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I never plan ahead for Halloween. This year I put ‘Get a Halloween Costume’ on my calendar, for September 1, and here I am without a costume on the night before the night. Now that the costume store is sold out and turning into a Christmas store, here are some ideas that’ll help you avoid being the guy who was too lame to dress up. None of these are my own ideas, but I’m not sure anything on this blog is.

  1. Sexual Harassment Lawsuit – Put on a suit, write sexually harassing comments on pieces of paper, pin them to your suit. Probably best to use a cheap second hand suit. If there is one piece of advice I’d give a 16 year old it would be to buy one or two second hand suits (also known as drinking suits), as they can come in handy for all kinds of shenanigans over the years.
  2. Doctor/Nurse - After the costume shop has sold out of it’s cheap doctor costumes, you can always head to your local nurses supply store to buy some scrubs. Personalize it a bit by adding bits of your favorite tv doctor. Ladies can cut and tighten for a new twist on the always popular ’slutty nurse’ costume.
  3. God’s Gift to Women – Shout out to the Shark on this one. find a box big enough to wear. Cut a whole in the box. Put your junk in the box. Wait, that’s something else. Cut holes so you can wear said box, wrap it in wrapping paper and add card “To: Women, From: God”.
  4. Box of Wine – Another box costume, probably a lot of things you could do with a box. This one requires some artistic skill or the means to copy and enlarge a Franzia box (don’t they have 24 hour Kinko’s?). So you draw/copy an enlarged Franzia (or your favorite box wine) onto your box, you can even add an actual bag from a box of wine. Bob G. tells me this can lead to back pain if you just have the box sitting on your shoulders and you include the wine.
  5. Chip-n-Dales Dancer – Girls don’t have the market cornered on slutty costumes. Actually the kind of do, but if you have access to tight black pants and a bow tie your ready to fight for man slut equality. The laides will ahve to add cat ears to this one and its a slutty cat (but if your going out in public add some sort of top).

I don’t have time to write all 101 right now. Basically, everyone should own a wearable box and an old suit, and then their costume options are virtually unlimited. If you’ve got any great comments for the Sexual Harassment suit, feel free to leave them in the comments.

14% of Twitter users have no followers. I’m surprised by this because I have a follower, and I’ve never tweeted a thing (like 38% of all users) or made any attempts to gain followers. I used to have two followers, but apparently one can’t keep those kind of numbers without sending some kind of gibberish into the Twit-mosphere.

Here is my source for the Twitter stats.

Go here if you would like to be my 2nd 2nd follower on Twitter. I still have no intentions of writing anything there. I can’t be constrained to 140 words.

I picked up the Daily Aztec today and saw the headline ‘University Ranks Number One’. Clearly it wasn’t for journalism. Turns out SDSU is the number one small research University in the country. The source? The school’s own Dean of graduate affairs who claims to have seen the figures. Might have wanted to wait until those get released, Journalism majors. It’s called checking your facts. I don’t have to, I’m a blogger.

A few minutes after reading that I turned on the radio and learned that downtown in the Gaslamp, the Haunted Hotel was named one of the top 13 haunts in the nation by Haunt World Magazine. Most surprising about this is that Haunt World Magazine appears to be a real thing (I didn’t check that fact).

I’m not trying to put any positive or negative connotation on that, I went to a Killers concert Friday and there were a lot of Latinos in the crowd. I also realized it had been a while since I saw a band that was big with the under 25 crowd. Lots of Acne and tight jeans at the show. I just don’t get the tight jeans.

I’m not a big fan of the band, I like their music but had never payed too much attention to them before. After watching them, I couldn’t help feel like the band looks like an odd collection. The guitar player looks like he came from an 80’s hair band, the bass player from 70’s Southern Rock group, and the drummer wouldn’t look out of place lined up with ‘To Catch a Predator’ guests (is guests the right word?). While the look like a collection of misfits, I’ll admit they put on a hell of a show.

Another Slate article I read when I should’ve been working was on books to teach men to be men. Nothing in there got me running to Boarders, but it did get me thinking about the way a man should behave when he lives on the West Coast as opposed to back East or Europe.

The books in the article seemed to be filled with all kinds of things men should always do and never do, but a proper West Coaster would be too relaxed to have rules that can never be broken. The rules of dress would be different as well, the formality of the New England gentleman would not be appropriate in California, it would step too far outside the norms and probably make some insecure men in jeans uncomfortable. I would think any kind of gentleman would do his best to avoid making others uncomfortable.

These are just some opening thoughts on the subject, a semi-definitive guide would be helpful for teenage Seattlites and East Coast transplants, perhaps something to work on.

the use of the term ‘cougar’ to describe mature woman chasing young men may have originated with the Vancouver Canucks hockey squad in the early 90’s. I first heard it being tossed about in the ski/snowboard crowd, so a Canadian origin makes sense.

But instead of tweeting, I’m just going to write short blogging posts from now on.

Last night, after what seemed like a long weekend, I didn’t want to go to sleep. Sleep meant waking up and going to work.  Working, as some of you may already know, is for suckers. So I stayed up late. When Monday morning eventually came I was tired. I got over it.

