Indignity Vol. 1, No. 33: Spooky Season.

OOH, SCARY!!!

IT'S TIME FOR PRINT-YOUR-OWN HALLOWEEN MASKS!

THE LEAVES ARE turning...The darkness settles over the streets early...In the night, through the window of your browser, you can hear the eerie rattle of broken supply chains as you try to shop for costumes. Embrace the scarcity and scariness of the season with INDIGNITY's assortment of printer-ready PDFs of do-it-yourself HALLOWEEN MASKS, drawn from the most terrifying topics of today, ready for you to cut out and wear in an emergency. Boo!

HARBINGER OF ECOCIDE

What's that lovely little splash of color? Oh, just a SPOTTED LANTERNFLY, rampaging through defenseless trees with no natural predators to stop it. Eek! Try not to let any civic-minded vigilantes swat you!

HARRY POTTER AND THE RAMPAGING BRAINWORMS

You are a fabulously wealthy and beloved author. Young people everywhere adore you, for escorting their generation into the future. All you need to do is not go on the internet and say things grossly offensive to their collective morals. Just close the computer, bury it under one of the piles of money scattered around your mansion, and take a walk. "We stand upon the brink of a precipice..." Poe wrote in “The Imp of the Perverse.” "[T]here grows into palpability, a shape, far more terrible than any genius, or any demon of a tale...It is merely the idea of what would be our sensations during the sweeping precipitancy of a fall from such a height...And because our reason violently deters us from the brink, therefore, do we the most impetuously approach it." Feel the dread and compulsion as you wear this J.K. ROWLING mask—for ladies only, please!

THE FACE OF THE FUTURE: A MASK OF MARK ZUCKERBERG IN A MARK ZUCKERBERG MASK

It's meta!

BLUE ORGAN

The future will be hand-crafted by billionaires. The billionaires will keep coming up with projects like a rocket that almost flies to outer space, built with a clearly defined glans. The people whose labor makes the rocket possible will keep having to pee in bottles to meet productivity standards enforced by robots. Let it all hang out by dressing up as the liquid-methane-powered end of subtext, THE JEFF BEZOS DONG ROCKET!

HILLBILLY EFFIGY

Which pose will you strike in your holiday guise? The bright boy too gifted for his poor Appalachian kin? The Appalachian young man too rustic for the snooty fools at Yale Law? The venture capitalist sweatily trying to compose man-of-the-people tweets to convince Trump-loving Ohio voters he's one of them? Strap on your J.D. VANCE hillbilly effigy mask and see which attitude will get you the most candy, before Josh Mandel steals your whole bag.

CYBERCANINE MENACE

Woof! What does it feel like to be so palpably menacing that even the NYPD is too embarrassed to keep using you? The distance between "cute" and what you actually look like in the viral robotics videos is the distance between "search and rescue" and what you'll actually do when you're deployed. Don't bother knocking when you're trick-or-treating, the BOSTON DYNAMICS ROBOT DOG can open doors now!

HOLIDAY FAVORITES DEPT.

Halloween 2021's Top Candy Is the SNACK SIZE PAYDAY

WE ORDERED THE big bags of assorted Halloween candy early this year, to be prepared for the holiday in the time of retail uncertainty, but that just meant that people broke into them in advance and started snacking on the Reese's items, which meant in turn that this week it was time to go to the drugstore and get supplemental fallback candy, from whatever was left.

And there, among the less-popular items on the semi-depleted shelves, were some sacks of snack size Payday bars. I never think about Payday, but now that I was looking at them I grabbed a bag, and when I got the bag home I opened it up and ate one. Then I ate another.

One minor sad and alienating experience in life is going back to treasured childhood candy and discovering it tastes awful. The little relentlessly sweet-toothed child you once were has slipped away from you, and those Three Musketeers he used to eat full-sized bars of with delight are now so cloying as to be difficult to swallow, even in miserly "mini" morsel size.

The Payday bars? The Payday bars were awesome. Caramel and peanuts, peanuts and caramel, two things that are still as delicious to the adult palate as they ever were to the child. Full rounded peanuts mortared together with soft, not-too-chewy caramel, like a stone wall holding back any threat of disappointment and dissatisfaction. I ate them without remorse, like handfuls of salted peanuts, which they basically were, or like so many salted caramels, which they also basically were. The trick-or-treaters aren't getting any.

SANDWICH RECIPE DEP’T.

CANDY THAT’S TOO GOOD FOR TRICK-OR-TREATERS SANDWICH

A plain Hershey’s bar
A roll of ROLO
A Kinder Bueno Crispy Creamy Chocolate Bar
Plain M&M’s
Peanut M&M’s
Candy corn: Don’t give me any static, it’s candy.
An Almond Joy bar
A bag of Turtles
A Twix
A pouch of Justin’s peanut butter goop

Lay down some parchment paper or similar nonstick surface upon which to assemble your sandwich. Use food-service gloves so the candy doesn’t stick to your fingers. Break the Hershey’s bar in half. Hershey’s is perfect for this because it’s like the white bread of candy, super boring on its own. Spread the peanut butter goop on each piece of Hershey’s, then start piling on different types of layers of candy, alternating with more peanut-goop. Smash the whole thing down, flattening as much as possible, and then cut into four pieces. Serve immediately or store in fridge wrapped in parchment paper.

If you decide to prepare and enjoy this sandwich, kindly send a picture to us at indignity@indignity.net.