You like to cook. Making breakfast is fun for you.

[The baby goats] were a lot of work, especially in the beginning. I tried, with moderate success to enlist my human kids to pitch in. One afternoon a few days after school let out for the summer, I heated the milk for the goats and filled their baby bottles. "Would you please take these out and do the feeding?" I asked Owen, who was lying on the floor, drawing a Transformer.

"You do it," he said.

"You do it?" I replied.

"Yes, you do it."

"Did you just say, 'You do it'?"

"I always do it," he said.

"That is not true."

He said, "I did it last night."

"And I did it this morning."

"Because I was sleeping. Besides, you like getting up early."

"I do not like getting up early."

"Then why do you do it?"

"So I can feed the goats! So I can do the laundry! So I can make you breakfast!"

"You like to cook," he said. "Making breakfast is fun for you."

"JUST GO OUTSIDE AND FEED THE GOATS!"

Owen stared at me in shock. He shouted, "You want me to be a SLAVE for you. Summer was not invented so kids could be SLAVES for their parents."

"Actually," I said wearily, "it was."

there were no exchanges like this in the Little House books, ever. Owen went outside. A few minutes later, I heard him singing.

Jennifer Reese; Make the Bread, Buy the Butter

Why is breakfast different from all other things?

I would very much like to know what those who have an answer to everything can say about the food requisite to breakfast? Those great men Marlowe and Jonson, Shakespeare, and Spenser before him, drank beer at rising, and tamed it with a little bread. In the regiment, we used to drink black coffee without sugar, and cut off a great hunk of stale crust, and eat noting more till the halt ... Dogs eat the first thing they come across, cats take a little milk, and gentlemen are accustomed to get up at nine and eat eggs, bacon, kidneys, ham, cold pheasant, toast coffee, tea, scones, and honey, after which they will boast that their race is the hardiest in the world and ready to bear every fatigue in the pursuit of Empire. But what rule governs all this? Why is breakfast different from all other things, so that the Greeks called it the best thing in the world, and so that each of us in a vague way knows that he would eat at breakfast nothing but one special kind of food and that he could not imagine breakfast at any other hour in the day?

Hilaire Belloc, The Path to Rome

The Path to Rome is such a wonderful book to idly read here and there in your day. It is the story of the pilgrimage Belloc made on foot to Rome in as straight a line as possible order to fulfill a vow he had made. It is a delightful travel book with all sorts of discoveries and musings, such as above!

Around Here: Dickens and Boxer

This is from some time ago but never fails to amuse me.

Boxer, feeling that his attentions were due to the family in general, and must be impartially distributed, dashed in and out with bewildering inconstancy; now, describing a circle of short barks round the horse, where he was being rubbed down at the stable-door; now feigning to make savage rushes at his mistress, and facetiously bringing himself to sudden stops; now, eliciting a shriek from Tilly Slowboy, in the low nursing-chair near the fire, by the unexpected application of his moist nose to her countenance; now, exhibiting an obtrusive interest in the baby; now, going round and round upon the hearth, and lying down as if he had established himself for the night; now, getting up again, and taking that nothing of a fag-end of a tail of his, out into the weather, as if he had just remembered an appointment, and was off, at a round trot, to keep it.

Courtesy of Project Gutenberg where
this novella is available free in a variety of formats

One of my favorite bits in the beginning of The Cricket on the Hearth is accuracy of Charles Dickens' description of the Perrybingles' dog, Boxer. Ours is a "double Boxer" household and ours are almost constantly displaying some of those very attributes.

Chances are that the Boxers of Dickens' day didn't look precisely like those we have today, but they surely acted like them!

This article shows current Boxers and if you scroll down you can see how they probably looked in Dickens' day.

Cooking and the Ballet

Noncooks think it's silly to invest two hours' work in two minutes' enjoyment; but if cooking is evanescent, so is the ballet.

Julia Child

Sometimes I think of this quote when I am cooking. Then I think of how many other things in my life are considered evanescent and how I enjoy them.

When a murderbot avoids eye contact ...

Just a heads-up, when a murderbot stands there looking to the left of your head to avoid eye contact, its probably not thinking about killing you, its probably frantically trying to come up with a reply to whatever you just said to it.

