Anyhow. Invites to six different parties hung Damocles'-sword-stylee above my head on Friday night, but I was exhausted after spending the afternoon systematically undoing all of the edits a client had made to an "article" I'd written about Prague. Par example, they took out the three historical background paragraphs detailing the Nazi occupation, the Soviet occupation, the 1968 uprisings, and the eventual Velvet Revolution. In their place (and I am crapping you negative, people) was this sentence: "From its halcyon days in the 16th century as the capital of the Holy Roman Empire, Prague weathered through the Nazi and Soviet dictatorships of the 20th century to finally become the capital of the modern Czech Republic."

Hm. So how *does* one weather the Nazi regime, exactly? Is it just a matter of wrapping the shrubs in burlap and putting masking-tape Xs on the window panes? And did nothing happen between the 1500s and 19-freaking-38?

Anyhow. A quandary, to be sure, but nothing a few hundred drams of brown liquor, thrown back with Randy Johnsonesque vigor, couldn't remedy. And I'm loath to do anything half-assed, so I kept it up all Saturday as well.

My inner narrative, Saturday night at the bar: Hm, the sexy cat? Or the sexy witch? It's a hard call, but I think you made the right decision. Allow me to reward you by plugging "Frankie Teardrop" into the jukebox. Ten times.

Got home in the wee hours to discover that our neighbors were throwing one helluva hootenanny. Tigres del Norte cranked up to eleven means no sleep for the drunkies. So instead of going to bed, we watched The Wicker Man. (Why has no one told me about this movie before? I want answers.)

I was nearly done composing my impromptu Def Poetry Slam about the bastardos next door (and I swear, Mos would've given me the whole hour, it was that good) when the music ended, the joyful shouting stopped, the shrieking children were gathered up, and everyone disappeared into the night. How do you get everyone to leave a party all at once? I must remember to ask.

Drinking commenced the next day after the startling realization that editors would rather attend stand-up comedy shows than the Frankfurt Book Fair. It continued into the evening, when revelers from yet another neighbor's Halloween party opened the door to the roof of our building, setting off the alarm.

"Let's go out into the hall and shame them," N suggested.

It turns out that it doesn't take much to shame a grown white man dressed as Bob Marley.

Yesterday, back at work, HR distributed a memo reminding us to be sensitive to our coworkers' phobias by avoiding decorations involving spiders, witches, cats, and pumpkins. I might've been willing to entertain arguments in support of Halloween right up to that point, but the memo pretty much cemented my opinion: This is not a fun holiday.

Today the leftover candy appears, scattered forlornly by the reception desk. Did you know they make Halloween-themed Peeps now?