Halloween is big business. This year it’s bigger than ever. In a recent survey, over 40 percent of respondents said they will be wearing costumes. Americans plan to spend an average of $66.28 each – or upwards of $20.4 billion. That’s as much as BP agreed to spend to clean up the entire Gulf oil spill. I wonder if there’s a costume of a dead, oil-soaked bird? Probably not.

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.

Will buying more cool things make us happy? Or will more cool experiences make us happy? Interesting article in today’s NYTimes:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/business/08consume.html?_r=1&ref=business

What is it about the act of creation that brings out odd behavior in the creators? In the Bible, the Creator was endowed with some pretty unalienable rights. The arts have always tolerated manic creationism. When you mix the arts and business, however, “hypomania” can reach intense levels that defy understanding, but not mythology.

From Bill Gates at Microsoft to Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook to the founding Googlers, business turns on the ideas, passion and, sometimes, mercurial mood swings of brilliant brains riding atop the spines of risk-taking entrepreneurs. Often the backroom stories about trashed relationships are haunting, but geniuses get a free pass when it comes to sanity. We expect our geniuses to be a little crazy; after all, it takes a bit of that to create something from nothing. The story is familiar.

In Sunday’s New York Times, there was an article by David Segal about manic entrepreneurs. Seth Priebatsch and his Web company, Scvngr ( http://www.scvngr.com ) got the genius treatment this time. Mr. Priebatsch – all of 21 years old, dropped out of Princeton his freshman year to “build the game layer on top of the world.” He makes it sound doable, and he has attracted $750,000 in capital. Truth is, his idea is no less insane than buying a house or investing in the stock market these days. So he very well may be a genius. The game he proposes is interesting. The name is awesome. “Awesome,” by the way, is a word used by a lot of soon to be rich entrepreneurs.

Sleeping on his office couch, drawing ideas on the wall, stirring passions with both investors and employees, Seth Priebatsch is yet another t-shirted, barefooted visionary with a dream that could either be the next big thing or a waste of Highland Capital’s seed money. Time will tell.

Scvngr, according to their website, “is a game about doing challenges at places.” A store can propose a challenge – like writing a poem about the shopping experience or taking a pic of yourself standing on your head next to their sign. The challenge can pretty much anything. You compete for rewards at the participating businesses. As the NYT article says, “Scvngr is both a game and a game platform” so anyone can create a challenge. Give it a go.

Perhaps Scvngr will be Foursquare on steroids or it will be Outpost.com (whatever that was). If people see it as just a way to lure you into their business, it may die a quick and invisible digital death, which is how the Internet deals with losers. But if it succeeds, it will turn Mr. Priebatsch into a Jeopardy answer under the “Brand New Billionaires” category.

Either way, right now there are thousands of 19 year olds with their sights set on being the next (you know the names to insert here). In the end, as we all know, it’s not about the money; it’s about doing great work and winning and being the coolest person in the room. It’s about changing the world into your image. It’s ego and power and respect. Or is it?

When the friendships fall and the accusations fly and the lawsuits come, it’s always about money. Just watch the new David Fincher movie about Zuckerberg at Facebook:

In the beginning, though, there is a person with an idea. Whether they are a genius or not depends on who gets credit for it. And with credit comes cash – usually lots of it.

Why are we so fascinated with roadkill? We cause it, are attracted and repelled by it and even eat it. So what is the next big thing in roadkill? Mapping it.

For seven months, retired veterinarian, Ron Ringen has been tracking roadkill (http://www.wildlifecrossing.net/california). When he sees a dead animal on the highway, he stops, snaps a pic and records the location on his GPS device. He’s not the only one. Almost 300 people are helping him. The goal – according this vigilant vulture-chaser – is to better understand where and why animals get smacked on roads across America and to show people what our roads are doing to animals. In my years driving, I think I understand all too well what happens to animals on our roads. And it is not good.

Doctor Ringen has chronicled everything from dead birds to a 1,500-pound Angus bull (that’s got to leave a mark). Between one and two million animals are killed on roads every year, costing over $8 million in damages. In 2009, 33,808 people were killed on those same highways. More than 2.2 million people were injured. That is a lot of car-related carnage.

