Month: July 2023

All The Wascally Wabbits

If you’re around the same age as me, or even older or younger, you may be familiar with “Bunnykins” china. This is a pattern made by Royal Doulton featuring adorable anthropomorphized rabbits and it’s been a staple of baby showers, christening gifts, and Christmas presents for decades. I had a Bunnykins bowl, mug, and plate when I was a child, and my daughter also had one. Even today, they’re still popular and I sell a lot of them at the antique market. The other day, I was offered a really good deal on a box of Bunnykins china—plates, bowls, mugs, and egg cups—and I couldn’t say no. I brought the box home and started to unpack it, showing each piece to Ken, until he looked at one carefully and his brow furrowed:

Ken: What the hell is going on HERE?
Me: What are you talking about? It was a really good deal.
Ken: Not that. What are these rabbits DOING?!

It was in that moment that I realized two things. First, that I had never actually looked closely at the rabbits on the china, and second, that the rabbits on the china are INSANE. On one plate, the mother rabbit, who’s dressed like a character from Little House on the Prairie, is apparently trying to hang wallpaper (?) and she’s being swarmed by an assortment of lagamorphic “helpers” who are systematically destroying both the wallpaper and the room she’s trying to redecorate. One bunny has dumped a bucket of paste on another’s head, there’s ripping and tearing and randomly, and a mouse is running away with one of the rolls.

On a different piece, a bowl, the same mother rabbit is losing her sh*t because she’s taken her bunnies shopping and they’ve overturned a vegetable cart and are now rioting like an insurrectionist mob. They’re stomping on cabbages, throwing potatoes, and the same random mouse is part of the mayhem AGAIN. And on a mug, there was a scene of the mother and her horde at the butcher’s shop, only the butcher was a pig dressed in an apron and hat, and he was selling her what LOOKED LIKE PORK while her bunny babies destroyed his shop. Exactly what kind of life lessons is Royal Doulton trying to teach young children? Because it seems very subversive and violent and all the people who buy Bunnykins china because “it’s so cute” have obviously never looked closely at it either because I think the person who created these scenes is an anarchist and I’m surprised that none of this china has hidden messages on it like “Rabbits cannot make the revolution. Rabbits can only be the revolution.” Seriously—if you have any of this stuff in your house, take a good long look at it—and then go vandalize something.

Speaking of taking a good long look at something, the other day, I was on Facebook Marketplace and I saw an ad for a “Leather Reclining Couch” that made me look at it for a very long time, mostly because I was trying to figure out what the hell was going on, like either the guy was completely unaware that his photos were being used for the ad, or it was the most clever marketing ploy since Royal Doulton created their bunnies with an attitude. 

I call this first picture “Paint Me Like One Of Your French Girls” and it’s a very good example of how you can use this couch in a very suggestive way. The second picture I’ve dubbed “The Thinker” because he’s obviously deep in thought, contemplating how to blow up a space station or whatnot.

And in the last picture, he’s obviously emulating the famous painting by Henry Wallis entitled The Death of Chatterton.

All I know is that the couch is “Pending” which means someone is planning on buying it, and I really hope for their sake that this guy comes with it.

Let Them Eat Cake

If you know anything about me at all, you’ll know I love reality shows. Most of them are about drag queens, but lately, I’ve been watching baking shows because the second season of Is It Cake? just came out. In this show, a group of bakers have to recreate everyday objects out of cake, and sometimes it’s almost impossible to distinguish between the object, like a Doc Marten boot or a turntable, and the cake that looks like it. The bakers use a variety of tricks—edible paper, molding chocolate, fondant and whatnot, because in this show, everything has to be edible. And then sadly, I finished all the episodes and, having no Drag Race shows to watch (by the way, I decided that if I was a drag queen, my name would be Tartan Juicy because I’m part Scottish), I started searching through my channels for something else to fill the void and found the Dr. Seuss Baking Challenge. In this show, the contestants have to create cakes based on the books of Dr. Seuss. It was a lot of fun watching them make Truffula Trees and Grinches, but it got me thinking about other possibilities for baking shows….

