Halloween was kind of a bust.

Some years we run out of candy and some years we have almost the same we started with.

We never know what the night will bring.

This was one of those same-as-we-started-with nights.

Maybe a dozen kids crawling the neighborhood trying to look scary.

When I was a kid it was big deal to go demand candy from people.

We were out with our flashlights measuring success by the weight of our bags.

Then we all sat on the garage floor swapping stuff we didn’t like for stuff we did.

Now, it’s mostly teenagers with a tie-dye t-shirt and a $3 mask from Longs.
Maybe they’re hoping for a 6-pack of Bud.

What few kids are out are escorted by the parents because they never know what monster is answering the door and what is being given to a young child.

A lot of adults end up in Waikiki and my cop friends call it one of the worst night’s of the year for people acting badly.

I’ve been to a couple of them and it’s like Mardi Gras on steroids.
It’s amazing what some folks do when they’re all liquored up and trying to be cool.

Masks are wonderful things to hide behind.

The wife loads up on Costco candy – she never knows how much to get.

Sometimes we can get twenty or thirty kids, sometimes two or three.

She doesn’t want me to eat any of it.

Silly woman, I do as soon as her back is turned.

In an effort to some have left for the kids she waits until a day or two before Halloween before hitting the store.

The problem with that is all the good stuff is sold out and she comes home with junk.

There’s only so much Snickers one can eat without turning into a grumpy peanut with high sugar.

This is a serious problem because I like chocolate more than anyone in the world.

Now she’s going to take all this leftover candy to her work and let the friends pig out.

I sit home with nothing and get grumpy.

I usually think I have most things figured out.

There’s a scientific explanation for most stuff except the fascination women have with shoes.

It appears it’s up to me to come up with one.

I’m up for the task.

Ladies spend a ton of money on this stuff and then schlep around in rubber slippers.

Take the wife, please.

She has dozens of shoes.
Some I’m not sure she has worn more than once.

And to me they all look somewhat the same.
Low heel, open toe with some sparkly doo-dads on the front strap part.

Now take me, please.

I have four pairs of shoes.
One black, one brown, one canvas-type and one semi-retired, beat up pair of unknown type for working in the yard.

I’m covered for every event, no matter what.

All are loafer style – because at my age, if I lean down to tie my laces I may not get back up.

That’s it.
That’s all a guy needs.

Recognizing the importance of this issue I have pondered it for about three minutes.

I have to limit my pondering to that or I get sleepy and need a nap.

Some conclusions, suitable for a scientific paper:

The first shoe was invented, presumably, when someone stuck their foot inside a rabbit.

Their popularity grew as people noticed how shoes dramatically increased their running speed, which improved their odds of escaping mammoths and saber-toothed tigers.

One week later, shoes became a valued fashion accessory for the lady of the house.

Turning to the Internet where the sum of all knowledge is stored:

Scientific studies have proved two-thirds of men own less than six pairs of shoes.

The average woman owns somewhere between a shit-ton of shoes and a number of shoes so vast it had to wait for scientific notation to be invented to be expressed on paper.

Actually the average American woman owns 20 pairs.

But I think that study was flawed.
Twenty pairs are nothing.

The wife blew past that number at the age of 14.

While us guys don’t understand women’s religious zeal for footwear, ladies don’t understand men are incapable of caring about them, and sometimes, somehow, inexplicably don’t notice shoes at all.

Actually, I have come up with the scientific answer to why that happens.
Shoes are easy for men to miss because they’re as far away from the eyes as possible.

Let’s say an attractive woman enters a room with several men in it.
This has happened a couple of times before in my life so you may consider me an expert.

In noticing the lady, the men will tend to go for the eye contact first (“I love you. Wanna make out?”) and when answered with a blank stare will start working their way down.

But the path a male eye must follow between a girl’s eyes and her feet is loaded with detours.

Usually the male will never make it to the knee, having stopped for so long elsewhere that the woman has left the area muttering something about “perverts”.

A women could win the man of her dreams while wearing clown shoes over bulging hobbit feet.

We wouldn’t notice.

On the other hand, most women have a seemingly clairvoyant ability to see and appreciate a person’s footwear, usually within milliseconds of seeing them.

This ability is so powerful, it apparently is unaffected by crowds, poor lighting, extreme distance, nakedness or the person in question entering the room while engulfed in flames.

For example, if a half-naked android Daniel Craig walked into a restaurant beating on a drum, any women in the area would notice – in order:

1) He’s wearing socks with sandals and it doesn’t look very stylish.
2) His pecs and they look wonderful.
3) He’s randomly hitting a drum and it’s loud.
4) That an android Daniel Craig is indistinguishable from the real one.

When the wife is done admiring her shoes for 20 minutes in front of the mirror she shows them to me.

The usual response is, “They look like all your other shoes.”

She thinks I’m grumpy.

I can’t win.

I love stuff on the internet.

I find things no self-respecting newspaper would touch.

That of course, leaves out the British tabloids, but they are more focused on the Royals.

Maybe the TV news would, but if there’s no video they’re stuck.

I learned more than I ever wanted to about cow farts.

Sorry, flatulence.
I realize there may be people with sensitivities reading this stuff.

But sharing what we learn is important to a civilized society – so here it comes…

The scientific side of my brain was thrilled to learn the average cow poofs out enough methane in one day to run a refrigerator for 24 hours.

How great is that to know?

You now have a conversation starter at your next cocktail party.

People will look at you in amazement.
One way or the other.

There’s a bunch of scientists in Argentina who stuffed tubes up the rear ends of some cows to collect the gas and put in tanks.

Can you imagine what led up to this wonderful experiment?

“Hey Carlos, I have a cow outside and some leftover tubing. Let’s see what we can do with it.”

Anyway, they say they found a way to change cow poofs into fuel.

This is bordering on the magical.

This is a well-known scientific process because they used things like valves and pumps to collect this stuff and put it in some tanks.

I remember when we were doing scientific stuff in engineering school before I took a side trip into the wonderful and glamorous world of radio and TV.

We would pour different kinds of stuff into beakers and watch it foam up or turn color.

This was before someone discovered what happens when you put Mentos into coke bottles, so it wasn’t much fun.

Since I got tired of turning pink stuff into blue stuff I decided to change my education to something that used valves and pumps because I could use hammers and screwdrivers.

Back to their experiment…

Of course there’s a downside.

They say, “As an energy source it is not very practical at the moment.”

Scientists are realistic.

As an expert in valves and pumps, I can say with scientific certainty it wouldn’t be easy to strap a cow on the back of your car, feed it a bunch of beans, open some valves and chug off to the mall.

And what about all that other stuff that comes out that end while you’re parked in front of Macys?

There are a million failed experiments for every success.

That’s why many old scientists are grumpy.