Hobbes Jr. Finds Trick a Treat

Just wait till I give that furry flea sack a piece of my mind!
Originally uploaded by weirsdo

And Hobbes Junior had roared at Annie's rage.

Buyer Bewarorium

translated the real meaning.

Embarrassed,

Enter Pooh

when Pooh,

In with the New?

hanging up the new sign,
Originally uploaded by weirsdo

and was in the midst of

Out with the Old

Annie already had the old sign taken down,

What's in a Name

Annie thought "Caveat Emptorium" had an imposing sound and had the sign painted right away.

Assurance

assuring Annie that it would be a title most in keeping with the type of goods sold in the store.

To . . .

something more glamorous, and Annie had asked Hobbes Junior to think of a title that would include the word “emporium.” Hobbes Junior suggested, “Caveat Emptorium,”

Name Change

For instance, there was that time when Annie had decided to change the name of “Frederick’s General Store” . . .

On with the Captists

Diamonelle is not very relevant to "Gone with the Captists."

"Gone with the Captists" begins in April, 2007 on the blog and continues off and on through the July, 2008 archives, again from the Sept., 2008-March, 2009 archives, and most recently from the Aug.-Sept., '09 archives.

Frustrated in her love for Pooh, who married his cousin Anastasia, Annie (Anastasia's sister) married Percy, a flyer in the Captist Air Force, just before the war. During the war, in which Percy was killed, Annie helped deliver Anastasia's sickly baby, little O, in Petesville, and, with the help of the daring but intensely irritating Hobbes Junior, retreated during the Fall of Petesville to her mother's estate.
Annie's father, Hobbes, had been kidnapped by UnCaptists and was being held in Ork, and her mother Julia, a Litteral Captist fanatic, had gone a bit funny, or funnier, so Annie, Anastasia, and the few Captist servants who stuck with the family were left to keep the wolf from the door. Anastasia was sickly and busy with her sickly baby and any needy Captist who came around begging for a handout, so it was Annie who cared for the beehives and planted the estate's football field with crops so they could eat. Her only helper was Ginny, an orphan Anastasia took in, who proved a useful farmhand.
Pooh came home, but he was clumsy and not much help. He also rejected Annie's advances. On top of this, Julia's former steward, Red Baboon, came by with his jumped up Captist trash wife, Tawdry Cattery, and told Annie she'd have to come up with three hundred Stuffed Animal Planet dollars in taxes or Julia's estate would be his.
Receiving a letter telling of Percy's fall into a volcano in Ork, Annie journeyed to Petesville, where she offered to be Hobbes Junior's mistress in return for the 300 $APs needed to save the estate. Stuck in an UnCaptist prison after his questionable career as war privateer turned Captist officer, Hobbes Junior heard the humiliating request but refused on the grounds that any attempt to access his money would lead the UnCaptists to it. On the way home Annie met Percy's brother Frederick, who had an understanding with her cousin Elizabeth. Frederick had a store and some money, so Annie told him Elizabeth didn't love him and got him to marry her instead.
Annie ran the store ruthlessly, to the male chauvinist Frederick's surprise and dismay. One day, Hobbes Junior stopped by and after teasing her, revealed that he had lots of money and had come to make sure she was all right. She borrowed money from him to buy a honeyworks for herself (Frederick had no part in it). She then hired Pooh, who had been on the point of moving his family to Ork, to manage it.
Anastasia loved being back in Petesville and was grateful to Annie for all her "kindness" to her and Pooh. Pooh was a hopeless manager, but Annie really did everything anyway.
The corrupt UnCaptist government allowed or even encouraged all kinds of crimes against Captists, the worst of which were assaults on unprotected Captist ladies. The Captist males formed the Cat Claw Clan to defend themselves and the purity of Captist femalehood against these threats.* Annie made Frederick promise not to join, but she worried about him.
On the evening after Annie herself was attacked on her way past the rundown Pansitown and only saved by the timely intervention of Mrs. Arshmol/Ugluk, the Captist bear-menfolk mysteriously did not come home until late, and an UnCaptist patrol headed by Captain Tom the Lone Shark surrounded the house. At last Hobbes Junior, Pooh and Big Pooh returned, all, seemingly, very drunk. This ruse and Hobbes Jr.'s story that they had been visiting Belle Catley's house of ill repute caused Tom the Lone Shark and his troops to leave, but really Pooh was wounded and Frederick killed in their attack on Pansitown.
At first, Annie hardly noticed her widowhood, she was so concerned about Pooh. But when it was clear he would recover, she realized what a bad bear she had been and took to drinking alone in her room, fearing everlasting torments such as attending NG4J rehearsals for all eternity, until one day Hobbes Jr. kissed her into marrying him.
At first she was very happy with him. He spent a lot of money on her and showed her a good time. But could it last?
Annie was annoyed, for instance, when he burned her ENTIRE collection of Franc's latest line. And he was high-pawed in other respects as well.

