I never had the Latin

This is a shameless ganking from Neil Gaiman's site, for which he'll probably forgive me. Back when they were childless and full of good intentions, the parentals decided that they weren't going to have a TV until their children were set in the readin' way. Their plan succeeded to an almost alarming extent, considering that I can and sometimes do spend five minutes wandering around to find something that I can read while I brush my teeth. That's not a healthy fondness for the written word, there, that's a sickness.

But anyway, the lack of TV meant that we ended up listening to radio plays instead, which sounds so wholesome that I'm not sure how to disabuse anyone of the notion, except that some of the Halloween stuff on "The Big Broadcast" freaked my little wits out ("The Thing on the Fourble Board" petrified me, and I don't even know what a fourble board is). For a while I wanted to be an insurance investigator, because "Johnny Dollar" made it sound so glamorously noir. Oh, and the radio version of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"? That warps the young mind a treat. The only program I remember not liking was the "Star Wars" series, which did terrible things to movies Seesterperson and I had seen and enjoyed.

It is equally disconcerting to find that some of our very most favorite shows, "Beyond the Fringe" and "The Goon Show," are available in video. Anathema! Anathema! Well, not really. But a little.

Who Eats Free at Ben's

Who Eats Free at Ben's
Originally uploaded by thedoublepeace

DC locals will get a kick out of this: Ben's Chili Bowl has updated their who-eats-free policy to reflect the changing demographics of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Is this the terrible first step toward state control of the means of production of chili dogs? Only time will tell.

One more dawn, one more day

Maryland my Maryland doesn't have early voting; even if it did, I'd hate to miss being at My Official Polling Site (a church hall that smells like the ghosts of casseroles and play-doh, as well-used halls tend to do) to see everyone come out. There's never been much of a line, at least not when I've gone in after work; this is the first year when I plan to go early, the better to flaunt a "Yo voté" sticker all day, and man, if there's ever going to be a crowd, it'll be tomorrow. Although we're not remotely a swing state, there has been huge volunteer turnout over the last few months, most of it focused on reaching people in Virginia and Pennsylvania. Tomorrow, the work will be closer to home, as people switch to helping out in their own districts: A computer-wiz neighbor is planning to serve as an election judge "because I know how to hack a Diebold machine and can tell when someone else is doing it" (yikes, thanks, and please keep the white hat secured in the morally upright position), while several of my coworkers will be out ferrying voters of all descriptions to the polls or working on site. And everybody is making plans to get to the voting sites, read our books in long lines if we must, get checked off the rosters, solemnly/joyfully fill in our choices, double- and triple-check our ballots, collect our stickers—which are redeemable for booze, coffee, doughnuts, and sex toys—and head back out past the lines with great big grins on our faces for reasons other than the aforementioned commercial blandishments.

In conclusion, also, and such as, this is just to say: VOTE. Or else your penis will fall off.

[ETA: Dammit, there is nothing to say about Obama's grandmother dying the day before the election, except that I am glad he took the time to see her. The family is asking that donations be given to any charity or organization dedicated to curing cancer. Do that, if it moves you, and be sure to hug your people, whoever they may be.]

Barnoween, Ye Madnesf

Yes, these pics are terrible. I'm a wretched photographer at the best of times, but the lack of light, lack of flash, lack of tripod, and lack of subjects who would stand the hell still, dammit, I think that's a challenging combo for anyone to finesse. But the event was too fun for me to repine about the bad photos. Lots of the kids came in excellent costumes, there was a reeeediculous amount of candy, the barn decor must've taken hours to set up, and nobody called out my half-arsed costume (I wore barn-appropriate clothes, stuck a tiara on my head, and called myself a liberal elite). Good times!

Heza maintains a modicum of dignity in his rodeo-lookin' patriotic tack. He wouldn't leave his hay long enough for me to get a shot of his matching halter, though.

Queen's Colors got a red ermine-trimmed cooling sheet, a white veil, and a homemade velvet crown. Notice the ears sticking out above the brim. She was completely unbothered by the fuss and continued her usual habit of nuzzling everyone who came near.

