Have you ever seen. . . a Mondegreen?

Have you ever seen. . . a Mondegreen?

To me that sounds like a Dr. Seuss rhyme. Or  something to eat, like a madeleine or a macaroon or a meringue.

Or a meringa? Marimba? Marembo? Now we’re getting off course.

The name of this bit of word-torture (which refers to a mishearing of a song lyric or a common phrase) originally came from a line of boring poetry, which some boring old person mis-heard:

Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands,

Oh, where hae ye been?

They hae slain the Earl O' Moray,

And Lady Mondegreen.

The actual fourth line is "And laid him on the green”.

So what, eh? But there’s more. More weird names for things you’re not spozed to say, but say anyway cuz you’re an idiot. I will let Wiki describe it because I'm too lazy to:

The unintentionally incorrect use of similar-sounding words or phrases in speaking is a malapropism. If there is a connection in meaning, it can be called an eggcorn. If a person stubbornly sticks to a mispronunciation after being corrected, that can be described as mumpsimus.

Mumpsimus. Sounds like somebody from that Monty Python movie Life of Brian (i. e. Biggus Dickus), maybe with a  glandular condition.  I don’t want to believe it, but it’s in Wikipedia, so it MUST be right.

But before Wikipedia even existed, we had mondegreens: creative mis-hearings of things like hymn lines, which unintentionally led to brand new Biblical characters such as “Gladly, the Cross-Eyed Bear” and “Round John Virgin (mother and child)”.

I once overheard my kids singing O Canada (before a pretend hockey game played with stuffed bears) with the line, “Ah, tease a man” (rather than “God keep our land”, a much less imaginitive reading).

But the best-known merengues or whatever-they-are (marimbas?) seem to come from pop music, where the lyrics are so blurred by stoned musicians that even THEY don’t know what they mean.

Wiki quotes two classics:

     There's a bathroom on the right (the line at the end of each verse of "Bad Moon Rising" by Creedence Clearwater Revival: "There's a bad moon on the rise")

      

    'Scuse me while I kiss this guy (from a lyric in the song "Purple Haze", by Jimi Hendrix: "'Scuse me while I kiss the sky").

Kissing “this guy” makes more sense than kissing "the sky", which is idiotic. But what about that line from the Beatles’ first hit, She Loves You?

“You know it’s up to you

I think it’s only fair

(blank blank blank blank blank)

Apologize to her”

When I sang this along with my gang of ten-year-old friends, we sang something that sounded like ‘Frighten her to do”. We got by with this, because no one cared what the words were anyway. Paul was so cute ‘n fluffy, and Ringo made us want to take care of him. John was scary and looked a little mean, and George was just the fourth man, but never mind, they were the other two legs that held up the table.

It was only years later that I thought to myself, “Frighten her to DO?” and had to look up the real line.

Which is!

“Pride can hurt you too.”

There’s a sort of “oh, of course” reaction when we finally hear the correct words, as in my revelation/epiphany over “that line” in Elton John’s Rocket Man. I always thought it was,

“Rocket Man, wearing out his shoes in Avalon” (or Babylon).

You will never guess in a million years where I heard the right line. It was on a video of the incomparable William Shatner (and I like William Shatner, by the way – that’s for another post), in which his diction still carried something of that Shakespearian clarity he had when he started his career with the Stratford Festival.

He lounged in a world-weary fashion, smoking a cigarette, each line drawn out for about thirty seconds, with as much histrionic emotion and wild inflection as a rollercoaster. This was one of his first self-parodies, though the audience (this was in about 1978) took it seriously and applauded his performance wildly.

So what’s the real line?

“Burning out his fuse up here alone”.

Who'd-a thunk it?

Mondegreens can become malignant, as when they mestastasize into foreign-language stuff.  I remember seeing something called Mots D’Heures: Gousses, Rames which only made sense (sort of) when you read it out loud:

1. 
   
   (In case you didn't get that the first time - and by the way, how stupid can a person BE? You mean you didn't GET it? What the hell is the - oh well. Here it is again. Read it out loud, will you?)
   
