Family Guy killed off Brian. I strongly suspect we have not seen the last of Brian, but I stopped watching about a year ago. I also gave up on The Cleveland Show pretty quickly, but it had a great theme song.
*
Yesterday was such a horribly depressing link roundup, so I’m trying to make today’s more upbeat. After it was mentioned in our really good books for babies and toddlers post, I ordered and read all three existing Knuffle Bunny books, and now I am a puddle of mush. The third one? Knuffle Bunny Free? Actually cried it was so sweet. Did you have a toy/blankie you lugged around? I had a bald, hollow, detatched doll’s head I carried around until I was about eight. As a result, I religiously rotate my kid’s stuffed animals in and out of bed duty so I don’t ever have to drive three hours back to a hotel to retrieve one. I’m a monster.
*
A new edition of Reading Between the Texts!
Him: lakers won.got a day off.feet on the table,espn on.man,wat i’d give to hv R moanin on my lap right nw!!
*
What to read during Thanksgiving break: a flow-chart (needs more Middlemarch.)
*
Jennifer Warnes performing Leonard Cohen’s “First We Take Manhattan” is a) what I play on my headphones when I go up on my weights, and b) the soundtrack for my own misandrist revolution, and c) a blazer and three-quarter length black skirt:
*
The New Yorker has a great little thing about Cynthia Ozick, and made some of her older work for the magazine available.
*
Just One Book (Mallory is in here!)
*
Emily Dickinson: great texter, gruesome baker (jk jk I just hate dried fruits that aren’t peaches, apricots, or mangos).
*
Passengers through airplane windows.
Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
When I was about 18 months- 4 years old, I had a most favorite of favorite blankets, called Buggy. It was called Buggy, because I was such a deeply stubborn little shit with attachment issues, that I would freak out if I was separated from Buggy, even to be washed, and my mom would always say “Hot Doom, it’s going to get all buggy and gross if you don’t let me wash it!”. To truly spit in the eye of The Man (who was my poor, sweet mother), I would drag Buggy on the floor of our garage after it was washed, I guess to be contrary and awful, and to show how much I didn’t care if it collected bugs. It was basically my daemon, to use a His Dark Materials reference.
One time, when I was about 2, we were flying somewhere, and when the person at the x-ray machine told me I had to put Buggy through on the belt, I lost it. And by lost it, I mean I screamed at the top of my lungs “YOOOUUUUU BIIIIIITCH!”. Supposedly, the woman did not understand what I was saying (and probably would not have guessed based on my being 2), but my mom knew. I don’t remember the incident, but I am reminded of it frequently. I was a little angel, la la la 0:)
Oh man, this is the best thing I’ve ever heard.
Speaking of terrible children – one time my cousins were out at the mall with my grandmother. For some reason everyone was upset (I’m sure there was fault on all sides also.) My cousins (twins) were around 6 at the time – definitely old enough to know better. Anyway, my grandmother is trying to coral my cousins and they’re throwing a temper tantrum. The fit gets loud and big enough that mall security comes over to investigate. He asks my cousins if they know my grandmother (my cousins and grandmother look nothing alike), and they shake their heads and say no – at which point my grandmother becomes absolutely furious. The fact that my grandmother emigrated from Taiwan and is easily recognized as “foreign” combined with her rather forceful personality made interactions with the mall cop even more difficult. I don’t remember how things eventually got resolved, but I do know that my grandmother won’t let my cousins forget it to this day.
(Typing out this story makes it seem less like a funny family anecdote and more like a case of pretty blatant racism, actually.)
I had a crocheted baby blanket made for me by a family friend, called (originally) Blankie. Blankie went everywhere with me as a small child and most places as an elementary schooler. Even in high school, I slept with Blankie.
In my first two years of college, I attempted to give up Blankie. It was easier sophomore year when I had a boyfriend (although even then I had to admit that Blankie was often a better bed companion – I mean, it never came home wasted and barfed all over my sheets for example). Then in an effort to quit Blankie once and for all, I left it at home when I studied in Europe my junior year. But my mom secretly packed it in my trunk. MO-OM! (Thanks, Mom.)
Holy crap, your mom is the best. That’s such a sweet thing to do.
I read the Ozick piece and thought “heh, The Toast would be interested in this.” And now everything is Toast.
I have a five-hour train trip today and stopped by the library last night to pick up some reading. On a whim I checked the E stacks…. sure enough, one brand new paperback of Middlemarch. Thanks for the peer pressure!
I had a wooden spoon I’d carry around as a kid. I went with me everywhere. Until one day my mom and I went to IKEA and she left me in the ball pit at the child care center and I lost it and they had to call her over the loudspeaker because I was so distraught.
