Halloween Season: When Every Day is Payday.

The stuff starts showing up at the store around late September. A small display, festooned in black and orange, whispers to me as I wheel past en route to the Meow Mix. The sultry hiss of temptation beckons: 

"Dare you sample my delights yet, my weak friend? Go ahead, buy a bag. What’s not fun about fun size? Check it off the old to-do list. Yes, of course, you can put me in the basement for a few weeks and forget about me. 

"So glad you brought me home, my lover. Oopsy! You opened my bag, you silly galoot. Oh well, what harm is it to sample a savory sliver? Yes, yes, have another. And another. One more and the bag is gone, my sweet. Splendid.”

And yet again, the terrorists have won. 

It’s candy season, a time when high fructose seeps from the walls and the workplace becomes a Hershey highway. If October had a theme song, it might steal the chorus from Eighties one-hit wonder, The Church:

…I got no time,

For private consultation.

I ate forty Milky Ways tonight…

Throughout the year, a few co-workers maintain candy jars, perfect for those 2:30 drive-bys. But as All Hallows approaches, public sugar stations spring up like algae blooms in Limbaugh’s thigh meat—thirty paces to the Raisinette bowl, only seventeen to the York Peppermint Patties. Hmmm, Raisinettes would hit the spot, plus I can use the additional exercise.

Since we’re smack in the middle of the Festival of Saint Wonka, what better time to embrace our inner glucose glutton? Yes, it’s unhealthy, and sure, by 10:00 on Halloween night a lot of us can already feel the Mount Vesuvius of unicorn zits pushing through our forehead epidermis, but doggone it, I love the stuff, which is why I’d love to share with you my top five Halloween candies:

5) Payday—The only finalist lacking the cocoa bean, Payday’s savory peanuts pair effortlessly with the mysterious charms of nougat, a robust compound discovered in Roswell, New Mexico during the summer of 1947.

4) M-n-Ms—Probably the speediest sugar delivery vehicle in the Western Hemisphere, a handfull of these can paste a hundred calories to your dorsal flaps before you even get to the copy machine.

3) Butterfinger—I’ve loved these since I was knee-high to Augustus Gloop.

2) Kit Kat—Holy sweet mother of Monsanto, this time of year I eat so many Kit Kats, FEMA has to drop them from helicopters for the kids.

1) Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups—Although I wouldn’t consider that stuff in the middle actual peanut butter, RPCs are the undisputed king of candy. If there’s a heaven, the gate is orange with brown trim. Plus, after six or seven, they make me feel most ill of any candy, and that, my friend, is power.

Enjoy your season, and keep in mind, if I see you with a kale smoothie, you’re dead to me.

You'll Feel Better About Yourself After You Read This.

Hang on a second. 

Sorry about that, had to loosen up the belt a little. 

Okay, what the hell, I took it all the way off—it's been that kind of a weekend. 

What's the deal with belts, anyway? Oh sure, the man cons you into believing a belt is a useful accessory for keeping the old trou from sagging, but I submit that it's nothing more than an oppressive device whose roots can be traced to medieval dungeons. The belt is nothing more than an iron man maiden designed to punish my marbled middle.

Women seemed to have gotten the message years ago, burning not only their brassieres, but other confining devices propagated by men to keep them constricted and tamed. Girdles, curlers, high heels—even tweezers were shit -canned by a group of people fed up with a system which promotes torture in the name of fashion.

And that's why I'm about to burn my belt. I'm fed up—literally—from Thanksgiving weekend. During the past five days, I have exhibited the type of behavior that makes Caligula look like an even skinnier version of that chick who's married to Harrison Ford.

Fortunately, I've discovered there's actually a name for this culinary debauchery; I looked it up and it's called the "Nagev" diet. I know, it's sounds sort of Russian, but the term actually is "vegan" spelled backwards. It involves consuming only the bodies and byproducts of organisms which once had a face. 

It all started because I prepared Thanksgiving this year. All of it. Came up with the menu, shopped for it and cooked it all up. Fat was the common denominator. Each dish—turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes—contained at least an entire stick of butter, except the pumpkin pie, which I'm pretty sure still contained more lard than Rush Limbaugh tucks south of the elastic. 

I must have subconsciously decided that dairy products would not only stave off blandness, they would also curb any food-born hazards which may lie in wait for my bride and daughters. Ever since the e-coli scare with the under-toasted Pop Tarts, I've been a smidge paranoid.

The day went well, thankfully. Everything tasted pretty darned good, and nary a family member succumbed to the charms of our bathroom's only pottery not holding candles.

Still, everything would have been fine had I decided to eat with abandon on Thursday only. But when I rolled out of bed Friday morning, I'd barely nodded good morning to my wife and planted my swollen feet on the cold floor before pie had made me its breakfast bitch. 

From that moment on, every meal was a mini Thanksgiving. I understand I've taken a bit of journalistic license with this blog, but here's an indisputable fact: Out of the next four meals I ate, four of them were turkey, stuffing and mashed potatoes. By Saturday night, I'd thrown back so much sodium that I dreamed of Popsicle forests with Diet Coke waterfalls. 

My fifty-one-year-old body, after layering on a sedentary weekend of football watching, pleaded with me to purge the gelatinous globs of gluttony from its distressed bloodstream. By Sunday night, it begged me, "Dude, go to the gym. Or go for a walk. Hell, just move your toes."

Maybe I'll hold off on burning my belt for now. After all, what are the alternatives? A loosely tied rope? Nah, only Ellie Mae can pull that off. 

Suspenders? Nope, even though some guys can definitely rock that look, 

I don't think I'm one of them.

I'll see how things feel after a couple of salads.