According to Spirit Halloween.com, some of the most popular costumes are Lady Gaga and the cast of Jersey Shore. Before you rush out to get your fake “The Situation” abs or your “Pauly D” wig, keep in mind that some of these outfits will cost you between $50 and $130. A chicken mascot costume, for instance, is $300. Darth Vader or Halo 3 Master Chief: $700. Damn.

Almost 12 percent of the people from that survey said they put their pet in a costume. I saw a beagle online that could have been Glenn Beck or maybe Drew Cary. Hard to tell.

Halloween has gone from a children’s costumed candy-fest to the biggest national adult party of the year. You want to be Jesus or the Angel of Death to a Nympho Bo Peep? No prob. Just swipe you card. A quick browse around the Web shows everything from a dude dressed as a human baby magnet (with dolls glued all over his body) to a woman dressed like her Facebook page. Then there was the walking Tampon. How drunk do you have to be?

Even entrepreneurial superheroes like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and Mark Zuckerberg are out there partying with Yoda and Dracula at the end of the cul-de-sac. Zuckerburg’s costume, by the way, looked a lot like Art Garfunkle minus 45 years.

The latest craze is the “roving Halloween party” where a group of tricked-out adults meet at someone’s house, get drunk, and cruise the neighborhood ringing doorbells. We have several dozen kids hit up our house every year and we keep Rudy upstairs and away from the action because it works him into a snapping frenzy. But if a 45 year-old guy dressed like a condom shows up with a six-foot Tampon in the company of Zuckerberg/Garfunkle, Rudy will get to answer the door, promise. And his costume looks like a pissed-off Jack Russell.

I’ve seen the same nicked-up dining room chair out there since Bill Clinton did not smoke that cigar with Monica Lewinsky. A plastic dollhouse has become a permanent fixture in the monthly sale. The same people always come to see if the prices are lower. Since nothing ever gets carried away, I assume the prices have not budged in ten or twelve years.

Sitting in my reading chair watching cul-de-sac capitalism unfold in the driveway, I mark another sale off the calendar – January, July, September, whatever. They dragged it all out on Thanksgiving a while back; I forget the year. One customer always shows up early. Since the endless yard sale began, I’ve watched him go from a full head of hair to bald while haggling over the same sweater. He’s been through two marriages, a bypass and liposuction. I’ve had five jobs since the neighbor first placed the rubber shower elephant on the market. It’s still there. I am comforted by the consistency of it. The whole world has changed. Not this.

Come to think of it, I cannot remember the last time someone bought anything. I have never been a customer. I have enough junk in my trunk.

The neighbor sits stoically in a lawn chair staring into the street with a sullen face that screams, “I’m pissed and I have a dickey for $5.” His children are now nearing the end of high school. Stacked on a folding table are baby clothes that are old enough to get a drivers license. Still, once a month, rain or shine, the garage that has never held a car creaks open and disgorges its contents for six or seven people to fondle. By noon, it is finished; all tucked back in the garage.

Perhaps I should have mentioned that, from all indications, these people have hated us since one of our trees fell across their backyard during Hurricane Isabel. The guy’s wife has disliked us longer than that. I will say it again; I did not steal their cat.

We’ve gone for years without speaking to each other; just a surly wave now and then if one of us is in the mood, which is about every four years.

I am not angry because the dude’s few customers park in front of my house and walk across my yard to inspect his worthless merchandise. But my urging of Rudy to take copious dumps along that path is probably not lost on him. I see him arching his hatred over the bushes toward my window now and then.

The guy should be grateful I haven’t decided to compete with him, putting him out of business altogether with more advanced junk. And I have some seriously desirable items: a couple of the first Mac’s and an Arcus II scanner and at least four George Foreman grills that we got free from a bank. You know what a Herb Albert “Whipped Cream” album is worth these days? I’m talking good stuff here. I may even have a classic leisure suit from the seventies that would attract a crowd of aging Boomers looking to relive the days of “Afternoon Delight.” The Boone’s Farm stain on the leg is hardly noticeable, either.

One day, I will pull out some poster board and a marker and end this thing once and for all – just overload his piddly sale for good with my awesome collection of pre-owned crap. Or I may let it go. I hate to end such a losing streak.

It is almost as embarrassing, though, and shameful, as a man born in the South to people who only read the Bible or Field & Stream (and not in that order). This admission is like saying I do not like deer hunting or fishing or Red Man chewing tobacco. While I have partaken of all of those things on more than one occasion, well, not so much the Redman, I have done the walk of shame from the mailbox to the house trying to hide a copy of Southern Living in the folds of my junk mail.

There, I said it. It’s out of me and I feel like I just hocked up a big, slimy sin at a tent revival. I just finished reading a story in the latest issue written by Rick Bragg. I figured if a man like Rick Bragg can write a story for Southern Living, I can at least own up to reading it.