   
   
   

   

   
   
   
   
   

   Et qui rit des curés d'Oc? 

   De Meuse raines, houp! de cloques. 

   De quelles loques ce turque coin. 

   Et ne d'anes ni rennes, 

   Ecuries des curés d'Oc.

Makes me want to go put on my old recording of Inna-Gada-Da-Vi-Da.

There is always one more. . . doll

I don't know what gets into me, I really don't. I can't leave it alone, and I never could.

A few posts ago I was talking about fan art, which I've never done before, mainly because I have no artistic sensibilities whatsoever and can't draw or paint to save my life. Once during a manic phase, I did a lot of abstract painting and was convinced it was REALLY GOOD and went around scanning it and sending it to everyone. Unfortunately, it was shit. I had no idea why everyone seemed so embarrassed.

I don't know how artists do it, except through true talent and determination.

I can't leave it alone. These dolls, these alabaster time-travellers created by the mysterious genius Marina Bychkova (a Vancouver girl, I'm happy to say) pull something out of me, something equally strange.

I want to unjoint them and take them apart and see how they work, or at least dress and undress them. Why? What's the matter with me? I hated dolls as a little girl.

I didn't even have any, except an execrable Debbie doll with a big head and permed black hair like my mother's, and an even worse one called Miss Debutante. Does the average eight-year-old know or care what a "debutante" is? It's a strange term at the best of times, and like "chatelaine" it has no male equivalent. I used to call her "Miss De-BUT-ton-ty", when I called her anything at all.

I did mummify my Barbie, and got some strange looks for it, even from my schizophrenic brother Arthur who seemed to be from some other planet. What can I say, I loved mummies and hated Barbie and it seemed like a good solution.

I can't play with dolls even now, I can't afford one as good as these, and feel a bit silly prowling around doll shows where people just hoard them. So this is my only way of playing. 

I have to reveal a secret: while I played with images today, I worried about a medical test I'm having in a week. I don't feel well and I haven't for some time, though as usual nobody has a clue about it because "you seem fine to me". When you've hidden depression and other kinds of wretched imbalance for nearly 60 years, you get awfully good at it.

This seems to be "physical", meaning "not my fault" and "not something I'm just making up to get attention that I could snap out of any time I wanted to, except I don't want to". It's weird, because part of me hopes there's something wrong, or at least something they can locate, so it won't be one of those vague situations where you KNOW there is something wrong but no one in the medical community will acknowledge it.

It seems a bit idiotic to say, "Gee, I sure hope they find something wrong."

But I do.

I have another secret, and now I will reveal it. I wanted to use one of those hideous birds by Hieronymus Bosch in my "fan art", but discovered it really wasn't do-able, any more than my equally bright idea to make my own Russian nesting dolls. But I did find this, some sort of hawk making that screaming noise they do. What struck me is that its mouth was a perfect mother-of-pearl-looking heart, so I used that as a basis for my fan art, or desecrations, or whatever they are.

It just worked so perfectly. 

EXTREMELY RARE: world's most idiotic cat food commercial!

I have noticed that if you put EXTREMELY RARE in a title, everyone reads the post. Or something.

This ad is, I will admit, extremely bizarre, with the "p-p-p-p-protein" and the dog chasing the three cats into a barrel (with an obvious break to get the freaking cats out of there). 

Cat food ads have always been way stupider than dog food ads. We had Morris, who used to complain endlessly in that smarmy voice. (In spite of his addiction to Nine Lives, he died.) We had "chow-chow-chow" and that weird running-the-film-backwards dance that no cat would do if they were starving to death. And we had the incomparable telephone-proficient Baxter ("Don't answer it, Frank"), whom I thought was lost forever until I dug up a couple of the commercials on an advertising site. 

