The little lunch. The word for “lunch” in French is “le dejeuner”¹, and the word for “breakfast” is “le petit dejeuner” – “little lunch”. (Extra trivia: “jeuner” means “to fast”, so the French word for “lunch” translates literally to “un-fast”, similar to the English “breakfast”.)

Lemons and limes. In French, a lemon is “un citron“, and a lime is “un citron vert” – “a green lemon”.

Apples and potatoes. This is one of my favourites. An apple is “une pomme“, and a potato is “une pomme de terre” – “apple of the earth”. Something about that is just utterly lovely, the idea that a potato is an apple’s earthy cousin.

Redfish. In French, a goldfish is “un poisson rouge” – making it a redfish if translated literally.

1. I believe there’s an accent over one of those Es – but I have no idea how to format those on my Anglo keyboard, so I’m not going to bother with them

Reminds me of this, and not just because they both have unicorns:

Coincidence?

"So what's new, Grimey?"

In his review of the two newest episodes of Futurama, Zack Handlen of The A.V. Club (which: is one of my favourite websites. If you are a geek who adores crazy-in-depth pop-culture analysis, subscribe to it now) goes off on a thoughtful tangent in which he proposes that the episode ‘Homer’s Enemy’ marks “the beginning of the end” of The Simpsons.

If you’re not a Simpsons nerd and can’t identify episodes by their titles, ‘Homer’s Enemy’ is basically The One with Frank Grimes:

A fastidious new employee at the plant [Frank Grimes] doesn’t get along with Homer, who is anxious to make amends. Meanwhile, Bart comes into the possession of an abandoned factory.

Wikipedia rightly identifies ‘Homer’s Enemy’ as “one of the darkest episodes of The Simpsons“: Grimes, who’s “had to struggle for everything he ever got”, becomes increasingly furious with Homer and the ease of his accomplishments. It culminates with Grimes – nicknamed “Grimey”, against his wishes – impersonating Homer’s buffoonery, electrocuting and killing himself in the process. Homer then ruins his funeral by snoring during the service.

It is indeed dark. Handlen, while declaring the episode “hilarious, no question” (it is),  argues that “it fundamentally and permanently undermines the series’ core” – The Simpsons, he says, is built on “family”, and the series “can’t support that level of darkness without losing its heart”.

I disagree (though I do agree with Handlen’s other point, that the episode is “a clever piece of meta-commentary on certain basic elements that have been with the show since the beginning”), because The Simpsons has always had dark elements, particularly concerning Homer’s behaviour – consider ‘A Streetcar Named Marge’, in which he flat-out tells Marge he doesn’t care about her interests, or ‘Lisa’s Substitute’, where he says pretty much the same thing to his eight-year-old daughter. Both stories are wrapped up tidily, though in neither does Homer really earn his redemption (I remember being shocked by his selfishness in ‘Streetcar’ even as a small child)¹.

Note that both these episodes are from early on in The Simpsons‘ run (seasons four and two, respectively); Homer was a much darker, more selfish character before he morphed into the loveable idiot we’re familar with. ‘Homer’s Enemy’ really just combines those two sides of his character  in a single episode.

1. One could argue that Homer earns his ‘Lisa’s Substitute’ redemption in the later instalment ‘Lisa’s Wedding’, which functions as a sort of unofficial sequel; both episodes are about Homer’s relationship with other men in Lisa’s life.

ABC news: It’s their lead story!

The Australian: The lead (ie, the image slot) is the Afghan war. Rudd doesn’t even get his picture! Predictably dry of the Oz.

News.com.au: Top story – Photoshopped World Cup malarkey. (Of course that is their top story.) Rudd has an image, at least.

Ninemsn news: “CEO’s sticky fingers” wins the lead spot, but Gillard has her picture up there.

SBS World News: It’s the lead story, natch.

SMH.com.au: Seinfeld vs. Gaga is deemed the most important story (to be fair, SMH has five rotating “lead” spots, though none of them is devoted to Rudd/Gillard). The Rudd leadership threat is right up there, though.

However, every time I watch this episode – and it airs on pay TV frequently – I get anxious. Because it’s never made clear whether Elaine has made copies of the Soup Nazi’s recipes; if he was to snatch the recipes back from her, her gloriously delivered revenge would collapse. And even though I’ve seen the ep enough times to know he doesn’t snatch the recipes back, the dread always lingers in the back of my mind.

Solution: travel in time to 1995, request that Jerry Seinfeld and  writing team insert awkward line into the scene along lines of, “Hello Soup Nazi: I, Elaine Benes, have already duplicated your recipes, thus rendering your attempts to snatch them back from me ineffective. Next!” Sparkling dialogue!

It’s unknown what Charlie in the White House would’ve been about, beyond the obvious implied in the title. In Glass Elevator Charlie and Willy Wonka rescue an American space hotel overrun by Vermicious Knids (among other things; the scariest and therefore best part of the book comes when one of Charlie’s grandparents takes too many age-reversing pills and has to be rescued from Minusland, a gloomy underworld inhabited by the Gnoolies), and in recognition of their feat they’re invited to visit the White House by President Lancelot R. Gilligrass, a buffoon in the thrall of his strict nanny.

Presumably Willy Wonka would’ve mindfucked Gilligrass a little more in Charlie in the White House but Dahl only wrote one chapter, which is apparently on display in the Roald Dahl Museum in England. Unfortunately they don’t have said chapter available on their website – a shame, since there must be a tonne of adults out there with fond Charlie memories (like me!) who’d love to know what Dahl had in store for him next. Maybe next time I’m in England I’ll pop in and ask to have a quick read.

