Halloween in Roxie's World

(Photo Credit: Picked up over at The Confluence.)

Yes, it's Halloween in Roxie's World. That means there are pumpkin martinis on special tonight at Ishmael's, the seedy yet cozy bar around the corner from the global headquarters of RW Enterprises, LLC. That means bartender Peter Coffin has the five scariest movies ever playing on the bank of plasma TVs he recently had installed on the wall to the left of the bar. That means he's worked up a special menu, with a little help from the deliciously demented Amy Sedaris, that is conducive to eating, drinking, and having the crap scared out of you in a public place. Come on in. Have some meat loaf, mashed potatoes, and a glass of something really potent. The spirits are running loose tonight. You need all the help you can get.

And that means that, once again, the moms and I have suspended a key point of our companion species contract, the point that says dogs are not to be treated as cuddly, furry dependents or transformed into silly spectacles for the amusement of humans. They are to be respected in their otherness, their dog-ness, as it were, just as you goofy creatures are to be respected in your whacked-out humanness. We suspend this point on a couple of very special occasions each year -- Halloween and Christmas -- primarily because I am inordinately amused by the spectacle of humans going, "Oooooooooh" and "Ahhhhhhhhhhhh" over an old dog decked out in a wizard costume or in reindeer ears. It gives me hope that somehow you will manage not to destroy the possibility of life on this planet. So tonight I greeted the children of our neighborhood in the wizard costume that my friend Aaron got his dads to buy for me a couple of years ago. I greeted them.

I snuck out onto the front porch, and one of the children pulled me gently back inside. I stood on the threshold while they chose their treats -- "Everybody gets two," Goose said, until it became clear that she had bought way too much candy, when she suddenly declared that, "Everybody gets three" -- and when one of them got down on her knees and nuzzled my face, I kissed her. I love the little princesses and the animals and the girls with fangs and the one who explains she is "the spirit of music." Oh, okay. I love a festival of pretending to be something other than what you "are." I think that is a healthy exercise in stepping outside the usual order of things. I think it is good to try to know oneself in one's apart-ment, as Dickinson might have said.

Come back and see us this weekend, kids. We'll have a scintillating pre-election post that will explain the audacity of our ambivalence and the extraordinary possibility of America's first non-white president. Maybe we'll even tell you how we think the battleground states of Indiana and North Carolina will vote. Or at least we'll tell you which way the Moosians in those two states are trending.

It will be over soon, my darlings. Very soon, someone will be being addressed, with a mix of awe and amazement, as the president-elect. And I know in my old dog's bones that that person will not be John McCain. Relax, and plan to be here Tuesday night. We'll eat, we'll drink, we'll tell Goose to shut up if she messes with our ding-dong-the-witch (George Bush)-is-dead buzz. Trust me, it will be fun. They won't steal it this time, and the world will be better for it. Peace out.