my bookish impulses
Roald Dahl is hilarious. =) Somehow or other my sis borrowed The Twits by Roald Dahl, and me, being extremely sick of Demographic Transition Models, Population Pyramids and Co-ercive Chinese Family Planning Policies, ditched all these to read it.
Apparently Roald Dahl is biased against people with beards! "The idea for The Twits simply said 'do something against beards.'"
I challenge you to read the following while having your lunch. =)
----------
As you know, an ordinary unhairy face like yorus or mine simple gets a bit smudgy if it is not washed often enough, and there's nothing so awful about that.
But a hairy face is a very different matter. Things cling to hairs, especially food. Things like gravy go right in among the hairs and stay there. You and I can wipe our smooth faces with a flannel and we quickly look more or less all right again, but the hairy man cannot do that.
We can also, if we are not careful, eat our meals without spreading food all over our faces. But not so the hairy man. Watch carefully next time you see a hairy man eating his lunch and you will notice that even if he opens his mouth very wide, it is impossible for him to get a spoonful of beef-stew or ice-cream and chocolate sauce into it without leaving some of it on the hairs.
Mr Twit didn't even bother to open his mouth wider when he ate. As a result (and because he never washed) there were always hundreds of old breakfasts and lunches and suppers sticking to the hairs around his face. They weren't big bits, mind you, because he used to wipe those off on the back of his hand or on his sleeve while he was eating. But if you looked closely (not that you'd ever want to) you would see tiny little specks of dried-up scrambled eggs stuck to the hairs, and spinach and tomato ketchup and fish fingers and minced chicken livers and all the other disgusting things Mr Twit liked to eat.
If you looked closer still (hold your noses, ladies and gentlemen), if you peered deep into the moustachy bristles sticking out over his upper lip, you would probably see much larger objects that had escaped the wipe of his hand, things that had been there for months and months, like a piece of maggoty green cheese or a mouldy old cornflake or even the slimy tail of a tinned sardiie.
Because of all this, Mr Twit never went really hungry. By sticking out his tongue and curling it sideways to explore the hairy jungle around his mouth, he was always able to find a tasty morsel here and there to nibble on.
----------
And there's the classic Roald Dahl expletives or vulgarities.
"I'll swish you to a swazzle! I'll gnash you to a gnozzle! I'll gnosh you to a gnazzle!"
Damn funny la! (oh dear, what's happening to me?)
----------
And the ending is very stupid but kind of funny especially if studying has driven you nuts.
But heads are not meant to be stood upon. If you stand upon your head for a very long time, a horrid thing happens, and this was where Mr Twit got his biggest shock of all. With so much weight from up above, his head began to get squashed into his body.
Quite soon, it had disappeared completely, sunk out of sight in the fatty folds of his flabby neck.
...Their heads SHRANK into their necks...
Then their necks began SHRINKING into their bodies...
And their bodies began SHRINKING into their legs...
And their legs began SHRINKING into their feet...
...There was nothing more left in this world of Mr and Mrs Twit.
----------
Okay, but there's something in this book that I liked.
If a person has ugly thoughts, it begins to show on the face. And when that person has ugly thoughts everyday, every week, every year, the face gets uglier and uglier until it gets so ugly you can hardly bear to look at it.
A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.
---------
My sis also borrowed A Tale of Time City by Diana Wynne Jones. I'd forgotten what it was about so I re-read it. Speed-read it in two hours last night (ie. didn't study at all, goodbye human geography). I absolutely love Diana Wynne Jone's books. She is as funny and twice as inventive as JK Rowling and I'm not kidding. (Btw, she wrote Howl's Moving Castle! ^__^)
They call them Children's Books; I always wondered why. I never saw them that way. I think I'll still continue to love so-called 'children's books' about 20-30 years later.
----------
Should I get Mika Nakashima's 'BEST'? But I already have more than half of the songs in the album. But I can't locate the rest =( mp3.zhongsou.com is not exhaustive...
Apparently Roald Dahl is biased against people with beards! "The idea for The Twits simply said 'do something against beards.'"
I challenge you to read the following while having your lunch. =)
----------
As you know, an ordinary unhairy face like yorus or mine simple gets a bit smudgy if it is not washed often enough, and there's nothing so awful about that.
But a hairy face is a very different matter. Things cling to hairs, especially food. Things like gravy go right in among the hairs and stay there. You and I can wipe our smooth faces with a flannel and we quickly look more or less all right again, but the hairy man cannot do that.
We can also, if we are not careful, eat our meals without spreading food all over our faces. But not so the hairy man. Watch carefully next time you see a hairy man eating his lunch and you will notice that even if he opens his mouth very wide, it is impossible for him to get a spoonful of beef-stew or ice-cream and chocolate sauce into it without leaving some of it on the hairs.
Mr Twit didn't even bother to open his mouth wider when he ate. As a result (and because he never washed) there were always hundreds of old breakfasts and lunches and suppers sticking to the hairs around his face. They weren't big bits, mind you, because he used to wipe those off on the back of his hand or on his sleeve while he was eating. But if you looked closely (not that you'd ever want to) you would see tiny little specks of dried-up scrambled eggs stuck to the hairs, and spinach and tomato ketchup and fish fingers and minced chicken livers and all the other disgusting things Mr Twit liked to eat.
If you looked closer still (hold your noses, ladies and gentlemen), if you peered deep into the moustachy bristles sticking out over his upper lip, you would probably see much larger objects that had escaped the wipe of his hand, things that had been there for months and months, like a piece of maggoty green cheese or a mouldy old cornflake or even the slimy tail of a tinned sardiie.
Because of all this, Mr Twit never went really hungry. By sticking out his tongue and curling it sideways to explore the hairy jungle around his mouth, he was always able to find a tasty morsel here and there to nibble on.
----------
And there's the classic Roald Dahl expletives or vulgarities.
"I'll swish you to a swazzle! I'll gnash you to a gnozzle! I'll gnosh you to a gnazzle!"
Damn funny la! (oh dear, what's happening to me?)
----------
And the ending is very stupid but kind of funny especially if studying has driven you nuts.
But heads are not meant to be stood upon. If you stand upon your head for a very long time, a horrid thing happens, and this was where Mr Twit got his biggest shock of all. With so much weight from up above, his head began to get squashed into his body.
Quite soon, it had disappeared completely, sunk out of sight in the fatty folds of his flabby neck.
...Their heads SHRANK into their necks...
Then their necks began SHRINKING into their bodies...
And their bodies began SHRINKING into their legs...
And their legs began SHRINKING into their feet...
...There was nothing more left in this world of Mr and Mrs Twit.
----------
Okay, but there's something in this book that I liked.
If a person has ugly thoughts, it begins to show on the face. And when that person has ugly thoughts everyday, every week, every year, the face gets uglier and uglier until it gets so ugly you can hardly bear to look at it.
A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.
---------
My sis also borrowed A Tale of Time City by Diana Wynne Jones. I'd forgotten what it was about so I re-read it. Speed-read it in two hours last night (ie. didn't study at all, goodbye human geography). I absolutely love Diana Wynne Jone's books. She is as funny and twice as inventive as JK Rowling and I'm not kidding. (Btw, she wrote Howl's Moving Castle! ^__^)
They call them Children's Books; I always wondered why. I never saw them that way. I think I'll still continue to love so-called 'children's books' about 20-30 years later.
----------
Should I get Mika Nakashima's 'BEST'? But I already have more than half of the songs in the album. But I can't locate the rest =( mp3.zhongsou.com is not exhaustive...
posted by HEAR'TS IN THE COUNTRY @ 1:27 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home