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Weekly Whimsy

By tigtog on August 11, 2011

This week’s whimsy is brought to you by this Job Review for Mary Poppins.

A snippet:

Communications

Mary’s verbal communication skills are questionable, at best. She prefers to speak in riddles and has a propensity for addressing those in positions of authority in a manner that can only be described as “cheeky.” Her vocabulary also leaves much to be desired. She insists upon teaching my children unpronounceable words, resulting in the singing of lighthearted songs ‘round the breakfast table.

Quite.  Who wants to be going about a perfectly ordinary day, and have this suddenly happen to one?

Julie Andrews as Mary Poppins goes skating on turtle-back with Dick Van Dyke.

Skating on turtle-back with Dick Van Dyke. As one does.

Please share any bits and pieces you have come across recently that have surprised, delighted, intrigued or otherwise positively engaged you.

NB: the weekly whimsy thread is a stoush-free zone

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15 responses to “Weekly Whimsy”

  1. xulon
    xulon
    August 11, 2011 at 10:24 am |

    Some illuminating insights into the oeuvre of Roger Hargreaves.

    An example:

    If ’1984′ or ‘The Trial’ had been a children’s book, Mr Messy would be it. No literary character has ever been so fully and categorically obliterated by the forces of social control. Hargreaves may well pay homage to Kafka and Orwell in this work, but he also goes beyond them.

    We meet Mr Messy – a man whose entire day-to-day existence is the undiluted expression of his individuality. His very untidiness is a metaphor for his blissful and unselfconscious disregard for the Social Order. Yes, there are times when he himself is a victim of this individuality – as when he trips over a brush he has left on his garden path – but he goes through life with a smile on his face.

    That is, until a chance meeting with Mr Neat and Mr Tidy – the archetypal men in suits. They set about a merciless programme of social engineering and indoctrination that we are left in no doubt is in flagrant violation of his free will. ‘But I like being messy’ he protests as they anonymize both his home and his person with their relentless cleaning activity, a symbolism thinly veiled.

    This process is so thorough that by the end of it he is unrecognizable – a homogenized pink blob, no longer truly himself (that vibrant Pollock-like scribble of before). He smiles the smile of a brainwashed automaton, blandly accepting what he has been given no agency to question or refuse. It is in this very smile that the sheer horror of what we have seen to occur is at its most acute.

    Somewhere behind this blank expression though is a latent anger – a trace of self-knowledge as to what he once was – in the barbed observation he makes to Neat and Tidy that they have even deprived him of his name.

    The book ends with a dry reminder from Hargreaves that just as with the secret police in some totalitarian regime, our own small expressions of uniqueness and volition may also result in a visit from these sinister suited agents.

  2. David Irving (no relation)
    David Irving (no relation)
    August 11, 2011 at 1:10 pm |

    Thanks, tigtog. Following that link has enabled me to optimise the shit out of about 2 hours …

  3. tigtog
    tigtog
    August 11, 2011 at 1:49 pm |

    Try this one for some adding optimising, DInr - a retrospective of charming/stunning musical movie sequences (and some grumping about them darn movie composers of today needing to get off the lawn).

  4. OMG Squirrels
    OMG Squirrels
    August 11, 2011 at 2:58 pm |

    This:

    http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2011/01/wolves.html

    Had this tree-dwelling rodent in stitches.

  5. David Irving (no relation)
    David Irving (no relation)
    August 11, 2011 at 6:04 pm |

    Also dilightful, tigtog (although I refrained from playing any of the vids, being as I’m at work).

  6. paul walter
    paul walter
    August 11, 2011 at 7:15 pm |

    I suppose it’s safer than train surfing.
    “…Communications skills are questionable…prefers to speak in riddles..
    vocabulary…leaves much to be desired.”
    All of which will engender a tendency towards prolixity; incoherence.
    Just as well this is Julie Andrews of which we speak, we could be forgiven for thinking, “Pauline Hanson”.
    From here, do we follow Xulon’s line of investigation and assume that Poppins is an ally of Neat’ nTidy in Late Capitalism’s onslaught on untidiness as imagined by its enthusiasts, as expression and receptacle of Consciousness itself?
    The plummy, school-marmish delivery actually warns us we are within the ambit of an Edwardian version of another Nurse Ratched or Rebekah Brooks; a (default) Castrating Mother, although a “spoon full of sugar” has us more in mind of Juliet and Hayley Mills.
    Until we recall that Poppins secretly rejects properly constituted authority, in a civilised society. Too late we sense the transgression, quail at the subversion- this treacly Mrs Tidy is actually a tiger’s soul wrapped in goat’s clothing!
    Yes. Underneath all that voluminous clothing, behind the veil, our cognisance recalls too late a hiding place for bombs, from our old fridge magnet.
    We turn to flee but it’s past recall, our futures are mortgaged to a blinding flash of cordite and we find ourselves consigned to eternity by means of a sociopathic personality disguised as am over-ornate cup cake on set for the Brady Bunch.

  7. jumpy
    jumpy
    August 11, 2011 at 7:36 pm |

    Q. How do you turn a “know-it-all” into a “know-F-all”?
    A. Just take a few steps back.

    http://www.123opticalillusions.com/pages/albert-einstein-marilyn-monroe.php

  8. Gavin R. Putland
    Gavin R. Putland
    August 12, 2011 at 12:04 pm |

    At http://blog.libertarian.org.au/2011/08/09/counting-jedi/
    it would appear that the Jedi faith exists only on census night.

    Which reminds me of an esteemed colleague, now sadly deceased, who used to state his religion as “Theodolite“.

  9. Fran Barlow
    Fran Barlow
    August 12, 2011 at 12:59 pm |

    Deep Fried Butter … ?

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2024999/Deep-fried-butter-goes-sale-Iowa-State-Fair.html?ITO=1490

    It’s nice to know that there are still some indulgences that work well at a “tea party”! ;-)

  10. tigtog
    tigtog
    August 14, 2011 at 8:33 am |

    Ha – just found this link mentioned as part of a discussion on horror films:

    THE ORIGINAL Scary ‘Mary Poppins’ Recut Trailer

  11. Quoll
    Quoll
    August 14, 2011 at 9:14 am |

    Australia March 2014?

    PM Shock Jock

  12. tigtog
    tigtog
    August 14, 2011 at 10:14 am |

    I’ll let it stand for now, Quoll – but that link seems more stoushbait than whimsy.

  13. tigtog
    tigtog
    August 14, 2011 at 10:20 am |

    P.S. not saying it doesn’t have whimsical components, but on balance? Stoushbait.

  14. jumpy
    jumpy
    August 15, 2011 at 8:41 pm |

    To add to Fran@9, if I may.

    http://www.abc.net.au/correspondents/content/2011/s3292730.htm

  15. zorronsky
    zorronsky
    August 16, 2011 at 10:58 am |

    From crikey tues 16-Aug-11
    2. Simons: ABC News 24 runs on the smell of an oily rag.
    Oh boy and does it smell!

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