(”Evil Tiki Mask” courtesy of the folks at Halloween Mask.com)

Here’s a poem fitting for this day:

The victim, who tried to run away
Lay in parts, just outside the doorway
On the porch
Between the two front windows
At the exact center of the cleft
Of the whole house cut in two.

Not far off
In nearby trees, you could see
A large arm, still brandishing an immense axe–
And peering back
The satisfied
Assassin’s eye.

Ooooh - that’s real spooky, eh? This, and more spooky poems by Michael Benedikt can be found here.

Happy Halloween from Goodboys Nation!

That was some nor’easter they got all along the U.S. Eastern Seaboard this past weekend, eh? Parts of Maine were especially hard-hit, with hundreds of thousands of people in the New York City area without power at one time during the height of the storm.

(Funny, I don’t recall experiencing any kind of similar conditions here in Gilbert, Arizona last weekend. Strange…)

Bryan Woods at The Storm Track has this cool story about what it was like up on the Mount Washington (NH) summit, where they recorded subsequent wind gusts of 151 and 158 miles per hour (!), and a 10-inch snowfall to cap an October that featured 34 inches, the second highest total on record for the month of October.

I always looked forward to that first major storm that would barrel up the East Coast every late October-early November, turning trees loaded with their fading fall foliage to bare branches in a day’s time. In the next few weeks the yellows, oranges and reds of early fall will be transformed into the browns and grays of November, awaiting that first cold snap and the prospect of the first snow. A lot of people out here in AZ consider snow (and cold, for that matter) a four-letter word; I never felt that way and hopefully will see some when I get back to MA after Christmas (God willing!).

OK, I’m officially undergoing Hawai’i withdrawal, and it’s all because of Moana Chang’s lovely “Boat Days In Hawaii” CD I received in the mail while I was back East last week. Ahhhhhh……

Listening to it for the first time brought me back to that lovely moment I mentioned in my brief recap of the highlights of our vacation, hearing a band playing Hawaiian music on the Aloha Tower pier beneath our ship as it slipped silently out of its berth and towards the Pacific and our 7-night voyage around the Hawaiian Islands. The music that night was incredibly lovely to behold, the female voice who sang in Hawaiian alternatively hauntingly or cheerfully beautiful, depending on the tune being played. I’ll always remember hearing the soft strains of “Aloha ‘Oe” slowing fading into the distance as the sounds of land and civilization were gradually replaced by the breezy, nautical sounds of a cruise ship underway in the tropical moonlight.

One can imagine my delight, then, at discovering that the Moana Chang CD I purchased almost as an afterthought while perusing through various tiki bar accessory websites (and there are literally dozens of them out there!) just so happens to be by the very same artist we heard serenading us that night on the Aloha Tower pier. This, from the liner notes accompanying her CD:

“…In 1999, Moana got involved with the Aloha Boat Days Committee, a perfect pairing with her talents and passions! As Music Coordinator for Aloha Boat Days, Moana Chang and her Aloha Tower Entertainers provide the world’s most gracious welcome and farewell at Honolulu Harbour. This compact disc is a compilation of favorites from Moana’s Aloha Boat Days repertoire.

Way cool! By pure coincidence, we have a lovely little reminder of our Hawaiian cruise experience available at the push of a button. Who woulda thunk it? It’s only been a month, but here in the suburban confines of our Arizona subdivision, Hawai’i seems a place long ago and far away, indeed. But thanks to Moana Chang and her lovely CD, the weeks and miles melt away and we’re once again there, if only in our imaginations.

So, if you want to experience for yourself a little bit of the magical and festive atmosphere that goes with being on a cruise ship departing from the Honolulu pier on a lovely tropical evening - at a fraction of the cost! - you can’t do any better than Moana Chang’s “Boat Days In Hawai’i”. Aloha!

“Wild life, whatever happened to…
Wild life, the animals in the zoo?” - “Wild Life”, Paul McCartney and Wings

—

Awright, so neither the album nor the song are very good, but it’s an “all wildlife, all the time” day here at Goodboys Nation! Earlier, we did the big blue, now its on to terra firma…

* First off, some good news - Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro continues his long recovery from his near-fatal injury at the Preakness. There’s actually a University of PA Veterinary Medicine Center blog devoted to updates on his condition. It’s great to see that the horsey is obviously loved and being incredibly well taken care of, and the blog is a nice touch.

* This story about stupid animal rights activists in Switzerland really bugs me (my bolding):

Animal rights activists who broke into a circus to liberate a rare white tiger changed their minds after seeing it - and took a bunny rabbit instead.

Campaigners from the Swiss faction of the Animal Liberation Front had earlier told Circus Royal director Oliver Skreinig they planned to steal the Siberian tiger and hand him to a zoo.

But when they broke into the circus enclosure and saw the animal they changed their minds - and stole a rabbit instead.

