What's the best way to dress up as the 90s-era End of History for Halloween?

What are we skinning? The sheer inability to take it easy these days.

Why are we skinning it? Because this is a satirical column which aims to pinpoint the absurdities within current affairs while cleaving as close as possible to good taste and avoiding vulgarities unless they are strategically deployed.

So why is that difficult right now? The escalation of tensions in the Middle East is becoming highly precarious and locally, we are marking the anniversary of Daphne Caruana Galizia's assassination -- one of the negative turning points of the country's history.

So not much to laugh at, then? You come out of it praying for a hare-brained politician or high-powered businessman to shoot out a gaffe and slip their way into a scandal, if only to provide a welcome reprieve from the institutional brutality and overall glumness.

Then again, the Halloween period should teach and prepare us to appreciate the darkness, shouldn't it? Well, if binging on horror movies while giving out sweets - or 'candy', if we're to stick to the lingo favoured by what has become an imported Americanised annual appointment - will really help you come to terms with true darkness, then you're a far luckier person than I am.

It does help, on occasion. But only when I consume the 'candy' meant for trick-or-treating kids. Sugar will rot your teeth like corruption, greed and internecine warfare will rot the very foundations of a country, or the attempts at forming a cohesive one.

Do we really have to root around for scraps? Surely Prime Minister Robert Abela will have said something amusingly cringe-worthy? He said the minimum wage should increase.

Oh, that's disappointingly uncontroversial. Did he say lay out something resembling a concrete plan on how he intends to implement that? He said he'll hash it out with social partners, and then blamed the PN for apparently coming after him when he suggested those who profiteered from economic instability should be brought to task.

It must be great, having a party and fumble-prone as the PN to blame all your difficulties on. Given the upheaval we're witnessing internationally, it feels like a hyper-local game of ping-pong that we can always rely on for some (depressing) stability.

Here's hoping for more amusing gaffes next week, then. I'd rather hope for a world in which this column is no longer feasible, but that's about as utopian a dream as anything we may think up for the Middle East at this stage.

Do say: "Distressing world events should be a call for dignified reflection and silence, since jumping on bandwagons can hardly ever be a viable solution."

Don't say: "What's the best way to dress up as the 90s-era End of History for Halloween? Very much open to suggestions."