crooked house

"Hello, My Name Is Inigo Montoya" T-shirt

See how it's made from little "Hello my name is..." stickers? Brilliant. Via not martha.

Dot. The World's Smallest Stop Motion Animation Character.

I have cross-posted this over at spots and stripes. I've been posting there regularly -- go take a look.

What We Found When We Went Looking for Wild Things

Chip Taylor and Carrie Rodriguez perform his hit song.

Luke and his dad saw the movie on Sunday. They loved it. We finished the book (wow, check out that price) last night. We loved it. Now we're in search of more, more, more. I'm really excited about the fact we were able to read a novel together at bedtime -- and open to suggestions for the next one we should try.

Luke has added a Wild Things stuffed animal to his Christmas list. He wants Alexander, the goat boy creature. Unfortunately, I don't think that there is such a thing. The child is very persistent in these matters, insisting that, if I would just agree to telephone Santa and ask nicely, surely he would direct his elves to make one.

Annie Leibovitz's Hansel and Gretel and Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland

Annie Leibovitz does a series of Hansel and Gretel photographs for Vogue. Lady Gaga is the witch. Via Marina Tatar's blog Breezes from Wonderland.

And, speaking of Wonderland, here are some amazing posters from Tim Burton's movie version of the classic. Alice has inspired so many beautiful images, I have half a mind to start collecting both the books and the films.

Our Wild Thing

Okay, so mostly I just wanted to post these pictures of Sylvie in this new hat. (It's a sickness, I tell you, this constant putting-of-things-on-one's-children's-heads as a form of entertainment.) But for the past couple of nights after Sylvie has fallen asleep, Luke and I have been cuddling up and reading The Wild Things. In the past he's often asked me to read aloud whatever book I happen to be engrossed in to help him drift off to sleep. This is the first time one of these "books without pictures" has kept him awake. Thinking it'd be too advanced for Luke, I'd purchased it to read myself, not expecting much -- I never do, when a writer tries to put his or her own spin on a classic -- but this is good, really good. Eggers has perfectly captured that kind of impulsive wildness that you often see in kids, particularly boys. And the conversations Max has with the monsters -- they're funny and very childlike in a realistically childlike way, not in that fake and sentimentally childlike way kids often converse in, in books. It's difficult to put your finger on the difference, but they say the kinds of things you'd hear kids say to one another if you followed some around for a little while and actually listened to them.* Max's thoughts ring similarly true.

Since I'm reading the book with the boy, his dad gets to take him to see the movie this weekend. I'm jealous. (One of us has to stay with Sylvie.)

*Disclaimer: I do not advise picking a group of children at random and then following them around to test this theory. You might get arrested.

Take A Look: Roman and London Are Burning, Horrible Histories, Enchanted Hunters, Bird Music, Phantom Towns and More.

Alas, these firescreens featuring Rome and London burning are only prototypes, not yet for sale. Via BB-blog.

Speaking of Rome burning, I ordered a bunch of Horrible Histories, ostensibly for Luke and Sylvie for Christmas. Really, until they're old enough, they're for me. I was inspired by When We Were Romans, one of the library books I picked up a few days ago. I can't recommend When We Were Romans enough -- written from the point of view of a nine-year-old boy, it belongs on my list of the best books that evoke childhood for adults.

Maria Tatar's Enchanted Hunters: The Power of Stories in Childhood sounds excellent. Can't wait to get my hands on a copy. And look! She has a blog. Now if only Harvard would follow Yale's example and offer her children's literature course online. (Must remember to tell David about this new Yale offering: Craig White's Listening to Music.)

I have my eye on Mike Sacks's And Here's the Kicker: Conversations with 21 Top Humor Writers on their Craft, too. It's reviewed favourably here.

Also via BB-blog, check this out:

Birds on the Wires from Jarbas Agnelli on Vimeo.

Jarbas Agnelli saw a newspaper photograph of birds on wires and decided to compose music based on the birds' position. Lovely and haunting. I also enjoy Agnelli's short films about his baby daughter, The Mini Adventures of Nina 1, 2, and 3.

