Materials: 4 skeins Knit Picks Telemark (100% Peruvian Highland Wool), 2 in Drift and 2 in Deep Navy. Size 0 and size 1 needles. Pattern: a fusion of Norwegian Totoro Mittens and Anemoi Mittens.

Time: Coupla weeks.

Cost: $8.

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The pineapple was a particularly popular ornamental motif in the eighteenth century.  This page has a good brief overview of its history (and, as a bonus, explains why it’s called l’ananas in French, which has caused me mild confusion while reading grocery receipts on more than one occasion).  Typically American commercial revisionism has it as a mere symbol of hospitality, but this is of course a hospitality steeped in the economics of colonialism: its popularity was very much a product of its symbolic prominence in the British trade within the West Indies.

Here, for instance, is an official portrait of King Charles II being presented with the first British pineapple, painted circa 1675:

At the same time, it became a favorite artistic motif, and so you’ll find it used on all kinds of contemporary objects, textiles, and architecture.  Most fantastically, Dunmore House, built in 1761 in Scotland, uses the pineapple to striking effect.

Rent it today!

—

Yesterday, I took a lovely trip to Burlington and Plattsburgh.  As promised, Burlington made me miss Madison horribly, but I consoled myself with a ferry ride, elusive and non-Canadian flavors of Ben and Jerry’s, an enormous Lipsmacker that fits comfortably inside my closed fist, some no-longer-quite-so-ubiquitous bottles of Bath & Body Works hand soap, and of course Cheez-Its and Cooler Ranch Doritos.  I also walked out of Bath & Body Works with a home fragrance diffuser thingy, as our windows are hermetically sealed under a layer of shrink-wrapped plastic for the winter and I’ve grown paranoid about the slightly stale smell that the air tends to get at this point in the year.

And that is why I now have this plugged into my living room wall:

It’s not the Dunmore Pineapple, but it’ll do.

Scene: a coffee shop near the McGill campus.  After standing indecisively in front of the menu board for a few minutes, I step forward to order.

All of the following dialogue takes place in French.

ME: Hi, a cup of Earl Grey, please.

(EMPLOYEE 1 goes to get ME’s drink.)

EMPLOYEE 2: Can I help you?

ME: No, that’s okay, I’ve already ordered.

EMPLOYEE 2: What did you get?

ME: A cup of Earl Grey.

EMPLOYEE 2: That’ll be $2.31.

(ME rifles through wallet for money.)

EMPLOYEE 2: Are you from Montreal?

ME: No.  Why?

(ME wonders why he asks.  Not far from an English-language university, she is far from the only person to order in English-accented French.)

(EMPLOYEE 2 turns triumphantly to EMPLOYEE 1, who’s handing me my drink.)

EMPLOYEE 2, to EMPLOYEE 1: Ha!

EMPLOYEE 2, to ME: Because the anglophones in Montréal don’t speak French!  (Parce que les anglophones de Montréal ne parlent pas le français!)

(Insert business wherein ME stage-whispers that it’s because she’s an American, and EMPLOYEE 2 responds in feigned horror.)

SCENE.

Once again, Garth has commandeered my email account in order to communicate his wishes.  That’s what I get for not being the one who walks home past the cat food store daily.

To: Peter Jejune <[redacted]@gmail.com>

Subject: KIBBELS

Message: DEER KITTYDADY

WE WUD LIKE TO BRING TO YOR ESTEEMD ATTENSHUN THE SEVEE SEVEER VERY LOW LEVULS OF FOOD MUSH THAT REMAYNE AT HOM.  WEE FEER VERY MUCH THEE IMPENDING ARRIVAL OF STARVAYSHUN RASHONS, AND WEE DO NOT WISH TO FURTHER REDEWSE AR ALL REDDY SUHV SVUH SVELL STREEMLIND MUSCULACHUR.  SHUD CONDISHUNS CONT

BURD BUUURD BURRRRRDDD FADSJIRQWEOI UN,  JKSADFEUIOPQ BURRRD BUUURD BURD JLANXVZNJK QWERUOP890YIO PNJ BUUUURD]I

WEE HAV EXPRESSD OUR HUNGER TO THEE LOCAL WILD LIFE IN MOST FIRM AND VIGORUS TERMS. SHUD THEY NOT COPERAY COWOPERA AGREE WITH OUR STRATAGEMS, WEE MYTE SUGGEST YOU PROVYDE A VARIETY OF CHIPS.  WEE ARE TOLD THAT BURDS CAN BE CAWT WITH DORITOS, TOSTITOS, FRITOS, OR CHEETOS.