*This is, of course, the Captist side of the story. For our real view, click here.

Weirsdo Roundup: DePansification

Throw off your Pansification. Embrace Diamonellition!

Anyone in need of dePansification should proceed to this post. If you aren't dePansified, you will at least learn to cope.
Thanks, Emrald and Brittney!

Weirsdo Roundup: Shame on Brittney

Diamonelle doesn't judge.

If Brittney is annoyed by her new boyfriend's family, we are not that sympathetic. First her heartless desertion of her Beast drove him to despair, panhandling, and assault. Now she has left longtime companion Quorthon and her young* children to pursue a relationship with Satan's son.
Despite our revulsion at her behavior, we promise to follow its every vagary with avid fascination, fulfilling our journalistic duty to supply our readers with smutty sensationalism. Enjoy.

*In terms of how long they've been out of their test tubes, anyway.

Weirsdo Roundup: Doo-Doo Shame

Diamonelle parties with dignity.

Despite the phenomenal success and recognition that have greeted Dr. Doo-Doo since his arrival in the Netherworld, some believe that all may not be well under the glamorous veneer of the ambulatorily challenged gymvangelist-pharmacopia that is Doo-Doo Man. They cite this telling shot of a medicated Doo-Doo Girl out of control at the after party for the Amanda McKittrick Ros play. They also point to the fate of Orlof, formerly the fashion guru of the Netherworld, now in trouble with the law and inhabiting a dumpster behind Ugly Grace's bar. Is the good Doctor Doo-Doo's treatment to blame? Or should we credit Diamonelle's assertion that Orlof is a casualty of his own imitative mediocrity?
No one knows the uppers and downers of celebrity better than Doo-Doo Man. We hope his pharmaceutical armory will allow him to parry these latest attacks with his customary aplomb.

Weirsdo Roundup: Otherness in My Own Backyard

The swimming pool is behind the big backyard.

This post by Tom & Icy brought home to me how little we can understand otherness, even when it's right in our own backyards.

Ask Weirsdo: Saving Face in Levinas

Diamonelle's face is particularly memorable.

In response to our last post, Tom had this to say:

Huh? It must be like a person who has a mind over matter attitude, as in "out of mind, it don't matter" does not relieve them of the responsibility to feed the hungry or get robbed by them. Or get eaten by them, in the case of Steak Through the Heart Restaurant. Consciousness can be misleading when we think we are on the guest list only to find it is actually the menu.

He also said this:

It would be interesting to put on a blindfold and ear plugs and nose plugs and have about ten of our family or friends step into the room one at a time and see if they have any influence on us or if we can tell who it is or even if anyone is there. Like, if a person is in a coma, and we talk to them, do they sense our presence? Just thinking.

