Month: December 2013

Wee Beastie 2013 Omnibus (part 2)

(Link to part 1)

July 3:

While on the phone to grandy I can hear Wee Beastie chattering away to herself in the lounge. At the end of the call I come in to hear her saying to herself with much glee: “And that was the story of the three bear humptys!”
A fairy tale/nursery rhyme mashup? Sounds great! I ask if she can tell me the story of the three bear humptys.
“Ohhhh… I don’t think so.”
So it appears the tale of the three bear humptys has been lost to history. Sorry folks.

July 4:

My daughter, ladies and gentlemen. At 10pm, in the dark, reading ALL THE BOOKS. Staring at the illustrations and doing the sound effects.

Needless to say there were no books on her bed when she had her goodnight kiss some hours earlier.
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July 11:

Wee Beastie driving a train. Grandy in the caboose.
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August 3:

Wee Beastie knows we bought some treats home from the supermarket – English breakfast muffins, and mini ice-blocks.
“So what do you want for breakfast?”
“I want a…. ICE BLOCK!”
“How about a breakfast muffin?”
“Yes please! And after that, a BREAKFAST ICE BLOCK!”

August 12:

Wee Beastie’s favourite toy right now is a wooden plane. She puts her small animals and people in the cockpit, and balances more on the wings, and flies it around the room narrating the adventure they are having.

This plane is in fact a spaceship built by my grandfather, to my design, three decades ago. (It is in scale with my Star Wars figures and has a compartment in the back where a bounty hunter could put his prisoner. Oh yes.) She found it in a cupboard and claimed it for herself, and it makes me _indescribably happy_ to see her playing with it. Thanks Percy!
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August 28:

Wee Beastie has found a 30cm ruler made of transparent plastic. She is wandering around holding it up to her eyes: “I’m looking at things through my measuring glass”.

September 16:

Wee Beastie walks one of her Little People up to a toy playground swing. She does voices for both.
Person: I would like to swing!
Swing: Yes. Here is your change.
Person: (kicks over swing) But swings don’t have changes!
Person proceeds to toy playground slide.
Person: I would like to slide.
Slide: OK, here is your change.
Person: (kicks over slide) But slides don’t have changes either!

September 18:

Wee Beastie lines up all her cuddly toy friends.
WB: We are doing a show! You can sit right there.
Me: Great! What is the show about?
WB: They are all asleep and then they wake up and go to a show!
Me: Excellent. What do I do?
WB: You just sit there in the theatre. The show is about to start!
Me: Okay!
WB: The show isn’t starting yet because they are all asleep. They need to wake up to start the show!
Me: Shall I help wake them up?
WB: [angry] No! They are asleep at the start of the show! [thinks about this] This show is stuck.

September 24:

Me: All right Wee Beastie, if you’re not coming, I’m going to pick your socks. I pick… these ones!
WB: (several rooms away) No! I don’t like those ones!

September 30:

**Wee Beastie has a toy helicopter.
WB: Daddy daddy! I have a rescue helicopter! You be this doggie and you need to be rescued!
Me: OK. (as the dog cuddly toy) Woof! Help! I need to be rescued!
WB (as helicopter): I don’t think so.
Me: What? Help! Help!
WB: You have a sleep. I might rescue you later.
**WB flies helicopter away.

October 3:

Wee Beastie obviously did some rearranging of books and friends after we said goodnight…
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October 9:

Wee Beastie frequently talks about how her favourite character in the Hairy Maclary books is Scarface Claw, and how he is nice really, he just needs a friend.
Now she’s become obsessed with Monsters Inc., where her favourite character is the unscrupulous Randall.

Oh no. She likes bad boys.

October 15:

Wee Beastie starts kindy today! (That’s preschool for you overseas types.) She is very excited. We leave in five minutes..

November 16:

Wee Beastie watching a DVD. Two armoured knights enter pitched battle, swords clashing!
WB: Oh oh! They’re not sharing!

December 12:

Wee Beastie in the back seat of the car today, screaming and screeching in argument. The argument was between her left hand and her right hand, who were not sharing the cracker she was eating. Eventually they agreed to put the cracker back in the plastic container and save it for another day. And all was quiet again.

December 25:

Merry Christmas all! From Wee Beastie and her new friend, the Talking Frog from Monsters Inc.
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The Wee Beastie turned 3 just before Christmas. I look forward to 2014!

Wee Beastie 2013 Omnibus (part 1)

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(Photo from May 1)

Over on Facebook I try to share amusing moments from life with the Wee Long-Leggedy Beastie that is our daughter. Here’s the first half of 2013…

January 10:

Wee Beastie: Where is the apricot? *arms out, turns around, looking all over the room* Where has it gone?
Me: Have you lost it? Where did you put it?
WB: In my mouth!
Me: You ate it?
WB: Now it is in my tummy!
Me: I guess it is!
WB: In my mouth and my tummy. It comes out the hole.
Me: What did you say? What happens to the food in your tummy?
WB, pulling up my t-shirt, pointing at my bellybutton: It comes out the hole!
—
Subsequent questioning showed absolute confidence in her theory that the food that goes in her mouth later emerges from her bellybutton.

