I say it every year, but it bears repeating: My street is to Halloween what Bourbon Street is to Mardi Gras. This year I bought 13 bags of Reese’s Cups, Starburst, Skittles and Snickers, and it lasted just a bit longer than 90 minutes. We had the full gamut — adorable toddlers in ladybug costumes to sullen teenagers in no costume at all — plus a few never-before-seen visitors. My favorite: A mother so morbidly obese she could only navigate in an electric scooter. Way to teach good health habits, mom!

But it is my street, and I’m glad of it. Halloween is fun. To repeat: Halloween is fun! Pass it on. Alan took Kate to Defiance (Ohio, his hometown) last night for that city’s Halloween parade. It lasted an hour and 40 minutes, which is no small parade. Bands, floats, the works — she came home exhausted, with her trick-or-treat bucket nearly full. Pawing through it, I found two are-you-saved religious tracts, presented comic-book style for children. I confess: It made me say goddamnit. Alan said they were passed out by parade-goers dressed as the Grim Reaper. If evangelicals disapprove of Halloween, OK, fine. Sit at home watching Pat Robertson while disappointed children ring your doorbell; that’s your choice. But don’t come out to rain on my kid’s parade. To her, and to virtually everybody else in the world except you folks, it’s an excuse to a) get dressed up; b) get a lot of candy; and c) stay out after dark. That’s it. OK? That’s all it is. Jesus wouldn’t approve of people who ruin children’s harmless fun — really, He told me so. “Tell those people to stop being such pills.” His exact words.

He doesn’t just talk to Mel Gibson and Jerry Falwell, you know.

OK, then. We allowed Kate to have a “Halloween party” before trick-or-treat, with restrictions, i.e, six guests tops, and a 60-minute duration. It was a blast. Doughnuts, cider, games, outta here. The highlight was the apple-bobbing, plus the blast out the door to start the trick-or-treating, when everyone ran across the street to the neighbors’, who had their dog out in the yard in her costume: Prison stripes, plus an old-style prison pillbox emblazoned BAD DOG. That’s my neighborhood. We know how to have fun.

(By the way, thanks, Connie, for the tip on the glue-on hem strip. Saved my bacon. NN.C readers are the best. You can see how the dress turned out, more or less. Kate likes the batwings best. So do I.)

Bloggage:

My alma mater, the Columbus Dispatch, published their latest presidential poll. They charge for content, so I’ll just give you the gist here:

President Bush and Sen. John Kerry are tied at just less than 50 percent in a new Dispatch Poll. How close is this matchup? Kerry leads by a mere eight votes out of 2,880 ballots returned in the mail survey — the tightest margin ever in a final Dispatch Poll.

Lest you be fooled by the non-New York Times-ishness of this newspaper, don’t be. The poll has a good track record, and was one of the few to predict the enormity of the Reagan landslide in 1980.

As my colleague Bob said the other day, “Who’s ready for a 30-day election night?”

I hope you are — you’re getting one.

Happy Halloween!

I must be insane. Kate said she wanted to be a witch for Halloween, and my brains flew right out of my head. “I know!” I said. “I’ll go to the fabric store and find a pattern and make you a witch costume!”

Why? Why?!?

So I did. And I have to say, it wasn’t the stupidest thing I ever did, although it’s made a mess of my dining room, which is where this little project is set up. I was inspired by the example of my husband, who takes on all sorts of projects successfully, by employing a simple strategy: Read the f*%$& manual. If the manual isn’t helpful enough, there’s this building right downtown called the “library,” where many books are stored, which you can consult free. Plus we have this thing called the internet, where you can meet groups of freelance body-modification surgeons, so how hard could it be to find tips on sewing straight seams?

Not very, but just sort of tiresome. I discovered that if you can follow instructions, you can make a crappy witch costume. A nicely done costume? Well, that’s down the road. Maybe after I read “Ulysses.”

