what we did on our winter vacation

Spent three weeks watching five seasons of Lost, finishing just in time for the premiere of the sixth and final season next Tuesday. BRING IT ON.

Oh yeah—also spent a lot of time with family in Virginia; ate some really good BBQ in Memphis; made some Oreo truffles (hat tip: Rhettonica); read a couple of good books; sided with Coco; bought some fabric for a Dresden plate quilt that I will start but will surely never finish; reconsidered moving to Sweden upon hearing news of the Supreme Court's transformation of corporations into a real live boy.

Good times.

Lavémonos los Dientes

We went to the Planned Parenthood used book sale in Santa Barbara this weekend and came home with some interesting books. One of the things I found was an old LDS hymnal in Spanish titled Himnos de Sión. As I was looking through it, I came across a song titled "Lavémonos los Dientes." Here are the lyrics in Spanish:

Los Dientes no me lavaré, Un niño exclamó
Ya me lavé, ya me peiné, con eso me bastó.
Mas en su boca se oyó un grito de placer,
Y los microbios sin temor, salieron a comer.

Dijeron, llenos de placer: Aquí hay buen hogar
Entre sus dientes sin lavar, podremos festejar.
Oyó el niño de su plan y pronto se lavó,
A los microbios él mató, ni uno escapó.

It took a little bit of searching, but I found an old post on Times and Seasons that contains the lyrics to the original English version (titled "Tooth Bugs"), which I'm posting here so all the gringos out there don't have to be stuck reading my own translation.

I do not want to clean my teeth, a little boy once cried,
I’ve washed my face and combed my hair, That's quite enough, he sighed;
Some tooth bugs hiding in his mouth, Began to dance in glee;
At last we’ve found a home,” they cried, We do not have to flee!

This boy has such a nice warm mouth, We’ll linger here all night;
His teeth are filled with bits of food, We’ll eat with all our might!
The small boy heard their shout of glee, Get out of there, he cried;
He grabbed his brush and scrubbed and scrubbed ‘Till every tooth bug died.

Two questions: how did this song ever make into the hymn book? And why did they ever take it out?

Birthday surprise

I came home after a long day's work to find a birthday package from Lynda hidden behind the kitchen shutters (that UPS guy is so smart). Here's what was inside:

I Like Food, Food Tastes Good: In the Kitchen with Your Favorite Bands.

How did she know?! I've had my eye on this book for a while now. It's my two favorite things (food and music) rolled into one.

Thanks, Lynda!

The final countdown

So Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows goes on sale at the stroke of midnight, and some people are completely losing it over the fact that some newspapers, including the New York Times, published a review of the book ahead of its release date.

In a Huffington Post entry titled "Harry Potter And The Fact That I Hate The New York Times," Rachel Sklar writes:

How on earth could you run a review of the last Harry Potter? To do so, you had to break an industry-wide embargo -- and not just any embargo, an embargo that is almost tantamount to a public trust at this point, given the worldwide hype about Harry Potter and the excitement and intense emotion generated by -- finally -- the end to this epic series. . . .

But, hey, you're the New York Times, boldly going etc. Why should you care about honoring a book that's been over a decade in the making just for the sake of getting a two-day jump on the competish?

Competish? What are you, TMZ?

The book reviews also drew the ire of J.K. Rowling herself:

I am staggered that some American newspapers have decided to publish purported spoilers in the form of reviews in complete disregard of the wishes of literally millions of readers, particularly children.

Honestly, I don't see what the big deal is. I mean, this isn't the Pentagon Papers we're talking about here. If you're a diehard Potter fan and are truly wary of spoilers, is it really that hard to turn the page or not click on the link? I read the NYT review—it doesn't give away any crucial plot points about Harry dying or anything. Instead, much of it seems to focus on the literary achievements of the book and the series as a whole (doesn't anybody care about anything besides what happens at the end?) It merely assured me that I should buy the book and that I'm in for a good read. If I were Rowling and her publishers, I'd be ecstatic that my book got such a great review from such a respected newspaper.

As for this embargo nonsense, BStu put it nicely over at Shakesville:

While someone violated an embargo, it wasn’t the New York Times or Baltimore Sun. The embargo here is specifically on retailers. A few obviously failed to uphold their part of that bargain and the publisher can take appropriate action against them for violating their contract.

Embargo has a very specific meaning in journalism, though, and neither the Times or the Sun violated an embargo. Basically, if the publishers had allowed those papers an advance copy of the book with the agreement that the review would not be printed until the book was released commercially, then the papers would have agreed to an embargo. As it stands, they were no party to such an agreement and bound by no ethical code to refrain from printing the review.

There you have it. Can everyone just relax now?

So it goes.

I was scanning the headlines for something stupid and/or political to write about, when I discovered that Kurt Vonnegut died yesterday at the age of 84.

It makes me sad to think that we just lost someone who had so much moral vision.