The pain...

This morning before leaving for work I turned on the TV/VCR combo to set it to record "Coupling", which, if I go to the Y after work as planned I will not be home to see, and turned the channel to WGBH 44 just in time to hear Barney sing "I've got a friend whose name is pumpernickel, yum yum pumpernickel, pumpernickel bread," following which several multiethnic children sang verses about their own favorite breads, far too many of which I heard before I could finish programming the damn thing.

Anyway, everyone knows dinosaurs don't eat pumpernickel. Scala, yes; pumpernickel, I don't think so.

But then that rascal Barney is an atypical dinosaur, I suppose.

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I forgot to mention yesterday that Wednesday night one of the writers' group people at the Athenaeum was going on about how Mark Twain came to her in a dream and gave her a box full of sand (but not, apparently, a sandbox). It was apparently quite meaningful and significant.

Childhood beliefs

On the Changeling forum on white-wolf.com someone started a thread about odd childhood superstitions and beliefs, and I was inspired to post to it. I then realized it would make a spiffing livejournal entry.

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I had a terrible nightmare once (incidentally on a Christmas Eve) that gravity had grown so fierce in my bedroom that you could be crushed if you got out of bed to go to the bathroom. While I got over this one fairly quickly, there was a week or so where I was rather nervous at night about leaving the bed.

I hated closets too, thanks to Mr. Spielberg. But the closet light didn't help in the movie, so I was at a loss what to do.

I really liked dinosaurs, but dragons were scary. I couldn't watch the Rankin-Bass "The Hobbit" because it was going to have a dragon in it (and other terrible monsters). Even seeing the names of Mr. Rankin and Mr. Bass in the credits of "Rudolph" or some other holiday special filled me with a nameless dread.

(By third grade, however, I made myself read "The Hobbit" and decided it was cool.)

Naturally, full blanket coverage meant protection from evil. (And even now I still don't really like to let limbs dangle off the edge of the mattress.)

A neighborhood friend convinced me that Steve Austin (the bionic man, not the wrestler) was his invisible friend. One day Mr. Austin had apparently been badly injured in a fight with the cyborg Bigfoot and (I was told) was lying on my sliding board desperately fighting to survive. I remember praying for him.

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Someone else in the thread reported getting into an argument with another kid over his assertion that 2+4 could equal 6; the other kid maintained that only 3+3 could do that. I think that's just excellent.

Open letter

Dear Cammaron Di*az,

I just thought you might want to know that the URL of those "Brutal Tyrant Seks" pictures of you that you were mailing to your friend got sent to me by mistake. You should be more careful next time!

(Oh, and I think it's spelled "sex"!)

It's really weird, though, that you were expecting your friend to provide a credit card number to prove that he's over 18. Don't you know already? I'd like to think I knew someone well enough at least to have a general idea of his age if I were going to show him pictures of myself being raped by donkeys. But I don't want to tell you how to live your life.

Anyway, did you know your name is very similar to the name of a Hollywood star? I think that's pretty cool -- she spells it "Cameron Diaz," though.

I'm curious: how do you pronounce the asterisk? I think I want to spell my name with an asterisk too, but not if it's going to be pronounced funny.

Sincerely,
quislib*t (is that okay?)