My grandmother used to get Southern Living when I was a boy, probably because my grandfather got Progressive Farmer. In 1966, the editors of PF launched SL. Since I had to visit the bathroom now and then, and a stack of both publications sat beside the sink, I started reading about travel and food and all kinds of things that Sports Illustrated and Car and Driver didn’t offer. But I never mentioned it to anyone. This was the late 1960’s in Alabama; “I weren’t no dumb ass,” as my uncle used to say, even though he sort of was.

After a few years, I moved on to Rolling Stone, which was, at the time, a little like Southern Living and Sports Illustrated combined for potheads and musicians, and since I was technically neither it helped me hang out with both. But I liked to read. I would read anything, even the articles in Playboy magazines I would find between the mattresses at friend’s houses. Yeah, that’s where I got them, really. The pictures were not half bad either.

Getting this Southern living thing off my chest is like admitting that I was the one who shot those road signs over near Opp and painted the school columns like a barber pole and sailed that flaming mattress off the top of Paty Hall at the University of Alabama.

I am not admitting to any of those things. What I’m saying is, it feels as if I had admitted them. I also did not pour three 50-gallon drums of water down the elevator from the top floor of…okay, enough confessing to things I swear I did not do, even though people who claimed to be with me probably accused me of them. By the way – just because I’m curious, not because I did it – what is the statute of limitations on something like pouring a whole bottle of dishwashing liquid into the big fountain in front of the president’s mansion that caused a hundred-yard-long foam slick across University Boulevard almost to Denny Chimes? I’m just asking.

None of those activities or techniques can be learned between the covers of the Halloween and Thanksgiving issues of Southern Living. You may, however, find out how to make fancy drop biscuits with maple pork belly or how some lawyer from Birmingham renovated a 5,000 square-foot house with a three-level pool and an outdoor fireplace fronting a built-in $23,000 Viking range overlooking his putting personal green. That son-of-a-bitch.

While I am cleansing my literary transgressions, I read Garden & Gun, too. Garden & Gun (a newer Southern lifestyle magazine) is like Southern Living’s rowdy grandson with an attitude, a trust fund and a penchant for good eating, shotguns and slow food. Oh, and barbecue.

I’m done admitting things now. And don’t be looking at that copy of O over there. That’s my wife’s. I swear.

Private schools do a great job educating children. And they only cost 5 to 8 times what public education costs.

Private companies have done such a wonderful job so far in our nation’s history. Wall Street firms can run the financial system, just like they have for a hundred years. As we have seen in the last few years, they have the publics’ best interest at heart. Health care companies have done an amazing job keeping us healthy and lowering costs. Private security firms could certainly take the place of the nation’s law enforcement agencies. And why even have a fire department? If your place catches on fire; too bad. You’re screwed. That’s how God wants it. In fact, we could just let the churches run half of America according to many. Those guys have done a bang-up job curbing pedophilia amongst the clergy, let’s give them a shot at bigger issues, like telling us who to marry and how we should protect people – until they are born, then to hell with them, they’re on their own. That’s what Jesus would do.

The above statements make about as much sense as anything I’ve heard slung at the president recently. But let’s face the truth of all this angry hoohaa: big government seemed to be just fine under Reagan and Bush 1 and 2, but now that a black man lives in the White House, big government is bad.

Since 1929, only four Republican African Americans have served in Congress. In that same time span, 96 African American Democrats have served. If that were a Final 4 score, CBS would cut to a rerun of Welcome Back Kotter.

Perhaps, after almost 250 years, racism is still big government’s biggest issue.

From the gentleman who collects his $1,300 government disability checks and then writes blogs urging people to throw bricks through Democrats’s windows because of health care reform to angry Tea Partiers acting like the U.S.Census is a new big government program instituted by the Obama Administration to unduly extract secret information on every citizen, some Americans (I use that term loosely) have gone off and dug deeper into the real estate formerly call The Deep End.

If this brick-thrower wants less government in his life, why take $1,300 a month from the very government he vilifies? He is angry. It has altered his ability to connect that monthly check from the government to his daily hypocrisy. Bottom line: he is basically being paid by the government to urge people to break the windows of those in the government. Both sides are at fault. Perhaps the government needs a brain scan for sending him checks to begin with.

The census has been the law in this country since 1790. For those whom anger has diminished the ability to count, that predates President Obama by a few hundred years. To put it into perspective, George Washington was president.

Today I read about an angry woman who refused to fill out her census form because she is ticked off about big government forcing her by law to do it. Does she get pissed about speed limits? Does she think criminals should be in prison? Is she angry about having police and the fire department protect her neighborhood? Does she wear clothes to work? Society has rules and laws and they are not free. Like it or not, it costs money to be an American. While there have been abuses by both parties, this is not something Mr. Obama invented.

