no planets strike (Friday's Sunday's Poem/Hot Actress 69)

Hamlet, Act I, Scene I [Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes]

by William Shakespeare
Marcellus to Horatio and Bernardo, after seeing the Ghost,

Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
This bird of dawning singeth all night long;
And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad,
The nights are wholesome, then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallow'd and so gracious is the time.

___________________________________________________________

About the Poem: Yesterday, driving home in the snow from Stevens Point, I was listening to Stuff You Missed In History Class, and it was the "Mysterious Death of Christopher Marlowe" episode...

... yes, that's really what I listened to...

... and then last night, when Sweetie and I took Mr F and Mr Bunches for a ride after they helped me shovel the driveway, I'd commented that I didn't feel all that Christmas-y yet -- not that I was down or sad but that I just didn't feel like it was really Christmastime, even though we're only two weeks from Christmas Eve and I've gone shopping and have been posting the best Christmas songs and all.

So today, I went searching for a Christmas poem other than "A Visit From St. Nicholas," and the first one I found was this excerpt from Hamlet, which completely fails to have what we think of as the Christmas spirit, despite in fact having a Christmas spirit, if I'm reading it correctly. (And I'm not sure I am because I faked my way through Hamlet in AP English in high school.) A Christmas poem about some guys seeing a ghost and hoping that the Christmas season will protect them from such harms as ghosts might cause seemed to me to be interesting enough to post here -- and the exact opposite of what has become one of the main themes of Christmas since Dickens, the idea that ghosts are abroad and can help us at Christmas.

Food for thought.

About the Hot Actress: Zooey Deschanel is not only Christmas-y -she's in Elf, but she also just turned 30 this year, and also serves as food for though: someone who wrote to the editor in Entertainment Weekly suggested she be cast as Wonder Woman, which made me think: Who has the time to write to Entertainment Weekly to make casting suggestions for movies that don't exist yet?

It's not every day I recommend destroying a secondary market for overpriced art. But this seemed important. (This Is Why I Hate People.)

And, back to hating people. Or at least some people. After trying to be positive and not always talk about the lowlifes that abound in society, I was awakened this morning by two things:

First, Mr F had apparently decided that he liked Mr Bunches' blankets better and had gone over to Mr Bunches' bed to steal them, resulting in a fight and Mr Bunches complaining to me when I went in there, "Something happened."

Second, a news story that someone, somewhere, had paid $10,000,000 for a book. Something by Audobon, the news story said. So once I finally gave up trying to go back to sleep and headed downstairs for some 'puting, I looked it up and found an article explaining that a copy of John James Audobon's Birds Of America sold for $10.3 million. According to BBC news, the book is extremely rare -- apparently only 119 copies of them exist -- and featured "phenomenal" print quality for the time.

That wasn't the only book sold at the auction. In total, the sale of books and paintings took in $105 million worth of books, including Shakespeare folios and the like.

$105 million.

Remember that guy who's going to die in Arizona because the state wants to save $4.5 million?

Maybe he and the other 97 people who are no longer on the Arizona organ transplant list because people are selfish ought to self-publish their own book of birds to sell to some greedy sucker.

And maybe they just ought to do it. Maybe they ought to begin producing laser-printer quality copies of Audobon's Birds of America, and just giving them away to people and selling them for a $1 in used book stores. I bet $200 worth of materials and a link to Lulu.com would let them create so many fake Audobons to give away that the value of the real 119 remaining copies would drop to zero because it would be so hard to tell what's real and what's not.

The only thing is, they likely don't have enough time to put that plan into action. You know, because of the whole dying because they need organs thing.

Quote of the Day, 51

"Can you believe those ugly uniforms?"

-- The Boy, talking about the Green Bay Packers' throwback uniforms worn on Sunday's game against the 49ers.

The Boy blurted that out, with no prompting from me, as I came downstairs yesterday to eat lunch and watch the Packers' game with him.

What makes this such an important quote is that on Saturday, Mr Bunches and Mr F and I had spent about 4 hours going from store to store in Madison trying to find The Boy an Aaron Rodgers' throwback jersey, and, having not found one at the malls, I had Sweetie go online and order him one from the Packer pro shop Saturday night -- just hours before he uttered this quote.

When I asked him if he was serious, he said "Yeah," and added that he really hated them.

"I was going to get you one for Christmas," I said -- not telling him that I had gotten him one.

"Oh," he said, and then, after a moment, said "You still could. I could just start an Aaron Rodgers' jersey collection."

