Greetings, Manor Hors! Today "The Roving Pecker" presents two boxed gifts for Boxing Day from our own Raincoaster. Dare you open them? Bwahahahahaha! Who is it? Smee. But the question is: is that good news or not? A jolly country house Christmas party. All the food, all the comforts, all the jollity of the season due the prosperous English gentry. A happy bachelor guest, excited for a grand holiday. A posh game of hide-and-seek. “Every player is given a sheet of paper. All the sheets except one are blank. On the last sheet of paper is written...Smee. Nobody knows who Smee is except Smee himself – or herself. You turn out the lights, and Smee goes quietly out of the room and hides. After a time the others go off to search for Smee – but of course they don’t know who they are looking for. When one player meets another he challenges him by saying, Smee. “The other player answers, Smee, and they continue searching. “But the real Smee doesn’t answer when someone challenges. The se...

Greetings, Manor Hors! Periodically, "The Roving Pecker" presents urgent missives from filthy esteemed guest writers. Today's entry is from Raincoaster! If there's one thing we know about Jerome K. Jerome , it's that his parents were people of remarkably little imagination. That said, it's a flaw their son did not share. One of the most famous and popular humourists of his time, Jerome K. Jerome had a talent that hasn't become stale with age, unlike many of his peers. For that reason, today we're posting his explanation of why, exactly, ghost stories are traditional at this time of year.  It's the old pagan idea,  evolved over centuries,  that the powers of evil grew stronger with the darkness; with Christianity, it's the idea of evil becoming more powerful until the birth of Jesus, who beat them all back, leaving them to flee until Halloween. But there, I'm getting ahead of my betters. Let's learn from the very best - and the funniest ...

Greetings, Manor Hors! Periodically, "The Roving Pecker" presents urgent missives from filthy esteemed guest writers. Today's blood-cirdling entry is from Raincoaster! You won't thank me for this one. If Tarnhelm was creepy, this seasonal story is next-level terrifying. Ready your night light; you'll need it. A jarring mashup of an anticipated jolly holiday for a joyful young man, and a terrifying, yet morally understandable haunting by the most horrific of criminals, this tale shows the true mastery of the short story form by Anglo-Canadian author Algernon Blackwood . He wrote several seasonal stories, and his catalogue is rich, even if he never was. Blackwood had the kind of resume to which modern writers can only aspire: dairy farmer, theosophical society founder, yellow press reporter, proto-pulp author who skillfully wove indigenous legends into contemporary fiction, whether the setting were the French marshes (The Willows) or the northern Canadian woodland...

  Greetings, Manor Hors! Periodically, "The Roving Pecker" presents urgent missives from filthy esteemed guest writers. Today's seasonal entry is from Glamour Doll! I unabashedly love it when local radio stations start playing Christmas music in November. I even have a Christmas playlist I start playing while cooking for Thanksgiving. Recently, I was groovin' in my car to the Christmas station when "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" by Martina McBride came on, I immediately - Grinchly - frowned and changed the station to protect my sanity. See, I despise that song because it's dreadfully slow and boring. I grew up watching "Meet Me in St. Louis", where the song was debuted by Judy Garland herself. And yes, literally every time I watched that movie, I fast-forwarded through that song (remember doing that?). I have never heard a rendition of it I can tolerate. Judy's is about 2.5 minutes, Martina's drags on for over 4 minutes. Who ...

Greetings, Manor Hors! Periodically, "The Roving Pecker" presents urgent missives from filthy esteemed guest writers. Today's chilling entry is from Raincoaster! It's your lucky day...but maybe not Toby Crooke's. He's dead, you see. Although inert from the opening of the story, he's the central and titular character of J. Sheridan Le Fanu 's complex, charming, and chilling Christmas ghost story, "The Dead Sexton." Le Fanu's lesbian vampire tale, "Carmilla," helped inspire Bram Stoker's "Dracula," and is certainly responsible for the great lashings of sex appeal in most of the Dracula legacy. His style is what people think of as the "classical" ghost story, because he is one of the foundational authors of modern horror. The reason it feels familiar is that every horror author you've ever read has been influenced by him. Naturally, there's a sexy, supernatural, and mesmerizing character in this sto...

Greetings, Manor Hors! Periodically, "The Roving Pecker" presents urgent missives from filthy esteemed guest writers. Today's chilling entry is from Raincoaster! The snow. The pure, driven snow. The beautiful snow. The sparkling, seductive snow. The deadly snow. We in Canada know that the snow, the gorgeous and mystical messenger of Winter, can be as fatal as it is stunning. But Hugh Walpole, the largely-forgotten but once-popular writer, was born in New Zealand. Nonetheless, he was educated in England from early childhood, in a series of schools which terrorized the delicate lad, so much so that he expunged all but the most prestigious from his entry in Who's Who. His style nods to Horace Walpole (no relation except in the Gothic and psychological nature of their writing), Nathaniel Hawthorne (particularly in this story), and to his dear (perhaps intimate) friend Henry James. Mannered, tense, subtly building to a climax that seems inexorable but may also be nothing ...

