It’s today, November 5. In Britain, they say “Remember, remember the Fifth of November” and celebrate by trundling scarecrows from door to door and burning them on bonfires with fireworks bursting all around them — all to commemorate an explosion that famously did NOT happen there in 1605.
MuseBlog notes the occasion every year. Here are our threads from 2005 and 2006.
I’m going out to watch the fireworks tonight, and doing sparklers. That means i have less time to work on NaNo though. Oh well.
I’m officially confuzzled.
more Great Moments in MuseBlog History
For me no celebration of this holiday could be complete without the time-honored custom of reciting the tale of Ebeth’s Homegrown Improvisational Guy Fawkes Tour.
Okay, so it only happened last year. But it seems like a ready-made legend. So here it is, in her own inimitable run-on style, with a few extra paragraph breaks for the sake of slower eyes.
EBETH BRINGS GUY FAWKES DAY TO AN UNSUSPECTING OHIO
so yes, my amigos are coming over at 3 for celebratory…celebrationness. Still haven’t gotten hold of weckstein though, so i may have to call him. He does fireworks all the time and has a special place for it. We don’t and we’d rather not burn the neighborhood down. Understandably.
I’ll probably have to spend a lot of time explaining to confuzzled neighbors what the bleep i’m doing begging for money and dragging around a scarecrow. Then they’ll say something along the lines of “no money for you” and slam the door. But it’ll still be fun. XD …
’twas amazing! ok. Rant following-
so ok, it was a little short notice, but still. y’know how eveybody said “maybe” yeah, the only person who showed up was weisman. But still, we made our guy out of cardboard, leaves, and clothes (danny takes great pride in the fact that he stuffed the guy’s pants) and put him on a roller moving cart thing. We got pics on danny’s cell of the whole trip. i’ll try to see if he can email them somehow, if he can i’ll beg the GAPA to put them up
Mom gave us a nickel. Then we decided to just go to our friend’s houses, not door-to-door because a-just a little awkward and b-we had to get back at them for not coming. So we go to hewitt’s house first. He asks what the hell we’re doing, we explain it to him. he said he couldn’t come along because of hw though. then since jacob was at his dad’s, we skipped his house and went to tory’s but she wasn’t there either. we decided andy’s was too far out of the way, so we moved on to central.
We were at Main just outside of cvs when danny got the brill idea to take him in and buy something. So we did. I repeat-we took the guy into cvs and bought him some gummy worms. XD The kids in front of us kept looking back like they might have just imagined it. The guy at the counter just completely ignored it though, he was just like “do you have a cvs card?” and danny’s like “no” so he takes the money and he’s getting the change when danny goes “penny for the guy?” and the guy’s rolls his eyes and goes “just take the change” Danny put the penny from the change in the guy’s pocket though.
So then we went to Bill’s house, and bill absolutely loved it so she came with us. We got some pics of the guy with bill’s halloween ghosts and suchlike (one of which was wearing a duct tape tutu-you see why we love bill so
) Then we went to wecksteins, and on the way we met this really nice old guy who gave us 35 cents. Then at wecksteins, he was going to dump water on us but his dad told him not to, so he came out and whacked the guy with his shoe instead. We were like “noooooo!!!” he didn’t come with us though, he was in the middle of dinner. Then coming back from his house we saw josh, and we were all like “penny for the guy!” and he was like “no! do your latin hw!” which i actually probably won’t because i have a load of history and i’m 2000 words behind in nano.
Anyhoo, then we saw hunter driving past us (he wasn’t driving, his parentals were) coming back from indiana and we waved. Then we went to monica’s and i found out that she has a really fun wiggly slab of rock on her porch. Plus the railing, part of it is totally held together by duct tape. Squee! It was schneids’ old house. She actually sleeps in his old room. We find that amusing. Anyway, she couldn’t come either because of an open house, so we decided to go back to my house and burn the guy (dad said we could as long as we built a fire pit!) but it was late and danny had to go home on the way back anyway so bill and i decided to do it next weekend when we can have more ppl and maybe go over to danny’s for fireworks.
Reactions- Most people thought “maybe if i ignore them, they’ll go away! it’ll all be my imagination…” Two ladies stopped to ask us what it was for, and several stared, but most just went on with their leaf blowing/raking/walking the dogs. Occasionally they went so far as to raise an eyebrow. But only the more emotional ones. Oh, and there was this one jerk who asked us what was going on and then when we explained, he told us to go back to england because we declared independence from them already. We were all like “[pick your fav expletive-believe me, we used most of them], don’t diss brit people. Besides, they celebrate halloween.” But other than that everybody was nice, or at least neutrally indifferent.
