The only thing I would have to add to the election business in Florida is this: why are there no UN observers down in Palm Beach?

I've been on one of my downswings this last month. The pumpkin carving experience was really nothing more than an outward expression of having too much time to spend on my own. And it's not like I don't have friends that I can call to do things with--I'm a fortunate man in that I have a very solid network of support and friendship around here. However, sometimes I tread so far off the beaten path that it's hard to convince even the staunchest of supporters to come along on many of the journeys.

Case in point: my brother suggested, without giving me too many details, that I should go see a band called Gwar in concert when they played at the 9:30 club on Halloween. I bought a couple of tickets to see them, thinking that a guy I'd been speaking to might be interested (he wasn't, and I think the invitation managed to turn him off completely) and when I looked it up on the web, it seemed like it'd include a few hours of death metal into the mix. One of my co-workers, Kevin, sounded highly excited by the prospect, but he wasn't able to attend given a recent excursion with his wife to a Moby concert and the last-minuteness of it all.

The crowd at this show was definitely out of the ordinary by DC standards, which is fine by me. I ran into one of the folks I met at the Eagle last time I was there, who works at the 9:30 club on occasion. I made the mistake of showing up at 7:30 for the show, which meant that by 10, when Gwar made its appearance, I had already settled for 3 hours of death metal by two bands, Lamb of God and Amen. 'Twasn't hard to notice the obsession with Catholic imagery.

Gwar is an interesting concept band--they play in caveman/spaceman costumes, claim to have landed in this planet to cause mayhem and destruction, and have a stageshow that involves larger-than-life puppets that are decapitated or otherwise mutilated and bleed fake blood all over the audience. Gwar reflect a general scatological and hypersexualized sensitivity that goes well beyond most people's limits, even those of the highly mohawked, long-haired, dyed, pierced and tattooed crowd. Definitely an odd experience--fun, not sure I'd do it again I was feeling highly violent. My ears rang for three days, even though I left early because I was already feeling ill.

The weeks between that and now have been generally nondescript. I've been working on the novel, conceptualizing altogether too much about what was at some point a simple story about three characters with unusual personalities and is now a treatise on information overload.

As I write, I'm sitting in a plane on my way to Costa Rica to visit my folks for the Thanksgiving weekend. We still do not know who the President of the United States will be. DC has been a strange town recently. I got a chance to give the finger to a crowd of Bushists hanging out on the sidewalk across Massachussets Avenue from the Vice Presidential residence (I am a firm believer in counting all the votes, and have many years of living in Latin America as background with which to justify it). In general, I think I have to chalk November up as a wash.