October 2023: The Strange Files Newsletter

It's the Tricky Month of October -- Ghosts and Goblins Abound

Welcome to the tenth month of the year, October, derived from the Latin word "octo," meaning eight. And if that seems odd, you're not wrong. But it has some history:

The ancient Romans, in their original ten-month calendar, designated October the eighth month, but later switched to a twelve-month calendar, adding the months we now know as January and February, This pushed October into tenth place, but they never got around to renaming it.

Meanwhile, in merry old England, the month was called Winmonath, meaning "wine month," for the time of year grapes were harvested. What, you never heard of fine English wine? Yeah, nobody has. Which may explain why they changed the name.

But, of course, we know October for it's most entertaining holiday -- Halloween -- which always falls on the last day of the month but is frequently celebrated on other days depending on whether October 31 falls on a Sunday, which freaks some people out.

Let's face it, October has all kinds of issues. Here are a few Halloween facts you can use to prove to your friends how smart you are. And if they think your trivia chops are weird, own it. It rocks to be strange.

How did early New Englanders (you know, the crowd that gave us the Salem witch trials) protect their homes from evil spirits? Besides hanging witches, they hid their shoes in the walls.

We associate pumpkins with Halloween, but the vegetable once thought to have supernatural powers was not orange but green -- the cabbage.

What's the worst Halloween candy? According to a survey of 17,000 people, the answer is: candy corn. (What's the best? I've got that for you later in the newsletter.)

When did Halloween start? Lots of opinions on this, but a consensus answer is that it began in 600 A.D. with the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain that signaled the beginning of winter, which the Celts associated with death. Samhain is one of the oldest demons, and when God built Lucifer's prison cage, he made the summoning of Samhain one of the sixty-six seals.

Americans spend $3.4 billion on Halloween decorations each year.

And speaking of witches, do you know where the phrase "double, double, toil and trouble" comes from? William Shakespeare's MacBeth.

But there's more to October...

It's also the month to wear pink in recognition of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. This from the National Breast Cancer Foundation:

"Every day, more than 700 women in the U.S. are diagnosed with breast cancer. For these women, the impact of breast cancer extends well beyond the single month dedicated to awareness."

Early detection is the key to successful treatment. Click here for more information.

Bat Appreciation Month is also celebrated in October. Why October? Because people associate bats with Halloween. And Bruce Wayne, of course. Bats are good. They eat invasive insects. Of course, they eat non-invasive insects, too, but the whole fight-invasives-movement is really popular now. How many bugs do bats eat? In one study, scientists discovered that some small bats catch up to 1,000 or more insects in an hour. Of course, if you're an insect or an insect lover, bats may be public enemy number one. But National Insect Appreciation Day isn't until June, so the bugs can have their say about bats then.

National Crime Prevention Month is also in October. Seems it might be a better fit for, say, January 6, the message being, of course: Don't try to overthrow the government; it's a crime and you'll go to jail. But it's hard to reason with the criminally insane.

October is also Squirrel Awareness and Appreciation Month, Arts and Humanities Month, Vegetarian Awareness Month, Positive Attitude Month, and National Stop Bullying Month. It's also National Pizza Month and National Sausage Month. Speaking of pizzas and sausages, there's even a National Sausage Pizza Day. (More on that exciting celebration later.)

Guardian Angels Day is Oct. 2, which reminds me, have I mentioned that in my next novel, working title An Angel in Time, Alexander Strange discovers he has a guardian angel? Only problem is, she's the one who needs help

October 2 is also the scheduled first day of Donald Trump's fraud trial in New York now that a judge has ruled he is liable for faking his net worth. Whether the trial remains on schedule is up in the air.

October 4 is Coffee with a Cop Day. It's also National Vodka Day. As far as I know there is no Vodka with a Cop Day, but maybe there should be.

Bring Your Bible to School Day is October 5. I am now also declaring it Bring Your Copy of Origins of Species to Church Day.

October 8 is World Octopus Day. They are amazing and highly intelligent creatures. Some fun facts:

-- They have three hearts and blue blood.

-- They are able to taste what they touch due to special receptors in their suckers.

-- They keep the divorce rate low by dying shortly after mating.

-- The oldest octopus fossil is from 296 million years ago. That's before the dinosaurs.

-- The "octo" in octopus refers to their eight arms, just like the "octo" in October being the eighth month, well, now the tenth month. Oh, never mind.

