making spells

as we know the proper place to learn the language is on the fridge door, pushing magnetic letters around, just like the infant shakespeare did. it's also where the nephew, zoom, currently two-and-a-half, will soon be deploying letters to form important sentence structures like "nanna smells" and "cabbage is gross".

to kick things off i cleaned out the local "toys r us" of their magnetised alphabets and introduced zoom to these three, high-scrabble-scoring, word concepts. "haruspicy": the divination of future events through the examination of animal entrails. "quadroon": persons of one quarter negro blood. and "dropsy": a disease often mentioned in eighteenth century literature, though sadly now called œdema (where's the fun in that?)

unfortunately the manufacturers are stingy with the vowels so "homunculus" will have to wait. otherwise, avuncular responsibilities discharged.

naming rights

when my nephew, zoom, was still unhatched—in the egg, as it were—i made a couple of helpful unsolicited suggestions about his future christian name. naturally my advice was disdained, as advice always is (no matter who offers it). nevermind. these were my suggestions:

"bort". my favourite. from "the simpsons". and the one i lobbied hardest for.

"tuk-tuk". pronounced took-took. the thai three-wheeled vehicle pictured. i like the sound of it. funny.

"theodore hypothalamus". again for the euphony. also i keep hearing the word hypothalamus on the show "house". i like it. it's better than "apple" anyway.

taxidermy for tots

went book shopping for my 1 year old nephew, zoom. he won't be ready for "timon of athens" for six or seven months, so i was hoping to find something with a funny, arresting title like "taxidermy for tots". no luck. i settled for "peppa pig" instead. apparently this pig is also a star on tv. news to me.

during this bookshelf browsing i hatched what baldrick calls "a cunning plan". i thought i'd assemble a pre-teen survival kit: a holus-bolus of non-electronic toy necessaries to see the nephew through to the onset of his double-digit, girl-complicated years. nothing too extensive. just a small survival kit of amusing gizmos. such as:

rubik's cube*
yo-yo (they have ball-bearings now and spin forever)
frisbee
supersoaker
viewmaster
slinky
one of those vortex doodlebug things
joy-buzzer

*my only qualm about giving him a cube is the likelihood that he'll end up solving it before i do.

zoom

this is my nephew, zoom. (his initials are z.m.) he's one. and. is. utterly. adorable. everyone says so.