Insofar as I understand your comments, Tom, I'd say first, that consciousness in Levinas is precisely this sort of "mind over matter" attitude. The Levinasian face of the Other reminds one of one's responsibility to the Other, but in a way that overwhelms consciousness. As for the possibility that an Other might take advantage of that sense of responsibility, as someone whose family was killed in the Holocaust, Levinas was no naif when it came to inhumanity. He argued that all ethical acts and speeches are "saids" that diminish our sense of infinite indebtedness because they cannot adequately convey or act on it and because, as conscious responses, they inevitably partake of the grasping of conscious being, which seeks to contain Others and otherness, and thereby does violence to them. Unethical acts, of course, are worse, but Levinas argues that they are a conscious e- or de-facement, a deliberate stamping on the Other's face that betrays in its violence an underlying consciousness of the ethical command of that face. So in denying the Other's humanity, we tacitly admit its power.
As a skeptic, I doubt we'd sense much in the experiment you propose, and I don't believe people in comas know what's going on. In terms of Levinas, he is not entirely clear on how much the Face is a metaphor for the humanity of the Other. But he does also talk about the power of voice, touch, and even gesture to convey humanity, so I don't think the visual presence of the literal face of an Other is necessary to the experience of Substitution, his term for our being overwhelmed by the ethical command. He also talks about the "Trace," which is the "saying," the ethical expression, of humanity in representation. I believe we do carry around a sense of Trace, even when not directly confronted by Face, in (for example) memory.

Ask Weirsdo: Levinas and the Other

Diamonelle says Liquid Bling is an upper-case HO.
Originally uploaded by weirsdo

A few posts back, Tom, though not Icy, was curious about the concepts of the Other and otherness in Levinas. Insofar as I understand it, Tom, otherness refers to the fact that although consciousness can only experience a mediated, phenomenological world, we are aware that such experience is limited. That which eludes the grasp of consciousness is other to it. The other Other, with an upper-case O (or Autre with an "A," if we're reading Levinas in the original French) alludes to the uniquely vulnerable otherness of another subject whom I encounter. Unlike the otherness of the world in general, the Other's Otherness impresses me with my responsibility toward the Other, calling me to account and even overwhelming me with my inadequacy in the face of the ethical command of the Other's face.
This command undoes the pretensions of consciousness to comprehend, or grasp, otherness, which shows, Levinas claims, that ethics is first philosophy. Ethics is not a choice made in or through conscious being but an involuntary disruption of its claims.

ASS ALIEN INVASION IMMINENT, MEEKMOK WARNS!

Diamonelle, serene once more.

(From the HOBBESYWOOD TIMES)

After this Meekmok was removed from Diamonelle's photoshoot, he gave the following statement to Hobbesywood law enforcement. Once it was translated, he and two alien companions were seen boarding a spaceship and departing Stuffed Animal Planet.

Alien statement:
!!!!@);).>@@*^^$=+, ?/\[%]^**=5..____##-&nRaymond?##0*(==+-~!`'":

Apparently the Meekmok was only trying to deliver an urgent message about THESE aliens. According to his statement, a cat named Raymond notified him that they were coming to Stuffed Animal Planet soon, and that they were "all asses." In case of hostilities, authorities advise stocking up on toilet paper and paddles.

Panis Envy Continued: Marge Simpson

When it comes to posing, Scarface says, "Can't touch this."

Is Pansi only "jellos" because PLAYBOY asked Marge Simpson to be on their cover before they asked the NG4J Superstar? Or is Pansi repressing envy of Marge's long, erect, startlingly blue hair tower?
We may never know, and frankly I'm not sure I want to find out.

Further Pansi Warning Falls on Pointy Ears

Scarface expresses his opinion of Pansi's warning.

Pansi wanted to add another warning to her recent complaints, but her condemnation of this person was shouted down in our editorial chambers by members of the Cat Claw Clan, who made Kitty le Claw an honorary Grand Whisker. A few of them even asked for directions to her "house of ill repupe."

