Inspired by a similar post about Al Bundy.

Welcome to our first check-in for "Something Wicked This Way Comes", by Ray Bradbury. Hoping to extend October vibes throughout November, please join me...

In Summary:

One year, Halloween comes early, on October 24th at 3am. A lightning rod salesman comes to Green Town and meets two boys, our protagonists: William (Will) Halloway and Jim Nightshade. Will was born one minute before midnight on October 30th, and Jim one minught after, on the 31st. The salesman tries to get the boys to buy a lightning rod, but hearing they have no money, he tells them to take one for free: a storm is coming, and one of their houses (Jim's) needs protection from the impending lightning. Will is enthusiastic and runs to attach the rod, but Jim is less believing.

That evening, the boys run down to the town's library, where Will's dad - Charles William Halloway - works. Charles is an older dad, approaching 50, and both he and his son find it hard to relate to each other. The boys browse books, picking out dinosaurs and adventure novels. Charles leaves the library after them, musing about the differences between the boys. 9pm hits as the boys walk home, shops shutting down around them. They pass two store owners standing outside, seemingly frozen as they gaze into the distance, listening to and smelling something on the wind. Charles, leaving the bar, sees a man hanging up flyers. He follows this man to an empty shop, wherein a 6 foot block of ice rests atop two sawhorses. He finally reads the flyer, which advertises Cooger & Dark's Pandemonium Circus Show. One of the advertised attractions is the Most Beautiful Woman In the World - supposedly contained within this ice block.

Still on their way home, Jim suggests they stop at the "Theatre." Jim is eager; Will is hesitant. This "Theatre" is a window with an open curtain, wherein the boys have seen people having sex (unclear if it's just one couple or an orgy...) Will isn't interested, so he takes their books and heads home, leaving Jim to peek into windows by himself. However, no one was home, and Jim catches up quickly. Will grabs a flyer blowing down the street: Cooger and Dark's Carnival, coming October 24th - tomorrow! They can hardly believe a carnival would come this late in the year, but the promise of such exotics as The Lava Drinker, Mr Electrico, The Demon Guillotine, The Skeleton, and The Dust Witch is enough to excite them. Especially... The Most Beautiful Woman in the World.

Finally home, Will walks inside t

A few days ago I quit WSS, due to being pissed off about having some of my admittedly obnoxious anti-crypto posts taken down by Ivan. I hate censorship and I'm no fan of cryptos. Ivan had previously promised me he'd stop censoring my posts, and he broke that promise, which I didn't appreciate. But there are bigger issues here than all that. One of those is getting as many apes as possible to higher ground before the coming shitstorm hits. Including my intrepid little band of followers.

First, just so you know, this isn't my first rodeo. I had a close-up view of the 1999 and 2008 market crashes. What the Fed has set us up for now is something far worse. For some time I've been warning that the Wall Street-Federal Reserve Looting Syndicate was setting us up for the next Great Muppet Reaping, i.e. an engineered crash that would allow the Fed's accomplices like BlackRock and the vulture funds to systematically loot and asset strip what remains of the middle class. I believe that's what's coming. The Fed has artificially, criminally suppressed interest rates since 2008 while blowing enormous speculative bubbles with its tsunami of Yellen Bux "stimulus." Now the financial reckoning day is closing in on us, and if my assessment is correct, this is not going to be pretty. ALL assets are going to get slammed, to include precious metals and miners. That's because legions of greedy fools levered up on debt to play in Wall Street's rigged casinos, and to gamble on all the asset bubbles, with crypto being the biggest speculative mania of all. The liquidation selling to cover margin calls could easily turn to full-blown panic that feeds on itself.

Crypto holders, I think you're going to get creamed. But I'm not here to mock you anymore, as I got that out of my system, and admit it was bad form. You will figure out for yourselves soon enough what's headed your way. I will tell you that it looks to me like ALL speculative asset classes are going to get monkey-hammered as we head into a liquidity crunch and the cascading defaults begin. This is just one ape's opinion, NOT financial advice. But like I said, I've seen this movie before & have a pretty good idea of how it's going to end. Housing Bubble 2.0, when it implodes, is going to make the 2008 financial meltdown look like a walk in the park.

Add to the turmoil in our markets the geopolitical risks swirling around Ukraine and whatever adventures China decides to get up to as their ginormous housing bubble is in a

One of my personal favorite October reads is Ray Bradbury's "Something Wicked This Way Comes." It's already been read in r/bookclub so I couldn't nominate it for October's reads, but that does make it a perfect Evergreen choice! Here's an enticing summary, for anyone not familiar with the book:

"For those who still dream and remember, for those yet to experience the hypnotic power of its dark poetry, step inside. The show is about to begin. Cooger & Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show has come to Green Town, Illinois, to destroy every life touched by its strange and sinister mystery. The carnival rolls in sometime after midnight, ushering in Halloween a week early. A calliope’s shrill siren song beckons to all with a seductive promise of dreams and youth regained. Two boys will discover the secret of its smoke, mazes, and mirrors; two friends who will soon know all too well the heavy cost of wishes…and the stuff of nightmares.

Few novels have endured in the heart and memory as has Ray Bradbury’s unparalleled literary masterpiece Something Wicked This Way Comes. Scary and suspenseful, it is a timeless classic in the American canon."

So, no, I can't reminisce about being a young boy, but man does this book have some incredible autumn / Halloween vibes. I hope you'll join me in reading or rereading this! (Schedule TBA, aiming to start around the end of October).

