The May Issue of Ex Libris Reviews is now on-line.

There have been no posts at Banana Oil since the 25th; in addition, Ian hasn’t responded to a Miyazaki-related e-mail I sent him at about that time. He’s been experimenting with Linux, and I wonder if he shot himself in the foot.

I agree with Lileks. Our house is and will remain a Bratz-free zone.

When I’m feeling sick and mostly brain-dead, I turn to one of two kinds
of book: either a rather shallow series that I can chain-read without
much effort, or an old favorite that I know so well that reading it is
more likely reminiscing with a friend. Watership Down is
one of the latter. I first read it when I was in junior high school (what
they call “middle school” around here these days), and the copy I have now
I got in England when I was 14. I was on a trip with my parents; it’s
the only time I’ve ever been to Europe. I’ve got copies of
James Herriot’s first four books from that trip as well,
though you likely wouldn’t recognize the titles–they were repackaged for
American publication as All Creatures Great And Small and
All Things Bright And Beautiful.

But I digress.

Are any of my readers unfamiliar with Watership Down? It’s
a tale of adventure and romance, of resourcefulness and steadfastness, of
courage and honor and integrity, of causes and things worth fighting for,
of grace under pressure.

And, of course, it’s about rabbits. Not country bumpkins in rabbit-form,
not talking beasts with waistcoats and pocketwatches, but rabbits. Real
rabbits, with the concerns, problems, and enemies of rabbits. They talk,
certainly, and tell stories, and they are a degree smarter than real
rabbits, but they remain rabbits. They do not build towns or plant
gardens or write books; instead, they dig warrens and eat grass and bear young
and keep a watchful eye for the thousand enemies that beset them.

It’s a remarkable achievement, and I don’t believe it has ever been
matched. The closest book I can think of is William Horwood’s
Duncton Wood, which seems clearly patterned
after Watership Down (it was published eight years later).
It’s about moles, who at first mostly seem to have the concerns of moles;
there’s even a General Woundwort figure named Mandrake (of all things).
But as the book progresses it emerges that these moles aren’t real moles.
Some of them write books; and there are even pseudo-Buddhist enlightened
monk moles. In other words, Watership Down is a mainstream
novel that appeals to lovers of fantasy, Duncton Wood is
unequivocally a fantasy novel whose characters happen to be moles.

In any event, I re-read the book with great pleasure; and the ending
has become only more moving with time and familiarity rather than less.
I always have to have a box of kleenex handy for the last ten pages or so.
Fortunately, given that I’m sick no one’s surprised that my eyes are
watering.

I’m at home, sick with some kind of strangulating throat malaise, and have been since yesterday morning. And the fact is, I’m bored stiff. I haven’t enough mental horsepower to do anything worthwhile, and my attention span is on the order of fifteen minutes max. What to do? Read blogs!

Of course, it doesn’t take all that long to make the rounds of the blogs I usually read–at least, not when you’re making a day of it–so I’ve been trawling through the blogrolls. The only blog that I’ve seen so far that’s new to me that I feel like linking to is this one.

I realize that under the circumstances, this probably doesn’t sound like a ringing endorsement. Oh, well. I feel rather like Marvin the Paranoid Android this morning– “Don’t bother trying to engage my enthusiasm, because I haven’t got one.”

I’ve just released Notebook V2.1.2. You can get the whole scoop at the Notebook Wiki.

Oh, the wild and wonderful things you find in the rain forests of Peru:

Martin’s quarry is an un-catalogued species. It is called the Chicken Eating spider because eye witnesses claim to have seen it dragging chickens into its burrow on the edge of jungle clearings. Estimates put it at around 10 inches from one hairy foot to another.



And he found it: a tarantula as big as a dinner plate. And a very odd tarantula, too. Known tarantulas are solitary; after a brood hatches, the “spiderlings” need to scatter PDQ, because Ol’ Mom gets mighty hungry while gestating, and the young’uns are fair game. The Chicken Eating spider, on the other hand, shares its burrow with several generations of its offspring.

Don’t miss the pictures; it really has to be seen to be believed.

Update: Here’s another link. Oh, and I was alerted to this by my friend Dave Jaffe.

Well, increased freedom, anyway.

Jane talked to my doctor yesterday, and given my weight loss to date and my improved cholesterol numbers my doctor is now allowing me to eat a wider range of foods. Apparently she hasn’t generally had to deal with this issue before; relatively few patients stick to the diet she gives them for this long. Anyway, I’m still mostly off carbohydrates, which I’ve mostly gotten used to; but I can now add lean beef and pork, eggs, and the occasional bit of bacon or regular (as opposed to low-fat) cheese is OK too, so long as I don’t overdo it. On the other hand, I need to keep eating the green leafies at every meal, which, again, I’ve mostly gotten used to.