And it has been a strange experience, almost like muscle memory. My mother sewed, and huge chunks of my childhood were spent watching her do it, while we talked at the kitchen table. I also got dragged through fabric stores until I thought I’d go insane, and no, I didn’t appreciate all the cute clothes she made me when I was a child, but that’s the way of the world. I haven’t sewed anything since eighth grade, but when I have a question I find that if I just stop for a minute, close my eyes and think for a minute, it comes back to me.

When that fails, I read the f*&^% manual.

And now I’m almost done. A badly sewn hem, a little tacking here and there, and if I’m lucky it’ll hold together for two wearings — at the Defiance Halloween parade and at Actual Halloween on Sunday.

Best bloggage of the day: A Sun-Times correspondence, between Roger Ebert and various executives, but mostly Conrad Black, the thievin’ sleazarino who lined his pockets with company money. Black, in one letter, revealed to the world Ebert’s S-T salary — $500,000. That’s damn generous, I must say, but it doesn’t strike me as excessive. Anyway, I loved his retort:

Since you have made my salary public, let me say that when I learned that (your wife) Barbara received $300,000 a year from the paper for duties described as reading the paper and discussing it with you, I did not feel overpaid.

Snicker.

I’ll be back to full strength tomorrow. As soon as I’m done hemming.

Well, this is alarming.

Wait. Didn’t I say no more election-related posting unless it was funny? Sorry about that.

Tuesday, eh. A bleah day made less so by mild temperatures and not too much extra work, except for a million phone calls, the left sleeve of Kate’s costume and an apple pie. For my colleagues. I made a peach pie last summer and have been fending off requests for an apple until tonight. What the hell, I make a good pie. Why not share one with my colleagues once a season. It’s such a cinch, if you don’t mind flour all over your kitchen.

Is there anything to talk about this week that isn’t election-related? Maybe the World Series. On which I should probably keep my mouth shut.

So you all discuss what you want in the comments, including that scary story about Ohio.

Here’s why, from the comments below:

are others of you living in the so-called battleground states being inundated with recorded phone messages about the candidates? so far i’ve had “calls” from tommy thompson, ann richards, fred thompson and a host of others. today was the capper, though, when i picked up the phone and heard: “hello, this is laura bush.” i retorted, “bite me, laura,” and hung up. it was deeply satisfying.

I know what you mean. Those calls generally arrive on Election Day here.

Oh, lord, I knew this would happen. I have a busy week in front of me, and Kate just threw up. Fortunately, she has a stay-at-home dad to nurse her, but he can’t make her Halloween costume or write the memo and essay I have due at week’s end. Here’s hoping this will blow over quickly, and spare me in the bargain.

Better get to work on this stuff now, then. No time like the present…

…for bllllloggging!

As the person who sent this to me wrote, “No partisan gag is too stupid, as long as it mocks the same folks you mock.” Presenting: The Lie Girls. Moderately unsafe for work, but amusing.

That’s the new rule for the week: If it’s partisan politics, it has to be funny.

UPDATE: The bug flew in and out the window quickly — I think we’re calling it the After-School Virus. After a second heave and two glasses of 7-Up, Kate seems to be good as new. Ah, the mysterious healing abilities of youth. I don’t get over hangovers that fast.

What a day it was to be off: The temperature reached 70, the fall color was blazing, and my neighbors all seemed to have the day off, too, so we could gather in the street and pickalittle talkalittle about the big bust down the street yesterday. Six cop cars and a sniffer dog descended upon a house in the next block, which we’ve suspected of housing un-neighborly activity, which may or may not include a) drugs; and b) trick-turning.

(”The girl down there looks like she’s had a …real hard life.” — one of my neighbors. “Whatever the price of admission is, it must include take-out food.” — Alan, noting that the visitors tend to be middle-aged men bearing clamshell styrofoam boxes.)

When Laura Lippman visited last summer, her first observation was about how lovely our neighborhood was. And yet…it harbors vice and sin! They should make a weekly TV show about us. “Fort Wayne Vice.”