Some places get more kills than others. Animals tend to follow established travel patterns that are carved into their genetics. When a road is built across that trail, death follows. In California, the animal most likely to die on the road is a raccoon. In Texas, it is probably an armadillo. In Alabama, it may be a guy in a camouflaged jumpsuit. Hey, I’m just saying.

This mapping technology is a big thing too. We just finished shooting a short documentary about a group of 4-Her’s using GIS technology to map healthy food options in Wake County, North Carolina. It takes time and skill and passion to investigate and pinpoint such large amounts of data, whether it is roadkill or food.

When you do something long enough, you become finely attuned to its nuances. Doctor Ringen, for instance, can spot roadkill like a buzzard flying 50 mph. Several months ago, he found what appeared to be a shark flattened between the yellow lines. Upon closer inspection, however, it was a stuffed toy. I wonder how many toys are ground into the asphalt every year? Someone is probably mapping that as you read this.

Why can’t I use Foursquare to track roadkill? I mean, I can find greasy burgers and fried chicken beside the road, why not squished squirrels and sailcats?

{ NOTE: Thanks Fred Moore – my old friend and avid NYTimes reader – for bringing this important news to my attention. For a better-written article about Doctor Ringen’s efforts, go to: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/13/technology/13roadkill.html }

Water, water, everywhere,

And all the boards did shrink;

Water, water, everywhere,

Nor any drop to drink.

When English poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote The Rime of the Ancient Mariner around 1797, he understood the concept of thirst. Soon, we may understand it better than we want to.

Over 70 percent of the earth is covered by water, of which 98 percent is in the oceans, making it undrinkable because of the saline. Until technology advances, the amount of energy needed to turn salt water from the ocean into drinking water is far too great. Only about 2 percent of the planet’s water is fresh and 1.6 percent of that is frozen in the polar ice caps. Rivers and lakes account for only about .036 percent of the potable water and aquifers contain .36 percent. That leaves the rest of the water in the air as clouds or in us, as we are 65 percent water.

Aquifers are in trouble and water shortages are already common in many countries. The earth moves water around naturally through evaporation and rain. We move the rest of it just to stay alive. Industry swallows water as if the supply is limitless. Agriculture sucks up massive quantities of water from one place and redistributes it to another place in the form of vegetables, meat, fruits, etc. Humans guzzle water worse than cars guzzle gas. We don’t just drink it; we flush it – over and over, without regard to the resources needed to filter that waste. Sanitation is a large part of the 400 billion gallons we use every day.

Since the oceans are undrinkable and we’ve polluted most of the rivers and lakes by various definitions, the small amount of water available for human consumption is small and has to be treated to decrease toxic pathogens. Disease from tainted water is one of the world’s leading causes of death. In the natural cycles of our biosphere, when we pollute one water source, it affects another source. Eventually, our water pollution goes into the 65 percent of water that is in us. Add naturally occurring droughts to the mix and the potential for disaster rises considerably.

After reading an article about state fairs in the New York Times, I was reminded of the smells of a fair. It is a wholly unique aroma; part cotton candy, part funnel cake, part hot dogs, part candied apples, part “fried everything” as the Times article so aptly reported. Those smells have been known to make a kid want to ride the Tilt-a-Whirl or the Condor or the Matterhorn over and over. The Snake Man awaits you in his trailer while a guy carrying a plastic bag jammed with a four-foot-long stuffed animal struts past the Plate Toss, tempted to test his luck again until his paycheck is dented.

The most pungent fragrance is animal manure blended with hay, diesel fuel, and one other scent I am still unsure of. I think it might be the smell of fun. Does fun have a smell? Perhaps that is what it is – the wonderfully timeless stench of fun.

All fairs smell the same, whether state or county or one of those amusements rigs thrown up overnight in a shopping center parking lot. In 1974, I added another smell to the Covington County Fair in my Alabama hometown. It was not, by any measure, the perfume of fun.

Squatting like a multi-colored crab on the midway, a vicious ride attracted me to its spinning octopusian arms like a fat man stalking a chilidog. The Scrambler, in hindsight, was perfectly named, probably by someone like me.