February 6:

Hearing an unpleasant wailing, Cal Greaney rushes to the Wee Beastie’s bedroom – but just before opening the door, she pauses. That’s not crying – WB’s lying in the dark pretending to be a cat.

February 28:

Wee Beastie: Can you draw a square?
(I draw a square)
WB: And a star?
(I draw a star)
WB: And a moon?
(I draw a crescent moon)
WB, giving me a look: That’s not a very good moon.

She is currently in her bedroom looking for books with better pictures of moons to show me where I went wrong.

March 2:

Wee Beastie bedtime story – she asked me to tell a story about Mickey and Minnie not feeling well. I told her about Doctor Jiminy Cricket coming to help them. (It turned out they’d eaten too much birthday cake.) After I finished she decided the story needed a coda: “Then Doctor Cricket Pitch got back in his car and drove away.”

March 14:

Me: Hey Wee Beastie, you’re dribbling.
WB: (big grin) You’re a dribble!
Me: No, _you’re_ a dribble.
WB: No, YOU’RE a dribble! Hee hee, we’re doing tricks!

March 20:

On a walk with Wee Beastie, after seeing and discussing a dog.
WB: Tell it again?
Me: So if you see a dog by itself, you don’t give it a pat, because it will be a bit afraid waiting for its mummy and daddy to come back. OK?
WB: Mmm. When you see a dog by itself…
Me: Yes?
WB: watch it in the swimming pool and then it takes its togs off and gets all dry and then it goes to see its husbands!!!
Me: yes, that’s pretty much it.

March 26:

Cal Greaney putting the Wee Beastie to bed, telling her nice things about herself.
CG: You are very funny, you make me laugh!
WB: You say Knock Knock?
CG: Knock knock!
WB: No, there’s no-one here.

April 19:

Having animated talk with my mother while Wee Beastie prepares to play with trains. WB gently takes my hand and walks me out the door, then lets go, backtracks inside, and calmly shuts the door in my face.
Undivided attention from grandma: achieved.
(Actually i didn’t let her get away with pushing me around but I was impressed by the smoothness of her intervention.)

April 25:

Somehow the Wee Beastie has ended up with 3 toothbrushes, which means brushing teeth is preceded by a lengthy period of arranging the collection and weighing up the brushes’ various merits before finally choosing which one to use.
Yesterday I decided one of them had frayed far enough, so WB carefully carried the “boy and cat” brush to the bin and dumped it inside.

Last night, as we prepared to do her teeth before bed, I overheard WB with her remaining toothbrushes, holding one in each hand:
(squeaky voice) Oh where is the boy and cat one? Where is it gone?
(normal voice) said the bumblebee toothbrush.
(squeaky voice) Oh I don’t know where is it? The boy and cat one is lost!
(normal voice) said the wiggles toothbrush.
Then she put both brushes in one hand, and with the other she picked up her toothpaste tube and walked it up to the brushes.
(deeper voice) It’s okay! The boy and cat one has just gone in the rubbish that’s all!
(normal voice) said the toothpaste.

I love my Wee Long-Leggedy Beastie.

May 21:

Special dessert chosen by the Wee Beastie: six frozen blueberries, and a pickle.

May 23:

Inspired by Morgan Jones and Janet Humphris, I just asked the Wee Beastie, “Are you a boy or a girl?”
She replied, “I aren’t.”
Case closed.

May 23:

While making dinner, I hear a wail from the lounge. This is what I find.
She was wound about three revolutions deep. (Forgive me for making her wait while I took a photo.)
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May 28:

Cal Greaney asks a very sad Wee Beastie why I made her sit in the corner.
WB: (crying) Because I didn’t listen.
Cal: I think you should say sorry to him.
WB: (looking down) Sorry daddy.
Cal: You should look at his face and say sorry.
WB: (meeting my eyes, very sad) I’m sorry about your face daddy.

June 18:

Wee Beastie carefully removes all the money from my wallet, replaces it with clothespegs. “There you are Daddy. I put pegs instead of money in case you might need some pegs.”

June 24:

Wee Beastie is working on her phone technique with a toy phone. I say it’s her grandfather calling! “Will you say hello to him?”
“No. But Baby Dolly will.”
I give her the phone, and she carefully puts it to Baby Dolly’s ear. After a moment she looks at me, eyes big and innocent. “She didn’t say anything! She was just quiet.”

(She didn’t want to talk to Grandy, but she eagerly had a full one-sided conversation with James the Number Five Red Engine.)

(link to part 2)

3 Linky

The Wee Beastie is 3 years old today! Hurrah!

