This week’s whimsy is brought to you by revoltingly cute baby animals from the Daily Squee. I think they are begging for a caption, or at least for fond reminiscences of favourite tales of anthropomorphised animals from ones misspent youth.
cute baby animals - British Squee
Please share any bits and pieces you have come across recently that have surprised, delighted, intrigued or otherwise positively engaged you.
N.B. The weekly whimsy threads are a stoush-free zone.
Baby fox to baby badger: “Are you edible?”
Agree about the cuteness, but.
You may need to put sunglasses on before beholding this bevy of baby badgers.
Badger: ‘hey Julia’
Fox: ‘Hey Rob’
No linkage, but I just gave a lecture on “Web 2.0″.
I managed to include references (and screenshots, though very very tame ones in the second instance) of both I Can Has Cheezburger and Grindr in the same lecture
Beaker the Muppet has forgotten the words to Freddy Schiller’s and Luddy Beethoven’s greatest hit. I’ve provided some of them below so you can sing along.
Joy, thou spark from Heav’n immortal,
Daughter of Elysium!
Drunk with fire, toward Heaven advancing
Goddess, to thy shrine we come.
Thy sweet magic brings together
What stern Custom spreads afar;
We are sisters, we are brothers
Where thy happy wing-beats are
To the soul of God’s creation
Joy eternal brings her draught
In strong secret fermentation
Flames the cup of life aloft
Coaxing grassblades to the daylight
Making chaos into suns
She in spaces never fathomed
By the gazer pours Her glance
At the breast of blessed Nature
All that breathes now drinks of Joy
Every nation, every creature
She draws with Her on Her way
Brings us friends in our misfortune
Charities’ garlands and grapes’ blood
Brings to insects lust voluptuous
- And an angel faces God
That from baseness’ vile dominion
We may rise to soul’s rebirth
We must join eternal union
With our ancient Mother Earth
So from baseness’ vile dominion
We will rise to soul’s rebirth
We will join eternal union
With our ancient Mother Earth
It’s lambing time in my neck of the woods and the sheer joy of watching these darlings frolicking and racing each other always makes me smile and oooh and ahhh.And the newborn calves are pretty cute too.
Badger badger badger badger..!
THat’s interesting, Paul, the translation on my parents’ old copy LP cover was very different.
Joy, bright spark of divinity,
Daughter of Elysium,
Fire-inspired
We tread your sanctuary…
etc.
“Yes Tim, you still have to do the dishes”
@Helen, oh how could I have forgotten about that!
The same producer has an equally weird take on owls.
Helen, the translation on your parents’ LP cover was probably a correct translation from the original German. What I’ve posted is probably more of a paraphrase than a translation (and most of mine is an English translator’s rendering of Dostoyevsky’s rendering, using some degree of license for fictional purposes, of Schiller’s German original).
While trying to find Lateline last night on the ABC’s web site, I found myself watching this classic piece of Blues instead.
Sprinkler Rainbow Conspiracy
No link, but my newish inamorata, a Buddhist, has asked me to bury and hold a memorial service for the mouse that this morning fell prey to the mouse-trap in my kitchen.
I’m now wondering who to get to officiate, and pondering what religious persuasion is followed by the majority of mice?
@13 – laughed so hard that the spouse came to check on me. Specially as I had just listened to last night’s LNL all about the US’s underclass. Scary to think that it could happen here too.
Freemasons the lot of them.
“..what religious persuasion is followed by the majority of mice?”
mmmm, I know…
http://bigeyedeer.files.wordpress.com/2007/05/cheeses.jpg
@ 17:
I never expected to get such a curdeous answer so quickly!
The two things that have most surprised, delighted, etc, me over the past week have probably been (1) my five year old asking me if we could listen to the Skatalites on the way to child care and (2) listening to these two women’s cover of a Howlin’ Wolf song on a community radio station while driving through the streets of Brisbane.
@15 Curi-Oz the hundreds of thousands of homeless and 2 million or more on disability (not to mention neglected aboriginal communities) would probably assert that Australia’s underclass has been around, oh, since white settlement.
@ terangeree
Leave out some block cheese for the Death of Rats and the raven (not olives he always mistakes those for eyeballs). Probably in the backyard if you have a mouse problem.
James, junior has choice taste and is Totally Together.
Terangeree, I have always assumed animals and plants to be followers of Deep Ecology. So it kind of makes sense to celebrate the life departing occasion with recycling of the body as in green burial and a short life confirming ritual by planting an appropriate plant on top.
What, then, is the appropriate plant for a mouse?
Mice and rats (especially roof rats, the most common ones in Australia) are tied very closely to the human population, much more so than the natural one. Heaven for a roof rat in particular is a steady drip of water, access to your compost bin and a spot in the roof joists close to the fireplace flue.
A mouse might be pleasantly planted under wheat or barley.
Heh, you could always plant a cheese fruit tree (Morinda citrifolia). However, it really depends on the environment of the burial place and what you fancy to grow there too. A native flower would be nice. I have been know to pick up road kill and bury it on my 2 acres. Two pretty face wallabies under Black Bean and Mulberry trees, Sooty owl under Evodiella, as well as assorted stray cats under a mixture of Callistemons and Syzygiums. If I had a choice, I would like for myself a Ficus virens, there is nothing more live giving then a sprawling rainforest fig, needs a bit of room thou.
re: Ludwig van/”Ode to Joy” translations (or transpositions, anyway), I always liked the Anthony Burgess version from A Clockwork Orange (the novel, natchly, not the vastly inferior movie version):
Boy, thou uproarious Shark of Heaven,
Slaughter of Elysium,
We will tolchok you on the Rot
And kick your grazhny vonny Bum.
Plus, it scans properly.
On a lighter note, my favorite crackpot close-harmony songstresses, who I thought had split up, are now back working together again. Here’s one of their delightfully daffy musical mock-PSAs (viz., ‘public service announcements’)…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ni_uRU3bVz4
(FDB, please forgive the lousy sound synch.)
Although I have to say, I’m not fully on board with the way they’ve fully embraced the whole kandy-kolored nutbar thing. Here they are in an earlier, tuffer phase (stick around for the snappy ingenious break at the midpoint)…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnvbOTFFy8Q&feature=related
Bonus points: I was present at that performance. Though I wasn’t the one filming it…
On a less light note – Rafe posted this over at the Cat. I thought it might be of interest here as well.
Christchurch Quake Map
Changes moniker back to avoid moderation…
On a less light note – Rafe posted this over at the Cat. I thought it might be of interest here as well.
Christchurch Quake Map.