The Westmonster Daily

My niece likes to talk. A lot. Of course, it’s a little hard to understand what she means at the moment when everything she says sounds a lot like “da da da”, but there are two distinct words she is already using appropriately. Those are “please” and “thank you”.

Over the Easter weekend the whole nuclear family gathered and I had two days to observe her. She likes giving things to people and getting them back. It goes like this:

She picks up something and holds it out for you to see. But when you try to take it, she won’t let go. You have to say: “Would you please give this to me? Please?” before she actually gives it to you. And she repeats the “please” back to you. When you say “thank you” she repeats that as well. Of course, the next thing you do is give the item back to her, saying “there you are” (which is the same word as “please” in German) to which she usually replies with her version of “thank you”.

How cool is that? Can’t talk yet but she’s polite like a pro!

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On  a different note: She also imitates a certain animal. While other children may know what the dog says or how the cow goes, my niece knows what the hedgehog says! Unfortunately, that curling of the nose and snuffling and lip-pursing can’t be put down in writing… *dying of cuteness*

Wow!

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I know I am, as always, a couple of decades behind, having just now finished reading The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. But – oh! What a book! What a writer! What a poet!

I keep telling people how Rilke breaks my heart with his way of weaving the same words I use every day into beautiful, heartstrings-tugging works of art. But Margaret Atwood? I mean – is she even trying? Yes, the story is compellingly interesting. Yes, I wanted to know what was going to happen in this strange, yet eerily familiar world she had fabricated. But what really had me hooked were the words! The same type of words I use (okay, maybe not “palimpsest” [p.1] and the like, but I swear, it’s mostly everyday vocabulary), but combined SO gorgeously that I had to smile and gasp and marvel all the time at the sheer force of poetry chasing me to page after page.

My favorite quote about the handmaids having to live between the lines of society (or something like that) is lost somewhere in the book (*kicking myself for not writing it down when I had it right there before me*), so the last lines will have to do for now (here be no spoilers):

“As all historians know, the past is a great darkness, and filled with echoes. Voices may reach us from it; but what they say to us is imbued with the obscurity of the matrix out of which they come; and try as we may, we cannot always decipher them precisely in the clearer light of our own day.

Applause.

Are there any questions?”

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Bookmark check: You need to search everyone for the individual spot in which they are unique [Man muß an jedem Menschen solange suchen bis man den individuellen Punkt findet wo er originell ist]. J. Paul

Stumbling around the internet I just happened upon this site full of puns.

These two made me laugh out loud (yes, I actually lol’d):

…Baby seal walks into a club… what a tragedy…

and

…A guy walks into a bar. “OUCH!”…

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Another one on the puny site (*heehee*) reminded me of a joke my favorite ex-roomie tells a lot:

What do Budweiser and sex in a canoe have in common? (more…)

Here’s a poem-y text fragment I wrote in my poem-y diary just about three years ago:

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Tonight, while I was asleep, as good girls should be at night – which doesn’t tell you anything about me being good or bad or a girl of either of these convictions because for all you know I could be an averagely okay-behaved boy who just happened to be asleep at night because he accidentally misread the clock – I had a great idea. (more…)

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I posted a recipe for Because Pie over at the Munichies today, and one sentence made me think of a really silly joke I know. Here’s the one-and-a-half sentences that sparked this flash of inspiration: “place the dish in the oven for about an hour. Take it out, place the mozzarella slices on top and put it back in the oven for another half hour.”

And here’s the corresponding (?) joke (it’s a Q&A type of joke, where you ask some unsuspecting friend or foe a question and they’re bound to give the wrong answer):

Q: How do you go about putting an elephant into the fridge?

Naturally, most people struggle with the answer to this, as there doesn’t seem to be a sensible way (never mind a reason) of getting an elephant into a fridge, and of course they’re expecting a serious twist. Well, life could be so simple:

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