The liberationists then posted pictures of themselves online wearing black army uniforms and balaclavas and holding the rabbit.

Skreinig said: “The pet rabbit was not even in the show, it belonged to our clown’s six-year-old daughter.”

Pretty pathetic, huh? Here’s my question - after getting the tiger, where’d they think they were gonna put it - in the back seat of their Chevrolet? A dining-room sized pet carrier? For both the clown’s daughter and her bunny rabbit’s sake, I sure hope these creeps have the guts and compassion to return it to her. While many animal activists have their hearts in the right place, these jokers were not just stupid, but cruel and mean as well. And The Great White Shank hates cruel and mean. (Hat tip: Polipundit)

* Those eclectic folks at Free Republic provided this National Geographic story link about things not looking very promising for the hippo population in a Congo wildlife reserve. I find this particularly heart-breaking:

Hippopotamuses are being butchered by the hundreds inside a Central African wildlife reserve, conservation groups report.

An aerial census conducted yesterday put the hippo population in Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) at 629

This represents a 98 percent crash in numbers since the 1970s, when there were some 30,000 animals, according to the Frankfurt Zoological Society based in Germany, which carried out the census.

In recent weeks about 400 hippos have been slain, according to Emmanuel de Merode, head of the Africa Conservation Fund based in Kenya.

The killing is being blamed on Congolese militia currently operating inside the park. The rebels are believed to be eating and selling hippo meat and taking the animals’ teeth for ivory.

Not is not only tragic, but a disgrace as well; just don’t expect the government to step in and do anything about it. Between the increasing expansion of radical Islam, the ongoing AIDS epidemic, the Darfur tragedy, and the usual cabal of incompetent and corrupt dictators sucking from the trough of their poverty-ridden populations, Africa is in a greater mess than ever before, with no real hope in sight. Perhaps the Colonial Powers of the 19th and early 20th century were not always acting in the best interests of their possessions, but they did bring a sense of order to things, and you didn’t have the rampant chaos and corruption there is now. Of course, that’s not a very politically-correct thing to say, but the fact is, Africa is not, and will never be, able to take care of itself politically and economically. And its never the people in power who suffer.

News item from the other day: Icelandic whalers kill first fin whale.

Can someone tell me why, in the 21st century, we still need to be hunting whales? Look, I’m no tree-hugging, enviro-wacko like these folks (although I will admit to avoiding stepping on ants and letting insects out of the house instead of executing them on the spot), but one would think that between the world’s rapidly-expanding aquaculture industries, new technologies, and an increasing global awareness of the need to better manage our precious and diminishing natural resources, a practice as outdated and unnecessary as whale-hunting would have by now been the stuff of old, fantastic stories told by Jack London and shared by intrepid old salts over a whiskey and a crackling fire.

I remember saying a number of years ago that I could foresee the day when nations would use their navies to protect the oceans from renegade nations that refuse to honor or sign international treaties designed to protect fish stocks and endangered species in the big blue. I sure hope things never get to that point, but when I read about things as senseless as the hunting of whales in this day and age when it’s common wisdom that their numbers need to be protected, it makes you wonder how close we are to that day.

Although a confirmed Episcopalian in membership and a Anglo-Catholic in both my spiritual worldview and religious practice, over the past several months I have enjoyed attending on an occasional basis a Roman Catholic church down the street from me. Partly because it’s close, partly because I like the 4 PM Saturday Mass time (why more churches don’t do this is beyond me), partly because I’ve enjoyed the services, the sermons from their priests, and the music, and partly because of all the crap going on in the Episcopal Church (TEC) these days with all the dissatisfaction and gradual disintegration resulting from the ongoing war being waged against conservative (i.e., “orthodox”) parishes and members who’ve had enough of its socially-progressive, gay/lesbian agenda following the consecration of openly-gay Bishop V. Gene Robinson three years ago.

But it wasn’t just convenience or dissatisfaction on my part that got me seriously considering Roman Catholicism. Earlier in the year, I was both impressed and moved by the book “Rome Sweet Home - Our Journey to Catholicism”, by Scott and Kimberly Hahn. The Hahn’s were life-long, Scripture-centered, militantly anti-Catholic Presbyterians (Scott himself a pastor) who came to discover in Catholicism what they both felt was the true vehicle and voice for God’s Word in its sacraments, doctrine and practices. The book struck a chord in me and made me want to undertake a similar kind of journey of my own.

One night, I met our veterinarian at the pizza place Tracey and I do our usual Friday night take-out. An active member at his non-denominational church, we’ve ended up having lengthy and interesting conversations whenever rabbit checkups have brought the two of us together. When, this particular night, I told him I was attending St. Anne occasionally and at least thinking about the possibility of becoming a Roman Catholic, he looked at me like someone who had swallowed an anchovy the wrong way.

“How could even consider that with all the clergy sex scandals in the Ch