Salon’s Hack List is marvellous this year – each entry written in the style of the hack it is honouring

Charlie Stross wants bitcoin to die in a fire
The weird mechanics of a bitcoin heist
(less controversially, Stross also hates Microsoft Word)

Minimalist circular city maps

Superhero spankings

A big assault on the selfish gene metaphor (there have been replies to this, of course, but I haven’t read any of them yet)

BuzzFeed article generator

The full stop (aka the period) – now it means “I am angry with you!”

Via John Fouhy, and also in the field of internet linguistics, I can’t even

Interesting discussion of the word of Norman Rockwell. I’ve always had a huge soft spot for Rockwell because I grew up with a big coffee table book of his work in the front room.

Pianist up on stage before large audience. The orchestra begin. But they are playing a different concerto to the one she prepared for. What happens next? (Well, she conquers, of course.)

Via Georgios, a lunchbreak romance

And finally, old Finnish people with things on their heads

Invisible Cow Linky

Matt Taibbi (still making Rolling Stone worthwhile all by himself) breaks down the situation in Camden – one of the USA’s dying cities. The man who struck the killing blow? Leading candidate for the Republican candidacy, Gov Chris Christie. (via Amund)

Twistiest tongue twister ever. But it’s a nonsense phrase as far as I can tell, which is cheating as far as I’m concerned…

People with opinions about the NZ film industry ought to read Jonathan King’s perspective on the thorny issues of subsidies.

This:

Confirmed: the Universe is a hologram! (Actually more technical and theoretical than this, of course, of course, but it’s always good to be reminded that for several decades hardcore scientists have basically concluded our perception of reality is wildly screwed up.) (via Chris Elder)

Love Actually movie critic showdown. I’ll just link to the opening salvo and finishing move, both by Christopher Orr. The second one links to a bunch of other responses. Sadly only five words survive of my post about it from a decade ago: “Went to see the new Brithope”. I said this whole thing that I’ve never seen anyone else get into. I might have also talked about the Keira Knightley/Egg storyline, because that’s by far the most interesting to talk about – Orr devotes most of his second piece to attacking it with gleeful ferocity. Love Actually! It has become a Christmas classic, though.

The world’s first real-life superhero. A gunfighting PI with hooks for hands. Weird and fascinating.

Upworthy headlines! Everyone is talkign about them now, not just me. They are a thing!

7-year old Russian kid draws pictures of himself riding around shooting bad guys. The pictures date from the 13th century.

Arresting series of nude photos – raises some questions about being “attractive”. Just fun. Not safe for work, obviously. (via Susan IIRC?)

This clip of Jason Segel and Paul Rudd, promoting 2009 bromance I Love You Man, has been doing the rounds. Because they are obviously really tired and it all goes very weird. Lovely

And it gives me an excuse to link to my review of the film, which was a real high point of this blog if you ask me.

Ursula K. LeGuin goes deep & smart into Tolkien & Middle-earth.

Ray Bradbury’s newly-released script for Moby Dick.

You’ve all seen this dog breeding thing, right? Damn. The photos are intense.

What life is like for players right on the bubble of being in the NFL (via Blaise)

Model of the I Love Lucy soundstage from above. Wondrous, somehow. (thanks David R for advising that this is a model, not a pic of the real thing! D’oh.)

And finally, via Hamish: find the invisible cow

Insurance, Monique says ur dumb

This is a call for advice, because insurance companies are dumb. It’s a small-scale issue in the grand scheme of things (cough Christchurch cough), but it’s irritating. So:

We had a fence & gate in our back yard. Then the big storm happened. Our gate fell down. Tower Insurance came to the party. They replaced our ruined shed, replaced our ruined carport roof, and put a new gate in the fence. The fence was finished September 13. We were happy customers.

On October 25 there was another storm in Wellington. It was just an ordinary sort of storm, I thought. The new gate did not survive.

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We told the insurer, hey, that gate didn’t withstand its very first Wellington storm. Wellington gets high winds and storms all the time. Ergo: it was not up to standard. Fix the gate properly this time. They replied, nope. That was a new event. You have to make a new claim.

We said: uh no way. So they sent an assessor around, who advised them: “the damage is not from bad workmanship but from another event.”

So. What’s our next move?
Forget it Jake, it’s Chinatown: we let them get away with it because what were we expecting anyway.
Make it right or we’re outta here: we put a finger in their chest and stare them down and say their guy is wrong and if they don’t fix our little gate situation then we change insurance providers, capeesh?
Counterstrike: I don’t know maybe there is some customer response channel that they are not telling us about where we can say, they got this wrong, and something might come of it. Also I want a pony.

Like, we’re not stupid, are we? Would any builder say that a brand-new fence that is fit for purpose would split apart like that one did in its very first, very average, storm? Was it a very average storm, or am I misremembering its severity?

And how broken is a system where the insurer chooses the builders to do the work, pressures them into delivering work fast and as cheap as possible, then has the absolute power to decide whether their work was good or not?

Insurance is dumb.