Halloween and STUFF

Halloween, here in Scotland, is a much more pagan celebration than in the US. Rather, there is a pagan celebration for Halloween. Tuesday night, I and a few friends went to watch the procession, which snaked its way down from the Royal Mile to The Mound. You're supposed to follow the parade down to a stage for a little theater, where Winter battles and defeats Summer or something symbolic like that. There were four main groups: green nymphs, red devils, black wolves (some on stilts, some as drummers with really cool white face paint), and some white angelic/druid-y looking people in flowy robes. Oh, and there were also a few people in blue who ran around the whole procession hitting people in the crowd with large branches. I'm not even kidding. Anyway, each group put on it's symbolic bit of theater, most of which I had a hard time seeing as I was buried halfway back in the crowd. However, I did eventually get a little closer in time to see the battle between two green men wearing only kilts and weilding a variety of weapons, including swords, sticks, and a flaming ball on the end of a length of chain. One defeated the other by choking him with his bare hands, then a blue lady came onstage, revived the dead one, and "married" the victor. Oh, and there were giant, flaming antlers as the backdrop on the stage and crazy pagan drumming and singing as the soundtrack. It was pretty sweet and like nothing I've ever seen, to say the least. Best part? This happens again, and in about three-fold size, in May. The closest equivalent I can draw for you readers at home is that it was like a Berkeley Co-op party. Except about 40,000 times cooler. And with less nudity.

Then guess who I saw down at the Hermatige Braid during my Ecology project on Wednesday morning? I'll give you a hint, they were dancing around a bonfire, naked, and several still had body paint.

OhMANohmanohmanOHman I am going to FREEEEEZE when winter actually gets here. The past couple of days, the weather has been unusually cold (in the 30s) and I've been just holding on. As soon as I stepped outside on Tuesday, all intentions of holding out and keeping my winter coat in my closet until the mid-November flew away about as quickly as a plastic bag in a tornado. I do have more jumpers I can pile on underneath my coats, thank goodness, so I'm not at a complete loss for future warmth, though I could probably do with a few more thermal shirts.

Also in the climate front, the days have already begun to be massively shorter. It's only November 2nd, and the sun doesn't rise until about 7:30am, and begins to set around 4:30pm. It is completely dark by 5:30. You look out the window at 6pm and you think, "Agh! Where did the day go?! It's night, I have to start getting ready to go out! Oh, wait... it's only 6:04. I've still got 4 hours..." Before I know it, the sun's gonna be up at 11am and down again by 2:30pm, or something like that. It'll be as light at 3pm as it is at 3am. I don't know. I'm just trying to prepare myself for the worst. Sigh, I hate being 55 degrees North.

And now for something completely different, how come no one told me that habeas corpus got shot in the face by George W? (And Congress, for that matter.) I just found out about it yesterday! Sigh, I don't miss having to put up with that kind of crap at home, but it's almost worse putting up with it over here because I have to make a sheepish attempt at explaining it and be the immediate terminus for ridicule of All Things American. It's a similar feeling to the one I get when people decide to tell dumb blonde jokes around me, even when they insist I don't qualify as one.