1) The Kafka Kitchen

Host: Welcome to The Kafka Kitchen, a show that marries the absurdity of reality with cake! Today, our contestants were challenged to come up with a special dessert that exemplifies The Franz Kafka Thang. I’m here today with our judges, Connie and Hermann, to see who can outcake Kafka! Blue Team, what did you make?
Blue Team Spokesperson: We created a giant cockroach out of a peanut butter swirl cake with a butterscotch ganache, vanilla cream icing, and an orange fondant.
Host: Delicious! What was your secret ingredient?
Blue Team Spokesperson: We were given anise and nihilism.
Host: It looks super-depressing!
Blue Team Spokesperson: Thank you. That means a lot.
Host: Connie and Hermann, what do you think?
Connie: It devastates me.
Hermann: Ja, it is oblivion to me.
Host: Blue Team, you have “metamorphized” into first place!

2) Shakespeare Cake-speare

Host: Welcome to Shakespeare Cake-speare where our contestants must design desserts based on the plays of William Shakespeare. Today’s challenge—Titus Andronicus! I’m here with our judges, Portia and Mercutio, as we try to determine who is the Bard of Baking! Green Team, tell us about your special creation!
Green Team Spokesperson: We made a pie.
Host: Cool! What kind of pie?
Green Team Spokesperson: Meat.
Host: Meat? But it’s supposed to be a dessert…Judges, what do you think?
Portia: It looks very bloody. What kind of meat IS it?
Host: Mercutio? Mercutio? Has anyone seen Mercutio?
Portia: Not since this morning…
Green Team Spokesperson: That’s what he gets for criticizing our scale model Globe Theatre cake. Too many sprinkles, my ass. To be or not to be, Mercutio.

At any rate, I’m sure there are plenty of other authors who would make a great basis for a baking show—can you imagine cakes all inspired by Alice In Wonderland or Lord Of The Rings? Regardless, the only thing I need to know is: Is It Cake?!

In other news, Atlas recently acquired a new toy. We don’t buy him toys very often because a) he has a huge wicker basket of toys already, and b) he will immediately destroy anything not made out of the most durable rubber. But this toy, a type of stuffed character, was a gift from a friend whose dog had passed away, so we reluctantly let him have it under supervision on the balcony only. Every night after dinner, Ken and I go up to our balcony for dessert and now Atlas can’t wait. He’s actually started running to the balcony door any time we go upstairs, and he stands with his nose pressed against the door crying a little because he wants his new toy so badly. It’s very cute and also a little obsessive. The only option is to bake him a cake that LOOKS like his toy, and then he can destroy THAT instead of the toy, which is much healthier because cake and fondant won’t get lodged in his intestines like flannel and micro-fill will. And if he can’t tell the difference, maybe I’ll win a prize…

In other, other news, thanks to everyone who’s purchased and given a review to What Any Normal Person Would Do–last week it was actually sitting at #12 on Amazon Canada’s Best Sellers in Comedy chart! And now I’m hard at work editing manuscripts for the authors I’ve signed for the fall under the DarkWinter Press imprint–I’m sure they’re all going to be bestsellers too!