YOURS
MOST SINCEERLEY
GARTH PANTS
WHO ALSO APPRESHEYATES DORITOS
P.S. AND FRITOS
P.S.S. AND IS TOLD THE FLUFFY WUN LIKES CHEETOS

Materials: 2 skeins Knit Picks Palette (100% Peruvian Highland Wool), 1 in White and 1 in Pimento. Size 1 needles. Pattern: Snowbird, originally from the Fall 2008 issue of Vogue Knitting.

Time: Three weeks.

Cost: $4!

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Materials: 1 skein Tahki Donegal Tweed (100% Pure New Wool) in Black (890). Size 5 needles. Pattern: Dashing.

Time: A couple of weeks, largely dormant.

Cost: $20 for two balls of yarn, one of which I didn’t use.

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It’s the end of the week, and I need an excuse to post YouTube videos.

After my last post, I got to thinking about the perpetual appeal of the resonant, male, overdramatic voiceover.  For example:

Don LaFontaine, whose death got a lot of publicity last year:

GOB Bluth, as played by Will Arnett:

And lastly, this story on NPR , a.k.a. one of my very favorite things of 2008: an interview with two voice-over actors who do threatening political ads. It was something that strongly resonated with me at the time that it aired, because we went through at least one election cycle in Wisconsin where we’d see political ads for the Senatorial race that did just what they discuss in the interview.  “Russ Feingold was the only US senator to vote against the US Patriot Act!” a happy, proud voice would tell us, music swelling softly in the background.   “Russ Feingold was the only US senator to vote against the US Patriot Act!” a disgusted voice would tell us as a piano plinked a few dark notes in a minor key.

In the interview, I particularly love how you can just hear their lips curling in distaste as they spit out the ever-ominous word liberal.  It  makes me wonder what a similarly derisive pronunciation of the word conservative would sound like: light irony, perhaps, barely tempering raw derision?

I’ve written before about how I wouldn’t mind a soundtrack to my life–or merely one that provides music for an appropriately dramatic entrance–but I think I need to correct that to say that I wouldn’t mind a soundtrack or an overdramatic voice-over to narrate banal household events.

Gaaaaarth… pursues his TAIL!

Sebastian… claims he doesn’t know about the missing milk in the cereal bowl.  He’s NOT telling the truth.

Peter… eats MUESLI!*

Can’t you just imagine the way that they’d tear into all the vowels in the word “muesli”?

* Pete gleefully stocked up on some super-cheap imported muesli on sale at the PA two weeks ago only to find that Swedish efficiency had dutifully sucked all the joy out of it.  It’s a bowl of dried oats — like, exactly what you’d get in a bag of the unflavored old-fashioned oats you buy for baking — with a couple specks of also unflavored puffed rice and some nearly-microscopic diced dried vegetables near the bottom.  Although I see that we bought it for much less than it sells at IKEA, I’m even more dismayed to see that we don’t get the bag art featuring a flaxen-haired Scandinavian lass to reinforce its salubriousness.

I learned from NPR that Jan Gabriel, who originated the “Sunday!  SUNDAY!  SUNDAY!!” voice-over for auto-racing advertisements, died recently.  It’s no secret that we’re fans of the distinctive rhetoric he inspired around here.

Moreover, according to the uncited sources at “Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!”, the first “Sunday” was “to inform”; the second “Sunday,” “to confirm”; and the third “Sunday,” “to excite.”

R.I.P. indeed!