I never had a baby/blankie/wubbie that I carried around, but my sister did, well into adulthood.
What’s interesting to me is that of the two of us, I have some not insignificant attachment issues and insecurities as an adult, while she is super grounded and secure. Maybe I should have had a wubbie? Does anyone have any insight? is this just happenstance, unrelated to wubbies?
I call my cats’ cheeks wubbies and I wondered if I had made that word up or not. But they are definitely not secure. So I don’t think its the wubbies.
I have a teddy bear that I received from my great-aunt for my first Christmas. At first it was one among many stuffed animals, but sometime after I gave it a name (Emily) it became my favorite & only. When I was seven I left Emily at my grandmother’s house, which was inconveniently located across the Atlantic Ocean from our house at the time. My grandmother, may she rest in peace, returned Emily to me by airmail. Emily now stays in my underwear drawer, for easy access when I’m feeling particularly low.
See also this slide show of stuffed animals who have been loved to bits.
That slideshow is lovely but I am mad about the “deranged fellow student” who ripped up the first bear featured (Pink Teddy). How much of a shitmitten must you be to do something like that? Deranged is right.
Oh my goodness, that slideshow. I wanted to burn the earth earlier and now I’m just going “aww”.
D’awwww… that slide show just made me so happy.
When I was quite small, as in barely a year old, I had a small plush Big Bird that I carried everywhere with me. It probably would have been cute except I walked around with Big Bird’s beak in my mouth to the point that the yellow beak turned greenish-black. My mom told me she was so relieved the day I left it in the grocery store by accident and it never darkened our doorway (or my mouth) again.
Not gonna work, Nicole. No matter how often you rotate them, she’ll imprint on something and claim it as her beloved germ-bomb.
(I made the mistake of reading Knuffle Bunny Free out-loud in the library. Yup, cried in public.)
Oh, I’m so glad it’s not just me. The epilogue? Waterworks.
Nothing sad happens in this book, everyone. It’s just full of feelings.
I have a friend whose daughter is named Trixie and I asked her how she handled the end of the series. She said she thinks she’ll have to wait a few more years before she can read the epilogue to Trixie without losing it.
You were still watching Family Guy A YEAR AGO? Bold move, Cliffe. Bold move.
I’ve never dumped anyone I’ve ever dated, either.
NOT ONCE.
I had a yellow blanket with silky borders and a Winnie-The-Pooh applique on one corner. Its name was Mokey (maw-kee). One of my first memories is drawing a picture of Mokey in Sunday school. I’ve got it carefully folded in my bottom dresser drawer at home right now. And yes, at one point I did leave it at home while we were visiting my grandma; I realized what I’d done while we were somewhere on the Cross-Bronx Expressway and wailed intermittently for the duration of the trip.
My brother had a blanket and I had a bear. I still have mine and I think he still has his. Ted and my wallet are the two things I would grab in a fire. I’m not super sentimental, but when I am, I’m superduper sentimental.
I had a blanket that went through several iterations (first one fell apart and was turned into the border for the second one) that I slept with until probably middle school, and a large stuffed dog that I got when my parents brought my brother home from the hospital after his birth. The dog came with me my first year or two of college, actually. He still lives in my childhood bedroom and I used to have nightmares about having to give him up.
Knuffle Bunny is like a nuclear weapon of emotions. Gabe has listened to the first one enough times that now he “reads” it along with me, and it’s been memorized. What I really like about them is that Trixie’s parental interaction is mostly with her daddy– daddy does the laundry, daddy does the hand-off, daddy helps Trixie with the loss of Knuffle Bunny.
I had a yellow blanket that, NGL, I slept with until I was probably eleven. The binding on the edges was gone on three sides, it’s more holes than blanket, and I love it. It’s packed away in Gabe’s closet, and it’s probably something I’d rescue in a fire. We once left it in Moses Lake and my mom made the six-hour round trip that night to go get it so I’d sleep. In anticipation of my dude becoming attached to something like that, I’ve only given him stuffed animals that I can easily find online. Of course, all he wants to sleep with are Matchbox cars.
People still care about Family Guy?
I kind of assumed it wasn’t being made any more.
As long as teenage dudes are smoking dirt weed out of pop cans in their parents’ garage, Family Guy will be on the air.
I think I last watched it… 2 years ago, give or take? It may well be the Simpsons of this current generation though, going on indefinitely.
God, I seriously hate Family Guy so much. It’s blatantly racist and sexist and stupidly violent, all under the guise of “irony” because OMG don’t you know that Seth McFarlane is sooo liberal and couldn’t possibly be racist??? “Oh, but they make fun of everyone!” Yeah, sorry, able-bodied rich straight white dude, that doesn’t make it okay. And just making a reference to something in pop culture doesn’t make it a joke.
