*packpackpackpack*

[malsperanza]

Me: So, you haven't sent me your xmas lists yet.

The Sophisticated 12-Year-Old: Oh, you can send me anything.

Me: Bag of coal? Package of underwear?

The Sophisticated 12-Year-Old: Just puhleeze not any more books.

Me: Had enough, eh?

The Sophisticated 12-Year-Old: I have too many to read. It's getting ridiculous.

Me: I know what you mean.

The Sophisticated 12-Year-Old: But you could send me movies.

Me: Cool. Even black-and-white movies?

The Sophisticated 12-Year-Old: No, not those. Not old movies.

The Stylish 9-Year-Old: You can send me black-and-white movies. You can send me Charlie Chaplin movies.

The Sophisticated 12-Year-Old: She's just trying to impress you.

Me: It's working.

The Monster, now 6: Have you read Harry Potter?

Me: Yes, have you?

The Monster: The books are much better than the movies, you know.

Me: You also are impressing me. Is that what you want for xmas? Harry Potter stuff?

The Monster: I want a Harry Potter wand.

Me: OK.

The Monster: A really big one.

Me: For big spells?

The Monster: So I can stab the Death Eaters with it.

Me: I see. Um, it's not a light saber, you know.

The Monster: No, it's a wand. But I have to kill all the Death Eaters in the house.

Me: You have Death Eaters in the house? I have cats. And a few cockaroaches. And sometimes katydids.

The Monster: They are all Death Eaters in the house. I will stab them all.

The Sophisticated 12-Year-Old: Except me. I'm Voldemort.

Me: That sounds right.

The Stylish 9-Year-Old: And I am Galadriel.

The Monster: Galadriel is a Dementor.

Me: So, you sure? No books at all?

The Sophisticated 12-Year-Old: Is the sequel to Tithe out yet?

Me: Not for a while yet.

The Stylish 9-Year-Old (sadly): No, no books.

Me: Just movies?

The Monster: And a really big wand.

Me: How about some CDs instead?

The Stylish 9-Year-Old: White Stripes!

The Sophisticated 12-Year-Old: Have you heard of a band called Nirvana?

Me: Yes.

The Sophisticated 12-Year-Old: They're old, but they're good.

Me (O_O): Old.

The Sophisticated 12-Year-Old: But they're good.

Me: Practically black-and-white.

The Stylish 9-Year-Old: Green Day!

The Monster: I like Massive Attack.

Me: You would.


So the upshot is that the xmas box contains:

3 soprano recorders (green, purple, and orange)

1 large pink book on how to play the recorder

"Buckaroo Banzai" on DVD

"A Night at the Opera" on DVD

Dame Edith Sitwell / William Walton's "Facade" on CD (with, as a bonus, a Walton piece titled "Ass-face," which is bound to please)

Nirvana Unplugged, Rage Against the Machine, Massive Attack, & Jimi Hendrix on CD

12 chocolate subway tokens (bet youall didn't know that in NYC chocolate is legal tender)

6 books from the splendid Discoveries series: Ramesses II, Alchemy, Angkor Wat, The History of Dyes & Pigments, Monet, & Lost Cities of the Maya.

Which is hardly any books at all, really.

No wand, though. Because I don't think I can face the idea of Harry Potter stabbing Galadriel to death on the grounds that she is a Dementor.

Here is Edith Sitwell's "Hornpipe"


Sailors come
To the drum
Out of Babylon;
Hobby-horses
Foam, the dumb
Sky rhinoceros-glum

Watched the courses of the
breakers' rocking-horses and with Glaucis,
Lady Venus on the settee of the horsehair sea!
Where Lord Tennyson in laurels wrote a gloria free,
In a borealic iceberg came Victoria; she
Knew Prince Albert's tall memorial
took the colours of the floreal
And the borealic iceberg; floating
on they see
New-arisen Madam Venus for
whose sake from far
Came the fat zebra'd emperor
from Zanzibar
Where like golden bouquets lay far
Asia, Africa, Cathay,
All laid before that shady lady by the fibroid Shah.
Captain Fracasse stout as any water -
butt came, stood
With Sir Bacchus both a-drinking
the black tarr'd grapes' blood
Plucked among the tartan leafage
By the furry wind whose grief age
Could not wither -
like a squirrel with a gold star-nut.
Queen Victoria sitting shocked
upon a rocking horse
Of a wave said to the Laureate,
"This minx of course
Is as sharp as a lynx and blacker --
deeper than the drinks and quite as
Hot as any Hottentot, without
remorse!
For the minx,"
Said she,
"And the drinks,
You can see
Are hot as any hottentot and not
the goods for me!"



Proving, once again, that the spirit of Lewis Carroll is alive and well. But it is much better when chanted to music.

Comments

[priceyeah.livejournal.com]

That was a lovely post.

[chresimos.livejournal.com]

*mutters to self* Edith Sitwell? who's this Edith Sitwell? ...oh, that Edith Sitwell! *feels learnede*

Very amusing childrens. Don't you fear that when you see them again they will play you recorder-ized renditions of Nirvana, though? ;)

Also: The surest way to spot a nonreader: someone who comes into your house, looks at your books and asks, "Have you read all these? (from an article on the loathsome Salon))

[malsperanza.livejournal.com]

Don't you fear that when you see them again they will play you recorder-ized renditions of Nirvana, though?

It's a risk, but with any luck they will do that to their parents.

[lolaraincoat.livejournal.com]

Hee! Isn't it fun being the Cool Aunt? (or person in aunt-like position, whichever.) And also, Facade! I love that piece. A recording of Sitwell herself reciting it warped my childhood even more than it already was warped. Had I but known that there was a Walton piece called Ass-face ... well. They'll love it.





but the words stung him like a mosquito
for what they hear they repeat!

[malsperanza.livejournal.com]

Being the Cool Aunt totally rocks. I had the same recording of Facade as a child, which is why it occurred to me that the Literary Critics might like it. I had to order the CD from Amazon.uk--it's not available in the US. But none of the other recordings is as good.

but the words stung him like a mosquito
for what they hear they repeat!

Man, you can really hear "The Hunting of the Snark" in that, can't you?

In the midst of the word he was trying to say,
In the midst of his laughter and glee,
He had softly and suddenly vanished away—
For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.