Probably the best- known was the Meow Mix jingle, with the original subtitles reading, "I want chicken, I want liver, Meow Mix, Meow Mix, please deliver." There were infinite varieties on this, with the words gradually making less and less sense ("I want lightly-grilled sea bass, I want roast turkey with razzleberry dressing," etc.).  My all-time fave, which I think I already posted at some point, was the "Close Encounters" Meow Mix commercial of the mid-'80s: a cat is pictured gazing heavenwards and meows four times in the familiar Meow Mix "frequency". A huge spaceship appears and echoes the meows with "BOM BOM BOM BOM". All that's missing is Richard Dreyfuss digging up shrubs and having a nervous breakdown from sheer intensity.

I'm glad to find these things again, because they're fun, and my grandkids whoop and scream over them. They don't make ads like that any more, with those stupid cats, or rather, those stupid advertising copywriters. Paging Freddy Rumsen!

One!. . . More!. . . Time!

If your whole life somehow

Wasn't much 'til now

And you've almost lost

Your will to live

No matter what you've been through

Long as there's breath in you

There is always one more time

And if your dreams go bad

Every one that you've had

That don't mean that some dreams

Can't come true

'Cause it's funny about dreams

As strange as it seems

There is always one more time

Oh turnin' corners

Is only a state of mind

Keeping your eyes closed

Is worse than being blind

If there's a heart out there

Looking for someone to share

I don't care if it's been

Turned down time and time again

And if we meet one day

Please don't walk away

'Cause there is always one more time

There is always one more time

Blogger's note. Why do I spend so much time doing these things? Something to help the video down, I guess. Something to force me to concentrate so I won't sink ever deeper into depression and despair. What? I'm not happy all the time? Of course I am! It's just that I have this bad case of reality. Plus my Kicked post with the Cole Porter lyric (very mysteriously) got something like 400 views!

When I first heard this song in the movie Bowfinger, I was riveted. Then I forgot all about it. Then I saw Bowfinger again, but this time I was actually able to look it up and hear it again. I think it saved my life (at least for now). 

Johnny Depp: FOLLOW THE RULES OR ELSE!

You know, I'm always a little intimidated when the first thing I read on an unfamiliar web site is a detailed and very long list of rules.

I was particularly astonished when this headspinningly complex list (below) appeared on a fan site about that rascally social rebel, that mascara-eyed Caribbean ne'er-do-well, that stereotype-shattering gender-bending Ed Wood of the modern cinema, Johnny Depp.

Johnny Depp is a fox- let's get that out of the way first - and ever since my then-teenage daughter told me breathlessly about a painfully-gorgeous young hunk on a show called 21 Jump Street, he has taken on interesting parts, the sort of roles that a Gary Oldman might choose (or a Danny DeVito or a whoever-is-a-subversive-character-but-not-especially-good-looking-or-over-the-height-of-four-feet-one-inch-tall).  And he has made a go of it for a very long time, decades in fact, an unusual thing for a slightly off-the-wall leading man.  And he has attracted female fans everywhere. Especially me. 

Do I have a favorite? I do.  Though the movie Benny and Joon is not especially good in story line, and not much acting ever takes place, I love Depp's nearly-mute amalgam of Chaplin, Keaton and even my beloved Harold Lloyd as he swings from a rope past the window of his girl friend who is incarcerated in a mental institution.  He's all in, as they say.

So I was kind of, well, ah, er, taken aback when I investigated the web site I recommended at the end of my post about automatons. When I finally looked at it in detail, I found this, this, this - edifice of rules, this - this boarding school, this itchy crinoline, this Little House on the Prairie bonnet of restriction! Compared to this, my Grade Four grammar teacher was a raving slut. 

Yes, I appreciate the fact that the comments have to be written in complete sentences. Most of my sentences are complete, and if they aren't, it's 

I can see ruling out those lols and rotfl and grmlds and stuff like that. I hate them and fear that the language will become irreversibly eroded if they take over any more than they already have.  I can see ruling out abusive language and blatant Depp sexual fantasies, although. . . 

Although. People can't express feelings about him, share dreams or fantasies, or post fan art or Johnny Depp coloring pages or anything like that. No good steamy gossip or "hearsay" is allowed, nor can you quote those scumbag entertainment sites.  It's completely sexless, devoid of the giddy joy these Hollywood gods are meant to provoke in us mortals.  This fan site is under such tight control, it only has something like 33 followers, all of whom seem deeply intimidated when they approach the Headmistress with their timid questions.