(The picture, I know, has nothing to do with this post. It's just one of those Transformer robots you get with a Happy Meal. We've got three of them so far -- I'm trying to stock up while I still can.)

Life With Unicorns: Table Of Contents

Life With Unicorns is what I call my series of posts about raising our two youngest children, Mr F and Mr Bunches, both of whom have autism.

Here's the original essay about how I came up with that title -- and why I decided to start writing overtly about this topic: Life With Unicorns.

And here's the rest of them:

Earth's Greatest Superhero Eats Some Cheesepuffs, Everyone Cheers.

The many faces of Mr F

How much unusual is too much unusual?

Don't worry, chicken, you're going.

One night Mr F somewhat unwillingly helped me make Rice Krispie treats. (Photo Essay!)

The Partially Edible Snowman and the Happy Bear

What Mr Bunches is watching, 1.

How about "I'm feeling a little arjvmydgs?"

Chair Pioneer, 6.

World's Youngest Daredevil Leaps Over Kid!

Mr F does not like slides.

I give you People's Sexiest Man Alive, 2027.

Mr F likes his red blanket.

We actually never got near many pumpkins at the pumpkin farm.

The Adventures of Mr F Stardust and the Gargoyles from Mars... or something like that.

Mr F does NOT like blue jeans.

Chair Pioneer, 5

You know what's a match for a good blaster? Bustin' a move. (video!)

The Greatest Chase Scene Ever Filmed (Video!)

The NEXT Greatest Chase Scene Ever Filmed (Video!)

Mr Bunches covers "Sweet Talk Sweet Talk" by The New Pornographers. (Video!)

InstrumentQuest!
Part One

Mr Bunches is camera shy, which poses problems for my career plans for the Babies! (VIDEOS!)

Texts from Sweetie.

Mr Bunches sings Numa Numa. (VIDEO!)

Nailed it!

From here on out, "9" shall be pronounced "mab." (VIDEO!)

Milestones for Mr F!

A pep talk for Mr Bunches ends with a twist.

Today you will learn a word in a new language.

The Pancakes of Time Get Their Revenge
UPDATE: Watch the video!


As seen on TV... hopefully someday

Imagine not knowing what "fun" means.

Crayon tourists.

I didn't get to read the paper yesterday morning.

More time at the library.

Roosters don't live in rainforests, for one thing.

My desk gets reorganized.
Indian Bunnies Wearing Crowns.

Mr Bunches hits the red crayon jackpot!

Chair Pioneer, four.

Mr F's abstract art.

Chair Pioneer, part three.

Also, we did eventually clean up that room.

Be careful what you promise, or you might end up playing in the rain in a diaper.

Singing a song you don't know the words to.

Doing the cookie boogie.

Mr F helps me eat pizza a little faster.

As it turns out, he DID change into a different outfit.

X is for Dog.

Awesome Covers of Already Awesome Songs: Christmas Edition 2

Today it's Do They Know It's Christmas...

In patriotic version:



And Swedish Christmas Home Video Version:



And in a version that manages to be more eighties than the original song was -- even though the original was made in the 80s:





And, of course, the self-proclaimed "historical" 20-years-after remake -- complete with people talking over the singing:



Here's the version of that one that lets you hear the song,



And I think the real lesson from this is that it's impossible to wreck this song. Although they certainly tried with that unnecessary rapping bit in that last version.

I always knew these would be a big hit, so now you can get punctuated.

About two years (maybe longer) ago, I spent a morning creating what I thought would be a genius idea: the You've Been Punctuated line of clothing apparel.

Nothing much happened during that time -- other than I bought myself a semi-colon -- until the last two weeks, when they started selling like well-punctuated hotcakes. Never one to miss out on a trend, I thought I'd reprint them all here and remind you that Christmas is just 19 days away -- and these t-shirts would make a great gift for that special someone in your life who always wants to punctuate someone. Click the shirts to go buy one:

! by brianefp

ellipses by brianefp

parentheses by brianefp

Colon by brianefp

Ampersand by brianefp

Semicolon by brianefp

Comma by brianefp

Awesome Covers Of Already Awesome Songs: Christmas Edition.

When I was a kid, I'd play We Three Kings in a sort of upbeat, fun way -- I liked the melody but thought the song was too ponderous. My mom would always say "What are you doing?" and make me play it right.

If only she'd known that encouraging my Christmas Improv might lead to my joining a moderately successful rock band someday:



Okay, it's only a small part of that song -- but still, I was on the right track.

