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Hey folks, I’ve mentioned this before on some previous Halloween’s, but I think it bears repeating. I write from my experience as a one-time employee of one of our nation’s many fine pizza-serving and delivering establishments. Basically, tonight’s Halloween, so you might consider refraining from ordering a pizza for delivery this evening. Why? For one thing, since there are tons of kids about on the streets, with many of those dressed in dark clothing, many pizza delivery places will be quoting abnormally long delivery times, both because business might be up and because they may well be instructing their driversDown the rabbit hole….

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These are good, upstanding, patriotic American citizens who are standing against what they see as decades of freedom-crushing excess, who are only fueled by their patriotic fervor and their keen knowledge of history and policy, whose every gathering — no matter how sparsely attended — warrants huge and fawning and reverent news coverage, whose formation is the most important development in American politics since the Revolution itself (no matter how much their basic arguments sound like Republican-as-usual-but-this-time-with-a-tricorn-hat), and whose motives cannot be questioned or mocked in any way. These, on the other hand, are dirty, smelly, anti-American hippies who don’t know shitDown the rabbit hole….

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I re-post this every year on this date. It is the first piece of fiction I wrote after 9-11-01. “The City of Dead Works” There is never any rest for me, the Ferryman of the Dead. I pole my barge across the black waters and up to the pier. So many wait this time, many more than usual. I wonder what has happened, what event has sent me this many. “Come aboard,” I say. “I will take your coin for passage.” One by one they file past me, each handing to me the coin that they never knew they had.Down the rabbit hole….

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Ten years ago this morning, I was driving to work. My job was in a telesales office for a pharmaceutical distributor. I liked the people in the office immensely, and for what it was, the job was about as good as it could have been; I probably should have realized a lot sooner — say, before I was fired after a year and a half — that I’m just not temperamentally suited to sitting at a desk and talking on the phone all day. But anyway, on that day, I got in the car, turned on the radio, and startedDown the rabbit hole….

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Did you know that, even as NASA has ended the space shuttle program with no replacement and no real direction for future space policy, we’ve made it illegal for NASA to enter into cooperative space projects with China? I didn’t, either. It’s one thing to mistakenly pursue bad policy on the belief that it’s good policy, but I’m really starting to think that our country is deliberately opting for bad policy whenever possible. These are truly amazing times to be alive, and I don’t entirely mean that in a good way. Share This PostDown the rabbit hole….

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An opinion: I do not think that Newsweek‘s cover photo of Michele Bachmann ‘went too far’ or whatever we want to call it. I’ve seen plenty of photos of Bachmann, and she just plain flat-out has crazy eyes, which I suspect is because she’s…well, she’s dumb and crazy. I’m sorry to say it, but that’s the only way I can interpret the fact that most of the things she says are dumb, crazy, or dumb and crazy. Plus the fact that her eyes really do look like that. Lord knows, we all don’t photograph well all the time — someDown the rabbit hole….

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Hey all, We’re having a great time here on the Jersey Shore. It’s funny — I’m aware of the existence of a teevee show called The Jersey Shore, and that’s that, but when I was telling people that my family and I were going to the Jersey Shore, lots of folks grinned and said, “What happens at The Shore stays at The Shore”. And that sounds great and all, but it doesn’t make for good blogging. So, a couple of notes thus far: :: It turns out that the tastiness of rum varies in direct proportion to one’s proximity toDown the rabbit hole….

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This (.pdf warning) may be the greatest judicial ruling ever written. Or maybe not. I’d have to read others by this same fellow to be sure. It’s the final ruling in a divorce case that has apparently been extremely acrimonious, and the judge’s response (the Hon. J.W. Quinn, of St. Catherines, ON — just about a 35 minute drive from Casa Jaquandor, depending on the border crossings!), in the end, is to fill his ruling with lots of dry wit. The very first sentence is “Paging Dr. Freud. Paging Dr. Freud.” And check out the bits during a section whereinDown the rabbit hole….

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I’ve been waffling on whether or not to write this post, as part of it involves blogging about work, which I’m not generally thrilled to do, but I don’t think that the relevant work details are especially sensitive, so here goes. A few weeks back, the fine folks at Cultural Compulsive Disorder (one of my favorite pop-culture blogs, by the way) decided that it would be cool to show all six Star Wars movies in their favorite bar. They were going to make a thing out of this — they put up flyers, and so on. Come to the bar,Down the rabbit hole….