I'm just sayin'.  All passion seems to have been squashed down by one of those squashing-down things.

Once you've carefully read through ALL the rules, and don't you dare just skim them like you'd do on a surgical permission form or a divorce settlement or whatever, you discover there is in fact very little that you CAN do on this site. I wonder, then, why even have a Johnny Depp fan site, if indeed that's what it is? And what would Johnny Depp think about it?

I don't think he'd read a web site, to tell the truth. I don't think he would read one about himself, in particular. He'd be out there jumping into his next role, which is what real actors do. He'd be out there shattering the dull tradition of good-looking actors mainly functioning as backdrops on wheels.

But that's just me.

General Forum Rules and Guidelines
(For detailed information, please see next post)

• All posts must be written in English.

• No chatspeak or text-message abbreviations.

• Use proper punctuation, capitalization and spelling.

• Do not post chat threads (threads that are not about Johnny Depp). The Morning Thread in the Daily Features forum is the place for off-topic conversation.

• No obscene material is allowed on the Zone. No sexual fantasies and/or dreams about Johnny.

• When posting material from the Zone onto other websites, please give credit to the Zone and the person who posted the material.

• No flaming, spamming or soliciting. This includes, but is not limited to posts on the board, private messages or emails.

• No troll posts—ones that are written to provoke arguments.

• Avoid using profanity. This is not a community that curses. Please use the “censored” board icon instead.

• Do not divulge, discuss, or complain about the contents of a private message from a staff member.

• Do not post tabloid stories, unfounded rumors or gossip. Nothing from ContactMusic.com. No hearsay—information you “heard somewhere.” No “inside sources” from other websites.

• Do not post items for sale or trade on the Zone. In certain cases, items to give away free are allowed to be posted. Please contact a staff member for approval before posting free items.

• Don’t advertise other websites or chat rooms. You may use the website button in your profile or post the site in your signature as long as (1) you don’t promote the site in your posts and, (2) the site link you post does not violate any Zone standards.

• Include SPOILER warnings if you are writing about an unreleased film. Please use the Spoiler button to hide the details.