I stopped drinking caffeine about a month ago, and I’m trying to figure out if I’m happier without it. Or, as an economist might say, if it has increased my utility. Note to economists: utility is a stupid synonym for happiness. Living without coffee, tea and delicious soda has had the desired effect (I think), overall, I have more energy. Not Tony Little energy, but he had to be on something to get that pumped about cheap exercise equipment. Now when I’m tired in the morning it passes, but before when I was tired, I’d drink a tasty beverage and I wouldn’t be tired.

I guess I save money, but my caffeine drinking was breaking the bank, so that hasn’t really come into play. Now that school is starting back up and my days have gotten longer, I’ll give sooner or later, and then I can stop wasting precious time pondering the pros and cons of a decaffeinated life.

I feel obligated to link to this, due to my current course of study (hat tip to Marginal Revolution).

You know what the problem with beer is? Sometimes it causes one to not be on top of ones situation. I went to the Stay Classey tailgate party this weekend, consisting of music, drinks and a Padres game. Unfortunatley when I got there and started drinking (it was very hot out), I didn’t realize I was at the second stage. By the time I figured this out I had missed the main act and had to take the consolation prize of watching the Padres almost win a game.

Adding to the fun of the Padres was some old drunks (both older and drunker than I) sitting behind me. At one point my trip to the bathroom coincided with them getting a talking to from security. I didn’t notice but apparently they thought I had narced on them and made some comments when my friends and I left in the 9th. This was pointed out to me later, as I had already tuned them out. Had I heard them I would have responded with ‘Your girlfriend is fat’. Which I have decided is an all purpose way to win an argument with any guy who’s girlfriend is, well, kind of fat. All though not sinking to their level was probably a better way to handle the situation.

Sunday I tagged along with my roomate to the U.S. Open Sand Castle building contest. On the whole I was dissapointed with the castles (I think one was actually a castle, most were tributes to Michael Jackson or confusing political statements). I’m thinking of training for next years contest, but not sinking to their level is probably a better way to handle the situation. If your thinking of going in the future, I’d advise against it, it’s mildly entertaining but Imperial beach can’t handle the massive influx of humanity, and just finding a parking spot was a chore.

 

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RSS I Read & Enjoyed…

  • Caplan on Education November 10, 2009
    How much does increasing college-going rates matter to our economy and society? Caplan: College attendance, in my view, is usually a drain on our economy and society. Encouraging talented people to spend many years in wasteful status contests deprives the economy of millions of man-years of output. If this were really an "investment," of course, it […]
    Alex Tabarrok
  • Dolphin markets in everything, Gresham's Law edition November 4, 2009
    I enjoyed this story: Kelly has taken this task one step further. When people drop paper into the water she hides it under a rock at the bottom of the pool. The next time a trainer passes, she goes down to the rock and tears off a piece of paper to give to the trainer. After a fish reward, she goes back down, tears off another piece of paper, gets another fi […]
    Tyler Cowen
  • How to improve basketball October 29, 2009
    Tim Miano writes to me: I am a longtime MR reader. I have a hypothesis about how basketball could be much more exciting, and I can't for the life of me figure out why people who are into sports haven't widely considered it (as least as far as I know).Here is my simple thought: games should be played as best 4 out of 7 periods -- perhaps 7 minutes e […]
    Tyler Cowen
  • The coin toss: not 50-50 after all October 25, 2009
    Using a high-speed camera that photographed people flipping coins, the three researchers determined that a coin is more likely to land facing the same side on which it started. If tails is facing up when the coin is perched on your thumb, it is more likely to land tails up. How much more likely? At least 51 percent of the time, the researchers claim, and pos […]
    Chris Blattman
  • Motorcycle helmet externality of the day October 13, 2009
    Our estimates imply that every death of a helmetless motorcyclist prevents or delays as many as 0.33 deaths among individuals on organ transplant waiting lists. Here is the paper and I thank Brent Wheeler for the pointer.  So should we mandate or tax the use of such helmets?
    Tyler Cowen
  • Sobering Reality September 28, 2009
    From Bill Easterly's, Can the West Save Africa.Hat tip to for the link and table to Hit and Run.
    Alex Tabarrok
  • The McFarthest spot September 27, 2009
    Strange Maps reports:Somewhere in South Dakota is the McFarthest Spot, the place in the US geographically most removed from the nearest McD’s...If you started out from this location, a few miles north of State Highway 20 (which runs latitudinally between Highways 73 in the west and 65 in the east), you’d have to drive 145 miles to get your Big Mac (if you co […]
    Tyler Cowen
  • Teacher Absence in the United States September 24, 2009
    Yesterday I looked at teacher absence in the developing world, highlighting India where a quarter of teachers may be absent on a given day.  Teacher absence isn't that high in the United States but it is still shockingly high.  On a typical school day, 5-6% of teachers are absent, i.e. equivalent to an absence once every 20 days!Bearing in mind that the […]
    Alex Tabarrok