While the Toddler Goes to Sleep...

These days the way to get my daughter to sleep is to turn the lights off and sit in the room with her for about 10 minutes while she chatters incessantly about her day, often adding in tidbits of things that happened weeks ago but she insists they happened "yessuday" and then you get up, go to the door, and scoot through leaving it partially open. If she calls out to me, I simply lean my mouth to the door crack and say, "I'm standing right here, go to sleep, shhhhh" and then I leave. Problem is, she's calling out every few minutes, and I have to sit in the next room so I can go to that door when she calls out so she thinks I'm still standing in the room.

SO... while I wait for that to stop, I shall blog about cool things I found today.

Once again on McSweeney's, I found something to make me laugh out loud. In "Poems that were Considered and Rejected before 'Twas the Night Before Christmas Was Established as 'The Official American Christmas Poem," the author parodies Allen Ginsberg, Sylvia Plath, and Edgar Allan Poe, and nails it. I laughed out loud, and then emailed it to my former American Lit prof.

Continuing in an American lit mood, The Book Standard has a great article about banned books in the U.S. that's definitely worth reading. I think my favourite is a 1989 banning of Little Red Riding Hood for promoting alcoholism in children. That and a letter from Mark Twain all excited that the banning of Huck Finn would be sure to sell 25,000 extra copies (it sounded exactly like something my boss would say).

Go Fug Yourself had a HILARIOUS post yesterday about Anne Hathaway looking like a toilet paper doll, and it reminded me of this totally creepy toilet paper doll that my friend Sue's grandmother has in England, and it's become an ongoing joke with us. We went over to England in 2000 and Sue's sister had gone ahead to her grandparent's house. Then Sue and I showed up, and Anne was standing at the door with saucer eyes saying, "Oh. My. God. You SO have to go into the bathroom. I'm not even going to prepare you for it." So we wandered down the hall and peered in, and there, on the back of the toilet was this toilet paper doll with one of those knitted outfits that covers the roll, but it was missing most of its hair. It looked like some sort of radiation victim, like something had been plucking the hairs out of its head one by one in some sinister voodoo weirdness. We totally freaked out and ran screaming from the bathroom, but eventually got the nerve back up to return to take its picture. A few years later Sue went back over to England to visit her relatives, and when she came back she said, "I brought you a surprise," and pulled out... a NEW picture of the creepy doll! After my initial horror and dead faint, I was revived and got to study the photo more closely. Even MORE hair was missing -- no doubt the result of the radiation poisoning creeping through its little plastic nervous system -- and it looked insane. Then this past summer Sue headed back yet again, and came back with photo #3. This time I thought I'd braced myself, until I looked at it and saw a doll with nothing but three black hairs sticking out of its little dotted head. What is wrong with that doll?! Or better yet, why are Sue's grandparents plucking its poor hairs out of its head? Maybe it IS a voodoo thing... I wonder who ticked them off?

OK, Her Highness has gone from calling out to me to actually wandering out onto the landing and asking if she could fall asleep in my arms in the chair, so I will give in to her whims and desires. It's my job. :)