You could go as a procrastinator. A clueless procrastinator who can't afford an expensive costume even if you had an idea for one - which you don't.
Tomorrow is Halloween. If you don't have a costume by now, chances are you'd be a natural in the procrastinator suit.
Or you could peruse our list of ideas. Culled from our own imagination, the ingenious Web site costumeideazone.com and a crafty Baltimore mom, we've got 41 can't-miss costumes that will pass muster at any Halloween party.
Millions of people visit costumeideazone.com each year. According to Kate Regan, who runs the site, in the last two weeks of October last year, about 150,000 people combed daily through the more than 2,400 costume ideas - many of which fall into the cheap and easy category. But on the very last day before Halloween, with just hours left, procrastinators clogged the site and set a one-day record of more than 1.5 million page views.
Regan, who's based in California, started the site in 1996 with just 20 ideas she thought up herself. Readers started sending in their own creations, and the site grew in size and reputation.
In Baltimore, Heather von Marko, a fiber and mixed-media artist, doesn't need to go online for costume ideas. She says her head is "brimming with ideas," costumes that tend to be more creative than costly.
"My ideas are all sort of the cerebral type," the 33-year-old says. "One year, my college roommate was the road. She wore all black, used masking tape to make the dotted line down her middle, top to bottom, and she hot-glued matchbox cars in the 'lanes.' "
Are you listening, costume dalliers?
As a kid, von Marko loved to trick-or-treat as a hobo.
"My mom used sugar water to 'glue' coffee grounds onto my face to look like stubble, then I got a stick outside, tied a bandanna to it, put on a torn pair of jeans and one of my dad's giant flannel shirts, and I was done!"
With ideas like that, our suggested costumes might not be the most elaborate and you might have to accessorize a few of them with an ironic smile. But each and every one is cheap (if not free), easy and fast.
With the witching hour fast approaching, what more could you want?
Classics
Hippy: Who doesn't have a tie-dye T-shirt laying around? Or maybe a caftan. Throw either on with some Birkenstocks, beads and a peace sign.
Doctor: Pull on scrubs or even just a white jacket. Wrap a real or fake stethoscope around your neck.