	(Blogger's note. I only posted the bare bones of these rules! Herein is the expanded, complete version. I note that much of what they post on this forum consists of Johnny Depp jigsaw puzzles. Fan fiction is allowed, but it can't have Johnny Depp in it. Oh dear.)
	All posts must be written in standard English. Please avoid "chatspeak," random mixtures of capital and lower-case letters, and/or text-messaging abbreviations. The goal is to make every post clear and easy to read; we have many members who are not native English-speakers, and they need words they can find in a dictionary or that can be easily translated by automatic-translation programs. So use "I" and "you" and "because," not "i" and "u" and "cuz." Use proper punctuation, capitalization, and spelling. A message written entirely in lower-case letters violates Zone standards; these and other types of chatspeak posts will be deleted by the staff without notice. The Zone is a discussion forum, not a chat room. Every thread must introduce a subject to discuss about Johnny Depp. Threads like "Hi, I'm back!" or "Is there anybody there?" or "I'm so bored/depressed/lonely--please cheer me up" or "What's going on?" are inappropriate to the Zone and will be automatically deleted without comment. Threads which are started to discuss a personal problem of the member are also inappropriate; such matters should be discussed by email with one's friends, not posted on a forum. If you have the urge to chat about your private life, post onto the morning thread, which is where such messages are exchanged--along with the latest news about Johnny, of course. Since this site was created by adult women for the enjoyment of other adults, a certain earthy, appreciative tone is often part of our conversations. But we do not allow explicit sexual references, or discussions of body parts; the tone is subtle and witty, never sleazy. The Zone is NOT an NC-17 site, and there are members as young as 13 on every forum. Please keep them in mind when you post, and be sure to leave plenty to the imagination. Don't post obscene material on the Zone. Explicit posts about sexual acts and body parts, or images or artwork that would push an R-rated film into NC-17 territory, go too far. Avatars, locations, and signatures, since they appear with a member's every post, must be suitable for reading by all ages; keep these PG-13, please. No profanity, nothing sexually suggestive. Don't post detailed sexual fantasies or dreams that involve the writer of the post and Johnny Depp, or a Johnny Depp character--that makes us feel icky. We also don't allow the real Johnny Depp to appear as a character in a Fanfic story (or in a "Johnny and me" fiction on any other forum). Don't post material from the Zone onto other websites without giving proper credit. We request that you give credit to the Zone and the person who posted or created the material. That's only fair, and members who don't treat the Zone and their fellow Zoners fairly won't be members here very long. It is particularly despicable to take another member's personal artwork or personal photos or videos (of herself and Johnny at a meet-and-greet, for example) and post them on another Depp site (or anywhere else) without first seeking that member's permission and then graciously thanking her in the post on the other website. Please Note: Zone members hold the copyright to their artwork, fanfic, and personal photos and personal videos, and those who post them elsewhere without the member's permission are committing copyright infringement. Even worse, they are betraying the friendship of a fellow Zoner who was kind enough to share with all of us. Anyone who would steal another Zoner's artwork, writing, photos, or video and post it elsewhere claiming "I just found this . . . I can't remember where" is both a liar and a thief, and will be immediately banned from the Zone. No flaming, spamming, soliciting or trolling. Don't exploit the Zone or its members for personal gain. Occasionally people join the Zone as a marketing ploy, to gain access to a large group of Johnny Depp fans in order to sell them something. We consider that spam and deactivate those accounts. Don't write any posts which ask other members to send you their email addresses, home addresses, phone numbers, or other personal contact information. This is a tactic frequently used by sexual predators and other criminals to obtain the home addresses of their victims. Never send your personal contact information to someone newly registered on the Zone. Only share it with people you know well. Don't abuse the Private Message system by using it to harass, harangue, solicit or spam other members of the Zone. Members who misuse the PM system will be deactivated or banned. Don't post troll posts—ones solely written to provoke arguments among the members. Such messages will be removed from the boards. If you notice a troll post, rather than firing back an angry reply (which we all are tempted to do), please PM a member of the Zone staff and let us know where to find the troll post. We'll handle it. Never use profanity in a thread title. Do not direct profanity or vicious comments at another poster, the Zone, or members of the Zone community. Other kinds of name-calling, and malicious/slanderous rants, will be deleted. Keep casual profanity out of your posts--this is not a community that curses, except in extreme circumstances. Use the "censored" board icon instead. Zone forums are friendly and always civil. Don't post comments or complaints about receiving a "correcting" private message (PM) from a a staff member. PMs are private and the staff sends them to you privately rather than posting a list of "Here's who screwed up today," out of respect for your privacy and your dignity. It is in your best interest and the Zone's that anything that violates a Zone policy is corrected as soon as possible. That's all one of these PMs is—a reminder of what the rules are. Don't post tabloid stories, unfounded rumors, or gossip. This includes any item which originates in a newspaper gossip column or a paper like the National Enquirer (U.S.). Do not post any items from ContactMusic.com. These stories rely on sensationalized headlines and out-of-context quotes and rarely prove to be true. Items from unreliable sources will be deleted. Don't post news stories from “inside sources” found on other websites, since the accuracy of this information cannot be verified. Don't post hearsay--information about Johnny Depp that you "heard somewhere" (at work, at school, from a friend) that cannot be verified. The Zone is widely read (we have many thousands of visitors a day), and we have a responsibility to be certain that whatever we print about Johnny is accurate. The Zone adheres to journalistic standards for our Johnny Depp news; rumors about possible Johnny Depp film projects that appear in the press are clearly labeled as rumors (only), and we don't publish hearsay or gossip. Threads that make claims about Johnny but have no verifiable source for their information will be deleted or locked. Don't post items for sale or trade on the Zone. We have no way of investigating or doing quality control, and we can't be responsible for trades or promotions that don't turn out as advertised. The Zone's forums are a place for discussion of Johnny's films and other career activities; we are not Ebay. In certain cases, items to give away free are allowed to be posted. Please contact a staff member for approval before posting free items. Don't publish links to articles or websites that violate any of the Zone's standards and practices. This would include sites, including members' personal websites or pages, that feature sexually explicit material, profane language, name-calling or hate speech, gossip about Johnny Depp, pictures of the Depp children, aggressive attempts to sell merchandise, spam, etc. Don't use a thread on the Zone to advertise another website or to urge Zone members to visit a different site or chat room. We consider this spam--an unfair harassment of the membership. EXTERNAL LINKS POLICY The Johnny Depp Zone web site may contain links to many other web sites. The Zone cannot guarantee the accuracy of information found at any linked site. Links to or from external web sites not owned or controlled by the Zone does not constitute an endorsement by the Zone of the sponsors of these sites or the products or information presented there. The Zone staff reserves the right to remove any links in forum posts or members' signatures that we deem inappropriate for the Zone. Include SPOILER warnings if you are writing about an unreleased film. If your news item has ANY reference to the plot, casting, or a particular scene or effect in a movie in production or pre-production, put SPOILERS in capital letters in the subject line of your post. Please also use the "SPOILER" code available on the message reply page to hide any spoilers. Many Zoners do not wish to know any details about Johnny Depp’s movies until they see them in the theater, and they deserve the right to go to the movie and be surprised and enchanted. Do NOT spoil the movie for them! Also be careful when replying to a thread about a movie in production; unless the thread says SPOILERS, don’t give anything away!

