Mari Ness

...and because everyone's morning (or evening) should start with an exploding violin at least once:

Beaker's Ode to Joy:



Thanks to devinjay for the link.

Shocking, shocking. A St. Patrick's Day passes (whatever day you chose to celebrate it -- the actual date, or the reset date chosen by the Catholic Church this year) and NOT ONE OF YOU REMEMBERS THE MOST IMPORTANT OF ST. PATTY'S DAY TRADITIONS?

So here you go, a day late:



You're welcome :)

NPR interviews Cookie Monster. From a couple of you.

I actually owned a Cookie Monster puppet when I was a child, quite a large one, as I remember. (Then again, in my memories our very small dog was huge, whatever the photographic evidence might say -- that was one large dog. Really. Ignore my parents' pictures.) Its eternal fascination for me stemmed from the fact that this Cookie Monster actually had real cloth cookies which I could make disappear into his stomach. Which I did endlessly. I might add that I was easily amused as a child.

But my favorite Muppets back in my early Sesame Street days -- before the Muppet Show -- were actually Grover and Snuffleupagus. I can't account for the love of Grover, although it was certainly there, but my main reason for loving Snuffleupagus was that only kids and Muppets could see him, and adults couldn't. I found that utterly fascinating, especially since my dad played into it ("What's Big Bird talking about?" he'd say. "There's no monster there.") and the concept of something visible only to children seized my mind. I have to say that I was disappointed to find out that Sesame Street later decided to make everyone able to see him, taking away a little bit of my childhood with that.

So I'm alas quite aware that my entries have been a little thin of actual content lately, when they've been there at all. I'd like to tell you that this is because I'm caught up in an evil government conspiracy to hid the truth from you that the Wii is, indeed, a sophisticated methodology of brain control, oh, and that aliens, as it turns out, refuse to come out in public because, let's face it, they look like circus clowns, and no amount of makeup can disguise that terrorizing effect.

It's not that I don't have things to write about -- I do, with half planned and completely unfinished entries about movies, Tin Man, getting rid of all but one of my bras, some new teas at Teavana, an annoyed response to Mitt Romney's religion speech of yesterday which declared, among other things, that agnostics like myself are not Americans, and that we need to bring religion back into the public sphere, ignoring the very visible presence of large churches, synagogues, mosques and Christmas lights and menorahs all over the place at the moment; the U.S. may be many things, but hostile to religion, no. Hostile to agnostics, apparently. (Hmm. Apparently my rant was already written in my mind.) And so on. But it's more that I just haven't found myself writing about any of these, for whatever reason.

I suspect things will change after December 17, when I'll have full access to Livejournal at work and can return to my old habits of blogging as a thought comes to me. In the meantime, I can give you more Muppets:

dragonbane reminds me that Swedish Chefs, too, have problems with squirrels:

Today clearly needs the Muppets and the Village People:

Happy birthday, athenakt! And in honor of the day,the Muppet moment that always makes me think of you.