Twitterpated

• 02:08 Just saw "Spirited Away" for the first time. I really liked it, but @NowIsStrange didn't care for it. She's not into fantasy, though. #
• 02:09 @TarynAria You people with connections bother me. Are you in the Freemasons, or the Illuminati? #
• 02:11 @3x1minus1 He did a few years ago, didn't he? I don't watch the show much, but I remember some of his sketches. #
• 02:12 @InBloomers It's a smaller version of a shammy. #
• 02:22 @neilhimself twitpic.com/qh55t - Do Deformed Rabbit, it's my favorite. #
• 02:52 I think I need to invest in a car charger for my new phone. Now that I actually can do more with it, the battery drains very quickly. #
• 02:56 Do you think it's a bad sign that our new phones are named after the Greek goddess of discord? #
• 03:24 Barney is shaped vaguely like a tyrannosaur, but his teeth are flat. So what does he eat? #
• 03:25 Should I be ashamed that I HAVEN'T been keeping up with the Kardashians? #
• 13:05 Does Sarah Palin really think refusing to sign the books of people who waited in line for hour
  s will help her 2012 campaign? #
• 13:08 @Clamanity Lasers can do anything! #
• 13:08 @Clamanity Which one? Not Barney, I hope! #
• 13:09 @Clamanity Hey, he has reason to be. #
• 13:51 What was Popeye's sibling thinking when naming a kid "Poopeye"? #
• 14:09 @gick7 I asked Bill Cosby about it, but he just said, "Jell-O reeza frozzum hoben skillum!" #
• 1
  4:09 Why do so many famous cartoon characters have nephews but no children, anyway? #
• 14:15 @huggythuggy Yeah, there are exceptions, but the nephew thing is still pretty common. #
• 15:09 @huggythuggy That could be. #
• 15:09 @huggythuggy Barney Rubble? Didn't he adopt? #
• 15:10 @huggythuggy A bear in his natural environment? #
• 15:23 @huggythuggy That's true. #
• 16:13 Okay, I guess I'd better do some studying. Not sure I'll be ready for this test by Tuesday, but I'll try. #

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Monday Morning Miscellanea

1. I feel somewhat obliged to defend Lady Gaga, inasmuch that a lot of the criticism of her that I see tends to be along the lines of, "She thinks she's a performance artist/shocking/weird, but she's really not!" (Either that or "she's a man," in response to which I direct you to this, a creation of not_glimmer.) I guess I don't really know what Miss Germanotta is going for, but if she's just a regular pop star who enjoys playing dress-up, is there something wrong with that? Why does someone wearing a goofy costume have to be seen as shocking or controversial? Oh, and speaking of Lady Gaga, do you think this is real? (WARNING: Picture not safe for work.)


2. What was Sarah Palin THINKING by not signing the books of people who'd waited in line to meet her? Wait, I just used "thinking" and "Sarah Palin" in the same sentence, didn't I? Maybe that answers my question right there. Really, though, the woman obviously isn't afraid of alienating people, but it always seemed previously that her disdain for certain people and institutions was calculated to make her Joe Six-Pack base like her more. The strategy apparently didn't work too well in her bid for vice president, but there's a certain amount of sense to it. But these people who came to her signing actually LIKE her, and bought her book to prove it! Does she really want to risk turning these people against her, if she really IS hoping for a presidential run in 2012? Well, maybe her friends in the right-wing media will find some way to spin this in her favor, like how she wasn't REALLY drastically unprepared and in over her head at the Katie Couric interview, but was simply taken aback by Couric's audacity in bashing Alaskans by asking if she reads any newspapers. People who like Palin might well be a vocal minority by this point, but they still baffle me.


3. As you might have seen if you read my Twitter updates, I was pondering the other day over how many cartoon characters have nephews, but no children of their own. Just offhand, I can think of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Scooby-Doo, Popeye (actually, he might not count because I believe Swee'pea was originally conceived as being his adopted child, but the cartoons put her in Olive Oyl's care), Bugs Bunny, Kermit the Frog (not a cartoon, but it's the same basic idea)...I'm sure there are plenty of others as well. I suppose it's easier for characters who have been established as single not to have unexplained children, but in how many of these cases do we see the sibling who did reproduce? I believe Huey, Dewey, and Louie have been officially established as the sons of Donald's sister Della, and the Duck Family Tree obscures the name of their mysterious father. It's interesting that Goofy apparently reproduced when Mickey and Donald never did, though.

Balloonatics

Since the balloon had been a popular toy for some time by the period in which the Oz books were written, it's not too surprising that they would appear as characters in the series. The first example of living toy balloons (as opposed to the non-living hydrogen-filled balloon that the Wizard used to reach Oz in the first place) appears in The Tin Woodman of Oz, in which the main characters visit Loonville, a forest clearing in the Gillikin Country inhabited by the Loons. They're made of rubber and filled with air, aside from the king, who contains a lighter-than-air gas and is tied to his throne with a string. The king's name is Bal Loon, and he was appointed ruler because he had less common sense than any of his fellows. Other notable Loons are Panta and Til, the former of whom was an advisor with a rather inflated opinion of himself, and the latter the one in charge of mending and re-inflating punctured Loons. The jokes behind Bal and Panta are obvious, but what does "Til Loon" mean? Well, someone who read the original handwritten manuscript reported that it was originally "Sal Loon," but that didn't go over too well at the time. Because a kid reading a play on the word "saloon" will automatically want to shoot whiskey, right? Don't ask me what the logic is behind this. I guess Wal, the Loon from Belgium, didn't play a part in this particular story for whatever reason. {g} This video includes the Loonville portion of the recent computer-animated take on Tin Woodman, and gives King Bal a surfer dude kind of voice. I'm sure that wasn't what Baum was thinking of when writing the character, but it works pretty well.

While the Loons are the only balloon people in Baum's Oz books, Thompson introduced some of two of her additions to the canon. In Hungry Tiger, Ozma is kidnapped by a giant balloon man named Atmos Fere, an explorer from the Cloud Country who descends to the surface of the Earth using a pair of iron boots. Ozma punctures him in order to escape, but when the two get to understand each other better, they become friends. A blacksmith in Ev named Rusty Ore re-inflates Atmos, and he and Ozma eventually join Evered of Rash in his search for the missing Rash Rubies.



Finally, in Gnome King, Peter Brown encounters Sandaroo, the Lord High Bouncer of Balloona, on a street corner in Philadelphia. He is described as having a "dark and merry" face, and "his long pointed beard and slouch hat gave him the appearance of a merchant from some far country." He sells Peter a green balloon, which turns into a bird and tries to take Peter to Balloon Island, where he would serve Queen Luna as an airrend boy. As the balloon bird relates, the Queen's servants were always exploding, so she had Sandaroo search abroad for a more solid one. We never get to see Balloona, as Peter lets go of the bird's leg and lands in the Nonestic Ocean near Ruggedo's Island, but the descriptions given by the bird make it sound like not only the people are inflated like balloons, but so is the island itself. If there's some kind of link between these balloon countries, it's never explicitly stated, but maybe Loonville was settled by exiles from Balloon Island, or vice versa.



By the way, happy birthday to fellow Oz fan graycardinal!