NOTE. I don't think it's fair to assume a fan site about Johnny Depp is going to have a Depp-like, devil-may-care disregard for social convention. But it just strikes me as strange, is all. It's so careful, careful, careful, and seems at odds with his rebellious and often very sexual persona. Oh, but we CAN allude to sex if it's done in an earthy, oh-so-English way ("Quite the ripper, is Johnny, eh, Honoria dear?" Assuming this site is English.) 

Anyway, I didn't write any of this, I'm just using it as an example of internet curiosa. Oh my God, I think that's a run-on sentence!

Just playing around (driving myself crazy)

The most beautiful thing I have ever seen

Dead monk in the middle of the road: the ultimate automaton

From Wikipedia, under the entry of Automata:

In 1562, the heir to the throne of Spain sustained a serious head wound that caused him fever and blindness. His father, the king, thought all was lost, until the heir was reportedly cured by the miraculous corpse of a Spanish monk that had been dead for 100 years.In his desperation, the king had allowed the monk's mummified body to be placed in bed with his sick son and he was so thankful when this dubious medical treatment actually worked that he commissioned a moving replica of the dead monk.


You see? You see how wrong I was about automatons (or automata, if you want to get technical about it - just don't say automaTRON, as too many people on YouTube videos did - collectors!!). I thought they were a Victorian invention, maybe because of that scene in A Christmas Carol where Tiny Tim is staring into the store window as they take away the wooden boat he covets. But soon he is beaming again with his crooked English teeth, because of the jouncing clown that leers and laughs at him, which I just ASSUMED was an automaton.

Which maybe it was, but it was a pretty shitty one. If this monk-on-wheels (currently moldering away in the Smithsonian) is indeed dated back to 1562, there's more going on here than I thought. For one thing, I must have seriously underestimated human technology. (BTW, there's no sound on this video, probably to disguise the creaks, groans, whirrs and thuds these creepy homunculi produce).

I can't begin to figure out how these things move, and when I see the inner workings of them they look like giant pocket watches ticking away. I don't see how else they could have stayed in motion, though, like a pocket watch, I assume they would have to be wound at intervals.

My readings about automata are fascinating, if pretty strange. The medieval monk-y business is nothing compared to this far-fetched Biblical tale of automatiana:

According to Jewish legend, Solomon used his wisdom to design a throne with mechanical animals which hailed him as king when he ascended it; upon sitting down an eagle would place a crown upon his head, and a dove would bring him a Torah scroll. It's also said that when King Solomon stepped upon the throne, a mechanism was set in motion. As soon as he stepped upon the first step, a golden ox and a golden lion each stretched out one foot to support him and help him rise to the next step. On each side, the animals helped the King up until he was comfortably seated upon the throne.