Columbus Day/Indigenous Peoples' Day is October 9. Columbus Day recognizes the "discovery" of the Americas by Christopher Columbus. It is a federal holiday. Indigenous Peoples' Day is a counterpoint to Columbus Day honoring the native people of the Americas, and is designed to raise awareness of how they suffered colonization, disease, enslavement, and genocide following Columbus' arrival.

Father-Daughter Day is also October 9. The day was created by Smokey Robinson to celebrate the bond between fathers and daughters and the role dads play in helping their daughters to develop into strong, confident women.

National Sausage Pizza Day is October 11. Which just goes to show that anything, no matter how trivial, can be an official "day." For a complete list of all this silliness, click here.

Speaking of silly commemorations, October 13 is National M&Ms Day. This deserves noting because M&Ms are the best candy in the world, so when stocking up for trick-or-treaters, it's always a good choice.

An annular eclipse will be visible from Oregon to Texas on October 14 beginning at 11 a.m. EDT. An annular eclipse is often referred to as a "ring of fire" because the Moon doesn't completely block the Sun.

The first newspaper comic strip -- The Yellow Kid Takes a Hand at Golf -- appeared on Oct. 18, 1896.

Slap Your Annoying Coworker Day is October 23. While not officially recognized, it could also be Take a Trip to the County Jail Day, too.

National Temperature Check Week begins October 23. If you're above room temperature you should be in good shape. Unless your room temperature is 101, in which case: (A) Call your doctor and (B) call your air conditioning repairperson.

Cranky Coworker Day is October 27. This is what you get for slapping him/her/them earlier in the month.

A partial lunar eclipse will be visible in the northeastern U.S. on October 28. It is the last eclipse of the year.

National Cat Day is Oct. 29. The celebration is designed to encourage cat adoption from animal shelters. The pitch: Cats lower blood pressure. (Personal note: I like cats, even when they scratch me, which, of course, results in additional pressure-lowering blood loss.)

October Sports

Major League Baseball's playoff schedule starts this month culminating in the World Series Oct. 27 through Nov. 4. Wild card games begin Oct. 3. The American and National League championship series start Oct. 15 through Oct. 24. Here's the complete schedule.

The Women's National Basketball Association playoffs are underway and the last possible date date for the final game is Oct. 20. Navigate to WNBA.com for updates on games and times.

The Rugby World Cup Final will be played Oct. 28 in Stade de France. Schedule here.

And, of course, college and NFL football continues through the month.

On the Tube and Silver Screen

The Fall television season is in full swing. October features a rash of premiers including the next season of the popular Rick and Morty on Adult Swim. Fans are on pins and needles waiting to hear the new voices for the star characters. They had been voiced by the series' co-creator Justin Roiland, but he was kicked off the set after allegations of misconduct. Who are the new voice actors? It's a secret and won't be revealed until the premier on October 15.

Complete list of Fall premiers here.

On the silver screen, October features yet another Marvel spinoff, Kraven the Hunter, premiering on Oct. 6. Kraven, not a nice person, is after Spider-Man. Good luck with that.

Tommy Lee Jones is back on October 6 along with Jamie Foxx and Jurnee Smollett in The Burial, a legal thriller about corruption, racism, and, dead bodies.

The Marsh King's Daughter also launches October 6 starring Daisy Ridley who goes hunting for the most dangerous man alive, her father, played by Ben Mendelsohn -- last seen helping Agent Nick Fury (Secret Invasion) as the shapeshifting Skrull Talos.

Leonardo DiCaprio stars in Killers of the Flower Moon, also out the first week in October. And all of that is just the start of the month. It's a big month for movies.

Check out the complete list here.

What I'm

Reading

It's always a happy day when the latest John Scalzi shows up on the doorstep, and I gobbled up his latest, Starter Villain, in two sittings (only because I started late the first evening).

Our hero, Charlie, inherits his uncle's supervillain business only to discover he's also inherited his enemies. Lucky for him, he has allies -- his late uncle's sociopathic executive assistant, sentient cats and dolphins, and more money than Donald Trump (yeah, I know, a lower bar than previously touted).

It's 260 pages of Charlie trying to stay alive while he sorts out all this zaniness. Like Scalzi's best and funniest work, it's fast-paced, character-centeric, and dialogue-driven. And just plain hilarious. Scalzi's work is so varied it's a little hard to make comparisons to earlier books, but for wit and humor I'd put this offering next to Agent to the Stars, one of the funniest books ever written IMHO.