You gotta admire these people though. It’s hard to ignore three people hauling a life-sized cardboard man down the middle of the street, especially after danny noted that he looked kind of like a lumberjack and we all began singing the lumberjack song, pausing occasionally to shout “penny for the guy!” at uncaring passersby. XD
Next year we’re totally doing it again, but we’re going to go door-to-door, not just our friends, and we’re going to bring a videocamera (a “guy-cam” to put on his head) and more people and walk into more stores too. XD XD XD Yay for guy fawkes day!!!
[Postscript]
i forgot my key today, and when i opened the garage to get the new one there was the guy staring me in the face with his freaky green eyes. i was like “ach! haven’t we burned him yet?” but we had stuffins going on….idk when we’ll do that…it’s so late now we might just leave him there until next year…
Umm…allrighty then… *stares at Ebeth strangely*
But it sounds fun I guess… *rushes off to make a Guy*
But I’m behind on NaNo! *cries*
hehe… I want to do that!
Heehee, lovely.
I’m watching V at the moment…^^;
Ah, I remember that. It sounded like so much fun. I wish we could do that…
Feather’s been bugging me to watch V for a while, but I havn’t yet. And my sibling (some of you may know her as Violetfire) is being all snide again, when I asked mom if we could build a fire for Guy Fawkes Day she was all “We shouldn’t celebrate that.” “They are in britain!” “Yeah, well, we arn’t.” And she was mad at me a few weeks ago for aparently ‘speaking like a british person.’ It’s just how I talk! Her: “We’re not in england! Stop it!” Me: “Through no fault of my own.” Her: “You’re so weird!”
She irritates me. Grr. /minirant. BUt how can she not want to celebrate it? It’s so much fun! I swear she’s trying to be like *shudder* normal people. It’s sickening.
7-Yes, normal people sicken me. My parents aren’t exactly what you would call normal, but they sicken me too.
BTW… who is Guy Fawkes…?
you know, if you’re gonna trash me online you shouldn’t leave the window open. just a tip.
*gasp* SERVED!
Well, this should be interesting, at least.
I honeestly don’t care. I’d rather you saw how concited you can be, actually. But I digress from the topic.
9- He tried to blow up the House of Parliament. Note the ‘tried,’ it didn’t work.
I find this the oddest holiday ever.
Haha, i was 2K words behind last year too! *feels a bit happier about her poor nano*
well it’s getting kind of dark…cheese should be here soon, but a lot of people are at play rehearsals so they won’t come until later. we’re definitely going to cvs again, but i doubt dinner’ll work out. oh and the guy-cam didn’t work either, because i forgot about guy fawkes day until this morning. whoops.
guy fawkes was and irish radical who got the brilliant idea to tunnel under the house of parlaiment and load casks and casks of dynamite into the tunnel. he then went to light it, but was caught and hung, ithink. or something like that.
anyway, i saw bonfire on the link to this thread and couldn’t resist. and the part about blowing things up didn’t deter me too much either. *pyromaniac to the core* i wish i had friends who would do stuff like what ebeth did. oh well. i’m the weirdest out of anyoine in my group. and i’m probably 5000 words behind in NaNo. off to write!!!!
Penny for the guy?
On the October 2005 issue of Muse, Paul Baker wrote an article about Guy Fawkes’s plot.
*gasp!*
I have, as of today, been posting on the Blog for exactly a year!!!
*pies everyone in celebration*
Oh, geez…I’m an idiot…I was thoroughly convinced it was September…ignore me…those pies can go to everyone in celebration of Guy Fawkes Day…lolz.
Guy fawkes, year two.
