Welcome to another installment of SCHIZOTRICHIA and another new article delivering the most thought provoking insights you'll ever see. Schizotrichia is society's alarm clock, waking everyone and bringing them back to harsh reality! Continue on at your own risk!

THIS WEEK: It's Halloween! Time to celebrate the coming of fall by dressing in a lovely Store-Bought costume that'll come apart in about 30 minutes, getting candy from strangers after Mommy and Daddy spent the last 364 days telling you never to, and eating said candy until you heave a delightful Technicolor spew all over the good carpet! Ah, to be a kid again...

We're so glad that we've reached the truly fun part of the Presidential Election Season, where the candidates blame the Opposition Party for everything bad that's ever happened since Man climbed down from the trees...

The best part of Halloween, we feel, is when it gets to be about 9PM, and you start getting drunken, baked teenagers showing up at your door wearing randomly-applied facepaint, possibly a hooded sweatshirt to complete the "costume", and carrying a pillowcase or grocery bag, looking for "munchies".

Ever wonder exactly what toes are for? Try this fun experiment: Ram one of your Pinky Toes into something so hard that any contact with it whatsoever sends you into a spiral of shrieking pain. Now, try to walk without having that toe make any sort of painful contact with the ground. Difficult, isn't it? Lesson: Toes grip the ground and help you balance. Who says we don't provide educational content?

And yes, we have tried this fun experiment ourselves. And the conclusion we came to is: Always turn on the lights when you stumble about your humble abode at night. Especially when you've just acquired a new End Table and have placed it where there never was an End Table before...

We're sure there's a reason why you would dress up a kid for Trick-or-Treat that's barely old enough to stand, much less understand why Mommy and Daddy are dragging them to the door of every stranger in town, and we hope the kid comes up with one while he's enjoying his extensive therapy sessions.

One of the best things about being a "regular" in a newsgroup is that you can call any new contributor that disagrees with you a "troll", and have the rest of the "regulars" jump all over the poor sap before he contaminates your private Utopia with differing thoughts and ideas. Because that just fosters Newsgroup Anarchy, you know.

Note to DMX, providers of fine Digital Cable "Radio Stations": "Magic Carpet Ride" by Steppenwolf is *NOT* a Halloween Song. Any single off the Police Album "Ghost In The Machine" is *NOT* a Halloween Song. "Day Tripper" by the Beatles is *NOT* a Halloween Song...

The best carnival rides are the ones with warning signs implying that, if you don't follow the safety rules To The Letter, you will Die Horribly.

Sorry, we're not buying John Goodman as a gay man. He's coming across more like one of those wacky sit-com plots where a character pretends to be gay in order to get out of a bad Blind Date, or be eligible for some sort of grant, or something.

Of course, we suppose playing the part of Roseanne's husband for all those years could actually change one's sexual preferences away from women. But, we're still not buying it. Nope.

CRAPWELL PREDICTS: All Web-cam Tech Development will be dropped around the year 2100, when people finally discovers that 99% of Internet Users are not pleasant to look at, which is why they sit home and surf/code web pages all the time.

Haven't we, as a Civilization, evolved beyond the point where the word "Viagra" is this sort of catch-all Punch Line?

From the looks of that last Random Thought, obviously not...

Ah, good old Fox. Satisfied with the results of one Impulse Wedding between a would-be Gold-Digger and a Millionaire/Borderline Con Artist, they've decided it would be a swell idea to go with Multiple Impulse Weddings with the new Special "Surprise Wedding". Tabloid Newspapers, Start Your Presses!

Note to Advertising Agencies: Young people do *not* dance and consume finger food at parties. They drink until they puke, ingest illegal drugs until they forget their own names, and have sex with people who are also puking and trying to recall personal information.

Maybe we'd be more likely to "embrace" new Tech Advances if the press releases didn't read like 1) A Lexicon Of Business Buzzwords, 2) The Punchline From A Typical Dilbert Comic, or 3) The Winner Of A Bar Bet Where The Contest Was To See How Many Times You Could Cram The Word "Solutions" Into A Sentence And Still Have The Sentence Be Semi-Coherent.

Note to the USA cable network: Having a game show called "Strip Poker" on a station that, by FCC Standards, can't show a lot of Nudity, really doesn't work out too well.

Unless, of course, the idea is to appeal to all the Underwear Fetishers out there, in which case it works out extremely well. Although we wouldn't know a thing about that.

If elected President, we promise to remember that the American People are basically an intelligent (well, semi-intelligent) lot, and most are fully capable of Finding A Job, Saving For Retirement, Picking A Doctor, and other sorts of Life Decisions without a lot of Government Hand Holding.

Should we be disturbed by the fact that we find the Annoying Slim Jim Guy mildly amusing?

What is the point in Letterboxing TV Commercials?

Rule of Licensing #106: When in doubt, put the characters in a Cookbook.

What, exactly, is accomplished by smashing someone's Jack-O-Lantern late on Halloween Night? They were gonna throw it out in a few hours anyway. By grabbing it and smashing it on the street a few blocks away you've actually saved them a bit of work...

Note to EA Sports: Yes, nothing makes an ad quite so witty as Wacky Fake Roman Words.

If Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? has taught us anything, it's this; It's better to admit You Don't Know Something and kind of look like a moron, than say something completely Wrong and Truly look like a moron.

And we think it's time we told people that dressing in old, worn-out clothes and calling it a "Hobo Costume" is just the height of Laziness. And Cheapness.

Time to Face Facts: A majority of Humor, from the beginning of Civilization onward, has been based on Physical/Mental/Verbal Cruelty and Pain, and the relief that it's happening to someone else besides Ourselves (Especially a "someone else" with a lower-than-average intelligence level). And the sooner we come to grips with that and just go along with the flow, the better.

Rule Of Life #283: Once you reach a certain age, nothing anyone does is solely For Your Own Good.

Fastest Way To Make Any Kid Think You're An Idiot: Point to his costume, and ask "What are you supposed to be?".

Here's another scary thought to take into Halloween: The Spice Girls are BACK TOGETHER. And have reached Number One on the charts again. God Save Us All.

Balthayzr hands out Dianetics pamphlets every Halloween.

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