La La la la ... the Halloween Parade.

RIP Lou Reed:

This Halloween is something to be sure
Especially to be here without you.

There's the Born Again Losers and the Lavender Boozers
and some crack team from Washington Heights.
The boys from Avenue B and the girls from Avenue D
a Tinkerbell in tights.

This celebration somehow gets me down
Especially when I see you're not around.

There's no Peter Pedantic saying things romantic
In Latin, Greek or Spic
There's no Three bananas or Brandy Alexander
Dishing all their tricks.

It's a different feeling that I have today
Especially when I know you've gone away
...
In the back of my mind I was afraid it might be true
In the back of my mind I was afraid that they meant you

The Halloween Parade
At the Halloween parade
At the Halloween parade
See you next year - at the Halloween parade

The Lives of Others.

*The "new" hot film...

Friday afternoon smile...

Marcus: Yonng women should stop binge drinking

Petri: How about everyone just stop drinking?

Taylor: Stop telling young women what to do

...in a good way.

----------

Take care, everyone;
the weekend is in sight...

Keep it healthy, wealthy, and wise.
Life is better when we're alert, no?

Snow Season Starts Afresh.

Yesterday morning, we de-fenced and cleaned up our collective community garden.

In in my plot, I'd been harvesting broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and summer-planted green beans every few days right up until yesterday's 9am meetup deadline, and got there early to uproot the living plants and stuff them into a big brown yard waste bag to be put out Tuesday as trash...

Last night, we got the killer frost.
Late, as we're usually due in mid-September.

Today, a bit of heavy wet flakes in the afternoon to cover the frozen windshields... Down to 28 degrees

The porch is filled with carrots, sage, celery, stalks of sprouts, green beans and potatoes. The garlic and onions are upstairs; the tomato sauce is in the pot...

You get the idea: a warm, indoors, food-scented day, with the outdoors bringing-it-in garden work done for the year...
Boom -- the seasons change overnight.

Make it a great week, you too.

She Just Can't Be Chained...

to a life where nothing's gained,
and nothing's lost...
at such a cost.

Friends, do we really think anyone "won" in this most recent episode of political immaturity in Washington? Really? You think that? -- that either "side" comes out smelling good after our latest fiscal fiasco?

From Athens — where an American default could have turned an unending economic crisis into catastrophe — Nikos Konstandaras wrote in the daily Kathimerini that Aristophanes, the master of ancient Greek comedy, “would have loved the idea of a group of lawmakers exploiting their position to abolish the state they are sworn to serve.

For Greece’s ancient tragedians, the vain indifference, the ignorance of dangers caused by our character and actions, was familiar material.” The question, he added, was whether America is “the scene of comedy or tragedy.”

Sadly, most revealing is the way the media breathlessly mis-covers these mini-crises: as a binary horse-race that requires naming a "winner" and a "loser".

Nobody won.
We all lost.

That we can't yet acknowledge the fact does not bode promising for our collective future...

So Jump Already...

How crazy Martin Riggs would help end this shutdown showdown:

Do you really want to jump?
Do you wanna? Well then, that's fine with me.
C'mon, let's do it... let's do it.

Go, You Northwestern... Fight for Victory.

Looking forward:

"No longer might people think, "Northwestern? That team that took 50-plus years to win a bowl game?" Now, maybe it'll be, "Northwestern? That team that gave Ohio State all it could handle and deserves that No. 16 ranking?"

"We're close," Northwestern coach Pat Fitzgerald said. "We're knocking on the door, we've just got to knock that bad boy down. And all of our goals are still ahead of us. I think we showed everybody in the conference and the country that this group of young men can play."
...
"There's a team getting on the bus going back to Columbus that knows they just got by a pretty darn good football team," Fitzgerald said. "That's what I'll take from this game."

As was pretty evident from Fitzgerald's post game comments and those of his team, this game had no shortage of positives. And there's no reason to believe this wasn't the kind of statement this Northwestern team was looking to make.

The tests keep coming for Northwestern. The Cats go on the road next weekend to Wisconsin, a team that's suffered a pair of tough losses in its past three games and will be coming off a bye.

*Hat tip: Mom.