I just discovered the World Passport podcast at ethnomusic.podmatic.com, which has tons of cool Calypso, Kompa, Highlife, jazz, and Kinshasha guitar music for your delectation and delight. I've been listening to "J'Ouvert Morning Calypso"—classic old-school Calypso—all morning, which is coaxing me out of my first-cold-of-the-winter funk. "Suck Me Soucouyant," indeed.
Bruce Schneier, coiner of the phrase "security theater," writes that we've "opened up a new front on the war on terror. It's an attack on the unique, the unorthodox, the unexpected; it's a war on different. If you act different, you might find yourself investigated, questioned, and even arrested -- even if you did nothing wrong, and had no intention of doing anything wrong. The problem is a combination of citizen informants and a CYA attitude among police that results in a knee-jerk escalation of reported threats.
I was raised in Virginia, so for me, the perfect ham is a Smithfield-cured ham. I think I was 21 before I ever tasted that bland concoction sold at delis as "ham." It might be pork, but ham it am't.