I don't see how this could have happened, unless a time-traveller (perhaps Dr. Sheldon Cooper of The Big Bang Theory) went back and built the thing for Solomon. I also wonder about that "legend" bit: legend usually means "something that maybe sort of should be true because we want it to be, but probably isn't". 

But this one takes the cake, and I am sure was written as a form of satire, perhaps to take a swipe at people's wide-eyed awe when watching these things. I can imagine them exclaiming about how lifelike they were, even if they were about as animated as that monk's mummified corpse.

In ancient China, a curious account of automata is found in the Lie Zi text, written in the 3rd century BC. Within it there is a description of a much earlier encounter between King Mu of Zhou (1023-957 BC) and a mechanical engineer known as Yan Shi, an 'artificer'. The latter proudly presented the king with a life-size, human-shaped figure of his mechanical handiwork (Wade-Giles spelling):

The king stared at the figure in astonishment. It walked with rapid strides, moving its head up and down, so that anyone would have taken it for a live human being. The artificer touched its chin, and it began singing, perfectly in tune. He touched its hand, and it began posturing, keeping perfect time...As the performance was drawing to an end, the robot winked its eye and made advances to the ladies in attendance, whereupon the king became incensed and would have had Yen Shih [Yan Shi] executed on the spot had not the latter, in mortal fear, instantly taken the robot to pieces to let him see what it really was. And, indeed, it turned out to be only a construction of leather, wood, glue and lacquer, variously coloured white, black, red and blue. Examining it closely, the king found all the internal organs complete—liver, gall, heart, lungs, spleen, kidneys, stomach and intestines; and over these again, muscles, bones and limbs with their joints, skin, teeth and hair, all of them artificial...The king tried the effect of taking away the heart, and found that the mouth could no longer speak; he took away the liver and the eyes could no longer see; he took away the kidneys and the legs lost their power of locomotion. The king was delighted.

Could Walking Baby Alive have done any better? 

 http://www.johnnydepp-zone.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=48978

(I've barely looked at this site, but it looks promising, though I have no idea what it has to do with Johnny Depp. Except that maybe he's an automaton.)

It's Nancy (but where's Sluggo?)

Once you start watching these, you're a goner. Nancy is particularly "lifelike", meaning she isn't lifelike at all and scares the Jesus out of you.

Screek, scrawk. . . it's alive, ALIVE, I tell you!

This strange embalmed-looking automaton was once a form of Victorian entertainment, a technological marvel of its time. The sounds she makes are the best part.

Super-creepy, heeby-jeeby, WORST clown ever seen!

What makes these hideously fascinating figures even more fascinating is that you just keep finding them. One YouTube video leads to twenty more. These were marvels of high technology during the Victorian-Edwardian era and were driven by a hand-cranked clockwork mechanism. I tried to find a quite long video shot by a tourist which featured a fascinating museum in Switzerland, mostly a collection of self-playing musical instruments. Can't find it now, but maybe it lingers somewhere in a backwash of YouTube-opia.

I suppose people must collect these at great price, or else they appear only in museums and are seldom - what, played? Cranked? What ARE these things, anyway, and why do I have nightmares about them? The sounds they make are the worst, the creakings and bangings and muffled thuds. 

I mean, clowns are bad enough, aren't they, but half a clown made out of wires, rolling some sort of ball and sticking his tongue out at us, is the stuff of Tim Burton movies. 

Embalmed Beauty, Part 2: fan art

Quite a while ago I went through a doll phase - all right, an obsessive doll phase - all right,  a completely obsessive doll phase that took me down some very dark corridors in my mind.

I think the first significant genre I found was on a web site called Enchanted Doll (http://www.enchanteddoll.com/) which features a collection of exquisite and disturbing dolls by Russian-Canadian artist Marina Bychkova. Barely 30 years old (and living in my hometown of Vancouver), she has been creating these shockingly original alabaster dream-figures since her early 20s. It has certainly paid off: one of her dolls commanded the headspinning price of $27,000.00 on eBay, and the waiting list for purchase is now several years long.