How far up your ass do you have to have your head to not realize that the government is not going to steal your Social Security number from your census form? They already know your Social Security number. They gave it to you. The I.R.S. has your secret information. They just need a count and info so we can be better represented (which is the real joke, if we want to be angry about something). The Obama administration didn’t invent the census. The Washington administration did.

Ironically, many of these same people believe that it is the government’s job to know everything about everyone so there is enough information to prevent terrorism. Or should the government just collect info on Arabs? As I recall, however, Tim McVeigh was not Arab.

Public schools have caught hell in this environment as well. Find a private school that will educate your children for less than the cost of your property tax. In 2008, the average private school tuition was around $8,000 a year. The one you want your child to attend is more like $16,000 a year. The average property tax in America is 2.85%. So if you make $50,000, educating one child or 10 at public school costs you less than $1,425. And for that $1,425, you get police and fire protection and roads are maintained and more. Still want to bitch about what you get for your money? What would private companies charge you for all of those services? A lot more than your taxes.

Government is nowhere near perfect. It never will be. Both political parties are flawed beyond repair. But the next time we all get angry about big government intrusion in our lives, just remember, in Haiti, there is no government intrusion in anyone’s life. There is no government at all. If this is your idea of the perfect world, take your anger to Haiti. I think you’ll return in a few days much calmer and be pretty damned happy to fill out your census report.

Was losing an election so bad that it turned supposedly good American people into the very thing they said we should be fighting? Or were they ever really good Americans to begin with?

This behavior is embarrassing and disgusting. The elected officials who are spewing these calls for violence should be treated in the same way as any other terrorist in this country. Calling for change is one thing. Congressmen calling for violence toward others because they did not get their way, however, is not free speech, it is treason. We did not allow treason when Bush was president, why should we allow it now? Where is the Department of Homeland Security? Where is the F.B.I.? Where is the decency these very offenders require of others?

In the end, the real question is: What is the punishment for treason?

“With this new bill, your tax dollars will be used to buy Viagra for sex offenders!”

I thought about that for a moment. I wonder how many of our tax dollars have gone to buy Viagra for congressman?

The bill for his services on that visit? $1,931.00. If you have a calculator handy, that’s about $2,000 a minute. Keep punching those numbers and you get $120,000 an hour.

If you think health care does not need to be reformed, I will be happy to call him and get you an appointment. How much of his time can you afford?

Highway food is heartbreaking, literally. Fat, calories, salt, cholesterol – you can die on the road, and not from an accident.

How truckers stay alive is a mystery to me. Hours of sitting. Your ass becomes part of the vehicle like the steering wheel and the tow/haul switch. They are inseparable. The radio stations alone are like having a musical concussion, just sound with no meaning. A truck stop is no oasis, either. The showers seem like something from prison. The food, more like prison. The entrances and exits from interstates are like gates to the 4-lane prison. We have sang about the “freedom of the road,” but really, is there such a thing? Driving on a schedule is hardly freedom, it is a sentence to be served.

Driving a big vehicle with big mirrors and big wheels and a tall clearance is a wrestling contest of weight, wind, physics, hydraulics and boredom.

At 70 mph, somewhere between Spartanburg and Greenville, in the solitary confinement of the cramped cab, I felt a bit like George Clooney in “Up In The Air.” I’ve also had the planes, trains and automobiles experience. And I’m not going to Bali and Figi and Barbados. My travels take me to Toledo, Cincinnati, Red Level, Opp, Macon, Albuquerque, Fort Deposit, Gaffney, Victorville, Leesburg, Henderson, Franklin, Lafayette, Dinwiddie, Dumfries, Tuskegee, Noonan – if it’s not a vacation spot, I have driven or flown there, dozens of times.

Last Saturday in Georgia, I stopped at a gas station/convenience store. Hanging from the ceiling were dolls for sale. They looked like children, about 3 feet tall. The person who hung them there had done so with small ropes – around their necks. There were close to 20 of them hanging up there above the candy bars and potato chips. They were all black. Sometimes the retail irony of the road is a sad reminder of our past.

Six out of ten fear they will not meet their current financial obligations. Half wonder if they will be able to pay for college or even stay in school. Eight of ten are concerned they will not find a job when they graduate. Fewer than that believe they will be better off then their parents. Four of ten are politically independent. That’s 40 percent. 36 percent were Democrats and 23 percent claimed to be Republican. See a pattern forming here?

This lack of faith in government and institutions is hardly new. The 1960’s sprouted a political movement that turned into the current political establishment on both sides of the aisle. But what if these short-term fears become a long-term reality? The two do-nothing parties will suffer as much as the American population if younger Americans don’t see the needle move on solving some their concerns. And the needle is stuck with this current Congress. Government and corporations have a lot to lose when the next generation doubts them both into irrelevance.

The 1960’s used music to express their opinion. This time, we’re using the web. The difference will become obvious as more people doubt this broken system and begin to use the power of the Internet to affect change. What says “by the people and for the people” better than the Web?