They’re not that depressing, but what the hell, one is important and the other is grimly amusing.

This one’s important:

The Iraqi interim government has warned the United States and international nuclear inspectors that nearly 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives — used to demolish buildings, make missile warheads and detonate nuclear weapons — are missing from one of Iraq’s most sensitive former military installations.

The huge facility, called Al Qaqaa, was supposed to be under American military control but is now a no man’s land, still picked over by looters as recently as Sunday. United Nations weapons inspectors had monitored the explosives for many years, but White House and Pentagon officials acknowledge that the explosives vanished sometime after the American-led invasion last year.

Oops!

This one’s grimly amusing:

Americans are in the grip of a monster case of Pre-Election Anxiety Disorder. No one is talking about voter apathy anymore, because the opposite is more likely the case. People care too much. They’re losing sleep. They’re having bad dreams about unfavorable tracking polls. … Laura Auerbach, a Democrat and the director of a Washington research foundation, finds herself struggling with her emotions as E-Day gets closer. She hates the president. He’s a “horrible” man, she says. She sent an e-mail to a friend: “I never feel like such a bad person as I do when I’m talking about Bush. He is so hateful he makes me hate.”

Parents making speeches to toddlers: A classic sign of pre-election stress.

Newspaper editors are waking up to something even the half-bright ones feared at the dawn of the Web — it worked. Too well. We got lots of new readers, but they’re readers who don’t think they should pay a dime for it.

(Here’s a fairly depressing story about this, if you’re interested.)

But you know what? Here’s an old fuddy-duddy talking, but there is something you miss when you read a paper online: Context. Juxtaposition. Today, for instance, I was reading this wrenching New York Times story on educational chaos in Kenya, in the dead-tree version, which we splurge on with home delivery every Sunday. I was having the expected reactions — What did these people do to deserve this? There is no God — when I came across this passage:

the moment of grace was shattered when the teacher in charge, Andrew Ngundi, ordered all children not wearing uniforms to come stand before the rest of the school. As part of its free education initiative, the government prohibited the expulsion of students who cannot afford uniforms - required for students in many African countries - but the new rule has not stopped administrators from pressuring poor children to get them.

But Selina Malungu, a fatherless 8-year-old, stood before all her classmates in a grimy, red party dress adorned with torn lace and gay little bears climbing trees. It was her only outfit. The other children mock her for looking like a street urchin, she said.

I actually had to look away for a moment. On the opposite page? A Nordstrom’s ad for fall’s must-have boots. Jesus freakin’ Mary and Joseph, but I turned to the sports section. Some things are just too raw for Sunday morning. I’ll finish it tomorrow.

What a weekend. And it’s only half over, which seems strange, because I worked the extra-extra-early shift Saturday. Starting time: 4 a.m. I kid you not. I was home at noon, which should feel as though the weekend is still young, but it doesn’t. You just feel jet-lagged and spacey and crazy. I ate an egg sandwich and took a nap — oh, tell me you wouldn’t — and woke up to watch Michigan outfox the Boilermakers, then finally got around to watching “Fahrenheit 9/11″ on video. Verdict: Eh. I think I’ve finally reached my limit. If the election were held tomorrow, I’d shout huzzah and look forward to getting back to normal, whatever that is. I’m tired of scowling at my neighbors’ yard signs and being surly all the time. Let’s get it over with.

That said, I found this amusing.

Our latest guppy is named Sunny, but I’m thinking we should change it to Bill. As in: Clinton. He’s the world’s biggest horndog. He hassled the other male to death, chasing him around and nipping at his tail until one day we found him bottoms-up, out of the fight for good. Now Sunny’s obviously putting the blocks to both remaining females, and they’re both bulging in a suspicious fashion. Last month one of them had seven babies, all of which are surviving and growing, and right before our eyes our tank is becoming positively … Mormon. One male, two females, seven little’uns with more probably on the way and four teeny catfish prowling the bottom, cleaning everything up. (I don’t know who their human equivalent is in this metaphor.) I don’t know what we’re going to do when the next crop of babies comes along — call Henry Huggins for help, I guess.