Bonus happiness! Carl Hiaasen's latest, Wrecker, arrived in the mail just as I was about to hit the send button on the newsletter. I was pleased to see it is set in Key West, one of my favorite haunts and where I set my own 2020 novel Strange Currents. It's a Young Adult novel and I'm only in the first few pages, but I can tell already that it may draw the attention of Florida's book banners. Hiaasen has the audacity to mention the KKK and lynchings, as if the sparkling Sunshine State were ever home to atrocities like that. You won't find that in our history textbooks. No siree.

Politiquotes

“I don't want people to know we lost, Mark. This is embarrassing. Figure it out."

-- Donald Trump,

quoted in Cassidy Hutchinson's new book, Enough,

to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows

“If I can get through this job and manage to keep Trump out of jail, I'll have done a good job."

-- Mark Meadows to Cassidy Hutchinson

“I will say on behalf of myself I never dated Matt Gaetz. I have much higher standards in men."

-- Cassidy Hutchinson responding to

Florida Rep. Gaetz's assertion

he once dated Hutchinson

The Strange Files

The world is a weird place. Which is a good thing for Alexander Strange whose adventures I chronicle in the Strange Files series. Here are a couple of stories Alexander has been covering:

STRANGE CRITTERS: Rare Flamingo sighting -- on the Great Lakes

Maybe it's because of global warming. Or perhaps the birds just got lost. Or it could be they were caught reading banned books in Florida and had to flee for their lives.

In any event, a huge crowd of onlookers in Wisconsin were treated to the sight of a flamboyance of flamingos frolicking along the shore of Lake Michigan recently in the town of Port Washington, just north of Milwaukee.

It was the first time flamingos have ever been spotted in the wild in the state.

"This is huge. This is unbelievable," bird watcher and photographer Jim Edelhuber told the Associated Press.

But while a first for Wisconsin, it's not totally unexpected as flamingos have also been seen recently in Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania -- far from their home range of Florida, the Caribbean, and other Gulf Coast states.

Why?

Wildlife biologists speculate that the birds may have been blown north by August's Hurricane Idalia.

OH, FLORIDA! Bonnie and Clyde Junior Try to Run Away

When sheriff's deputies spotted the stolen car on Interstate 75 they pulled it over, drew their guns, and braced for the worst.

Inside the vehicle, the 10 year-old driver and his 11-year-old sister immediately surrendered.

The North Port kids had ripped off their mother's car and were heading for California, upset at their mother because she had taken away their electronic devices as punishment for misbehaving.

Mom had reported the car stolen, but had no idea her kids were the culprits. The children were returned to mom who declined to press charges.

Readers Write...

Dear J.C.

In your review of John Scalzi's latest offering, you closed with the acronym IMHO. Are we supposed to know what that means, and aren't journalists like you supposed to eschew obfuscation?

W. Strunk

Good catch. You should be a copy editor. That's short for In My Humble Opinion. Tough to keep up, I get it. Here's a link for the most popular internet abbreviations, FYI.

Dear J.C.

Did you just change the name of this newsletter from the GET SMART newsletter to the STRANGE FILES newsletter? I'm sure you have a reason for that. Is it just another cheap marketing stunt to help pimp your books, The Strange Files series?

D.D. Bernbach

Not just. First, I was wondering if anyone would notice. Also, I love the saying: Different isn't always better, but better is always different. So this is different. You, the newsletter audience of tens of thousands, will have to render a verdict as to whether it is better or not. BWL.

Dear J.C.

You claim M&Ms are the best candy in the world? Have you lost your mind? And, what? Was that like a paid product placement or something? Are you on the take from the Mars candy company?

L. Ghirardelli

Whether I'm of sound mind is, I suppose, for others to judge. Regarding the bribery question, no, I'm not being paid to tout M&Ms or any other product. But I certainly am available. You can reach me at my contact information below.

Dear J.C.

I've noticed you are now using funny coffee cups as props in your @j.c.bruce TikTok videos. Which one is your favorite?

C. D'Amelio

Probably this one.

Signs of the Times

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Parting Shot

J.C. Bruce is the author of The Strange Files series of mysterious novels (available on Amazon, other fine online booksellers, and at selected libraries). He also writes this free monthly newsletter. He holds dual citizenship in the United States of America and Florida, which PEN America notes is the number one book-banner in the U.S.A.