There is a fantastic Online Halloween Costume Contest going on right now. Unfortunately, I have sworn to myself that I would never, ever enter another Halloween Costume Contest for as long as I am alive. After I am dead, I might have an unfair advantage. Why did I get fed up with these contests? It’s a story of moderate length…

It was a dark and stormy night, We had finally finished the laborious preparations for the Halloween dance. When we arrived we were pleased to see that we had the most elaborate costumes in the place. We had spent days hand crafting our grotesque masks.

Like many small town Halloween dances, the band were designated to be the judges of the Halloween costumes. Like 99.9% of the contests that are judged by 24 year old male cover band members, the slut in the refrigerator box was given first place.

The Star Costumes contest taking place over at BrickFish.com is not being judged by 24 year old small town rock stars (to the best of my knowledge). I think imagination and originality could really triumph in this contest and the winner gets a trip to the 2007 VME event in New Orleans on Halloween.

A spider man costume may not be original, but if you have the right body, it makes a great impression on the ladies. If you have a body that is just very, very wrong for a spider man costume, well that’s just funny.

The motto of the Scouts is Be Prepared, right?

They apparently didn’t know that the other guys were bringing pikes.

My personal motto is Don’t Bring a Glockenspiel to a Pike Fight.

I think that it would serve the public well if Airports and other public places were to have a small special needs washroom specifically for people like Larry Craig who are not gay. I think this is important enough that they could retrofit some of the diaper changing rooms for this purpose.

Alternatively, they could use any large closets that might exist in these facilities.

If there are restrooms labeled as Family, the sign can simply be changed to We Are Family.

I have a bunch of Air Travel to muddle through starting today. I am a bit worried that there are protests near Heathrow. There are protests in Canada as well, but they are out in the countryside where George Bush is schmoozing with the leaders of Canada and Mexico.

I am travelling with my two daughters. Both of them hate flying. One of them also hates Gravol.

Mr. I.P. Freely has a difficult time when he is traveling. Airport security has repeatedly detained the limo drivers that were waiting for him at the arrivals gate. Are they worried that Mr. I.P. Freely is making a ‘dry run’ or something?

Art by CMH

I was at a country fair of sorts last evening. One of the commercial displays included some Light Pipes. It was dark at the time, so I can’t say that I was impressed by the solar lighting system. I was still intrigued by the idea. I really love the pro business atmosphere where I live now. As far as I can see, the only limits to what kind of business you can run out of your garage are practical ones. I am keeping this solar lighting system in mind in case I ever decide that I want to have an IT business running out of a garage. Right now, healthy full spectrum sunlight enters my retinas using a low tech method that we call opening a door.

While we were viewing the displays of plants, animals, crafts and arts, there was music in the air. We stopped for a while to watch five men on stage. Three of them were playing guitars and two were passing a microphone back and forth as they sang plaintive, extemporaneous verse known as ghana.

On our way home the Santa Maria festivities included lots of fireworks, lots of kids throwing paper out of opera house windows and a ten foot wide disco ball on a utility trailer.

I generally don’t take a camera out on social evenings, here is a video with some great Festa images. Some Canadian who works in promotions made it.

Here is a morning after picture that I managed to grab.

I was out last night at a social gathering and we were being entertained by a line dancing group. Country music is popular here, I think Southern Europe might be the only place in the World where you can still hear the dance remix of Cotton-Eyed Joe on any given night at a bar.

Even though country music is popular, the line dancers always seem to choose a few surprising non-country songs for their sets. With these juxtapositioned videos, I have tried to recreate the joy that I experienced last night.

Instructions: Adjust the volume bar on the dancer video to its lowest setting and crank up the other one. Play them at the same time. Repeat as necessary.

Note: Best viewed on Firefox.

The creative force behind Toronto Delivers is Defining a World Class City. This definition seems to have a lot of caveats. The anonymous review style of things as varied as coffee shops, opticians, and fetish flea markets grace the pages of this website. As far as customer reviews go, they are very much to the point. I think they are probably quite valuable to the enterprises that receive the attention, if the can take a hint…and in some cases a joke or two.

I have never lived in Toronto, but I have had a handful of memorable visits. I am going to continue through the older posts to see if any of my haunts get a mention. I think the reason that these reviews ring so true is because the writers occupy a demographic and social scene that is not normally associated with the mystery shopping style. They are educated urban and cool. I am going to point some of my Toronto blogger friends towards this site tonight.

The authors are interested in being hired by any area retailer or service that would be interested in having this sort of write-up for their business. If I was in business in TO, I might hire them to write about my competition.

The movie series about the Pirates of the Caribbean made pirates cool again. They seem too have a even longer cycle than cowboys. I might not be alive the next time pirates are cool.

The Caribbean itself is not as prone to fads. It has an unchanging allure that can be attributed to its beautiful climate, it’s warm people and the natural beauty of its numerous islands.

The Bahamas have great weather. In the winter, the coolest night is at around room temperature. The warm year round temperatures are quite comfortable because of the nearly constant presence of gentle wind.

The history of the Bahamas does have pirates. I have to confess that I don’t buy into the romanticizing of pirates. They were/are dirty, violent, unlawful people.

I like to snorkel. I would be under the water within hours of arriving in the Bahamas if I were to vacation there. Diving in the Bahamas is magnificent. You can find a lot of cool under water video on YouTube these days. Supposedly Bimini is spectacular, try a search for videos using Bimini as a search term.

When my wife and I were planning out our great experiment of living and working from a remote part of the World, the Bahamas was quite high on the list. We weren’t sure if telecommuting was feasible from the Caribbean. I would still love to visit someday.

I had the misconception that there already was an Encyclopedia of Misconceptions. I thought that the 1975 World Book Encyclopedia that sits in my parents’ bookcase served quite well in that respect.

The new project is actually kind of interesting. Here is a link for those of you who want to jump right in and contribute a misconception. If you want some back story, check out Global Nomads Group.

These guys pulled off a live video conference between Bishop Desmond Tutu and several US classrooms.