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RTDNTOTO 🐻 Random Thoughts Deserving No Thread Of Their Own 20 (2025)

JNA said:
Who remembers listening to a rebroadcast of Orson Wells Radio theater War of the Worlds ?
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I remember listening to it sometime in elementary school - maybe 4th grade. I seem to recall we also listened to the original Orson Wells version that was set to a really rudimentary animated slideshow that we watched on a reel-to-reel projector that got wheeled into the class.
 
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luckless pedestrian said:
unpopular opinion: Trick or Trunk Halloween means people are way too paranoid or your community doesn't have dense neighborhoods for trick or treating
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I have a standard anti trunk-or-treat rant whenever my staff proposes doing public engagement at the one in the municipality we work for. We still go and table at it from time to time but I hate the car orientation of it and the undermining of the tiny bit of autonomy some kids get on Halloween in their neighborhoods.
 
Faust_Motel said:
I have a standard anti trunk-or-treat rant whenever my staff proposes doing public engagement at the one in the municipality we work for. We still go and table at it from time to time but I hate the car orientation of it and the undermining of the tiny bit of autonomy some kids get on Halloween in their neighborhoods.
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yes. this!!!
 
luckless pedestrian said:
unpopular opinion: Trick or Trunk Halloween means people are way too paranoid or your community doesn't have dense neighborhoods for trick or treating
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I used to feel the same way but after taking our kids to a few trunk or treat events I've changed my mind.

Our elementary school PTA began hosting a trunk or treat event back around 2017 or 2018 and it's a blast. It's in the parking lot at our school in a very dense neighborhood on the edge of our downtown - the kind of neighborhood where the people who live right there get 500 or 600 kids at their door on Halloween, most of whom are running around unescorted by adults (or adults who are trailing 12 houses behind).

When done right I think it's a good chance for the parents of little kids who enjoy dressing up and decorating and handing out candy to do so because they might miss out otherwise because they've got to maybe chaperone some kids.

I didn't go to the one at the elementary this year (it was Wednesday night) but judging by the pictures that my wife took, some of the parents go all out decorating their displays. I used to participate and would load up the back of my truck with straw and pumpkins and put a bunch more pumpkins around it and dress like a farmer. My $60 display definitely would not be cutting it this year!

I was on a walk the other day and saw a sign outside a church advertising a Trunk or Treat event and for some reason it had a picture of the Monopoly guy on it. It made me think that if I had a Rolls Royce or a Bentley or something like that, I'd take it to my kid's elementary school Trunk or Treat, dress up as the Monopoly guy, and hand out 100 Grand bars and gold foil wrapped chocolate coins (even though the chocolate in those are generally pretty terrible). I'd pop the trunk open and it would just be filled to the top with 100 Grand Bars and "gold coins" and I'd stand there in a top hat and monocle. It sounded funny in my head but, judging by her reaction, it was apparently much less funny when I tried to explain it to our 15-year-old.
 
We're preparing ourselves for Halloween Mayhem... we live in "THE" trick or treating neighborhood of the city. We are stocked with 3,500 pieces of candy and fully expect to run out.

Our house is one block off "Halloween Street." The street self shuts down without any barricades or police--the pedestrians simply take it over and it ceases to be possible for a vehicle to get through it. Yes, it is that dense with people at the peak, and it should be epic this year since we have fabulous weather and it falls on a Friday.
 
SlaveToTheGrind said:
Our Halloween routine of the last several years...lights out and go out to dinner. Longhorn on the agenda tonight.
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Same here but dinner at a friend's house. We've handed out candy before and even stocked up for early evening/if plans fell through but when we leave for dinner we'll just put what we have left out in a bowl.

We bought a pumpkin but have been too busy to carve it!
 
Spent the better part of the week in Eugene, OR working with a group to try to (dismantle? suggest? reduce?) state Planning law. Long drive home last night.
Turning around to go back down (this time to Portland) for the Nuggets/Blazers game tonight. Taking my oldest son and his friend... my kid will do most of the driving...

