If you failed to get the memo when the pumpkin spice beverages popped up around the end of August, we are well into the Holiday Season, a chunk of calendar filled with ancient sanctities, modern marketing, and our own personal traditions, things we do because we have always done them at a certain time of year, like hauling down the boxes of decorations, or writing blogs about the difficulty of dining appropriate Halloween postcards in one’s inventory. Yes, it I time once again to run through our new acquisitions and realize there is nothing, nothing spooky enough for the thirty0-first of October. I tried. This young lady REAY seemed to me to be a proof that vampires CAN sit out in daylight, but, after looking at other postcards by this artist, we find he simply likes to draw gaunt, dark beauties.
Similarly, anyone who finds this sort of octofright Halloweenish is just behind the times. In a modern romantasy novel, those two would be glad her cowardly boyfriend gas left them alone together in the boat (to share the trout she’s hauling in, of course.)
Monster fish are sort of ho-hum in the world of postcards: not so much a terror as a way to advertise an excellent fishing resort.
While monster insects have joined the work force, serving the puny bipeds
Like the monster turtles.
And the only thing terrifying about the workforce is the boss. (He has fangs and is too big for his desk: clearly middle management. Not really worthy of Halloween, which celebrates CEOS like Count Dracula and the Mummy, or underdogs like the Wolfman. (Sorry.)
Your monster with a nine to five job who likes to go to the bar for a quick one on the way home is far too relatable to spread terror at this spooky time of year.
Damsels in distress: THERE’S a theme for every Haunted House attraction in the land. But my postcards can’t do much even there. This chain letter lady, one or two people observed last week, seems to have her hands bound behind her back, and is tied up like a bouquet for delivery. But she doesn’t look distressed about it, especially.
THIS lady IS in distress, but not especially horrifying because her predicament takes too many footnotes. One of the basic tenets of horror is to frighten the viewer with “THIS could happen to YOU!” but by the time we explain for the young’uns that the old wringer had a habit of catching any loose garment and pulling…yeah, we feel SORRY for her, but her situation is too detached from modern experience to be at all fear-worthy.
I COULD pretend this is a mad stalker from an archaic series called Halloween the Thirteenth at Freddy’s, but a second glance shows it’s only Dad, enforcing curfew.
While this expression of an antique joke about waking up after a binge and wondering if one is still alive is hampered by the teeny tidy caskets.
I just have to admit the inventory cannot offer any real terrors for these cool, clear, spooky evenings. You’ll have to make do with reality, and return to your regularly scheduled calm contemplation of our elected officials and our nuclear stockpiles. Sorry we couldn’t horrify you.