From Every Angle

A while back, I took out a subscription to a particular country decorating magazine, mostly because they kept emailing me with better and better deals until it finally came out to about $3 an issue—and yes, I mean actual paper magazines, not the online kind. So they started coming in the mail a few months ago, and I’d forgotten how ubiquitous each one of these things can be: every issue features a young couple who hired a designer, a gay couple who didn’t need to hire a designer, recipes I will NEVER make, and the latest in weird decorating trends. I’ve made my peace with the all-white rooms and all-white furniture, the people who never wear shoes, and the copious overuse of figs, but this month’s issue made my skin crawl. Was it full of earwigs? (Fun Fact: When I was very young, my grandmother let me watch an episode of The Twilight Zone—the old black and white version—where a man had an earwig crawl into his ear and it ate through to his brain. I was terrified of earwigs for years, even after I discovered that they’re called earwigs NOT because they crawl into people’s ears, which they never do, but because they infest ears of corn. Still.)  Were all the recipes based on beets and peas? No. It was the newest trend alert: hanging all the artwork on your walls askew. Aside from being the stupidest trend I could possibly think of, even worse than the faux leather wall covering debacle of 2006, I was immediately overcome by intense panic at the mere sight of it. You may remember, particularly because I mention it often and it took up almost a whole chapter of my new book (shameless plug: it’s called What Any Normal Person Would Do, available on Amazon), I have something called Extreme Symmetry Disorder, which normally applies to rugs, but also, in this case, to the artwork on my walls. And while it might seem strange to you, I regularly patrol my house, straightening not only the rugs on my floors but also the artwork on my walls, because while Atlas manages to knock the rugs sideway several times a day, the vibrations of his bounding around also shift the frames of both paintings and photographs, which I am compelled to restore to their proper positions.

And then I had to read this magazine, which featured several different walls of artwork, two of them very much like my own photography-filled breakfast room wall, but instead of them being all delightfully level and perfectly perpendicular to each other, THESE PICTURES HAD BEEN DELIBERATELY KNOCKED ASKEW AS A FASHION STATEMENT.

Who DOES this?! I mean, I can’t be the only person who would go into a house where the pictures are all tilting off into oblivion and have an overwhelming desire to straighten them. Seriously—is this not scraping the bottom of the barrel of decorating trends or what? And what’s next? Should all our rugs be scattered haphazardly around our rooms? Should our objets d’art be randomly grouped in fours and sixes instead of the much more stress-relieving threes and fives? Should the cords on all our lamps face the front where we can SEE THEM?! AM I IN HELL?

At any rate, this issue, according to the latest email exhortation I received, is to be my last, since I have no interest in renewing a subscription to something so ludicrous. I will never cook with beets, I will never decorate in all white, and I especially will NEVER tiltshift my artwork. To quote Captain Jean-Luc Picard, when he was yet again faced with the Borg: “The line must be drawn here!”

In other news, the new literary press is going very well. I have a lot of submissions and I’ve already signed three authors—don’t ask who, because it’s a surprise, at least until I’ve finished editing. But all three are awesome, and their books will be coming out under the DarkWinter Press imprint before the end of the fall. I’m currently in the process of reading more manuscripts to decide on the catalogue for Spring 2024, so if you want to be considered, I’d love to see your work—at least before the end of August, when submissions will be closed until January.

(And now I’m having a mild panic attack because I just realized that one of the candlesticks isn’t straight!)

Water, Water, Everywhere

On Tuesday night (or was it morning? —it was dark), I woke up to yet another pounding rainstorm. I immediately had a panic attack, because we live in a very old house, built in 1906, with the grossest basement you could imagine. For the last 17 years, the basement occasionally gets damp in the spring but then dries out in the summer and we’ve never had a flood—until this spring when the sump pump stopped working and suddenly there were several inches of water. Ken fixed the pump, but the constant rain here has made the basement even wetter than normal, causing me to go into Worst-Case Scenario mode, thinking the whole house was going to come down around our ears thanks to a crumbling foundation. I lay awake for a while, tossing and turning, until eventually Ken woke up:

Ken: What’s wrong? Why did you wake me up?
Me: The basement. It’s going to flood again.
Ken: No, it won’t. The sump pump is running. It’s an old house; there’s nothing we can do.