Update: Three catfish. Alan just euthanized an ailing one. RIP.

Let’s make it brief: Best Poor Man ever.

I don’t pay attention to sports. Everybody who knows me, knows this. But lately I’ve been editing sports, and I can’t help it: I’m now interested in the Yankees-Red Sox series. Who wouldn’t be, after last night, although some of the sportswriters got a wee bit hysterical. Curt Schilling has incredible heart, but the NY Daily News described his foot as a “bloody stump.” Please.

Anyway, today I saw the Poor Man’s entry on this and sent it to Dave:

Dear Boston Red Sox

God, I hate this team.

Dave replied:

I think this is the first time you’ve ever tried to talk baseball with me. I’m touched.

Cards vs. Yanks, please, God.

I think that says it all.

In between this, that and the other thing, I’ve been whittling away on a long, whiny post about Ohio’s Issue 1. Then I reread it, thought time to let this go, and spiked it.

Because this, that and the other thing is occupying me at the moment, how’s about a nice fresh bouquet of linkage, along with a short anecdote:

Today was one of those days when working in a newsroom is really fun. At one point in late morning, we were tearing up the front page for three breaking stories. One was pretty well under control, but two weren’t — escaped wildebeests from the zoo (no kidding) and a hostage situation in which the hostage-taker said he was holding a 15-year-old girl with a shotgun wired to her neck.

Mercifully, the hostage-taker turned out to be delusional and his hostage, imaginary. But the wildebeests were the real deal.

OK, bloggage:

(President Bush) was asked by Bob Schieffer whether he thought “homosexuality is a choice.” This is what Bush said: “You know, Bob, I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

In the best of all possible worlds, Schieffer would have asked, “Why not? How could you not know? Don’t you know any gay people, Mr. President? Have you ever asked them? Don’t you know any parents of gay children and have you asked them about their kids and when they knew, sometimes at a very young age, that their son or daughter was homosexual? In all those private lunches with Cheney, all the time you two have spent together, didn’t you once have the intellectual curiosity to ask your vice president about his daughter?” After all, Bush was making policy in this area — trying to bar gays from ever marrying in these United States.

Richard Cohen states the obvious in his column today: George Bush is a great big pander bear.

Elsewhere in the WashPost, Hank on Mary — not literally, of course.

Proving a sense of humor runs in the family, Rob Hiaasen on Bill O’Reilly. (Rob’s Carl’s brother.)

Snippet: He wrote: “Here’s another smart thing to consider. Whatever you do, don’t give the details to your friends. That is a betrayal of trust. I don’t care if it was the best sex in your life.”

She wrote: O’Reilly in 2003 regaled her and her friend over dinner “with stories concerning the loss of his virginity to a girl in a car at JFK, two ‘really wild’ Scandinavian airline stewardesses … and a ‘girl’ at a sex show in Thailand who had shown him things in the backroom that ‘blew his mind.’”

Snicker.

Later.

From a Salon story on Issue 1, the anti-gay marriage measure in my native state. If you think gay marriage is a bad idea, meet your people:

As the conflict between Ohio’s civic and business leaders and the cadres of the religious right suggests, the fight over Issue 1 is more than a just a contest between Republicans and Democrats. Rather, it’s a battle in a larger struggle between stolid Middle American moderation and the mega-churched, hot-blooded moralism that is sweeping through much of the country.

The audience stares at him in open-mouthed amazement. Looking like she’s been slapped, McClellan walks out of the room and starts crying. “My father was a D-Day lander and a World War II hero,” she says later. “He freed two concentration camps. All I could think of was here are all of these people who have fought and given their lives to keep our country free of maniacal people like that guy. This guy reminded me of a Hitler youth. At this stage of our evolution, why is there such a maniacal hatred of people?”

Oh, Miss Cheney, what a big … tent you have!