Dakota put up with this, further proving that he's ridiculously sweet.

Princess the ballerina! I can't believe they let the kids name such a huge draft Princess.

He may look like a rabbit, but Sterling's a (God help me) horse hare. His owner also brought in a maribou boa, so that if he got fed up with the fly guard he could be horse feathers. The pain, the pain.

Leila is ignoring the hell out of us, because she's got this one tiiiiiny shred of dignity hidden in her hay.

You might not credit it, but this is Doc, whose costume was listed as "ghost." Looks more like "haunted billboard," but we'll let it pass.

Not shown: Scooby, the eye-rolling permanently spastic pony, who last year almost lost his fool mind spooking at falling leaves, dressed as a Starbucks barista. Roosevelt, decked out with a little green felt leaf in his forelock and both a Macintosh sticker and a gummy worm on his side. Outlaw, sporting a Robin Hood hat. Huge hunter Manhattan, draped as a knight's charger. Grayson, wearing only a bandanna (shocking!) after he refused, categorically, to wear his Hell's Angels outfit. Dylan, who himself was not dressed but whose stall was festooned with bones and a warning sign about his fearsome carnivorosity. Princess Lea [sic] the pinto, wearing warpaint, beads, and feathers. Summer, wearing a shimmering purple dragon outfit.

The barn ponies, with the obvious exceptions of Grayson and Scooby, put up with an awful lot for us without protesting. But since they too got treats (to be doled out at intervals, lest they climb the walls all night), I suppose it's not so bad.

Argh

I know you have all been on tenterhooks waiting to hear about Barnoween, and I have not yet uploaded my photos. I can, however, tell you that a dark barn plus a prohibition on flash plus horses that are a little het up about their costumes and the bizarrely dressed people parading past their stalls is not a photographer's friend. There are maaaaybe three photos that came out even slightly acceptably, in that you can tell that they're of horses and not strange blurry fungi.

One brief anecdote to whet the appetite (and because Stephin Merritt's basso "tell more anecdote" instruction to Claudia Gonson at Sunday's Magnetic Fields show was one of the funniest things I've ever heard deadpanned): The owners of the buckskin Fjord horse had wrapped his legs in yellow fur and teased a huge poof of brown wool out around his head, in a very good four-hooved approximation of the Cowardly Lion. But unfortunately, someone noticed that that's not who he really resembled: "You dressed your horse as Art Garfunkel?"

Hurled with great force

The stranger tides that govern all our base the Web are aligning with the Aerial Squash Fandago ley lines this year. Friends, relations, and by now total strangers know of my love for the Yankee Siege trebuchet, which is to my mind the most elegant of the Chunkin engines. Now the RSS feed coughs up not one but two Got Medieval posts on trebuchet-related marginalia in the Maciejowski Bible ("A fmafhing blockbufter of a texte," and yes I stole that joke from Good Omens).

I also wanted to post a link to MightyGodKing's fantastic take on fantasy novel covers—seeing a Mercedes Lackey novel retitled My Little Pony Goes to War set me howling—but it done got slashdotted by the hordes and is unavailable until MGK finds another provider. BoingBoing uses a retitling of Stephen R. Donaldson's Thomas Covenant books (Asshole Leper Hero) as the teaser, setting off a fiery parry and riposte about the series dans les BB comments. I couldn't get past the first chapter of the first installment of that particular series, on account of it was hideously dull and badly written, so I'm indebted to the person who summed up the problems with Donaldson's work by quoting a single sentence: "The horses were almost prostrate upon their feet." I mean, that just ain't right.

Thou shalt not question Stephen Fry

Hat tip to Seesterperson for this one.



And as to why one should not question Stephen Fry, if you have to ask, well, I simply despair.

A brief important question

Have you loved your internet lately?

I mean, have you reaaaaally loved it? Because baby, the internet just wants you to be happy. Really. That's all it wants.

See? Look what it's done for you.

And honey, that's not all.

And baby, that ain't even the best part. (H/T Pandagon)