So this is a very good thing. I intend to celebrate this evening by going to Pepe’s and having their all-pork burrito with verde sauce, sans tortilla.

I’ve reviewed Kipling’s Just So Stories before, back in 2001
when I was reading them to David. After that they got put on the shelf,
not to be taken down again until we were reading
Prince Caspian. There were several evenings when David
wasn’t available at story-time, and on those evenings I needed something
different. I scanned the shelves, and Aha! This book fell right into my
hand.

There are many stories I remember my mother reading to me as a
child–picture books like A Fish Out Of Water and
Stop That Ball, and B’rer Rabbit and the briar patch, but
the one that reminds me most of her voice is Kipling’s “The Elephant’s
Child,” one of my all-time favorites both then and now. And it’s just
one among many: “The Sing-Song of Old Man Kangaroo”, “How the Camel
got his Hump”, and “How the Rhinoceros got his Skin”, are my other three
favorites, though I don’t hear my mother’s voice when I read them;
instead, I hear Sterling Holloway, Disney’s voice for Winnie-the-Pooh,
for I once was given a record of him reading those three stories.

The stories are tall tales superlatively told, with excitement and danger
and romance, set in colorful exotic places; but the best part of them is
Kipling’s language and the fun he has with it. He delights in using
large and unusual words to make the tale even more exotic–but only when
it won’t harm the sense. For example,

And the Rhinoceros upset the oil-stove with his nose, and the cake
rolled on the sand, and he spiked that cake on the horn of his nose,
and he ate it, and he went away, waving his tail, to the Desolate and
Exclusively Uninhabited Interior which abuts on the islands of
Mazanderan, Socotra, and the Promontories of the Larger Equinox.

Wouldn’t you just love to visit the Promontories of the Larger Equinox?
In another story, he writes,

One fine morning in the middle of the Precession of the Equinoxes
this ‘satiable Elephant’s Child asked a new fine question that he
had never asked before. He asked, “What does the Crocodile have for
dinner?”

The Precession of the Equinoxes has nothing to do with anything, but
there’s glory for you.

Then Kolokolo Bird said, with a mournful cry, “Go to the banks of the
great grey-green greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever trees,
and find out.”

Read that sentence aloud to yourself. “Go to the banks of the great
grey-green greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever trees…”

That very next morning, when there was nothing left of the Equinoxes,
because the Precession had proceeded according to precedent, this
‘satiable Elephant’s Child took a hundred pounds of bananas (the little
short red kind), and a hundred pounds of sugar-cane (the long purple
kind), and seventeen melons (the greeny-crackly kind), and said to all
his dear families, “Goodbye. I am going to the great grey-green greasy
Limpopo River, all set about with fever trees, to ask the Crocodile
what he has for dinner.”

Some time later, he meets a Bi-Coloured Python Rock Snake. Shortly
thereafter he meets the Crocodile, and gets into a bit of difficulty, at
which point the Bi-Coloured Python Rock Snake advises him,

“Rash and inexperienced traveler, we will now seriously devote
ourselves to a little high tension, because if we do not, it is my
impression that yonder self-propelling man-of-war with the
armour-plated upper deck” (and by this, O Best Beloved, he meant the
Crocodile) “will permanently vitiate your future career.” This is how
Bi-Coloured Python Rock Snakes always talk.

If you’ve not encountered the Just So Stories before, and
these brief quotes aren’t enough to intrigue you, grown-up though you
are, I’m afraid I must conclude that you have no ear for language and an
insufficently developed sense of whimsy.

For lots of reasons. I’ve in the middle of The Great Game, which is a long book; I’m spending a lot of time working on Notebook and the Notebook Wiki; and I’m transitioning onto a new task at work, which is taking a lot of my attention. As a result, I’m not reading as many blogs as I was, and I’m not finishing books quickly, so I don’t have much to review; and the only deep thoughts I’ve been having recently are going into Notebook. And some evenings, I’m just taking things easy.

One topical comment: why do so many pundits think it’s unreasonable for Pope Benedict to wish to hold fast to the official doctrine of the Roman Catholic church? Seems to me that’s the job he was elected to do, and he’d be at fault if he didn’t. We’ve got far too many prelates in my church (the Episcopal Church) who’ve decided that keeping up with the times is more important than the faith once received from the saints, and let me tell you the results aren’t pretty.

Anyway, things are likely to be sparse around here for a while longer.