This is neat: apparently phantom places, mostly streets but in this case a whole town, sometimes appear on maps. The town of Argleton in Lancashire appears only on Google maps. I can relate to the guy who felt compelled to walk to where it's supposed to be. That's exactly what I'd do:

"I started to weave this amazing fantasy about the place, an alternative universe, a Narnia-like world. I was really fascinated by the appearance of a non-existent place that the internet had the power to make real and give a semi-existence."

When Mr Bayfield reached Argleton – which appears on Google Maps between Aughton and Aughton Park – he found just acres of green, empty fields.

Via Gwenda on twitter.

Also on the topic of maps, take a look at these amazing map cut-outs of New York and Paris.

From Up Close, She Looked More Pregnant Than Most Pregnant Ladies. She Looked That Way From Far Away, Too.

Last weekend, the weekend before Sylvie was born, I devoured my first Raymond Chandler novel, The Big Sleep. The characters, with the exception of Philip Marlowe himself, are ridiculous* caricatures, especially the women, and the plot was ridiculously* convoluted -- I'm still not sure what happened  -- but the writing is stellar. There's something very Art Deco about it, very vivid and economical, all dramatic stylized swoops. Those zingy one-liners; those crazily apt similes and metaphors! Yum. There are too many great ones to list here, but the one that goes something like "He looked more like a dead man than most dead men" has stayed with me. The construction works to describe lots of things, like my current situation. Although I gave birth a week ago, I still look more pregnant than most pregnant ladies. (Try it! It's fun! Not the looking pregnant thing -- which is decidedly unfun -- but playing around with the "He looked more ___ than a ___ ___construction. If you come up with a good one, please do share by leaving it in the comments.) You can read some good Chandlerisms here but that list is by no means definitive. There were at least that many good lines in The Big Sleep alone.

Take this, from The High Window:

"From thirty feet away she looked like a lot of class.  From ten feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from thirty feet away."

It's very similar to a description that I've always liked, from the movie Clueless, written by Amy Heckerling:

Tai: Do you think she's pretty?

Cher: No, she's a full-on Monet.

Tai: What's a Monet?

Cher: It's like a painting, see? From far away, it's OK, but up close, it's a big old mess.

I wonder if Heckerling is a Chandler fan.

*Ridiculous is my new favourite word, ever since Luke has started using it a lot -- except he pronounces it "ree-dick-lee-us."

Appropriate Names for Half-Human/ Half-Vampire Babies

Half-human/ half-vampire baby Renesmee's photo taken from this fan site.

So I finished the last of the wretchedly addictive Twilight saga last night -- it was kind of like eating four giant chocolate cakes one after the other or maybe four pot roasts and now I am feeling more than a little sick. Also: I have been suffering through lots of vivid but not particularly frightening vampire dreams. My head cold has turned into a painful sinus infection and I had to finally give in and start taking tylenol and a decongestant, which apparently acts as a stimulant, so perhaps that helps explain all the dreaming. I'm thinking it's why the baby has been kicking so hard. My teeth are killing me, especially one of my eye teeth, which seems fitting. I'll start antibiotics on Monday if this isn't getting any better by then as I cannot imagine undergoing either a c-section or a normal delivery in this state.

Obviously, now that I've read the final book and (spoiler) discovered that Bella gives birth to a half-human/half-vampire child, I can no longer write the vampire/baby allegory I was hoping would make my fortune. Great minds think alike or dull ones seldom differ, whichever. I will say that it's probably not a good idea to read the baby's birth scene/Bella's death as a human scene when you are only weeks away from giving birth yourself. I'll post an excerpt for the Babies in Literature series when I can stomach reading that section again. But half-human/half-vampire babies apparently tear their way out of the womb with their teeth.

I was amused by how Bella came up with her baby's name, as it also echoes some of my own ideas about trying to honour grandparents. She combined her own mother's name, Renee, and Edward's adoptive vampire mother's name, Esme, and came up with Renesmee. (Maybe we should go with something like Ruthinda. Or Luntha.) Astonishingly, Bella managed to go even further than that, by combining her father's name, Charlie, with Edward's vampire dad's Carlisle, to make Carlie, which she used as a middle name. Impressive feat, wouldn't you say? (We'd have to go with Jurray or Mohn or some variation thereof.) I'm wondering if we're going to see some actual Renesmees when the final movie comes out -- I've heard tell of the odd Trinity since The Matrix came out ten years ago. As of yet, Nameberry has no entry for Renesmee. Must remember to give Pam the heads-up.