Greetings, Manor Hors! Periodically, "The Roving Pecker" presents urgent missives from filthy esteemed guest writers. Today's is from Caza86! Let's take a trip down memory lane with one of the most beloved sitcoms of all time, "The Golden Girls." Airing for seven seasons (not nearly enough) from 1985 to 1992, "The Golden Girls" featured a superstar cast of the stage, television and silver screen. First, there was Bea Arthur as Dorothy Zbornak, a divorced, part time teacher with acerbic wit. Rue McClanahan as Blanche Devereaux, the oversexed widow from the south who enjoyed many, many, many late nights with gentleman callers. Estelle Getty as Dorothy's mother Sophia Petrillo, who comes to live with the girls after a fire at her retirement home, "Shady Pines," and is very proud of her Sicilian heritage. And Betty White as Rose Nylund. Hailing from Saint Olaf, Minnesota, she's a simple farm girl with a lot of stories. The show was ...

Greetings, Manor Hors! Periodically, "The Roving Pecker" presents urgent reports from filthy esteemed guest writers. Today's report is by Caza86! What is "Fake or Fortune?" It's a wonderful series produced by those unfortunately jagged-toothed British folk starring Fiona Bruce (an elegant, come-to-life Nancy Drew) and art expert, Phillip Mould (yeah, he's kinda sexy). They basically take your memaw's old yard-sale paintings and find out if they're the real thing or done by a slightly soused artist who maybe did a better job. We're talking Renoir, Picasso, Michelangelo, comics, animation, graffiti, even Cindy with the fake eye from your junior high. It's all there. The show gives a mini history lesson in art, as well as an appreciation for the artist. Not just in terms of the squillion-dollar price tags that are used to launder money nowadays, either. I love art, whether it be anime, video games, paintings, drawing, etc. Give me an outle...

Greetings, Manor Hors! Periodically, "The Roving Pecker" presents urgent reports from filthy esteemed guest writers. Today's report is by LMN! Do you love birbs like I love birbs?  If your answer is "yes," then please say hello to my spirit animal,  The Yellow Billed Magpie,  who's recently been visiting my backyard in the Sacramento Valley. If you haven't seen (or heard) one of these marvelous motherfuckers, it’s because you don’t live in Northern or Central California - which is the only places they are found. They're very exclusive that way.  Highly vocal, extremely territorial and an all-around badasses, this birb and his gang of squawkers are taking over our entire neighborhood. They're much too big to feed from our feeder, which is likely why they torment me with their calls. They even built a nest over a bald eagle’s in Orangevale, CA. Nesting over bald eagles takes some major cajones , dont'cha think? When I worked at a local high s...

Greetings, Manor Hors! Periodically, "The Roving Pecker" presents urgent missives from filthy esteemed guest writers. Today's is from Saucy Kitty! What should we call them? Belena? Senny? Tiresome? Many of you have read that Selena Gomez has finally gotten engaged to music producer Benny Blanco, aka that fugly guy in the pink furry bathroom picture in People’s "Sexiest Man Alive" edition, aka the dude who gave her a bathtub filled with queso cheese for Valentine’s Day, prompting protests about food waste and the gross-nasty of eating out of a bathtub. My personal protest? What’s with the icky bathroom stuff? Before I pop the question (ha!), a brief background on the soon-to-be-wed (OR WILL THEY?): Selena started her ascent to fame on PBS’s “Barney & Friends” and went on to star in the Disney teen sitcom, “Wizards of Waverley Place.” Following that, she launched a singing career with such hits as… eh, must I? Do we care? I say no. She also starred in a bunch...

Greetings, Manor Hors! Periodically, "The Roving Pecker" presents urgent missives from filthy esteemed guest writers. Today's is from Tu Es Fou! Trump and his loathsome cronies wasted no time in consuming us with chaos. For the most part, the initial assailment consists of three prongs: 1. The threat of mass deportation and amped-up ICE presence 2. The attack on the federal workforce ( article written by an anonymous fed ) 3. The attack on diversity, equity, and inclusion*, in part, through a government data coup run by Elon Musk and his merry band of sociopath baby incels . (*say the whole thing. Don’t let the meaning be lost in the acronym) These are just the main ones. The news feels ceaseless and that's intentional. The chaos is meant to make us feel overwhelmed and hopeless. In Ezra Klein’s opinion piece, “Don't Believe Him ,” he notes, "Trump is acting like a king because he is too weak to govern like a president. He is trying to substitute perceptio...