Wednesday, September 30, 2009

My excellent Halloween Costume


I always wanted to blog, but I thought you needed a reason!


I am invited to a Halloween party on October 24, so I need a costume. I have an idea for it, but assembling it is kind of a ‘process’ and something that I think will blog well. I am to go as an oxymoron. The idea is to collect and execute all the wearable oxymorons I can come up with.


I actually had this idea about six months ago. At the time, I went onto oxymoron.com, or some such site, and offered up my idea for comment and suggestions to the oxymoronic community. They totally let me down without a single comment, helpful or otherwise. Maybe Halloween was to far away at the time to get their attention, but they had their chance, and I will not be favoring those geeks with updates on my progress, or any further opportunity to comment. I will favor you , instead.


This did not stop me from trolling oxymoron sites for ideas. After satisfying myself that an oxymoron costume was doable, meaning at least one or two items for each of the basic categories, I will now enlist your help in making it the best it can be.


As I see it, the parts of the costume are: (1) footwear (2) headwear (3) clothes (4) accessories and (5) props. Props are not wearable in themselves, but if for example, if I thought carrying one of those invisible dog leashes would enhance an oxymoron costume, (and I don’t) it would be in the props category. In order to not run out of all my material at once my next entry will just focus on the footwear.

A couple of more items 1. this party is a full week before Halloween, so I need to keep this on a slightly accelerated schedule. 2. I have not set a budget for this costume (maybe I can talk about that later) but I am not opposed to spending a modest amount of money for this, particularly if it is for items I think I will have a use for later.


Sometimes my perceptions about what will be useful in the future are a little off. For example, last year, I was Donald Trump. I had to buy a wig of course, and I got a power suit at the thrift store at a reasonable price. However, I had to wear several layers of clothes to bulk up and I thought I would get hot. So I bought one of those cooling vests that those people who dress up in school mascot costumes wear for about $60. At the time I thought I would find no end of uses for it. Oh, well…


Finally, one interesting thing I did get from those sites was the fact that the word oxymoron itself is an oxymoron: from oxýmōros sharp-dull, equiv. to oxý(s) sharp + mōrós dull.

8 comments:

Gordon said...

I'm learning Chinese and it seems that the characters abound in oxymora. So, try finding some good characters (I will investigate when I get home) and put them on the costume. You can turn it in to a double oxymoron by adjoining it with another related oxymoron beside it, perhaps in English. Maybe Innes will have some ideas.

Its great to have you blogging.

Piri said...

That's funny because my idea was to be a Chinese takeout container of sweet and sour chicken. I thought it might give you a chance to redeploy the personal cooling device.

And this is really Lynnis

Lona said...

footwear: I have heard of 'unshoes', that is straps that make it look like you are wearing sandals, so you can go into stores and such where there are signs that say barefoot not allowed; find out about this on the barefoot website.

Hallie Jo said...

i'm confused- are you looking to be ONE specific oxymoron or just an oxymoron?

Roal said...

Hallie, a host of oxymorons...one to put on the head, one on the feet, etc. not necessarily related to one another. It's an abstraction.

Innes said...

WHAT, NO PHOTO????!?

Roal said...

There's nothing to photograph yet. It's still in the conceptual stage. That's where you come in.

Tara Carlson said...

How about Loud Sneakers?