What exactly is happening here? How to analyze this strange and spooky magic? You can't, and I won't try or I'll be here all morning. Most of Bychkova's dolls are in a category called BJD (and it doesn't mean what you think it does, so shut up or I'll smack your filthy mouth). It means ball-jointed dolls, whose arms and legs have the capability of moving in practically any direction. (Please don't count those Monster High monstrosities, whose arms, legs and hands have an alarming habit of falling off.)

The bodies seem identical, slim and virginal, sometimes elaborately tattooed, with realistic genitalia that freak a lot of people out. Some even have pubic hair and a visible clitoris, which is strange because the average woman's clitoris isn't visible. The slender figures and spookily lifelike skin of these dolls contrasts startlingly with their blatantly visible, marionette-like joints. The nudes pose innocently or provocatively, faces sad and sometimes frightened, eyes brimming with tears. Costumes can be incredibly intricate, and there is even some furniture, velvet sofas and the like. But this is hardly Barbie's House of Dreams (from which the name of this blog is derived, by the way. Some people don't get the satire at all and just think I'm stupid.) 

There are recurring themes in the world of the Enchanted Doll. One seems to be subjugation and even a kind of captivity. Many of the dolls wear costumes that would feel something like a suit of armor, with enormous headgear (one even has a cathedral on top of her head!). Even the Scheherezade-like figures look like creatures kept under glass (which, during the many exhibits that draw wildly enthusiastic crowds, they actually are).

I had a Bychkova fit a year or so ago - or was it two? - then decided I had had enough and had better leave it alone before I crossed some sort of disturbing threshhold. Enchanted doesn't mean what people think it does. It means living under a powerful and often unbreakable spell, a spell cast through words or even song (the "chant" part). Abricadabra, bibbidy-bobbidy-boo, and you're captivated (captured?) for life.

But when I got triggered off again recently, God knows how, I found a trove of a couple hundred images I had previously hoarded (most of which I ruthlessly weeded down to just 66 or so - not 666! - figuring the rest of them  are already accessible on the internet, and will be for the forseeable future). I found only a few that were really new to me, including the heartbreaking one at the start of this post. If you really want to freak yourself out, pretend you can hear what this doll is saying. And there is the really disturbing one, the battered doll, which seems to cross the line even for a dollmaker who likes to push the envelope.

So do these dolls "make a statement" about female subjugation? I doubt if it's done consciously. If they do, it's in the sense of holding up a mirror, both to society and to ourselves. We prize the waxen beauty of girls kept under glass, and even find them sexually irresistable.

SOOOOOOOOO. . . we come to my Daily Special. Those few years back when I first became obsessed, I produced a bit of fan art. There is fan art on Bychkova's Enchanted Doll site, but it's done by actual amateur artists, not people like me who can't paint or draw. I play with my Enchanted Doll images like Colorforms, that primitive form of magnetic paper dolls from the '60s, which I was startled to see my granddaughters playing with the other day.

This is photoshop art, placing the dolls in settings that worked for me, stolen from the internet. The backgrounds are  meant to be standard wallpaper, but there is nothing standard about these dolls. They call up disturbing feelings in people, from "Ewwwwwwww! Cree-py!", to "Who made these?" to "Where can I get one?"

In case you think these dolls represent harmless social satire, just look on Bychkova's site and watch some of her videos. They feature "playing with" the various nude dolls, placing them in postures that often seem frankly lesbian. In one, a doll has died and is being buried. 

It all makes the mummified Barbie in the shoebox sarcophagus of my childhood seem much less strange.

CODA. I kept getting a funny feeling when I looked at this one:

It was perhaps the simplest one to compose, with only one figure in the extreme foreground. But it looked funny, kept changing somehow.

It was like one of those "can you see two faces in this picture?" things that I can never figure out.

With a few magical photoshop changes, I was seeing a giant goose or duck or some other strange bird, a malevolent-looking one that seemed to be dominating the entire picture. It's what fairy tale enchantment can do to you.