"What does a Beltane costume look like? Just a well-placed May pole?"

*snort* Shame on you, Ben.

If it's a serious question... My religion is all about comfort and sexiness, so whatever made you feel comfortable and sexy would be right on. Celebrate fertility (of ideas, maybe, rather than, y'know...), creativity, Spring!

Hi, Bryan! Yay!

With great power comes great responsibility: Fixed.

Yes, today's topic was in no way a commentary on Shawn's post. If I had the power to change its timestamp, I'd have done so. I think it's pretty clear he was writing for "dinner and a movie".

OK, those two being together is just silly. Timestamps are a cruel mistress.

Enh. I've written better. But I guess writing at all is all that really matters.

Has it been quiet in here today? See, I at least have an excuse. I couldn't get about half the Internet to work for me today, including Blogger. Truth be told, I spent much of the day playing online backgammon. And I've just spent the last couple of hours doing this, so I don't feel like doing much else but vegetating. Pretend mountaineering is tiring work.

I'll write a whole bunch tomorrow, though, I promise. Assuming, of course, that I can get anything to work.

I'm going to try to write a 12bar blues about the Olsen Twins for Friday. Right now, I'm calling the song 50 Days. Anybody else got any projects?
Sorry. It's just so...quiet in here.

Added Friday's confession.

These folks are doing something like we are. I don't know if anybody here had heard of them before. The next one there is due 1 May.

Jon is building a dome. He's also having grand fantasies. It makes a girl nervous.

Jon isn't building a dome, is he?

I, too, read it as "Olestra", and it took a few second looks to convince me otherwise, even after you explained. It's often the things we mishear or misread that provoke the most interesting stories. It worked for Harlan Ellison. Now I've just gotta try and make it work for me.

I wasn't sure. I thought it could have been a typo. I could imagine over-caffeinated Olestra worshippers.

I don't know what an Oestra Worshipper is, but it fell in nicely with my train of thought today. Please forgive me. I started in again on finishing my stupid novel this weekend. I've written better'n 2000 words in the last three days about that guy being eaten by monkeys that I wanted to be able to write about.

Was gonna be a silly joke about me being my own alter ego, but I like the superman thing better.

Well of course you didn't see them. They're ninjas after all.

Do ninjas come to your house to use the wireless, Ben? I saw no ninjas when I was in Texas this autumn, but then I also saw no bats and no barbecue and only one truck on fire by the side of the road. Knowing that the state was rife with ninjas might give me the incentive I've so far been lacking to move there.

In times of dry spell, I don't think anything is truly off-topic so long as we're writing.

'Nika comes to our house to use the wireless because UT (which has ubiquitous wireless) has a bandwidth-per-month download limit thing going. As you download more, your connection slows. By the end of the month, you're down to like dial-up connection. Speaking of government web shut-downs.

After reading Ella Minnow Pea, I had mangled alphybets on the brain. And then last night, I stumbled onto this blog full of that kind of text. She linked to a friend who also wrote that way. And I thought, here is a whole subculture of text-message-graphy; how Gibsonian. Once I'd latched onto Gibson, it was an easy hop to add ever-present wireless access to the net and an interfering government that probably takes the network down on purpose.

Wow! And Alphybet was supposed to be a throwaway. What a great pair of responses! (pair not counting mine)

I'm in a generous mood.

Best remedy for a dry spell? Make your own rain a few drops at a time: write.

"Periodic dry spells" is quaintly generous.