From Cactuses to Pagodas

In the fairly recent past, I also visited the Huntington, which is as nice as the name might imply and nowhere near as snobby. I took pictures. If you haven’t been there, it might seem like the following photos depict several different places, but that’s just this place does a nice job of switching the scenery up.

All this and a Guttenberg Bible!

By the way, can “All this and a Guttenberg Bible” please replace “All this and a bag of chips” as a woman’s way of proclaiming that she is desirable?

The Wang Tree

Another follow-up to the hike photos post: A tree branch nub that God clearly created in celebration of male genitalia. Intelligent design? No. Hilarious design.

I only wish I could have photographed this when the squirrel was still perched on the tip, but moments like that never last as long as you’d hope.

Because I Also Carry a Rifle in My Mouth

Somebody should have told me that they made a movie inspired by my life.

Also: Most Canadian thing ever.

Jabberwock vs. Bunyip: A Fight for My Eight-Year-Old Soul

Herein: two videos depicting nightmarish monsters that I first experienced as a child, while watching a movie that I presumed would have been safe. They weren’t.

First, via Topless Robot’s countdown of inappropriately disturbing scenes in children’s movies, there’s the terrifying last scene of a 1985 TV movie adaptation of Alice in Wonderland, in which the Jabberwock barges in to Alice’s house for no reason other than to give children like me a reason to fear elaborately decorated sitting rooms.

And via Ectoplasmosis, there’s the creepy yet aesthetically pleasing “Bunyip Moon” musical number from Dot and the Red Kangaroo. I hadn’t thought about this film in years but instantly remembered the whole thing upon hearing the first strains of this song. What is a bunyip? I’m not sure, as the song and associated animated sequence only clearly conveys that it’s intensely unpleasant. Personally, I’d prefer to never find out first-hand.

Thanks for the memories, people who made these movies!

Mrs. Dolan’s Class Is Excited — Awkward, Too

Let’s be honest. There’s a lot going on in the below excerpt from the 1988 book A Visit to the Airport.


First off, I would like to say that I can’t pick which of these strange-looking people is my favorite, but that would be a lie. It’s totally the girl with the glasses.


I have decided that her name is Marne. I mean, she’s obviously not Karen, because Karen got to speak in the book, whereas Marne would have the book read to her and then realize “They didn’t give me anything to say.” I’m not sure what her last name is, but I’m sure it rhymes with something awful.

Now a child has never elicited this reaction from me, but I feel compelled to hug Marne and tell her that it doesn’t matter what happened in the past because it will all be okay one day. “Marne,” I’d say, “You have to believe me. No matter how bad it seems, it won’t be that way forever. You may not believe me. I’m sure you don’t. Why would you? But one day it will get better and you’ll realize that I was right.” And then I’d ask Marne where she got her glasses so I could find this person and yell at them for letting something like this happen.

Also: This book came out in 1988. That is not that long ago. I remember things that happened in 1988. These kids are probably my age now. And yet I don’t remember life looking so frumpy back then. Was I just looking at 1988 life through the innocent, non-judging eyes of a child? Or was it that my 1988 happened in California and these people are in Wisconsin? Like, I’ve seen pictures of things that happened to me and my family in 1988 and they do not look this old. Is it like the thing where Canada didn’t get the 80s until 1993, as Robin Scherbatsky once pointed out? Or does it has something to do with the fact that the kids seem to have been abducted by members of some awful cult in which rank is determined by how little color you have in your clothes?

Sorry kids, I don’t know why you think you’re at the airport, but with these ladies leading the way, I feel like you’re probably not coming back.

(Via Awful Library Books.)

The Dumping

So I have this friend Lela — a soulmate, really — who I don’t see very often because she lives in a different city than I do. Also, she doesn’t have ears or arms, so she can’t use the common technological means to communicate with me from afar. But the arm thing notwithstanding, I decided to write her a Facebook email explaining that I would be in her town this Thursday and that we should meet up, if possible. Because, you know, soulmates. And I actually wrote a thoughtful little note explaining how I’d be happy to see her.

But then Facebook ruined it all with the word entry verification form it made me fill out in order to send this message looked like this:

“The dumping.”

I don’t put much stock in horoscopes or the arrangement of scattered chicken bones, but it’s hard not to read something into these two words being assigned to the email I send to a friend I haven’t talked to in a long time. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how the mystery that is life will reveal how “the dumping” will figure into our lives.

Ha ha. “Dump.”

Cabin Thirteen

A follow-up to the post about my hike at the Pinnacles, less positive in nature: And then, sometimes, while you’re hiking on your own, you stumble upon a suspicious-looking cabin. No one else is around and years of fairy tales, horror movies and dramatic reenactments of unsolved homicides prompt you to be wary of this building. So you just hike on, only turning back to look at Creepy Cabin once or twice, and you’re all the better for it.

And, of course, the structure that prompted this response was Cabin Thirteen. (See inset.)