Last weekend a wind storm blew down some huge branches in the neighbor's yard behind my (old) house. I still co-own the house with the soon-to-be Ex wife. Through this process, we have agreed to give eachother space and respect our home areas. However, after a $3200 estimate to remove the damage, I am now going to go over there this weekend to help clean up for the neighbor. I got my chainsaw out and got it running in the parking lot of my apartment. Got a lot of looks from residents and neighbors. After seeing that it was functional, I quietly carried it to my apartment (it is on my patio now)... I felt this may look weird, but it IS Halloween... :doubtful:
 
Wondering why my water bill has suddenly started coming to me addressed as AICP. That is correct, but not something that would normally appear on a utility bill (or mortgage, or HOA dues, for that matter).
 
Ever listen to a song, each note massaging its corresponding neuronal pathway, kneading each neuron, lovingly flowing through? Beyond satori? Yeah, I listened to that song last night. I think I’m a changed man.
 
Maister said:
Jim Davis - the creator of Garfield comics - is worth about 800 million dollars. How do you feel about that?
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That’s great, good for him, taking his own creation and not only making a living off it, but still earning bags of money from his IP. If only I could be so smart.
 
Suburb Repairman said:
We're preparing ourselves for Halloween Mayhem... we live in "THE" trick or treating neighborhood of the city. We are stocked with 3,500 pieces of candy and fully expect to run out.

Our house is one block off "Halloween Street." The street self shuts down without any barricades or police--the pedestrians simply take it over and it ceases to be possible for a vehicle to get through it. Yes, it is that dense with people at the peak, and it should be epic this year since we have fabulous weather and it falls on a Friday.
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We had 2,500 pieces of candy and friends of ours brought 1,200 pieces or so. So we had two points of candy distribution. We started giving candy out at 5 and continued till 8:30 when we ran out. We were giving out consistently 2 pieces for the first 2 hours and then switched to 3 pieces, by the time 8 pm rolled around we gave out 4 pieces. Our friend was very critical on her candy distribution. Cute kids got 3 pieces, average kids under 12 got 2 pieces, and teenagers and above got 1 piece. I conservatively figured that we had 600+. They were still coming through the neighborhood at 9:15 when I was cleaning up the front porch. I gave out left over unopened sodas to handful of kids that came to my front porch with the lights out while I was cleaning. My highlight was giving a two liter sun drop to a 3 or 4 year old dressed as buzz light-year.
 
If Mrs. Maister drops the ball on anything and I mean anything, her go-to excuses without even any apparent thought are: 1) I was tired and 2) I was really busy.

Fine. But there really should be a limit on how many times you can plausibly go to that well. Let's just say that well should have run dry several years ago.
 
SlaveToTheGrind said:
Our Halloween routine of the last several years...lights out and go out to dinner.
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We've done that for over two decades. Our next door neighbors have a couple of young kids, and they (for now) pick a theme for their costumes every Halloween (parents and kids jointly) - we stick around until they stop by, and then get the hell out of Dodge. Their costumes this year were K-Pop Demon Hunters, apparently...
 
Maister said:
In actual practice, Santa should be whipping Trick or Treaters. I noticed all the home improvement stores had their outdoor Christmas decoration sales displays up at least a week before Halloween this year.
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My neighbors already put up their Christmas stuff in the yard. My stuff will show up the Saturday after Thanksgiving. I did install some govee permanent led lights ahead of Halloween this year, but I won't turn them on for Christmas till after thanksgiving.
 
Big Owl said:
My neighbors already put up their Christmas stuff in the yard. My stuff will show up the Saturday after Thanksgiving. I did install some govee permanent led lights ahead of Halloween this year, but I won't turn them on for Christmas till after thanksgiving.
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I can understand putting up lights on the house while the weather isn't icy and snowy, and then turning them on the day after Thanksgiving, but setting up other lawn decorations is more dubious imho. I guess it's worse for plastic blow-mold lawn decorations than with today's inflatables which can lay deflated on the ground pretty well unnoticed.
 