I took my date – whoever that might be in any particular year – to the county fair, as everyone did. It was one of the few things to do in a small town once you had seen the only movie at the local theater.

The girl ate nothing. Girls used to do that. Guys ate everything, which they still do. During the time it took to stroll past the prize-winning animals, paintings and preserves, crafts, quilts and exhibits, I devoured a hot dog, a hamburger, boiled peanuts, a candied apple, and chased it all with cotton candy and two big Cokes. This is not something I would recommend before boarding a ride like the Scrambler. But at the time, my stomach routinely overrode my intelligence. Once the grizzled, tattooed carny pushed the start button on the rusty panel, however, I got smarter with every turn of that damned machine.

A little engineering is in order here. The Scrambler of that age rotated four steel arms on an axis. Bolted to each arm were three buckets. In those buckets were bench seats, worn as smooth as church pews by years of sliding asses. Once engaged, the arms of the contraption spun faster and faster until your brain hugged one side of your skull as if trying to escape through your ear. The buckets spun independently at the end of those arms to create a perfect, swirling storm of motion sickness for anyone stupid enough to eat a hot dog, a hamburger, boiled peanuts, a candied apple, and cotton candy.

In the middle of our ride, the carny decided to take a smoke break, leaving us spinning for much longer than normal. It could have been five minutes longer, maybe ten. Astronauts and fighter pilots are likely the only people who experience this many G’s for such a sustained period. Suffice it to say we got our money’s worth.

When it stopped, the girl – formerly known as my date – stumbled off to the side, looking into the sky and holding onto a creosote pole. I was not so lucky. The ride turned me into a vomiting snake, slithering out of the bucket and across the sawdust and behind a colorful trailer, leaving a snail trail of half digested hot dog, hamburger, boiled peanuts, candied apple and cotton candy behind me. Since I woke up some time later, I can only assume I passed out while lying in the damp grass next to a generator. My date probably wandered off and found a guy who wasn’t soaked in his own rainbow yawn. I did not see her again.

Even now when I go to a fair, it is difficult for me to even look at a spinning ride. But once in a while, while walking the midway, between the aroma of smoked turkey legs, burning sugar from cotton candy machine, fried Oreos and burrito-thick dill pickles, I catch a familiar whiff of 1974 all over again. It still does not smell like fun.

What got me to thinking about this was an interview with 70-year-old Robert Duvall for his new movie, Get Low, a true story about a hermit in 1930’s Tennessee who throws his own funeral party while he’s still alive. The funeral party story did not grab me like something else Duvall said: “I did The Godfather at 40.”

I’ve seen The Godfather more times than I want to admit and it never really struck me that Duvall was that old considering The Godfather was the movie most people remember first seeing him (more so than his Boo Radley in To Kill A Mockingbird). So I did a bit of Googling. The list of late bloomers is endless.

Raymond Chandler wrote his first story when he was 45. Stan Lee created Spiderman in his early 40’s. Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin at 47 and did not get the Nobel prize until 64. Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House in the Big Woods debuted when she was 65. Einstein was a middle-aged man before anyone listened to his genius. Julia Child was not famous until she turned 49. Danny Aiello did not act until he was 40. Rodney Dangerfield hit it big at 42. Charles Bukowski worked at the post office until his first book was published at 49. No one had ever really heard of Colonel Sanders until he started franchising his famous fried chicken. He was 65. Kurt Warner did not enter the NFL until 28 (ancient for that sport). Henry Miller published his first novel Tropic of Cancer at 44. While a famous actor, to be sure, Clint Eastwood, however, did not direct his first film until he was 41. It goes on and on, so much so that it is difficult to defend the genius of youth syndrome unless you are young. And when youth is gone, Robert Duvall is good fodder for a blog post about the genius of older people.

Then you have Abraham and Sarah of Biblical fame. They were over 75 years old when God spoke to them about having a baby. Considering that Jesus did not really get started until he was over 30 puts things into further perspective as well.

It goes to show there are few rules in life except exceptions. We only notice the famous ones. But as you look around, you’ll see exceptions every day. And many of them are old enough to be your parents.