Martha Wells, Network Effect

The Murderbot Diaries have become my relaxation reading during stressful times. Very much like Murderbot always falling back on running episodes of The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon during its own times of stress. Lately — Murderbot is my friend for nighttime reading. Plus it is just good reading anytime.

For fellow lovers of The Pickwick Papers

Pickwick is in Dickens’s career the mere mass of light before the creation of sun or moon. It is the splendid, shapeless substance of which all his stars were ultimately made. You might split up Pickwick into innumerable novels as you could split up that primeval light into innumerable solar systems. The Pickwick Papers constitute first and foremost a kind of wild promise, a pre-natal vision of all the children of Dickens. ... Dickens, like every other honest and effective writer, came at last to some degree of care and self-restraint. He learned how to make his dramatis personæ assist his drama; he learned how to write stories which were full of rambling and perversity, but which were stories. But before he wrote a single real story, he had a kind of vision. It was a vision of the Dickens world—a maze of white roads, a map full of fantastic towns, thundering coaches, clamorous market-places, uproarious inns, strange and swaggering figures. That vision was Pickwick.

G.K. Chesterton, Appreciations and Criticisms
of the Works of Charles Dickens

I avoided The Pickwick Papers for a long time because I heard how they weren't really a good book, not really Dickens as he was in his other works. Once I tried them, I loved them. And then I felt a little shame-faced to admit it. It made me glad to see G.K. Chesterton championing them.

Lagniappe — Rudyard Kipling on Edgar Rice Burroughs

On Tuesday we saw Ray Bradbury's tribute to Edgar Rice Burroughts.

Here's another, and perhaps more surprising, author going on the record about Edgar Rice Burroughs. I like his generous attitude.

My Jungle Books begat zoos of [imitators]. But the genius of all the genii was one who wrote a series called Tarzan of the Apes. I read it, but regret I never saw it on the films, where it rages ost successfully. He had "jazzed" the motif of the Jungle Books and, I imagine, had thoroughly enjoyed himself. He was reported to have said that he wanted to find out how bad a book he could write and "get away with," which is a legitimate ambition.

Rudyard Kipling

Lagniappe — Ray Bradbury on Edgar Rice Burroughs

Edgar Rice Burroughs never would have looked upon himself as a social mover and shaker with social obligations. But as it turns out — and I love to say it because it upsets everyone terribly — Burroughs is probably the most influential writer in the entire history of the world. ... By giving romance and adventure to a whole generation of boys, Burroughs caused them to go out and decide to become special.

Ray Bradbury

This tickles me. And I agree!

Tea and Objectionable Practice

I have understood that it was, to the last, her proudest boast, that she never had been on the water in her life, except upon a bridge; and that over her tea (to which she was extremely partial) she, to the last, expressed her indignation at the impiety of mariners and others, who had the presumption to go 'meandering' about the world. It was in vain to represent to her that some conveniences, tea perhaps included, resulted from this objectionable practice.

Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

I always forget just how funny Dickens can be and how well he slips his jokes into the main narrative.

The Tall Horse and Mr. Winkle

Now whether the tall horse, in the natural playfulness of his disposition, was desirous of having a little innocent recreation with Mr. Winkle, or whether it occurred to him that he could perform the journey as much to his own satisfaction without a rider as with one, are points upon which, of course, we can arrive at no definite and distinct conclusion. By whatever motives the animal was actuated, certain it is that Mr. Winkle had no sooner touched the reins, than he slipped them over his head, and darted backwards to their full length.

Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers

This made me laugh out loud. Dickens can be so very funny and, of course, The Pickwick Papers are loaded with his humor from beginning to end.

Louisia's idea for a TV show

He went to fetch more beers, and by the time he got back Louisa was telling Shirley her idea for a TV show, which would open with a view of Tom Hiddleston walking down a long, long, corridor, shot from behind.

River waited. "Then what?" he asked at last.

But the women had misted over, and didn't hear him.

Mick Herron, London Rules

What? Oh, sorry. I was mentally picturing that view of Tom Hiddleston and misted over.

