Hamlette's Soliloquy

"I'm sick and tired of these stupid things happening to me! And somebody had better do something about it!" --Prudy in Support Your Local Sheriff.

As has happened the last couple years, my carefully-planned Halloween costume has disintegrated the night before Halloween. Last night I melted a hole in my costume with an iron. So now I'm throwing together a quick costume to match my husband's. He's going as Wolverine from "X-Men", and now I'm going as Rogue (thank you, ED for having long gloves I can borrow!). We're patterning our outfits after what they're wearing when they first meet, about 17 minutes into the movie. You know, kinda normal clothing. Because there's no way I could get him to wear yellow-and-blue spandex. It's our hair that's going to make us recognizable. We got "hair glue" for his to give him that great pointy Wolvie hair, and I'm going to quick run to the mall after work to find some sort of impermanent white (or maybe silver?) dye to do a quick streak in my hair. But I'm afraid that as has happened all too often, our costumes will be too subtle and only a few people will get it. Let's see...my freshman year a friend and I went as sort of a photo and its negative--I wore a white shirt and black pants, she wore a black shirt and white pants, etc. Nobody got it. Sophomore year I was a genie, but just ended up looking like an Bohemian MC Hammer. Junior year my friends and I went Goth Glam, so that was quite fun and people understood that. But last year we decided to all go as vampires dressed as something else: a vampire as an elf, a vampire as a fairy, a vampire as a military commando (that was me), and a vampire as Ringo Starr from the film Help! (that was him, and only one person besides our group got it without us explaining the whole thing). I don't remember having this problem as a kid. We'll see if anyone figures us out this year. Maybe I should start thinking more garishly.

Just a couple more thoughts from Chamberlain (this time regarding the aftermath of battle) for you to ruminate upon:

"But we had with us, to keep and to care for, more than five hundred bruised bodies of men,--men made in the image of God, marred by the hand of man, and must we say in the name of God? And where is the reckoning for such things? And who is answerable? One might almost shrink from the sound of his own voice, which had launched into the palpitating air words of order--do we call it?--fraught with such ruin. Was it God's command we heard, or His forgiveness we must forever implore?" (p 42. Chamberlain, Joshua Lawrence. The Passing of the Armies. New York: Bantam Books, 1993.)