Big Owl said:
We had 2,500 pieces of candy and friends of ours brought 1,200 pieces or so. So we had two points of candy distribution. We started giving candy out at 5 and continued till 8:30 when we ran out. We were giving out consistently 2 pieces for the first 2 hours and then switched to 3 pieces, by the time 8 pm rolled around we gave out 4 pieces. Our friend was very critical on her candy distribution. Cute kids got 3 pieces, average kids under 12 got 2 pieces, and teenagers and above got 1 piece. I conservatively figured that we had 600+. They were still coming through the neighborhood at 9:15 when I was cleaning up the front porch. I gave out left over unopened sodas to handful of kids that came to my front porch with the lights out while I was cleaning. My highlight was giving a two liter sun drop to a 3 or 4 year old dressed as buzz light-year.
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I had 21. Guess I overbought, went to Dollar Tree and got those movie box candies. Looks like I have leftovers.
 
Maister said:
Jim Davis - the creator of Garfield comics - is worth about 800 million dollars. How do you feel about that?
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I am not really surprised. That's some popular IP!

Looking him up just now though, what really surprises me is that Davis is only 80 years old! Garfield has been going on for so long that I figured the creator would be like 90, if he were still alive.
 
mendelman said:
Check on Charles Schulz's net worth when he died in 2000.

The key is good IP licensing.
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I have a couple t-shirts from the Port Huron to Mackinac Yacht Race a few years ago. It was the 100th anniversary of the race and they had Peanuts themed shirts. I also have a Peanuts themed shirt from the Marine Corps league and a couple vintage repro Peanuts shirts from a Japanese brand and a sweatshirt from LL Bean with Spike on it that I've had for about a decade. A few years ago I had a Omega Speedmaster with Snoopy on it. This year, Brooks Brothers just did a special Peanuts themed collection.

I think I recall reading something a few years ago that Schulz didn't mind licensing out the Peanuts stuff but he was sort of particular about who could use the IP and what kind of products. Once a couple of his heirs got the rights, all bets were off and they began to license the stuff all over the place and that's when the money really began rolling in.
 
WSU MUP Student said:
Once a couple of his heirs got the rights, all bets were off and they began to license the stuff all over the place and that's when the money really began rolling in.
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See also the story of Mrs. Geisel and why we got the Jim Carrey Grinch and Mike Myers Cat in the Hat movies.

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Halloween Observations:

  • We bought way too much candy this year. My youngest went trick or treating, the middle son handed out candy, and the oldest went to a party.
  • Several houses went all out with decorations, but didn't do anything.
  • Way too many houses had their light's on, but no one was handing out candy.
  • Around 50% participated in Handing out Candy.
 
michaelskis said:
Halloween Observations:

  • We bought way too much candy this year. My youngest went trick or treating, the middle son handed out candy, and the oldest went to a party.
  • Several houses went all out with decorations, but didn't do anything.
  • Way too many houses had their light's on, but no one was handing out candy.
  • Around 50% participated in Handing out Candy.
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We didn't decorate at all this year due to other things going on, and the fact that we weren't going to be home (we worked an event at my office, with thousands of kids). Historically, though our neighborhood tends to really decorate, our particular street is mostly full of grinches.
 
We had 17 trick-or-treaters on Friday evening - down a bit from the past few years (we had 22 last year and a record 35 in 2023) but up from our average of 14 since we've lived here. I bought enough full size candy bars and packs of Skittles and Sour Patch Kids that each child could have taken a big handful and I'd still have plenty left over. I do that every year though because I love to eat the candy too.

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When I was getting Halloween decor out of the garage a couple weeks ago I found a bag of 250 small bouncy balls leftover from a science thing at the high school last year (they ended up with many more than they needed so our daughter brought us back one of the unopened bags we had donated). I dumped all the balls into another bowl and would hold out bowls with candy and/or the balls for kids. I didn't think the bouncy balls would be that popular but the kids seemed to love them, especially the really little kids, and they took some big handfuls.

