In the Crumpet household, summer brings with it hazy, somnolent memories of days spent at the beach, taffy, large bugs, penny-farthings, people-watching, and fried chocolate bars. And catching up with old friends.
There are lions and roaring tigers,
and enormous camels and things,
There are biffalo-buffalo-bisons,
and a great big bear with wings.
There’s a sort of a tiny potamus,
and a tiny nosserus too —
But I gave buns to the elephant
when I went down to the Zoo!
There are badgers and bidgers and bodgers,
and a Super-in-tendent’s House,
There are masses of goats, and a Polar,
and different kinds of mouse,
And I think there’s a sort of a something
which is called a wallaboo —
But I gave buns to the elephant
when I went down to the Zoo!
If you try to talk to the bison,
he never quite understands;
You can’t shake hands with a mingo —
he doesn’t like shaking hands.
And lions and roaring tigers
hate saying, “How do you do?” —
But I give buns to the elephant
when I go down to the Zoo!
h/t to Mrs. Crumpet
The Crumpet household once again recently found itself drawn into another one of those fine BBC-Andrew Davies adaptations of classic literature. Little Dorrit, an eight-hour miniseries based on the Charles Dickens novel, stars Claire Foy as the titular character and Matthew MacFadyen as Arthur Clennam, who seems to be vying for the title of Nicest Guy in the World. (See Mr. Jarndyce in Bleak House.)
And once again, Mr. Crumpet found himself appreciating a simpler, gentler age when hats (particularly of the tall variety) were deemed so important, so essential to the day-to-day functioning of a civil society.
Orange Bear sighs. “Here we go again…”
Mr. Clennam: It’s the hat, isn’t it?
In this our fourth installment of our (quite) occasional series on famous real-life critters, we turn the spotlight on William Windsor, a Kashmir goat, who retired this week from the British Army at the ripe old age of 9.
William Windsor, aka Billy (must be contractual), served as a lance corporal in 1st Battalion, the Royal Welsh (including a two-and-a-half year post in Cyprus) and performed his ceremonial duties as regimental goat by marching in front of the battalion. The tradition of the regimental goat dates back to America’s Revolutionary War and the Crimean War many decades later.
Billy the Goat will spend his golden years at Whipsnade Zoo, outside Dunstable in Central England.
Mr. Crumpet collects string. He’s not sure why, but he believes he has a cousin who collects rubber bands.
Mr. Crumpet also collects quotes about string. These are his two favorites:
A world without string is chaos.
- Rudolph Smuntz, Mouse Hunt (1997)
And:
On his deathbed, Morris Zelig tells his son that life is a meaningless nightmare of suffering, and the only advice he gives him is to save string.
- The Narrator, Zelig (1983)
Mr. Crumpet and the gang haven’t gone anywhere. They’ve just been soaking up a lot of rays this year, and it might be going to their brains.
Well, they do plan on tackling real work at some point.
For now, Milton presents a fitting soundtrack to their collective torpor.
torpor
n. Fancy word for being lazy.
h/t to Mrs. Crumpet
In a new feature, Milton Mole will showcase some of his favorite musical sequences from the silver screen.
“Will it really be weekly?” asks Orange Bear.
“As ‘weekly’ as our Word of the Week installment,” says Mr. Crumpet.
“Ah.”
Dear reader,
As you may have noticed, Mr. Crumpet and Orange Bear have been taking a break from their travels in internauting.
How long this intermission will last, only they know.
For now, they must go back to dreaming and practicing their two-step.
When Orange Bear goes to bed this Christmas Eve night, he plans on counting reindeer to help him fall asleep.
“Actually, they won’t help me go to sleep at all. I just use them to visualize a positive outcome. Reindeer mean Santa Claus; Santa Claus means presents; and presents mean toys! Toys, toys, toys!”
“I just visualize the toys,” says Phil the Owl.
Will Orange Bear be replaced?
From the Wired Gadget Lab:
MIT’s Huggable robot, even in its current uncompleted state, is a technical marvel of communications and data accumulation.
The bear is lined with over 1500 sensors for direct data transmission, has cameras for eyes, a microphone field in the ears, and has an internal wireless PC. The ear mics give the robot ’sound localization’ so it can directly interact with people in space, but the visual context from the cameras is even more impressive.
blue light beckoning
whoosh air turns to quicksilver
white plastic dream
Russia has the largest population of bears in the world.