Happy Halloween from the Raven. We've got the pumpkin carved, and it now stands sentinel on the railing of our porch. The tally so far: two shivering little goblins who opined that it was "scary." Wait until you see the bill for a semester's worth of college textbooks, kids. Then you will know terror. Based on last's year's turnout, these two were probably the only ones who will show up... Hurrah! Two more just came by. Dorothy from Oz and a girl in skeleton mufti. The holiday still lives. (Update: just got 3 more—s'wonderful.)

The Raven turns 10,000 today in page-hits. Please accept my thanks and sincere affection.

Macabre tales are part of the holiday, and if you like that sort of thing then we think you'll dig The Quiet Dogs.

6:27:39 PM       

Bet you had no idea how dangerous this Weblogging thing is. This morning the NYT has a look at "Making the Web Child-Safe" and warns of the many terrors lurking online for the unsuspecting urlchin.

Now, as online diaries and so-called Weblogs become a phenomenon among young people as well as adults, the issue of children's online safety has become even more pronounced. Youngsters might think they are alone with their thoughts and their computer, when in fact what is often a baring of the soul is out there for all the world to see.

Chow Hounds

Here's an expose on the weird world of Competitive Eating. Apparently there's an entire circuit of professional food-slammers who make Paul Newman's 50 hardboiled eggs in Cool Hand Luke look like a light snack. Case in point: Last Sunday at the Atlantic Oceana nightclub in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, they just held the world pelmeni-eating championship. Pelmeni are little potato-and-meat dumplings—one of my favorite dishes. When I'm hungry, I can eat up to 15 of them at one sitting. But here's Cookie Jarvis, a competitor getting ready for the main event:

"I hear they're not that great. But it's not going to matter because I'm going to eat 250 of them."

"Sport is about the refinement of a skill, like throwing a basketball. And eating is a skill that has been refined by these athletes, so the components that make up a good competitive eater are capacity, the speed with which you can eat and the speed of your hands."

Because the federation's only strict rule is that you cannot vomit during the competition, there is a great deal of personal style involved in competitive eating.

Gersh Kuntzman, a reporter for The New York Post says, "I've gone back to the videotape. He did exhale the last half, but then he reinhales it through his nostrils which, again, is such a mark of a champion."

Gentlemen of the Road

Over in Atlanta we've got a guy in jail over a road rage incident yesterday. I don't know why I like these kinds of stories so much. Maybe it's because you have to work so hard to control your anger throughout a normal day spent in the sea of rudeness and hostility known as "outside." It's fun to see what happens when one of us finally succumbs to the urge to go primal. In this case, two guys were doing the usual thing and one of them caught up to the other in stalled traffic:

When southbound Ga. 400 knotted up near Holcomb Bridge Road about 8 a.m. Wednesday, police say, Kevin Skahan got out of his Jaguar, punched out the window of David Hamilton's Audi A4 and grabbed Hamilton by the shirt.

9:24:27 AM