You're All Just Jealous Of My Jetpack.

I just finished this collection of cartoons by Tom Gauld (ISBN 9781770461048) and actually laughed out loud in a library as I looked through it to figure out whether or not to check it up. There's a Wii controller for Rhett Butler from Gone With The Wind and the break-up of a complex literary creation and a sci-fi character *sob* and science vs. religion calling a truce but seven years later going back to the way things were (because fights broke out between those who wanted to call it "rience" and those who preferred "seligion") ... anyway, after delivering the Trading Posts (Minot Daily News' once-weekly paper for non-subscribers) for the next-to-last time because Martha delivers them next week, then me, and then her, and by that Saturday we'll have quit the route. Hallelujah.

Read a review on another book while I was at Minot Public Library this morning before work that said paranoid people saw too many patterns. (I AM NOT! People really are out to get me!) Thought this morning before work about the similarities among -- among is more than two, between is two -- the worst case scenario of turning on the CERN hadron collider in Geneva for some Christians (that the barrier between the physical and spiritual realms will be broken, basically), the big event of Watchmen (when Ozymandias teleports that manufactured monster to New York City killing three million people to convince the global superpowers they've got more to fight than each other), and the Bible itself (pick a prophecy).

I love to see the kids catch up on their Reading At Home and be reading different things, books that they not only enjoy but also ones that make them think outside the box. For the child's first book of biographies Sarah is reading and The 39 Clues series Jeffrey is and the riddles I tell the kids every other night, they're getting thoughtful and seeing there is more to what they see when they're not beating the snot out of each other. And THAT really isn't much; the riddle last night was

A box without hinges, key, or lid;
A golden treasure inside is hid.

It is an egg, although Sarah got on me yesterday that an egg doesn't come in a literal box. But Jeffrey got it, and he's the one that got the Riddle of the Sphinx as an allegory a few weeks ago! Sometimes what is isn't what it is. Or in the theme song of Wizards of Waverly Place, everything is not what it seems. Speaking of that, oh boy did the episode of Once Upon A Time Martha, me, and the kids watch last night blow my mind. I can read the spoilers, I can see the previews, but I can still get shocked and awed. And last night Jeffrey did WITHOUT bursting out of his seat! The episode "Heart of Gold" was a frame story surrounding a flashback surrounding another flashback. For the slower students on the bridge today, Mr. Gold's the real-world alias of Rumpelstiltskin.

The story -- well, one of the stories -- so far: Gold was kicked out of Storybrooke by his wife Belle and finds his way to the apartment his son Neal had in New York City, only to find it occupied by Robin Hood, his wife Marian, and their son Roland. Then Gold collapses; evidently his life of exploitation has gotten to him, and without magic he's dying and he asks Robin to get him the last drops of the Elixir of the Wounded Heart which could save his life. Back before the curse that created Storybrooke, Robin did a similar deed for him stealing the Elixir from Oz and narrowly escaping the Wicked Witch -- who by the present of the show should be dead, but proves not to be (!) for she's been living as Marian with no one the wiser! Gold owes her and she's collecting ...

I almost need to lie down after writing that. But then I come to a book I bought this weekend and read this Saturday, Sandlot Peanuts (ISBN 003022621X) which collects TWENTY-FIVE YEARS of Charles Schulz's strips of Charlie Brown and his friends playing baseball, and almost always losing their games. Have you noticed Charlie Brown is almost always called by his first and last name, even by his closest friends, like your parents would call out your full name when you were in trouble?Peppermint Patty calls him "Chuck" and Marcie calls him "Charles", but that's about it.

Oh wait, Sally calls him "big brother" and Snoopy doesn't call him anything because he can't talk (he thought balloons "the round-headed kid who always feeds me")! You don't look for -- at least I don't -- any deep and profound meaning in Peanuts, but sometimes it just washes over you. It sneaks up on you, like the best parables do. We can, or at least I can, relate to Charlie Brown and Rumpelstiltskin (from OUAT, likely not the original one) and my kids and nearly everyone around me because they refuse to give up, they refuse to quit trying.

Something Robin Hood said toward the end of "Heart of Gold": When you steal for yourself it's bad. When you steal for others it's good. Jeffrey: That's not true!

He's getting the right idea, David