Judging by the number of hits I got yesterday from the Tarheel Tavern’s cobwebsite, there were a lot of you waiting for this week’s edition to hit the Tubes. Well it’s April, fools, and your host was enthralled away from the mighty laptop into other worlds, where games are central to relationships and fun is more than just a Tavern theme. This was also to be the April Fools Day that heralded the launch of Scrutiny Hooligans 3.0, but technical difficulties got between us and metamorphosis. So thanks for showing up a day late, Taverngoers, to read the finest blogging in our Tarheel state at a soon to be reborn site.

I’d originally planned to play an April Fools joke by linking the title of every post to someone else’s post, but I thought better of it when I saw that some people would miss the opportunity to join the biggest bandwagon to hit the NC creative writing scene since Charles Frazier gave hope to so many long-suffering novelists.

Billy: “Calling on ALL poets, novelists, short story authors and creative writers from all genres, in-print or only online: I’m about to launch the biggest thing that ever happened to creative writers and I need your help.”

At A Sort of Notebook, Waterfall is working on a novel of her own, and she’s blogging about the experience. In this post, she’s polysyllabically enrapt by uliginous, sclerenchyma, malodorous, and valetudinarian.

Steve Emery is also playing with words, but his have lusty, frondescent counterparts you won’t find in my garden: Bleets and Floccoli, Plumpkins and Monkmelons, Tomandos and Lemon Blam.

The always absurd Billy Sugarfix announces the winner of his latest lyrical recontre and performs it for all you Taverners. Have a listen while you scroll down the page.

In the Labyrinth of Many Names, Hamjamser, leads intrepid readers into a chimerical puzzle of lysergic dimensions:

“Interestingly enough, I visited the Palace of Madmen once (or the Changing Maze, the Sanctuary of Dreams, the Labyrinth of Many Names, the Heap, or whatever else you care to call it). I stumbled across one of the back doors. There are no front doors.”

In the world of politics every door looks like an exit or an opportunity. This collection of four political submissions ranges from the disturbing to the disturbingly funny:

Last week’s Tavern host, Bharat at The Olive Ridley Crawl, finds no fun and no games in Environmental Racism, “As life in the third world becomes more miserable, the rich countries can always build more walls.”

The View From the Cheap Seats has a very fun picture of politicians in suits and hardhats breaking ground on a jail that’s been a game of tug-of-war, “This would have not made the project the “Twin Towers of Terror” that the Downtown Jail Trail crowd had been bloviating about for the past couple of years.”

Ogre tells a joke about those stoopid gubmint workers (don’t tell all my schoolteacher and civil servant friends!).

And this blog, Scrutiny Hooligans, airs WNCNN’s Mad Miss Mattie as she announces that Presidential confidante and swirling dungpile of controversy, Karl Rove, is coming to Hendersonville to teach the eleventh district Republicans how to become even bigger bastards.

We’ll end this week’s Tavern with maximum randomness – Tarheel Tavern Blogfather, Coturnix at Blog Around the Clock, demystifies elephantine firewalking, “you may just start by assuming an elephant as a sphere.” First time Taverner, Breakfast With Pandora, is blogging from Greece and wants us to enjoy the sights, “In the distance, the Saronic Gulf, smoky blue. I leapt off the last stair, hit Hellenic tarmac, and let out a whoop.”

Lastly, here’s Moomin Light’s luminous offering to the one-day-late April Fools edition of the Tarheel Tavern, a trio of sassy penguins and one miserable nature photographer.

The Tarheel Tavern is looking for hosts. It’s a great way to get a ton of traffic, meet your fellow bloggers, and read some of the best work in North Carolina. Email me at scrutinyhooligans (A t) yahoo <[dot]> com if you’re interested in hosting #111, 112, or 113.