• Music: "Forever Autumn," Justin Hayward

September Is Here! (And the crowd goes wild.)

It's September! It's September! Fringe and Chuck return, and The Event premieres. Only three weeks until the joint birthdays of Bilbo and Frodo Baggins. Only thirty days until my favorite month of the year. Starbucks is serving pumpkin lattes again, and Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab is selling a limited edition pumpkin latte fragrance that is out of this world, and so it smells like the best season of the year, even if the thermometer doesn't quite yet reflect the feeling of fall.

Happy birthday to marthawells and aragornlover! May you enjoy many happy returns of the day.

I have some links to share:

• wellinghall is devising his own list of Best Fantasy Novels in answer to the various lists making their way around the blogosphere. And he seeks your input! Please drop by his LiveJournal and share your picks for the best fantasy reading for adults and children. Pass the word!



• Steampunk wallpaper. What's not to love?



• From Steve Horwitz: "Why Do Futurists Get So Much Wrong?"



• From Steff Metal, some great Lovecraft-inspired songs: "Metal Mixtape: H.P. Lovecraft, Vol. 1" and "5 H.P. Lovecraft Metal Albums." (I also recommend her "Cthulhu Gift Guide.")



• I was shocked to see that yesterday was the thirteenth anniversary of Princess Diana's death. I was in Paris not long after it happened, and I can still remember emerging from that same tunnel, seeing all of the flowers and random notes of remembrance piled along the roadside and on every available scrap of pavement. It was surreal... and it doesn't seem that long ago.



• I'll confess, I recently engaged in some *ahem* retail therapy, but I couldn't help myself: the brilliant Etsy artist Cobweb Corner made this bracelet specifically at my request, quoting Samwise Gamgee's song in Cirith Ungol, one of my favorite verses of all time. The bracelet is marvelous, and I can't stop wearing it. Pardon my geek-girliness, but I had to share the love.

I'll leave you with the "Particle Physics Song" interpreted by the CERN Choir, performing in the CERN Control Centre:




"By all these lovely tokens
September days are here,
With summer’s best of weather
And autumn’s best of cheer."
- Helen Hunt Jackson, September