The Goblin Spider

From the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum:

Noted writer and linguist Lafcadio Hearn’s 1910 English translation of the ancient Japanese ghost tale, The Goblin Spider, transports children of all ages to an exotic world of samurai warriors, haunted temples, and monstrous goblin spiders.
According to the tale, there used to be many goblin spiders in Japan. During the day, they looked just like common spiders—but late at night, they transformed into huge spiders with bulging eyes and menacing pincers. Capable of terrible things, these monstrous arachnids also had the magical power of taking human shape.

Sadly, no credit given for the illustrator.

L' Haunting

Henri le chat, on Halloween.

"Here's the last thing that I'd like to throw out there before we all go 1856 all over for a while..."

Excellent post from Charles P. Pierce:

Here's the last thing that I'd like to throw out there before we all go 1856 all over for a while. This entire campaign has been fought out over the issue of whether or not we are all members of a viable political commonwealth with implicit mutual obligations to act through our government — a self-government that is, or ought to be, the purest creative project of that commonwealth — for the common good, or whether that government is a some sort of alien entity repressing our fundamental entrepreneurial energy. Over the next few days, I believe, we are going to see that argument brought to the sharpest point possible. If you want to see how this event will "impact the election," look to what answer to that question emerges from the storm. It will tell us a lot about the election, and about ourselves.

Read more here.

Hurricane Sandy from space

Stay safe, everyone.

Ballet at 1000 frames per second

via Swiss Miss

Vintage

via the New Yorker

Uh-oh

Just in time for Halloween!

From Mother Jones:

Experiments on mice have shown that it is possible to rejuvenate the brains of old animals by injecting them with blood from the young. [Saul Villeda], who led the work, found that blood from young mice reversed some of the effects of ageing in the older mice..."Do I think that giving young blood could have an effect on a human? I'm thinking more and more that it might," said Villeda.

I was sure this was the plot of a Mystery Science Theater 3000 movie with Tor Johnson, but I was wrong.




It was Bela Lugosi!

Friday

I love me some Margaret and Helen.

I am no longer afraid of Tagg Romney despite my lack of Secret Service protection. Your dad is a dumb ass liar. Bring it on, son. I mean it. Really.

and

Margaret, I can’t imagine that there are many, but if a woman still plans to vote for Mitt Romney chances are she owns a car elevator. I am sure there are a few exceptions to that rule, and I imagine they will leave a comment here soon enough. I’ll keep their head shots in a binder so we can talk about them later.

In other, more superficial news, I got a haircut. My below-the-shoulder curly locks were whacked to just above the shoulder (4 or 5 inches). I feel positively shorn, and I miss my rather dramatic hair.

The real test will be if anyone else notices. I'm guessing no.

Waiting for this in the mail:

I have been wanting something from Le Bouton for ages. And when this popped up in her etsy shop, dear reader, I caved.

And you know, I think these boots would be just the thing to wear with it. Right now they are all sold out, but I am closet cleaning for the money to buy a pair when they come back in stock next month (fingers crossed).

Oh, and there's also this...

Binders Full of Women!

Hooray!

Hilary Mantel (more about her here), one of my favorite authors, has won (a second!) Man Booker Prize. I'll let my pal Kate the Driveller explain:

historical fiction is one of my favourite genres and one she particularly excels in (my introduction to Mantel was her richly multifocal French Revolution novel, A Place of Greater Safety and Bring up the Bodies shares that completely unpretentious and consummately precise dense prose style)...

This is the sequel to one of my recent favorites:

And there's a nice profile of her in The New Yorker, entitled "The Dead Are Real".

Dooooom and Glooooom

Nice job.