I'm over 50 pages in and I have no idea what the fuck this book is on about, idk if it's my mental state at the moment interfering with my focus and understanding of this book or what, I don't understand what it's trying to say sometimes so I have no idea what's going on in each scenario, it seems really bizarre, every page seems like it's trying to say something deep and emotionally impactful, I've just read the bit that rambles about how awful 3AM is and how women are clocks or time or some shit like that and I have no clue what Bradbury was on about, I'm usually able to follow and understand books, I'm fine with Shakespeare/Walt Whitman/Frankenstein/One hundred years of solitude, but this book's writing is going over my head. Maybe it's just me. Also why were Will and Jim scared of the carnival being set up or whatever, this writing is fucking cryptic, they just randomly freak out, run away and the the next page they ask each other if it really happened, what? What are you talking about? Am I just too goddamn tired to understand?

Hello again, welcome to check-in #3 for Something Wicked This Way Comes, chapters 29-41!

In summary...

Will wakes in the middle of the night to realize Jim's lightning rod is gone. While awake, he senses a noise... the soft, almost imperceptible sound of the creepy carnival balloon, steered by the Dust Witch, searching out the boys. She may be blind, but she is "special blind," able to smell and hear and sense things. She has tracked the boys, and glides the balloon over Jim's roof, leaving a slimy trail to mark the house. Ingenius Will runs for a hose to clean off the house and remove her evil markings. The boys return to their separate beds, but Will is still awake and eyeing his Boy Scout archery set. He uses thoughts and movements to attract the witch's attention, then runs and lures her to the abandoned Redman house. He lures her closer and closer, but his bow breaks! He's able to throw the arrow and create a smiling slit in the balloon, which flies off to die in the fields.

The next morning, the thunderstorm hits. As the boys head out, Jim tells Will he had a dream of a funeral procession or parade, perhaps for a balloon. Will tries to tell Jim about his nocturnal face-off with the balloon and Dust Witch, but he keeps getting cut off. Then they hear the sound of someone crying - a young girl, hiding under a tree in the rain. They recognize her but can't quite place it... Will realizes that it's Miss Foley, reverse-aged back into girlhood! They go to Miss Foley's house just to check, and find no one is there. From her house, they hear the music of the carousel's calliope, meaning it's been fixed. Miss Foley must have been lured there, and spun too many years backward. They want to help her, but then they hear the sounds of a carnival parade; the carnies have come into town! Not entirely a parade; Mr. Dark is on the hunt for the boys.

Will calls his dad to say that they can't come home, they have to hide. He doesn't want to tell his dad who is hunting them, doesn't want to endanger him. Cut to the parade, where the boys are hiding in plain sight: beneath an iron grille in the sidewalk outside the United Cigar Store. Charles walks by above them, not noticing them, and into Ned's Night Spot. While he sips coffee, he notices the Illustrated Man. A child out on the street sees the boys hiding and his shouts attract the attention of the Dwarf, who stares down at them for a while. But it seems like his eyes are recording photos for his brain to maybe p

I've locked myself in the attic for about 3 days now. Running low of food and water that I brought up with me, I'm beginning to experience the effects of hunger and thirst, and I'm starting to panic more and more as each day passes by. All of this started about a week ago, but I started hiding 3 days ago after I found out what happened to my friend.

You see, there's a demonic creature on the prowl outside and it started terrorizing the neighborhood recently, hence why I'm in hiding. My phone has run out of power about a day or two ago because I kept it on low power the whole time I was in the attic, but since there's no outlet, I decided to just bring my laptop just in case my phone died.

I didn't tell my friends or family about this because I feared that if I did, they would've just brushed me off as being high off of drugs or playing a prank, though to be fair I have said my fair share of weird stuff in my lifetime so it wouldn't surprise me if they didn't believe me. But this is no prank, and that's what got me scared when it happened and now it's near my house, fearing that it might be after me next.

But I guess I'm glad that I never told anyone because then they'd come to my house wondering what the hell is wrong with me, especially my friend who betrayed my trust after stealing away my girlfriend and ratting me out to the cops about something that he did, so he deserved to die. However, before he did, he sent me one last message in my email after not talking to me for months: "Something wicked this way comes..." I knew at that moment that I probably shouldn't have done what I did, and painted a giant pentagram in my living room with my own blood.

I’m almost finished with Dandelion Wine now, and I must say I absolutely love it. Definitely an underappreciated American classic that tugs on the nostalgic heartstrings.

I’ve read Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles before, but Dandelion Wine was such a different, yet awesome experience, I loved it a lot. I’m planning to read Goodbye, Summer after it, but I’m wondering if I should read Something Wicked This Way Comes and The Halloween Tree, since I’ve heard that they are thematically, of not directly, related.

What do you guys think?

Has anybody had trouble completing this mission? I got the rope and fixed the swing but nothing happens after that,I don’t know what I’m supposed to do next?

Haven’t watched this movie all the way through since it came out in 1983.

Oh my goodness, I have just finished reading Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury. It took me just two days because I could not put it down. Described as a Horror/Fantasy novel with a hypnotic poetic style of writing, I have to say I have never read anything quite like it. Yes I have read horror stories involving carnivals and funfairs, I love them BUT I have never read anything in the style that Ray Bradbury writes. It's absolutely mesmerising. The words and expressionism he uses are captivating, magical even. You are indeed hypnotised by it. And the characters - Mr Dark, Mr Cooger and their clan are spectacular; how the tents are erected, the balloon, the carousel - just everything is nothing that I have ever had the pleasure to read about before. There is true magic in this book, I feel so grateful to have been able to read and enjoy it. The message it delivers is much needed in the world at this moment, fight dark with light, evil with good and don't be afraid to stand up for what you believe in.

What a beautiful talent this man had.

I was wondering, is this book as good as people say it is? I mean, i haven't heard a single bad yhing about the book from my friends.