Wait, before I say more, check out why there is a word like Glamping to begin with:

http://www.themartynhouse.com

I won’t go into an explanation since one click past the Accommodations link will visually convey the luxury tent idea that looks a lot like the ones in the old movies about Arabian Nights, albeit with a Southern bent.

The Martyn House Glamping experience goes for around $180 a night. Breakfast and tea is included, so this probably isn’t the place to uncork your Coleman stove.

JoAnn Antonelli and Rick Lucas wanted to offer a 5-star luxury experience on their 16-acre property about an hour north of Atlanta. Looks like they found a unique solution. As I pause at a beautiful interior shot of one of the tents between the Symbicort ad and the article about Hermann, Missouri, the whole Glamping concept intrigued me as a seriously cool idea – until my Droid busted the red triangle on me, warning of a heat advisory of 105º.  On their website I read: “All tents are heated and will keep you toasty warm.”

Today, that goes without saying. In the fall, however, Glamping looks to beat the hell out of that me-too $180 room in the hotel off I-85.

Digitally, we will never die. We will just enter another database, easily found by anyone who remembers just a little info about us. It may not take that much. Our clicks live forever like old episodes of “I Love Lucy” floating through space to far away planets on sound waves broadcast in black and white over fifty years ago.

Into this metric world comes Bynamite, a small start-up that wants to help us regain some control of our digital selves. The app monitors information that Web marketers are collecting about us. It is less about online privacy than online transparency. According to the New York Times the founders say Bynamite “is mainly a ‘mirror,’ showing users how the commercial Internet sees them.”

In the same Sunday NYTimes Book Review, Gary Shteyngart writes about disconnecting from our iDevice/ARoid world and seeing what is around us in the real world. His observation that once engaged on a smartphone, everything disappears except the little arrow and the tiny screen, is far too familiar for most of us. We are drowning in Droids and buried in Blackberrys. This week, Apple’s Steve Jobs delivered a fix for the new iPhone so it works no matter where you hold it. The announcement made me a bit sad.
There are times when I’d like to hold my digital device in a way that doesn’t let it take the reality of my existence from me, meaning that I don’t hold it, it holds me.

I am disturbed to admit that I have become a traitor to my own humanity, constantly fondling a small re-charable square that blinds me from all that surrounds me. My kids sleep with their devices. People die texting or surfing or thumbing the ubiquitous screens. Every time I want to –

“Droid!”

Sorry, I got to get that. Catch you later.

The fast-growing phenomenon is the creation of 27-year-old Russian software developer, Dmitry Chestnykh, who, ironically, speaks English as a second language. So I entered the word “Irony” 30 times and got the deceased, weird fiction writer, H.P. Lovecraft.

The Huffington Post had this to say about the writing analyzer: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/17/i-write-like-website-goes_n_650037.html

It uses keyword recognition to track down your inner author. I spent about 20 minutes analyzing several of my stories. According to “I Write Like,” I write like:

• Stephen King (at least 20 times)
• David Foster Wallace (18 times)
• Kurt Vonegut (12 times)
• Ernest Hemingway (a lot)
• Mario Puzo (4 times)
• Chuck Palachniuk (twice)
• William Gibson (say what?)

I pasted in the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy For the Devil.” I got Ian Fleming.

The Beatles “A Day In the Life” conjured up Raymond Chandler.

Cory Doctorow came up after typing a series of repetitive profanity.

Okay, I spent more than 20 minutes doing this. I spent far too much time. But it is addictive. One hit leads to another and soon you want to analyze everything from Michael Jackson songs to the ingredients on the back of a Pop Tart box. It went on and on. Check it out: http://iwl.me
By the way, I just analyzed this blog post and it is written like Cory Doctorow. You’ll get Cory Doctorow about every 8 tries. Everyone writes like him, I guess. Perhaps his blog: http://boingboing.net is running in the background of our brainwaves as we write other stuff and it comes out about every eighth time. (this single paragraph was analyzed as writing like Cory Doctorow, so there, it’s the eighth paragraph in this post. Point proven.)

Thanks, Jeff (who also writes like Cory Doctorow). Damn. Is Dmitry Chestnykh the president of Doctorow’s fan club?