More Panis Envy: Pansi's Heething Competition

Diamonelle has distanced herslf from NG4J.
Originally uploaded by weirsdo

It is not bad enuff to have all these Heething's Viziting Me I have to have them DANSING at me to!!!!! Weather it is a Hindoo waring WAY to many close to be Christinane and not doing enuff gimnastick's or my former college's So Ho Girl (say's it ALL!!!) and the other one hoo is complaning becuz her CROSHAYED bickeeny bottum is WAY to thick and ichy anyhoo I am not innerested in there pathetick "Dansing"!!!!
Pee ess Mrs. Weirsdo I demanned that you spell my name rite rite NOW!!!!!

Weirsdo's From the Top: We're Number One

Diamonelle is OFF the charts.
Originally uploaded by weirsdo

When I posted about Moony's being concertmistress of the Emory Youth Symphony, I did not know that the orchestra will be taping an episode of FROM THE TOP in November. It is so rewarding to have a prize-winning former viola student 4th chair in the Vanderbilt Orchestra, a prize-winning daughter and former student first chair in the Auburn orchestra and about to audition for a great teacher, and the prize-winning Moony likewise preparing for a promising professional career. Given how long it takes to build a classical musician and how difficult and competitive a field it is, I feel very gratified. We can't wait to go to the taping!

In relatedly satisfying news, LEVINAS AND NINETEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE is now number ONE on the Amazon list of hot new bestsellers (in literary criticism). Hope you're enjoying your copy, RBUD.

Weirsdo Roundup: Ros Revival

Diamonelle creates drama just by being her fantabulous self.

Fans of NG4J and Amanda McKittrick Ros will be happy to know that at least one, and perhaps two, of her plays were presented by the Netherworld NG4J troupe and friends at the Vogon Idol Awards event. (We're not sure whether the second mention of a play alludes to a different play or the same work renamed.) Everyone felt very good about the performance(s), except possibly Aubvey, who, after years of unrequited devotion to Tommy Tuberville, has just not taken to Chizik, despite the Auburn Tigers' recent successes.
To order your collectible ornament commemorating this splungetacular occasion, click here.

Weirsdo Roundup: Ups & Downs of Dr. Doo-Doo

Diamonelle is high on life, and the occasional blunt.

Although Dr. Doo-Doo sometimes experiences minor friction with his Netherworld colleagues, especially the flamboyant Dr. Schitz, he is on the whole, a brilliant success, treating such celebrities as Kanye West and the Cheesemeister's brother. Recently he has expanded his intergalactic Christinane pharmaceutical distribution enterprise.
Not everyone is feeling the buzz, however. It has come to our attention that some embittered Americans, no doubt on downers after their Obama-induced Nov. '08 highs, have sent hate-, or at least mild castigation-, mail to the good doctor, blaming him for Dubya's presidency and its aftermath. We hate, or mildly dislike, getting on the bandwagon, but the evidence is clear. See for yourself.

Ask Weirsdo: Personification vs. Anthropomorphism

Diamonelle never worries her head about such questions.

A few posts back, Tom & Icy expressed some confusion:

I have always been confused between personification and anthropomorphicism. So how do slick plastic dolls end up on Stuffed Animal Planet with fuzzy bears.

Sometimes I feel confused about those terms also. I think they are somewhat different, and the key is the intent behind them. Personification is used for poetic effect, and is deliberately intended to add something strange and new to our understanding of an image. Anthropomorphism, on the other hand, tries to make the non-human more familiar to us. Anthropomorphism may occur unintentionally, and may paper over the difference between the anthropomorphized object and the anthropomorphic concept of the object being presented. Except in the case of clichés, personification calls attention to its anthropomorphism, to the new layer of understanding it is adding to the object described.

The dolls just moved to Stuffed Animal Planet, T&I, when Hobbesywood became an entertainment mecca. I think I've explained this before.

Weirsdo Roundup: Rabbit Rabbit

Diamonelle could have been a bunny, but did not deign to demean herself.

I don't usually do the whole "Rabbit rabbit" thing, except for the occasional coincidental gay bunny, but I love this artist, and her rabbit is worth calling attention to.