(Pictured: the Glass Elevator cover I had as a child. Probably the only Dahl book I owned that wasn’t illustrated by Quentin Blake.)

Coraline, I think, I would’ve been into bigtime as a kid: I loved (and still love) stuff that was scary but not gruesome, and Coraline fits into that niche with classics like The Witches. (Sidenote: I must’ve read The Witches a hundred times as a kid. I subsequently developed a terror of women with seashell noses, and I can’t wait for Guillermo del Toro’s adaptation.)

Much like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Coraline is about a young girl who ventures into a strange land, but where Wonderland is eccentric-creepy, Coraline’s otherworld is creepy-creepy. It’s ruled by the Other Mother, a sinister matriarch with buttons for eyes. Gaiman smartly declines to reveal too much about the origins of the Other Mother and her powers, or about the nature of the mirror world Coraline winds up in, and it’s the mystery that makes it spooky.

Also highly recommended: Henry Selick’s film adaptation of Coraline, which is also wonderful.

My copy of Coraline is part of the Bloomsbury Phantastics range, and includes several of Gaiman’s short stories. Some of them I’ve previously read, either online or in Fragile Things, but even the ones I’d come across before are definitely worth re-reading. The highlights are Sunbird, about an epicurean club whose members decide to eat a phoenix; October in the Chair, which ties nicely with The Graveyard Book; and Don’t Ask Jack, a genuinely unsettling tale about a spooky jack-in-the-box and its effect on the lives of the children who own it. (It’s one of the shortest stories in the collection, but also the scariest.)

I realise that at this point it’s cliche to profess one’s adoration of Gaiman, but: he is such a great writer.

The British theme song is kind stylish and catchy (sadly you must visit YouTube to watch the clip, on account of some jerk disabling the embed function. HATE).

The American theme song does not compare:

It rings of “generic wackiness” rather than “delightful quirkiness”, which is pretty typical of lots of American cartoons. (Not that all American children’s animation of inferior quality – I have very fond memories of some US cartoons, while there was plenty of off-putting stuff that came out of the UK.)

The first two books in the series, The Knife of Never Letting Go and The Ask and the Answer, stand out for their inventiveness, their fierce pace, and their vivid characters. Monsters of Men meets their standard, then ups the stakes, then ups them again, and then again. There are a billion points in the story where I didn’t think Ness could ratchet up the tension any more – and then he does.

Avoid spoilers, if you can. I’m not giving anything away, so, vague summary ahead: Monsters of Men is about young people coming into power, guided by those who are in power already (and who, in most cases, have been corrupted by it). Our heroes Todd and Viola are mostly back together again, in the sense that they share many more scenes than they did in Ask and find ways to communicate even when they’re apart, but they’re still constantly buffeted and battered by the competing forces of Mistress Coyle and Mayor Prentiss.

Who, by the way, is the strongest and most difficult character. Is he really the villain of this story, or is he its hero? Ness doesn’t answer that question (and nor should he), instead crafting a character who is at once charismatic, paternal, untrustworthy and chilling. Which is just the way it should be. Of all the characters in Chaos Walking, the Mayor will stay with me the longest.

(And maybe Manchee. Love that dog.)

Kudos to Ness for avoiding the drippy sentiment that often plagues finales (Deathly Hallows, anyone?), but he does cheat a few times: a lot of the support characters feel stand-in-ish, and a couple of the plot twists seem like they’ve been thrown in for shock value rather than to enhance the story. (Particularly the very final twist, which came thisclose to ruining the whole series for me. Ultimately, though, Ness turns it into a very satisfying conclusion.)

I’ve been lucky with the series: I only started reading it in the month leading up to Monster’s release, meaning I didn’t have to wait a year between instalments like everyone else. I literally read all three entries one after the other. So I’m not sure what the feeling is in the Chaos Walking fanbase – but I have a feeling they’ll like the final book as much as I did.

See: #30

1. Kaiju
2. Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo
3. Megatherium
4. Lunchtime atop a Skyscraper
5. Typographical personification, or Typo fairy
6. Dogcow
7. Titivillus
8. Remote viewing
9. Phantom cat
10. Elemental
11. Francis Walsingham
12. Lissajous curve
13. Old Man of the Mountain
14. Sampo
15. Magatama
16. Lists of unsolved problems
17. Luminiferous aether
18. Kitsune
19. List of eponymous laws
20. List of common misconceptions
21. Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office
22. List of unusual deaths
23. Lost lands
24. Lost city
25. Novikov self-consistency principle
26. List of cognitive biases
27. Blue hole
28. List of legendary creatures
29. Galatea of the Spheres
30. Death (personification)
31. Danvers State Hospital
32. Japanese holdout
33. Canary trap
34. Mongolian Death Worm
35. Enochian
36. John Dee
37. Baphomet
38. List of magical terms and traditions
39. Affair of the Poisons (L’affaire des poisons)
40. Aleister Crowley
41. Behemoth
42. Pow-wow (folk magic)
43. Psionics
44. Water cure (torture)
45. Unicursal hexagram
46. Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn
47. Hierarchy of angels
48. Demonology
49. Malleus Maleficarum
50. Geomancy

Click here to read part 1 of this series, 50 interesting Wikipedia articles.