in the garden, I did no crime

War, children, it's just a shot away.

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Today seems as good as any to be a Rolling Stones day. I need more Rolling Stones but Hubs hates 'em so there goes that good idea.

New Of Montreal should be out now!!! Squee!!!!

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I'm becoming a little too obsessed with Lewis Carroll lately. Did you know he invented portmanteau? Wonderful! I wonder if the writer from the Times knows that with his fug reference. Ugh. Don't get me started.

This may all have something to do too with my ever present love of psychedelic rock of the 60s and 70s (White Rabbit just came on but that's too gross and had to be skipped and blocked). But you know, take some acid and read a little Vic Lit. Sounds like fun! I get it Jefferson Airplane! I get it Cream!

Anyway I find a lot of pleasure in reading Lewis Carroll. I don't see at all in what sense of raising children that those Victorians would ever let a young child read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass though because that shit is scary! And f-ed up! It's just how I don't understand requiring a child to go to church to only tell him he's going to Hell. H-E-double hockey sticks. But whatever.

And I understand how it's supposed to teach children not to be afraid of growing up and the strange encounters that can only really be experienced one time in your life, as a child. You can never get that back, no matter how much Rush you listen to. There are few first times and we can never get them back. Is this why people propagate? To re-enter the bubble?

And did you also know the origin of the Hatta (The Mad Hatter)? This character has surreptitiously held my attention since I was wee. He's terrifying for one, and I've always had a macabre fascination with loving creepy men (in the figurative fashion, natch ha ha!) and I just recently learned his purpose. Mad as a Hatter comes from, again, Victorian England when hats were not only fashionable for men, but served to warm in the bitterly cold winters. But people were poor and hats were expensive. Many made of cheaply bought, poor quality wool which was cut into sheets and dipped into vats of boiling mercury. The hatters inhaled the toxic fumes and washed their hands regularly by hand dipping the wool in order to immediately form it into shape. A mad hatter was characterized by his schizophrenic actions and often, died young, penniless, and insane. There is no purpose in working an honest trade. Isn't that wonderful! How delightfully Britishly bleak!


But I mean really, how do you explain that to a child?! Come on! Although Jabberwocky is fun to read aloud. And who doesn't like to say Bandersnatch?

Bandersnatch. Come on, say it with me.

Bandersnatch.
BANDERSNATCH!

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Ok ok I've officially lost it.

I have to send a little pip for my friend Virginia. She's off to Germany to be an au pair for some big time scientist family. Isn't that exciting!!!