It all came together as a pretty last-minute thing…honestly, with nano and torch stories due early and everything i nearly forgot. i was planning on building him around 5:30 and leaving at 6, but most people got there at 6, especially since there were play rehearsals and stuff. It had also been raining, so we hung out in the basement for a while waiting for it to stop. we left as soon as it did stop though, because i wasn’t technically supposed to have people in the house (my parents weren’t home). So we stuffed him with (partially wet) leaves (we tried to grab the ones from the bottom that were dry, knowing that he would be lit eventually). We used an old shirt and pair of jeans of mine, so they were ok to burn. It started off with me, my lb, dan, cheese, bill, hewitt, danny, and scott. We went to Jacob’s house first, and he ended up coming along for a while, but he left about fifteen minutes later. Then we went to Leeny’s, and her mom finally relented and let her come along with us. As a joke, hewitt rang the doorbell of tory’s house on the way to leeny’s, but he’d forgotten that they lived right next to each other, so when tory came out she saw us all standing at leeny’s house. rachel was over at her house too, and they came over and mingled, and supplied us with some more duct tape. Then we went into cvs again. It was still so dark and windy and wet that people weren’t really out on the street at all, so we just shouted at passing cars and talked (and sang free bird and shot through the heart :D) The salesperson at cvs was an older lady this time who actually asked us about it. we explained, but she didn’t give us money. we bought the guy his traditional last meal of sour gummy worms, and headed over to chipotle, where we saw ruhi and a random cop who gave us four cents. on the way out, we saw another guy and asked him and he asked about it. dan gave the most detailed explanation we’d given yet, and the guy gave us a dollar! i’m going to use it to buy everybody who was there more gummy worms
by this time it was just me, my lb, bill, cheese, dan, and leeny. (danny and hewitt had to go home, and jacob had a rather late halloween party to go to.) We went out and wondered where to burn it, since danny had left. dan called andy but he wasn’t there, so he left a message on his phone that was like “andy you f***er, answer your d*** phone, b****!” (why, i don’t know. it’s dan). Then he hung up and bill was like “wait, wasn’t that his house phone?” there was this long pause, and then he swore again and we all cracked up laughing. So we decided to go to bill’s grandpa’s house (he’s like the coolest person ever…) and he said we could light it in the driveway. right before we started, we were being kind of loud and a dog was barking, and some guy we couldn’t see very well came out to tell him to calm down. Yeah, we figured out later that that was johnson (our band director) who lived right next to bill’s grandpa (we’d forgotten about that). That’s going to be rather awkward…We eventually got it burning. it was the fascinating combination of leaves, clothes, duct tape, and a plastic pom-pom (for the hair) It smelled HORRIBLE but the pom-pom was cool, it turned green and fused together in a giant blob of half-melted plastic, it was great. Eventually we put it out because there was a huge mass of smoke going up and we didn’t want to get arrested. about half of it had burned up. bill’s grandpa gave us pitchers of water to put out the fire. right after it was completely out, i saw some headlights in the alley, and just as a joke i said “s***, police!” but then dan apparently heard sirens up on main street just then so everyone freaked and started running. it was pretty funny, actually. Then we dumped the leaves and remaining clothes in the trash. we went over to bill’s and did kareoke, and then we came home.
for those of you who have found me on facebook, dan should be posting pics soon, and maybe even the vid we made, so look for it
Agh! I missed it! *sobs uncontrollably*
20-I’d like to see the movies/pictures but I do not go on facebook.
Red-tailed HAWK
i read a really cool book about witches and a parallel universe, it was really cool becuase the two universes split all because of some guy who (in the story) actually did burn down parliment.
Ah yes, another holiday involving burning, fireworks, etc.
23- Witch Week? I read that a couple years ago. I think the best book in that series is Lives of Christopher Chant, though.
25- Me too! I ♥ Lives of Christopher Chant.
I read a book where they celebrated this… I can’t remember what it’s called but it was good and I thought the celebration sounded like fun, I could find the title if anyone’s interested
for Reference:
Remember, Remember, the fifth of November
Remember, remember, the fifth of November,
The gunpowder treason and plot.
I know of no reason why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.
Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes,
‘Twas his intent
To blow up the King and the Parliament.
Poor old England to overthrow.
By God’s providence he was catch’d
With a dark lantern and burning match.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, let the bells ring.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King!
Hip hip hoorah!
Hip hip hoorah!
A penny loaf to feed ol’ Pope,
A farthing cheese to choke him.
A pint of beer to rinse it down,
A faggot of sticks to burn him.
Burn him in a tub of tar,
Burn him like a blazing star.
Burn his body from his head,
Then we’ll say ol’ Pope is dead.
Hip hip hoorah!
Hip hip hoorah!
25, 26- Yes, i read all of them but my favorite was the magicians of Caprona, that was really good.
28- I still can’t believe they celebrate about a guy that didn’t do what he said he would…. it’s missing something for a crazy holiday….. * pies closest MBer*
I think the fact that I wrote “remember remember the fifth of November” on my global test that day contributed to the fact that I defied all odds and got a 98 on the test. Sweet.
“MuseBlog: Helping Musers get extra credit since 2005.”
not just museblog, ive been getting extra credit off the magazines since…. a long time
Yay! That certainly was an epic moment, Ebeth. gooooodtimes.
I now further understand “V for Vendetta”.
Wow, this is all pretty interesting.
Wow. This thread is oooooold… that Random button takes you to some pretty strange places.
I’d say something relevant but it’s months away.
For this time of year, somebody should invent a holiday involving ice piles.
Oooh, and slush fountains!