The Explorers' Club
№ CCCXII - The Silver Swan.



To grasp how truly impressive is the Silver Swan, the automaton must be seen to move. To wit: The Silver Swan-link.





Commentary: "The Explorers' Club" is now back on schedule after the latest unscheduled sabbatical. This is the perilous period in which the wheels usually fall off this cart, sending us careening into a ditch, causing another rueful repose. Here's hoping for better fortune this go-around. Fingers crossed!

The Victors
Nebraska 23-9 Michigan (№ 20)
5-3, Big Ten 3-1

Night games are abominations & The Loose Ties had scheduled their album-release show weeks in advance, long before I knew the valiant Wolverines' contest against the unwelcome Cornhuskers would be a verdammt night game; so, I went to The Local, missing the lion's share of the game. I watched the first quarter & into the second, & when I embarked upon my journey in the Lumi the Snow Queen the score was Nebraska 7-3 Michigan, & we had already missed a field goal. I'd be able to comment intelligently upon what occurred had the game been played at noon, or even at 3:30. Thus, generalities & platitudes: Michigan football is still recovering from the worst stretch in our storied history, & restoration is neither an easy nor a swift process. We lost, & losing hurts. We can only hope that "the agony of defeat" is instructive, that we learn from the myriad mistakes we must have made yesterday, that we improve our procedures & our preparation, & that we come out for the next game stronger, smarter, & savvier than we did for yesterday's game.

Also, night games, like Carthage, must be destroyed.

Go Blue!

The Rebel Black Dot Hallowe'en Song of the Day
Jason Segel, "Dracula's Lament" via iTunes (T.L.A.M.)

Commentary: From the motion picture Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Within the film, "Dracula's Lament" is a song in the "rock opera" A Taste for Love.

"It's getting kind of hard to believe things are going to get better,
I've been drowning too long to believe that the tide's going to turn,
And I've been living too hard to believe things are going to get easier now,
I'm still trying to shake off the pain from the lessons I've learned—

"And if I see Van Helsing I swear to the Lord I will slay him!
Wa ha ha ha!
He's taken from me but I swear I won't let it be so!
Wa ha ha ha!
Blood! will run down his face when he is decapitated!
Ha!
His head on my mantel is how I will let this world know
How much I love you—

"Die, die, die…
I can't."