Our oldest and her friends are all 15 and 16 and sophomores so this is probably the last year they can get away with going out for candy. She went to a friend's house in the fancy part of town to watch movies and go up and down their street where a bunch of the houses go all out with the decorations. There was a house with a food truck from a local cider mill giving out fresh cider and donuts and another house had an actual carousel and pirate carnival ride set up for people to ride on. My wife dropped our daughter off over there early, around 4:00 pm, and said it was already like a massive block party going on with kids and adults all over the place. A lot of the houses in our neighborhood, myself included, give out full size stuff... our daughter came back from there with 4 king size candy bars and a giant bag of individual bags of Skittles among her candy (she said the house giving out the bags of bags of Skittles had cartons of them next to the door and you could pick between sour, original, or gummy, but they were all Skittles so maybe they work for the company or something? Seems like an odd thing to go all out on). She and her friends walked nearly a mile on that street all the way down closer to our side of town where a house at the very end had been setting up a huge haunted house all month with all sorts of animatronic things. I had walked past this house a bunch and saw the haunted house being built out front and thought it was excessive but our daughter said it stretched all the way around into the backyard and there was even more stuff back there.

The best thing either of our kids got though was our youngest got 2 full size Coffee Crisp bars (one was hers and then her friend gave her the one he had gotten because he didn't know what it was and this 9-year-old wasn't about to try something new). Coffee Crisp is probably my favorite candy bar but a hard one to find on this side of the border. Total score!
 
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WSU MUP Student said:
I have a couple t-shirts from the Port Huron to Mackinac Yacht Race a few years ago. It was the 100th anniversary of the race and they had Peanuts themed shirts. I also have a Peanuts themed shirt from the Marine Corps league and a couple vintage repro Peanuts shirts from a Japanese brand and a sweatshirt from LL Bean with Spike on it that I've had for about a decade. A few years ago I had a Omega Speedmaster with Snoopy on it. This year, Brooks Brothers just did a special Peanuts themed collection.

I think I recall reading something a few years ago that Schulz didn't mind licensing out the Peanuts stuff but he was sort of particular about who could use the IP and what kind of products. Once a couple of his heirs got the rights, all bets were off and they began to license the stuff all over the place and that's when the money really began rolling in.
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My father taught me a good lesson years ago when I was first getting good enough to sell my writing: He said don't sell your IP. Sell the rights to use it. Which is exactly what I do, and it works a lot better than selling the IP altogether.
 
There is a lot of controversy in some neighborhoods about kids from other neighborhoods coming to T or T. Personally, we don't know or even care where the kids live--anyone who comes gets handouts.

We also don't have age limits--anyone, age 0 to 100, gets stuff if they T or T at our house.
 
jumbach said:
My father taught me a good lesson years ago when I was first getting good enough to sell my writing: He said don't sell your IP. Sell the rights to use it. Which is exactly what I do, and it works a lot better than selling the IP altogether.
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One of our nextdoor neighbors is a very successful children's author and sold the rights to one of his series to Disney a few years back. I think they originally intended to make a cartoon series out of it but Disney ended up selling their rights to the Hallmark channel who made a direct-to-TV movie. Not quite as lucrative as a Disney series but I don't think the family is hurting for funds.
 
jumbach said:
There is a lot of controversy in some neighborhoods about kids from other neighborhoods coming to T or T. Personally, we don't know or even care where the kids live--anyone who comes gets handouts.

We also don't have age limits--anyone, age 0 to 100, gets stuff if they T or T at our house.
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As long as the kids aren't greedy I have no qualms about anybody coming to my door either, no matter where they live... I don't even care if you've got a costume on or not! My only stipulation is that if you are a teen, you must actually say, "Trick or treat!"
 
WSU MUP Student said:
As long as the kids aren't greedy I have no qualms about anybody coming to my door either, no matter where they live... I don't even care if you've got a costume on or not! My only stipulation is that if you are a teen, you must actually say, "Trick or treat!"
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You have to say the words! Don't just stand there holding your bag open. Say. The. Words.
 
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