The New England Journal of Forensic Blogginess, Vol III

Brad? You got your wish.

Me, Saturday, November 24, 2007:

Are they sincere fellow travellers, or is one (coughmcardlecough) consciously mirroring the intellectual value sets of the other as a career move?

Brad, Sunday, November 25, 2007:

I simply say this in the hopes (*cough*knowledge*cough*) that Megan will see this, and be irked. Hehe.

McArdle, Monday, November 26, 2007:

I am probably jaded, having grown up 10 blocks from Zabars, but both ingredients and equipment seem much, much harder to come by here than in New York, and while some cuisines are well represented (the Ethiopian is by far the best in America), others are practically absent (cough-Chinese-cough).

McArdle misses easy access to great bagels. Otherwise, she doesn't miss New York all that much.

Unlike most transplanted New Yorkers, I do not pine for the shadowy canyons of Wall Street...

What's with that Halloween get-up? Hang on a second. Enhance 224 to 176. Enhance, stop. Move in, stop. Pull out, track right, stop. Center in, pull back. Stop. Track 45 right. Stop. Center and stop. Enhance 34 to 36. Pan right and pull back. Stop. Enhance 34 to 46. Pull back. Wait a minute, go right, stop. Enhance 57 to 19. Track 45 left. Stop. Enhance 15 to 23. Give me a hard copy right there.



Huh. Thought she quit. Black garb, throat wounds...something...reminds me of something...

Got it:

THE WESTMINSTER GAZETTE, 25 SEPTEMBER A HAMPSTEAD MYSTERY

The neighborhood of Hampstead is just at present exercised with a series of events which seem to run on lines parallel to those of what was known to the writers of headlines as "The Kensington Horror," or "The Stabbing Woman," or "The Woman in Black." During the past two or three days several cases have occurred of young children straying from home or neglecting to return from their playing on the Heath. In all these cases the children were too young to give any properly intelligible account of themselves, but the consensus of their excuses is that they had been with a "bloofer lady."It has always been late in the evening when they have been missed, and on two occasions the children have not been found until early in the following morning. It is generally supposed in the neighborhood that, as the first child missed gave as his reason for being away that a "bloofer lady" had asked him to come for a walk, the others had picked up the phrase and used it as occasion served. This is the more natural as the favourite game of the little ones at present is luring each other away by wiles. A correspondent writes us that to see some of the tiny tots pretending to be the "bloofer lady" is supremely funny. (Bram Stoker, "Dracula," 1897)

Ah, Lucy Westenra, the Bloofer Lady. I wonder what put McArdle in mind of that character?

Me, Thursday, September 20, 2007:

Too much McArdle leads to Nyquil abuse, so let's see what Ann Althouse is up to. Let's see, sentimental photos of Brooklyn and Manhattan, willful misrepresentations of the behavior of museum goers...causing outbreaks of "bloofer lady" sightings...

This is like using a nuclear imaging device to watch isotopes course through the bloodstream. Perhaps we can prepare some special isotopes. Suggestions are welcome. In the meantime, Ethiopian immigrants in the Washington, D.C. area are advised to keep their children indoors.