Twilight Delight

I've never been much interested in vampire genre fiction -- for instance, I've never read any of the Anne Rice books on the subject and I don't think I was able to sit through any of the movies (were there more than one?). But this past week, unable to pick my head up off my pillow for more than fifteen minutes and unable even to focus on the television, I developed a bizarre craving for the stuff. Chalk it up to pregnancy.

Spurred on by something I saw over at Light Reading, I picked up Living Dead in Dallas: A Sookie Stackhouse Novel at the library. I enjoyed it very much, the way I'd enjoy downing a giant bag of potato chips if, say, the potato chips came in a delicious and as-yet-uninvented Sex'n'Violence flavour. Unfortunately the rest of the Sookie Stackhouse books were out -- and since in my state, you don't really want your nether regions stimulated any more than they already are by the pressure of an enormous fetal cranium, varicose veins, an overactive bladder, and constipated bowels (is this too much information?) -- I decided to spring for the wildly popular Twilight book, which I'd read was a teenage abstinence allegory, typed out with one finger by a Mormon housewife while she cared for a baby and two other little boys under the age of five.

I have now made a private vow to write something similarly wildly successful and lucrative just as soon as I pop out this baby. Should be a piece of cake. And speaking of cake, although the abstinence allegory is certainly very obvious, the novel also works very nicely, perhaps even better, as an allegory of dieting. Edward feels about Bella the way I feel about certain kinds of chocolate and this thought kept me giggling through many of the otherwise romantic scenes. I was not the only one in my household to notice this, either. After I finished the first book and the second, New Moon, I sent David to the video store for the movie. Early on, he commented, "She's just like M&M Slow Cooked Pot Roast to him." This is a dish I've been serving my family ever since I was diagnosed with an iron deficiency -- quite a big deal around here since we normally don't eat much red meat at all. If I do manage to write my own wildly lucrative vampire allegory of something or other, perhaps I will invite M&M to invest in a product placement. Although I have a feeling my allegory might end up having something to do with babies being the vampires, and mothers being the bloody pot roast. Milk = blood, or something. That hasn't been done before, has it? I'm still working out the details.

As for Luke's impressions, well, he didn't take note of the dieting allegory as he was not watching the inappropriate movie but was instead playing an elaborate game with his collection of McDonald's toys on the floor. He did, however, stop for a minute to notice Edward's brightly lipsticked lips. "He's got a funny mouth," he said. He watched as Edward said a bunch of romantic things to Bella and was perplexed by her serious and quivering reaction. "His mouth is so funny! Why isn't she laughing?" Because your pot roast doesn't laugh at you while you're staring it down at the end of your fork, that's why. It just quivers and looks tempting.

Enormous and Boneless. With a Side of Head-Cold. In a Cup.

This morning we were watching the beginning of Wall-E -- although I think it's a terrific movie, for some reason Luke never makes it more than halfway -- and I realized that at this point in the pregnancy I feel exactly like one of the enormous boneless people who live on the shapeship. Early on, one called Josh falls out of his chair and squirms helplessly around on the floor until he can be rescued. That's me right about now. Also, everyone in the house has developed a head-cold. I'm hoping it's gone before my c-section, which is scheduled for three weeks from last Friday. And/or that I don't spontaneously go into labour before it's gone.

Speaking of c-sections, last night while reviewing The Nursing Mother's Companion (and trying not to hyperventilate as my first attempt at breastfeeding was a total nightmare), I laughed when I came across this brief note on the operation: "If you have had a cesarean birth, keep in mind you are recovering from major abdominal surgery. Most likely, you will have to take pain medication during the first week or so at home. You may perhaps be bothered by an uncomfortable feeling that your abdomen may fall out." I don't really remember being too bothered by the c-section the first time round -- I was much too busy trying to stay awake for the round-the-clock feedings. This time I've vowed to make myself take notes through everything, no matter how tired I get. I'll pay particular attention to any sensations that indicate my stomach is about to fall out and report back.