may look silly and they may protest with fits of rage and defecating...cut eye holes big enough to see out of!!!!! I also remember two Halloweens where I was sick: 1987 I had a bad case of the flu ( though that didn't stop me from going out to get candy in my crayon costume) and 1992 when I had bronchitis for two weeks (poorly choosing a costume covered in fake animal hair), but mostly the memories are fond ones...though why on earth did I demand to be a Ninja Turtle three consecutive years in a row?! Gah.

How can I write about Halloween and not talk about candy? The other 363 days of the year (I'll include Easter but Halloween is the true suger fest) we are told candy rots our teeth and makes us impotent, but Halloween was the day that although we were told we could only have two pieces of candy upon returning home from Trick-Or-Treating, we'd only empty out half of our loot, leaving plenty of our spoils left in our pumpkin pails and pillow cases to sneak back into our room and fall asleep with melted chocolate covering our hands, faces and bedding. It's cliche to mention, but honestly, who DIDN'T have the cool neighbors who gave out full size Butterfingers to children they knew? God bless them eternally, for their place shall surely be assured in heaven.

As we get older Halloween changes from being excited to go Trick-Or-Treating as children, to wanting to go vandalize property as pre-teenagers, to salivating over the party possibilities as high school and college students. Costumes of course drastically change, particularly that of females females..."I'm going as a nun...but it'll be a SLUTTY nun." I had a couple sweet costumes planned out for this year but ran out of time for one, and had no money for the other...but overall I prefer the 'last minute' approach.

Overall Halloween is something for me to look forward to every year, especially now that I have little cousins to watch have fun trick-or-treating, and I'll always have fond memories, ranging from the football halftime in 1997 that fell on Halloween in which the drumline got in massive amount of trouble for disobeying orders, bass drummers in energin bunny costumes, others wearing wigs and whatnot (single handedly exasperating the band director's prostate cancer so I hear), to watching my friend get the tar beat out of him by a neighborhood bully back in '89 (one of the ninja turtle years), and I hope reading this might have jogged some memories in all of you about your childhood. If not, I assume no responsibility for your letdown, and all complaints can be addressed to your mother. If nothing else, I will offer you this advice: All the leftover Halloween candy goes out on heavy clearence November first...

This is Zach as always saying "Please don't add me to your Block List"

P.S. Never trust any children who willingly dress up as anyone from 'Queer Eye for the Straight Guy' for Halloween. That is all.