Wednesday, August 30

Lessons in children's lit...

My 4yo was reading a "Harold and the Purple Crayon" omnibus, the story "Harold's Trip to the Sky" (1957). Harold finds himself in the desert.

Apart from drinking at an oasis, he thinks, "there isn't much else to do on a desert." But "then he remembered how the government has fun on the desert. It shoots off rockets."


Which the hell government is Harold thinking of?

harold visits


original photo at the always delicious Quasar9.

5 comments:

  1. I miss Harold, and Mike Mulligan and his steam shovel, and those colorful fish, and Thomas the Tank Engine, and all those books I used to read to my kids...

    This is too funny.

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  2. So now we know where Dubya gets his foreign policy ideas from.

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  3. i'm angry about that original photo with the looks of delight on those kids' faces. but adding harold gives it, oh , i don't know, somehow an ironic humor.

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  4. Pictures like this - and the rest of the visual material that left no room for doubt about the recent episode in the war between Israel and Lebanon (previous episodes being in 1948, when Ben Gurion tried to do a land-grab up to the Litani and failed, in 1978, when Begin tried the same stunt and failed, in 1982, when Ariel Sharon got Begin to do it AGAIN; Israel eventually pulled out of Lebanon in 2000), have left even the staunchest supporters of Israel wondering about what's up with the hate messages.

    A very dear old lady told me that she prefers to watch Fox, because even CNN ("which used to be good!") "is now biased; they keep saying that Israel is the aggressor!" - imagine that: reality-based reporting.

    In Israel itself, things are becoming clearer: there is the peace camp, which thinks Arabs should be kept behind *really* high walls, and the right-wing nationalists, who thinks Arabs should be pushed out of Israel (presumably into the sea, but no specific destination is mentioned). There are hardly any voices calling for civil rights for all residents of Israel, regardless of nationality (and I am NOT talking about the Occupied Territories, here. Gaza is being bombarded daily, with 200 people killed there since June, and the infrastructure in shambles, or the West Bank, with more than a million people people under house arrest for the duration of the war, and check points strangulating every village).

    It is terrifying to watch.

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  5. Hi Blue Gal, You are delicious too

    Nice touch of humour adding the crayon cartoon, if only we could get the girls to draw kisses and flowers and render them useless.

    Thanks for the mention.
    I wondered where the traffic was coming from.

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