• 20:12 Shopping for Halloween costumes with my parents. I just needed more bones. #
• 21:05 At puppet kitchen, installing an armature into Hecate’s collar. Mom and Dad are having pizza with Rob. #
• 22:21 Sent the family home. I’m sawing a skull open. #
• 23:39 Spraying the skull with vanilla. #
• 23:41 And now pausing for a hot chocolate break while the skull dries. #

We don’t normally take the paper because neither of us are home often enough to really read it, but with the folks here we picked up a copy of the Sunday New York Times. I found this piece on the Op-Ed page and was startled by the opening paragraphs.

John McCain isn’t boasting about a new endorsement, one of the very, very few he has received from overseas. It came a few days ago:

“Al Qaeda will have to support McCain in the coming election,” read a commentary on a password-protected Islamist Web site that is closely linked to Al Qaeda and often disseminates the group’s propaganda.

So I went looking for more information and found more of the text at the Daily Telegraph. The gist — heavily paraphrased — is that a prolonged war exhausts the U.S. and provides recruitment incentives to would-be terrorists.