A thousand times this.
I had a bear called Bayboo that was a gift for me before I was even born. He didn’t really go everywhere (I mean, I could go to the store without him) but if I went somewhere overnight, he was definitely with me. I slept with Bayboo until I was 30 years old, at which time I told myself that a 30-year-old woman should not sleep with a stuffed animal. He now resides in my closet for quick access. I now sleep with a pillow in his place because I’m used to having something in my arms. :-/
Hey, this 34 year old woman sleeps with a stuffed animal! Cuddle Bayboo if you still want to!
I sleep with a pillow too. I don’t understand what other people do with their arms *pause for confused flailing* when they sleep.
While my childhood Winnie has been retired, I have gone through a series of more disposable bears for sleeping with throughout my adult life. They’re the right size for doing something with your arms while you sleep!
I have a little toy… animal that I christened Lamb as a small child. It may possibly have even been a toy lamb, once. All the fur has been hugged off, one of the back legs has been gripped by a sweaty little child hand so often that the stuffing inside has compressed down to the solidity of wood, one ear has now drooped over and there is a lipstick stain on her back.
I still have her and ALWAYS WILL.
I have a blue dinosaur named Aldalia (my stuffies had the strangest names) that is in the same-same condition and still gets cuddles every time I go home for the holidays.
My grandmother made me a bear blanket when I was a born, and when some kids at the daycare attempted to destroy White Bear, my grandma made me a replacement Pink Bear (I was super creative with names) to hold on to while she repaired the first, so I ended up with two. I would not go anywhere or sleep at all without them, and… sadly, they stayed in my bed until I was about 23, at which point my now-husband pointed out how weird it was to have to share a bed with my childhood toys, so now they are in a trunk.
I understand where Nicole is coming from, but at the same time I kind of want to create the same kind of unhealthy attachment in my own daughter, so I have already sewn her her own bear blanket. Here it is, side by side with my White Bear (which is no longer properly white):
Aww, such cute bears! I love the that your grandma gave you a placeholder bear while yours was being repaired — mine did the same for me, except my thing was a cat-shaped pillow she made me. Kitty Pillow II never quite achieved the same place in my heart as more-patch-than-pillow Kitty Pillow I.
I’m totally already attached to the idea of my daughter and favorite stuffed animals, it’s terrible. She’s too young to form attachments herself yet, but she falls asleep with a pacifier attached to a little stuffed lamb. In my heart, I think I might get more sleep if I made her quite pacifiers cold-turkey but she looks so cute holding her little lamb and I am projecting my attachment onto her like mad.
And I never learned to fall asleep without a stuffed animal. Right now it’s Tigger until my daughter boosts him from me.
I past even being embarrassed about it.
No, no. I’m totally embarrassed. But I can tell you as Delicious Recoil.
(I bring one of my daughter’s stuffed animals with me every time I go on a business trip. Ssshhh, don’t tell anyone.)
I maybe might still sleep with my childhood teddy bear. When I was a teenager my parents did occasionally teasingly ask me if I would still sleep with that bear when I am married. Wedding date is less than 6 months away, the answer appears to be yes.
Same – I currently have a pretty gross looking Sleepy Bear Care Bear (old style, before their heads got all huge) and it’s not so much a sentimental attachment, it’s that I don’t know how to sleep without something tucked under my right arm anymore.
The day I was born my grandmother gave me a Gund polar bear named Snuffles who went from fat and white to gray and skinny and his mouth fell off and his nose rubbed off and one time I left him in the bed at a hotel and the hotel cleaning staff bundled him up with the sheets and threw him in the hotel laundry but my dad called and they searched through the laundry and found him and mailed him to me and I still have him to this day. He lives in my closet now.
That hotel staff is awesome!
I have a Gund polar bear from the day I was born! *high-fives* Mine is named Beary. She is very very raggedy and her back is all burnt from when I tried to blow dry her after a bath one time and the hair dryer exploded and I LOVE her. 😀
I had a pillow named Pillow (for the daughter of an artist I did not have a very creative mind as a wee one) that I slept with every night. I have no idea what was used inside of it, but it eventually got yellow and crumbly and started to fall out of the deteriorating pillow. (I suspect foam… something?) I still have it somewhere, but I’m hesitant to pull it out since I think another washing and it will just dissipate.
After my ex-husband moved out of the apartment we shared, I pulled a fat plush Eeyore out and started sleeping with it. I sleep with it every single night now, unless my boyfriend is staying over or I’m at his house. If he’s at my house he sometimes cuddles Eeyore, and in the morning if he gets up before I do and I get to stay in bed, he carefully tucks Eeyore in next to me, where he had been laying. It’s dorkily adorable and I’m mushy just thinking about it.
