"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!"

These would be lovable if they were moles...

... but they are mice. "Inadvertently raked up" — Meade IM's from the garden.

ME: Ouch

MEADE: I didn't hurt them

I even ushered the mother to where I moved them

And then I boiled and ate

All three of them

At first, Meade thought he'd raked up baby moles, but when he found the panic'd mother searching for her lost children, he knew they were mice. But let the topic now be moles. Because, yesterday, we were talking about squirrels, and NotYourTypicalNewYorker said:

Squirrels aren't bothering me.

It's the moles, I can't abide the cursed moles.

I put the trap here, they go over there...

It's the moles I tell ya.

And Meade offered some gardenly wisdom:

The moles are your friends. They aerate the soil and eat pest larvae. It's a misconception that they eat bulbs and other desirable garden plants - they're completely carnivorous.

Set your mower blades higher and/or walk down their feeding runs before firing up the mower. Also, where the female mole pushes up a mound of soil, spread it with a rake or with your boot heel so the mower doesn't hit it. It's the mower that does the damage, not the mole.

Adding tags to this post, I knew I already had the tags "mice" and "rodents." I thought it would be excessive to make a tag "moles." Too narrow! But are moles rodents? No, they are Insectivora. And that underlines Meade's point. Moles don't eat plants. Don't worry about moles. Worry about Meade... eating boiled mice. And me, out there in Meade's grass with the squirrels...



... levitating.

(Thanks to Palladian for the TrANNscendentalism.)

We've found those "mice with fully functioning human brains" that Christine O'Donnell was worried about.

It's Pinky and the Brain, brain, brain, brain...



Good lord! She's right to be worried. Every night, they try to take over the world!

(Thanks to HKatz — katz and mice! — and, in the email, sonicfrog — frogz and mice.)

"American scientific companies are cross-breeding humans and animals and coming up with mice with fully functioning human brains."

Uh oh! That's Christine O'Donnell, my dear friends.

Via Memeorandum.

ADDED: And here she is with Eddie Izzard!

"She wasn't clean, and it made him mad."

"According to the source, Clark was 'a control freak' who insisted on lab cleanliness and 'had issues' with the way Le kept her lab and her research mice."

"It is important to note that this is not about urban crime, university crime, domestic crime, but an issue of workplace violence, which is becoming a growing concern around the country."

The murder of Annie Le.

Mr. Clark and Ms. Le worked in the same building — Mr. Clark as a technician and Ms. Le watching experiments with mice....

"It is important to note that this is not about urban crime, university crime, domestic crime, but an issue of workplace violence, which is becoming a growing concern around the country."

"If you really want a man to be nice to you, never give him a hard time, never talk about emotions and never ask him how he is feeling."

Says the famously feminist Fay Weldon — author of "The Lives and Loves of a She Devil." She also thinks women should just do the housework already and give up on trying to get men to do their share. Also:

"I think we should have more teenage pregnancies, and work afterwards.

"If you have children late you have no energy left for sex, and then men wander off to find someone else.

"The definition of a good man has become ridiculous. I just think that as long as you have a sort of semi-good looking, able-bodied, intelligent man, you should have his baby."

Okay, now we're talking about Fay Weldon again after all these years? Like we were in 1989...

Coffee time!

Don't forget!



More!



Okay!



That's more like it!

The 55 mice used in the University of South Florida study had been bred to develop symptoms of Alzheimer's disease....

When the mice were tested again after two months, those who were given the caffeine performed much better on tests measuring their memory and thinking skills and performed as well as mice of the same age without dementia.

Those drinking plain water continued to do poorly on the tests.