Oh really?! The gauntlet was thrown. I immediately began planning exactly what we were GOING to do first thing the next morning, which was a) buy a rain barrel so that the excess moisture didn’t sink into the ground, and b) plant more plants in the garden to replace the ones that Ken killed last year by insisting on “breaking the roots apart” when he planted them, thereby leaving large gaps where the water wasn’t getting absorbed by flora and roots and whatnot. And then I insisted on telling Ken the plan right then and there, causing him to groan and whine about “needing to sleep.” Well, I’m sorry KEN, but this is our equity, and I won’t have it ruined by stupid rain. And the climate gods were with me, because we set out the next morning to buy a rain barrel, which are relatively expensive, and we came across a yard sale that had one for 5 bucks. We installed it, and planted some shrubberies (the kind without deep root systems that might damage the foundation) and it all looked very nice. Later that day, there was an absolute deluge, but Ken had fixed all the downspouts so they went into the rain barrel instead of into the ground next to the foundation. And everything would be great if it would just STOP F*CKING RAINING because now I keep having to empty the rain barrel and find something to do with all the water that’s accumulating BECAUSE OF THE F*CKING RAIN.

So in between stressing about the rain ruining my house and dealing with Atlas, who got sprayed by the same skunk AGAIN, it’s been a hard few days. But then, yesterday morning, the sun came out again for the second day in a row (gasp), and I decided it was time to mow the lawn. I’d been putting it off based on my previous experience on the John Deere Death Machine, but not being one to give up easily, I decided to try again. This time, I wore a better bra and went a little slower, and it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as the first time. I think I only screamed twice—once because I went down a hill more quickly than I’d intended and second because I badly misjudged the clearance on a group of very sharp spruce boughs. Later, I was talking to my mom:

Mom: What did you do this morning?
Me: I mowed the lawn.
Mom: You did WHAT?!
Me: I mowed the lawn.
Mom: Are you okay?!
Me: Yes, except for a few scratches on my neck. But my boobs are fine.
Mom: Oh good!
Me: And it was lucky too, because it’s supposed to rain all afternoon.
Mom: I’ll bet the lawn looks great.
Me: Thanks, Mom.

She really is the best mom—if only she could make it stop raining…

Again?!

On Thursday night, Ken got up around 5 am (is that night or morning? Either way it was still very dark out and I had been, until that moment, fast asleep). “What’s wrong?” I asked. His back was twinging a bit because he’d been carrying our new deck furniture, a gift from my brother, up and down a ladder, to put it on our balcony because it was too big to take through the house.

“I’m going downstairs to read,” he said.

“Take the dog with you,” I said. Imagine at this point that there was ominous thunder rumbling in the distance. There actually WAS thunder—I guess I should have paid more attention.

I fell back asleep quickly and I was just in the middle of a lovely dream involving clocks and puppies when my subconscious sensed that something was terribly, horribly wrong and I sat bolt upright. I breathed in deeply, smelled that familiar noxious odour and knew that my subconscious was correct. I leapt out of bed and ran downstairs yelling, “Don’t let the dog out!!” Ken was standing in the brightly lit kitchen, mixing up something in a plastic bowl. He stared at me.

Me: Did you let the dog out?
Ken: Yes, but he’s back in now…
Me: Please don’t tell me he got sprayed by a skunk!
Ken: I can’t tell you that because he got sprayed by a skunk.
Me: Again?! OMG, is he okay? Where is he?
Ken: I locked him in the bathroom. I’m mixing up the peroxide, baking soda, and soap.
Me: F*ck. I was really hoping you’d just made coffee.

Alas no. The palpable stench was not from the devil’s brew; it was from the nocturnal demon that Atlas had decided to chase and confront at 5 am. After he’d been washed with the skunk remover, showered, and dried, I had a word with him:

Me: What were you thinking?!
Atlas: I thought Ilana had escaped. I was just trying to help.
Me: She hasn’t been here for weeks! What the hell is wrong with you?
Atlas: IT WAS DARK. I WAS TIRED.
Me: Well, you’re still a stinky pants.
Atlas: Smells just like coffee. MMMM.

He’s lucky he’s adorable. Smelly and dumb, but adorable.