CP CLASSIC REWIND: To GHOST or Not To GHOST

Today's Classic Rewind feature is a piece from the second Halloween season highlighting your humble host's complete and total inability to pick a costume.  This also features my earliest addiction to pun reliance.  Won't you come with me down memory rabbit hole as we completely fail to answer that age old question...

What the Hell am I going to be for Halloween this year?
I've been saying and thinking for a few years now that I would be a ghost, but then I end up not.  I'm not sure why this is other than my being "inspired" at the last minute by some other idea or my dissatisfaction with ghost costuming.  The really good ones are wicked expensive or require the use of a shimmering make-up, to which I might be allergic.  I had an incident a few Halloweens back where make-up made my lips go numb, my face tingle, and made me dizzy.  Pretty scary actually.
I am not one to wait until the very last minute.  I might change my mind a few times and spend weeks agonizing over choices, but I like to get started and get done, at least with the bulk of the work, well prior to the event.  I find planning is often the hardest part.
Just the other day, as Frau Punkinstein and I were looking at Halloween decorations at Michaels, I asked her what she wanted to be this Halloween and we briefly kicked around a few ideas.  Again the notion of my ghostly aspirations from years past came back to haunt the conversation, which is most apropos, I should think.
Obviously a costume is a prime example of visual shorthand.  It must be obvious that my costume represents a ghost, otherwise I will spend all night explaining it to people, which is not top of my list of fun things to do.  Like one year in college when I dressed up as Beowulf.  I thought it was perfectly obvious given the huge severed monster arm I was carrying.  Then when I told people who asked, "I'm Beowulf" and showed them the arm, they either nodded quietly as if to say, "Very droll, English Major" or just wandered off somewhere leaving me feeling quite the fool.
I quite liked my Beowulf set up.  The next year when I wrapped some tartan around my waist, painted my face blue and strapped a sword to my back there was no explanation needed.  Lesson to be learned: you have to work with cultural expectations and zeitgeist in these matters.
So again I am thinking ghost.  Mostly because I can't find a traditional undertaker's suit that I like (not that sodding wrestler, but a funeral director).
See, in my mind's eye a ghost should either look like this:

Wallpaper image courtesy of Doombuggies.com, THE best HM tribute site I know, please check out Chef Mayhem's excellent webpage

Or failing that awesomeness, this:

Awwwww, the Littlest Ghost, he's just so vulnerable and cute

Which means I have a hard time getting a costume I really like.
I'm fond of this one:

Comes with mask, which is nasty, but not pants or cane

It has a real "Grim Grinning Ghost" vibe going on, which I like, being a huge Haunted Mansion fan.

I also like this one, but it might have "unfortunate implications" if you get my meaning

Then there are the really expensive ones that require make-up, which I have stated before, might not work.

Comes with sodding everything

$130.00...BLOODY AMERICAN DOLLARS!!!  So, not so much.
Out of luck maybe?

But then again, I do like scarecrows...

And really it's just a sack on your head and some dirty clothes, right?  Who am I kidding, I nuke it every time.  I will end up wanting that "personal" touch, which means no simple sack for me.

So really the problem is not in the least solved and August is already in its second week.  Bloody.  Hell.

Any guidance would not be frowned upon.  Keep those pumpkins lit.