Fernbank really is so much fun. Joe and I went Saturday, our first visit since we impulsively became members a couple months ago (WHAT A WILD AND CRAZY LIFE WE LIVE, RIGHT?). The special exhibit, something about wildlife rescue, is mostly kidstuff—lots of flashing lights and colors and buttons to be slapped (I think a museum would do well to just have a permanent Button Slapping exhibit, tiny people really like that)—but Walk Through Georgia was kind of great. A little creepy, a little campy, a little outdated (many many of banks of telephone receivers you could pick up for more information about the taxidermied creatures on display and the kids were all like LOL WHUT ARE THESE, MOM), but that is the best thing for a natural history exhibit to be, I think. Also I got ogled by a dinosaur so that was cool. ANYWAY, YES, SO EXCITED FOR THE POOP.

Disney Surprise Gone Wrong- We’re not going to Chattanooga??? (by rlzeller0522)

I am weirdly a sucker for the videos of parents surprising their kids with trips to Disney World, but I am EVEN MORE OF A SUCKER for this video of parents surprising their kids with a trip to Disney World and the little girl MELTING DOWN because she wants to go on their previously-planned trip to Chattanooga instead. The best part is where it looks like she’s coming around, when she runs to her mom and starts crying on her lap—I was like, OK, she was just really overwhelmed and didn’t want to change the plans! I totally get that! I feel that way often in my life! But then she just keeps crying about Chattanooga. I am going home this weekend (oh, did I mention that I am from Chattanooga?) and I guarantee you this will be all over the local news and probably co-opted by the visitor’s bureau by then and that “I WANNA GO TO CHATTANOOGA” will be a thing that my family and Joe and I say for way way way too long into the future.

meltzer:

This photo essay on the children of Russian oligarchs is amazing.

Via Ashley’s upstairs neighbor, who is a very good speller.

WHERE THE RED FERN GROWS, Wilson Rawls

lazybookreviews:

Jeez, elizs, thanks for reminding me! Sooooo grateful.  (SARCASM)

Does anyone remember how, in C.S. Lewis’s ‘The Magician’s Nephew,’ the chick who would become the major antagonist is explaining to the children how she and her sister fought a massive battle for control of the world, and she was facing imminent defeat, and her sister is all “Victory, sister!” and the antagonist says “But not yours, beeoytch!” and says the FORBIDDEN WORD that turns everyone in the world to stone, including herself?

That is the role that invoking “Where The Red Fern Grows” plays in my marriage.  It’s mutually assured destruction.  It’s the nuclear option.  You’ll win, but at what cost?

You remember “Old Yeller”?  You remember how the kid’s dog died?   Yeah.  Well, in this book, the kid has TWO FUCKING DOGS, and the second one DIES OF GRIEF ON THE GRAVE OF DOG NUMBER ONE.

I should point out, here, that while “A Day No Pigs Would Die” is simply an exercise in brutal subjugation of the innocent spirit of childhood, like “wake up, kids, life is going to fuck you in the ass and then we’re going to run out of Social Security,” “Where the Red Fern Grows” is actually a very good book.  You shouldn’t read it, obviously, unless you are a Level Nine Masochist, but it holds out a little hope for the universe at the end.  Like when, after that last X-Men movie, Magneto looks like he might be able to get his powers back?  Like that.

Basically, though, this is the children’s book that Lars Von Trier would have written.

I have a newly-purchased copy of this book sitting in my apartment right now, waiting to be given to a friend who is about to have a baby, to whom her shower-organizers instructed us to all buy books that we think the little guy would like to read at certain ages. I got age 9, which is when my third grade teacher Mrs. Scarborough read this to my class in installments after lunch for several weeks. I bought my own copy at the Scholastic Book Fair when it came to school next and proceeded to wear it out over the course of multiple re-readings.

I never read Old Yeller but, yeah, I saw the movie once and I distinctly remember feeling unimpressed—this was what everyone got so worked up about? Dog gets rabies and kid has to shoot him? OH PLEASE COME ON. Where the Red Fern Grows taught me the word “jugular” because that is where a fucking MOUNTAIN LION bites Old Dan and kills him (or maybe that’s where Old Dan bites the mountain lion? I don’t remember. It also taught me the word “entrails” which, now that I think about it, had something more to do with Old Dan’s demise.)

There’s a bit on one episode of Louie about how getting a dog is just getting your family an excuse to cry in 10-12 years, and that’s basically what giving a currently-unborn-baby a copy of this book is like, too. Assuming he is of normal emotional capacity, in about nine years he is going to be really, really sad about some made-up dogs. Sorry, lil fella!

Etsy | veryfinehouse

(via groucho)

Jury’s still out on the Having Kids Thing, but I should probably buy one of these things now just in case, right?

(via I Like Your Face, the Internet’s greatest blog about teaching elementary school art)