Christmas with Charles Dickens

The best sitting room at Manor Farm was a good, long, dark-paneled room with a high chimney-piece, and a capacious chimney, up which you could have driven one of the new patent cabs, wheels and all. At the upper end of the room, seated in a shady bower of holly and evergreens, were the two best fiddlers, and the only harp, in all Muggleton. In all sorts of recesses, and on all kinds of brackets, stood massive old silver candlesticks with four branches each. The carpet was up, the candles burnt bright, the fire blazed and crackled on the hearth, and merry voices and light-hearted laughter range through the room.

Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers

Christmas with Washington Irving

 

It is, indeed, the season of regenerated feeling--the season for kindling, not merely the fire of hospitality in the hall, but the genial flame of charity in the heart.

Washington Irving, Old Christmas

Christmas Eve Lagniappe

And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so? It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags. And he puzzled and puzzled 'till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before. What if Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store. What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.

Dr. Seuss 

No Room to Swing a Cat

Mrs. Crupp had indignantly assured him that there wasn't room to swing a cat there; but, as Mr. Dick justly observed to me, sitting down on the foot of the bed, nursing his leg, "You know, Trotwood, I don't want to swing a cat. I never do swing a cat. Therefore, what does that signify to ME!"

Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

Dickens has some of the most amusing characters and dialogue of anyone. Not an original observation, of course, but he continually cracks me up.

Lovecraftian School Board Member Wants Madness Added To Curriculum

"Our schools are orderly, sanitary places where students dwell in blissful ignorance of the chaos that awaits," West said. "Should our facilities be repaired? No, they must be razed to the ground and rebuilt in the image of the Cyclopean dwellings of the Elder Gods, the very geometry of which will drive them to be possessed by visions of the realms beyond." ...

"Charles sure likes to bang on that madness drum," fellow school board member Danielle Kolker said. "I'm not totally sold on his plan to let gibbering, half-formed creatures dripping with ichor feed off the flesh and fear of our students. But he is always on time to help set up for our spaghetti suppers, and his bake sale goods are among the most popular."

"I must admit, he's very convincing," Kolker added.

This excerpt is from one of my favorite of The Onion's pieces. I enjoy rereading it every year. Do go read it all.

The Autumn People

For some, autumn comes early, stays late through life where October follows September and November touches October and then instead of December and Christ's birth, there is no Bethlehem star, no rejoicing, but September comes again and old October and so on down the years, with no winter, spring, or revivifying summer. For these beings, fall is the ever normal season, the only weather, there be no choice beyond. Where do they come from? The dust. Where do they go? The grave. Does blood stir their veins? No: the night wind. What ticks in their head? The worm. What speaks from their mouth? The toad. What sees from their eye? The snake. What hears with their ear? The abyss between the stars. They sift the human storm for souls, eat flesh of reason, fill tombs with sinners. They frenzy forth. In gusts they beetle-scurry, creep, thread, filter, motion, make all moons sullen, and surely cloud all clear-run waters. The spider-web hears them, trembles -- breaks. Such are the autumn people. Beware of them.

Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes

Proof that horror fantasy can also be poetic.

Halloween Lagniappe: H.P. Lovecraft

Through all this horror my cat stalked unperturbed. Once I saw him monstrously perched atop a mountain of bones, and wondered at the secrets that might lie behind his yellow eyes.

H.P. Lovecraft, The Rats in the Walls

Another of my favorite horror authors chimes in for Halloween from one of my favorite of his stories. A lesser tale, but still a good 'un.

How a gentleman shouldn't go to the devil

Flambeau had known Quinton in wild student days in Paris, and they had renewed the acquaintance for a week-end; but apart from Flambeau’s more responsible developments of late, he did not get on well with the poet now; choking oneself with opium and writing little erotic verses on vellum was not his notion of how a gentleman should go to the devil.

G.K. Chesterton, The Wrong Shape

Chesterton is just so darned funny. And this is just a toss off line in a Father Brown mystery.

Mine is a simple system

Mine is a simple system. I read from morning till bedtime, with breaks for my job, my family, meetings with friends, exercise, household chores and periodic reviews of my life's greatest blunders.

Michael Dirda, 10 Rules for Reading from Someone Who Does It for a Living

I don't read for a living, but I am often asked how I read so many books. My system is identical to Dirda's.