Showing posts with label arachnids. Show all posts
Showing posts with label arachnids. Show all posts

"Great Expectations, the Miss Havisham Cake" — banned from the Melbourne Cake Show.

In bad taste?



But it's literary!

A reading, from Charles Dickens:
The most prominent object was a long table with a tablecloth spread on it, as if a feast had been in preparation when the house and the clocks all stopped together. An epergne or centre-piece of some kind was in the middle of this cloth; it was so heavily overhung with cobwebs that its form was quite undistinguishable; and, as I looked along the yellow expanse out of which I remember its seeming to grow, like a black fungus, I saw speckle-legged spiders with blotchy bodies running home to it, and running out from it, as if some circumstances of the greatest public importance had just transpired in the spider community.

I heard the mice too, rattling behind the panels, as if the same occurrence were important to their interests. But the black beetles took no notice of the agitation, and groped about the hearth in a ponderous elderly way, as if they were short-sighted and hard of hearing, and not on terms with one another.

These crawling things had fascinated my attention, and I was watching them from a distance, when Miss Havisham laid a hand upon my shoulder. In her other hand she had a crutch-headed stick on which she leaned, and she looked like the Witch of the place.

"This," said she, pointing to the long table with her stick, "is where I will be laid when I am dead. They shall come and look at me here."

With some vague misgiving that she might get upon the table then and there and die at once, the complete realization of the ghastly waxwork at the Fair, I shrank under her touch.

"What do you think that is?" she asked me, again pointing with her stick; "that, where those cobwebs are?"

"I can't guess what it is, ma'am."

"It's a great cake. A bride-cake. Mine!"

"Lord, I'm twittery this morning. Must move on to things that require concentration. Grading. Even blogging. Life's easy in the Twitter lane."

Oh, look at that! An entire 140-character tweet fits in the Blogger headline window, even with quotes added. Room to spare too. Surprising, considering that I often run out of space for things I want to cram into that large colored print zone.

Here's the rest of my twitterage from the last minute:
annalthouse Early breakfast alone in the dark. I'm hoping somehow it will inspire me to efficient exam-grading today. Deadline tomorrow.
less than 5 seconds ago from web

annalthouse Some synchronous things are pleasing, but I'm sorry my art museum foolery coincides with the Holocaust museum shooting.
less than 5 seconds ago from web

annalthouse Obama at the Obama museum, where even the wallpaper is Obama. http://tinyurl.com/kk5x8d
less than 5 seconds ago from web

annalthouse Must there be a thunderstorm every morning at 5 a.m.? Ah, maybe I'd love to adapt to exactly that.
1 minute ago from web
"From web"... I sound like a spider!

Follow me on Twitter. Please. I have 1,103 Followers — yeah, it's capitalized— on Twitter and — do you think it's pathetic? — it means a lot to me. The writing over there is different. Some things don't make it through my blog filter. Some things don't make it through my Twitter filter either. Twitter's just that zone between 2 filters. I'm inviting you to see what collects there.

Do you think it's narcissistic of me? I took this narcissistic personality inventory yesterday, after blake tweeted it, and scored a 14 out 40. "The average score for the general population is 15.3. The average score for celebrities is 17.8." Actually, I took it a second time — with someone else — and got a 19. I don't know if it was the presence of a co-quiz-taker that boosted my score or the fact that I was taking it a second time. The choices require interpretation, and reading something a second time, you see new angles, new reasons to veer one way or the other as you decide which of 2 things you wouldn't say sounds more like something you would say.

Ah! What if one thought each exam should be read twice? And why not 3 times? Do you ever wonder why lawprofs miss grading deadlines? Some of them genuinely fret over what is the one true grade for each exam. Others dither and delay or just quite simply can't maintain the concentration long enough. Law profs who twitter and blog — what kind of concentration do these characters maintain?

It's still raining. The above-quoted tweets have aged to the half-hour vintage. It's still dark. A few different birds have determined it's time to — oh! — to tweet.

And now, I've tweeted and blogged.
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