Singing a Song You Don't Know The Words To. (Life With Unicorns.)

Looking for a post? It's been removed and added to my collection "Life With Unicorns." Look For it On Amazon Or Your Kindle.

Click here for a list of all my books!

Comment Highlight: Am I Anti-Franzen, is Franzen just Jerry Springer, and can people write about 9/11? (A Rum Punch Review Wrap-Up.)

Pictured: Where You Belong,
by Patrick Dilloway. Buy it here.

I'm not sure I've had two comments on the same post so quickly on this blog ever, but I got two in the first 12 hours or so that my post "He may show us the way to live but he hasn't shown us the way to write" was up -- part 3 of my Rum Punch Review of Jonathan Franzen's freeom.

So the real lesson of these comments might be "If you want readers, make fun of Jonathan Franzen and/or people who write about 9/11."

But I thought both comments were worth highlighting -- even though both are critical of me to a greater or lesser degree.

Commenter Minonda was succinct:

Don't even try to criticize his writing. You're absurd to suggest that there's anything wrong with it. Another frickin anti-Franzen.

Am I an anti-Franzen? My first thought was No way! My second thought was well, I was pretty critical of his writing, both in Freedom and, in retrospect, in The Corrections.

My third thought was I should probably not have had two sausage biscuits on the way into the office this morning, but that didn't really relate to the first two. Unless it did...

But maybe I'm in good company; if you google "anti-Franzen," and, remember, googling things is the way everyone proves everything these days, even scientists, there's 2,000,000 hits, but the number one result of those searched (at least right now) is an article saying that women writers, especially, are upset by the good reviews Freedom got-- not because it's Franzen, or Freedom, necessarily, but because the book is by a white male.

In truth, the anti-Franzen debate doesn't seem to be so much about whether or not Freedom is a good book or not as it is about whether or not the New York Times book reviews unfairly favor white male (kind of Jewish?) writers. The anti-Franzens the way Minonda seems to mean it look to be limited to me, and a guy named Jacques Day, who commented on The Awl's short review of the NYT's review of Freedom by saying this:

The Volvo 240 allusion shows what I think Franzen does. He tells people in a certain demographic things already know about themselves, in a cheeky, "literary" kind of way that will bore the hell out of readers years hence. Seems to me his books are made up of the dreary exposition of inconsequential events, followed by the author's telling the reader what to think about those events.

Read in a certain light, the NYT review is a pan.

And then there's the prurient appeal of Franzen–it's basically Jerry Springer with a masters degree. It seems literary, so it's OK to want to find out what slutty thing so-and-so did and how late her teenage son stayed out last night . . .

Let's start an anti-Franzen revolution.

Jacques doesn't stop there:

Spoiler alert! The Iraq war was a fraud, liberal idealists are often hypocrites, and suburbia is dysfunctional. Get Franzen's unique take on American life in the new novel.

You know, we could all learn a little something from Jacques... about how to write sarcasm.

(Franzen's Freedom, by the way, was a runner up for a not-as-prestigious award, the Bad Sex Writing prize, -- presumably for the Joey phone sex parts, but I could be wrong -- but he lost, being edged out by The Shape Of Her, which won by describing one sex scene as being “like a lepidopterist mounting a tough-skinned insect with a too blunt pin.”)

If there's one thing we all agree on, though, it's that Rogue Mutt's a heckuva writer. Frequent commenter Rogue took me to task for two things: First, saying that he can use 9/11:

In my book (http://amzn.to/huiFud) I used 9/11 in it because the one main characters works on Wall Street and I realized he was going to be in New York during 9/11 so it would have been stupid for it not to come up. But it turns out not just being a political statement or anything; what happens actually moves the plot forward.

I should add, first, that his book, Where You Belong, makes a great Christmas present and you should really go buy it right now before you even read what I have to say about his comment, and what I have to say is this:

I suppose that might be all right. Also, Rogue's comment goes on to note that in The Time Traveler's Wife the characters just watched 9/11, and that's what happened in Last Night In Twisted River, too -- people watch on TV and have reactions to what they're seeing, which really makes the stories nothing more complicated than an average Family Guy episode, Family Guy simply being a compendium of jokes about TV shows Seth MacFarlane has watched.

Rogue then gets critical of me, implying I might be less than accurate with my facts, adding as a parting shot:

BTW, weren't "Family Ties" and "Cheers" both on NBC?

But just because he's right doesn't mean I'm wrong. This is America, after all.