I’ve read the the other Knuffle Bunnies but my daughter is too old for Knuffle Bunny Free. I’ll have to buy it for someone else and read it.
I have a stuffed rabbit I keep on my dresser. It was a gift from my favorite grandmother. It looks gross to other people (the husband and child) but it’s the first thing I’d grab in a fire.
My grandmother (who never really understood ‘feelings’) took unilateral action and threw out my beloved (but ancient, hand-me-down) Blankie and replaced it with some shiny synthetic thing, thinking I wouldn’t notice. I was three. I am still kind of angry.
I WOULD BE TOO
Etymology of woobie, or wubbie: short form of wool blankie, used to dramatic effect in the movie Mr. Mom. Mr Hunting Creek had a boo bankie that he was quite attached to. He remembers with bitterness that his mother gave it to the poodle (!!!)
Mothers! Don’t give away your children’s precious woobies and bankies! Children do NOT forget this.
Considering how infrequently I even THINK about Family Guy these days, I’m still inordinately ticked off that they killed Brian. He’s the DOG. Don’t kill the dog! Ugh.
I’m that person that won’t watch a movie if I know the dog dies, so…
I have a teddy bear that I’ve had since the day I was born, he has a red ribbon around his neck and is therefore called “Teddy Red.” He’s in ridiculously good condition, has traveled internationally with me, and I slept with him ’til the point that I was sharing the bed with people (and in between those times!). Now he lives next to my bed and I am unashamed to say that if I have a terrible dream or the husband’s away on business or something, I’ll still sleep with him. I have already told the husband that our kids get their own toys, this one’s not getting handed down, no way no how.
I thought it was the rule in movies that you don’t kill off the dog, EVER? (Except for Old Yeller and, obviously, Family Guy.)
I never had a special blanket/stuffed animal/comfort object and as a small child I was very loathsome of the kids that did. I considered those kids the deepest dredges of society and told them so, because I was a very superior brat.
I had a couple of favourite stuffed animals over the years, but my last and favourite one was a stuffed wolf named Grey (imaginative, I know). I took him to university and left him with my stuff there over the summer, not realizing that Ontario is hell on earth and things stored in a basement over the summer will go mouldy. My flight came into town late, none of my roommates were there, and everything I owned was disgustingly mouldy. I was kind of overwhelmed and panicked and so I threw everything out, including Grey. Then I went outside and wandered the streets sobbing so hard some guy pulled his truck over to ask if I needed help.
In retrospect, I should have kept him, I could have gotten rid of the mould. Every once and a while I search Google for a similar one, but they must not make them anymore because I’ve never found one.
I had a stuffed bear that I deemed “Mister Golden Bear” whose arms and legs were patchwork and all different textures (one was crunchy, one was soft, one had shiny fabric, one had ridged fabric, etc). I remember that, for some reason, one specific foot smelled really good to me, so I would hold the leg in my hand, suck my thumb, and smell his foot. I loved that goddam bear and I still think about him, 22 years later.
I had SO MANY stuffed animals. My parents would occasionally make me cull them, which was always really emotional and devastating.
Also, not ashamed–my boyfriend and I share our bed with two stuffed giraffes (creatively named Giraffe and Giraffe Friend), and switch off who gets which giraffe. I don’t know what to do with my arms if I don’t have an animal with me.
Giraffe Friend is the name of my folk-world music collective.
(That’s adorable, figgie!)
I had so many, and they were all so poorly named. Blankie the blanket, Teddy the, err, Teddy, Cabbie the bald cabbage patch kid… the only one with any creativity was a wolf dog stuffed animal named after my grandparents’ wolf dog pet Tia.
Also: Jennifer Warnes’ First We Take Manhattan (along with most of the album it’s from) still make my day on a regular basis. I guess my mom liked it when I was a kid, and it stuck – the gender swapping always made it a little more interesting than most other music.
I still sleep with my blankie. I’m 31. It is now in shreds. I intend to sleep with it until I die or it falls apart, whichever comes first.
So, my first serious boyfriend I dated from age 16 through the first two years of college. It was long distance, saw him on weekends. Towards the end of our relationship things got seriously turbulent. During this time, I noticed my favorite fluffy white teddy bear that I’d had since birth, named Sam, was missing, and mentioned it to him. He told me he’d taken it to “clean it up and repair it” and I took him at his word. When our actual breakup finally happened, I asked for my bear back. He told me he’d burned it. And yeah, shit gets messy with tangled first love, but I will never ever forgive him for that. What kind of person does that to someone they supposedly cared about? It haunts me.
Eeeeeeeeeeevil. Burn HIM with fire!
I had a stuffed animal cat with some kind of marble thing in its head to make it sound like it purred. I named it Jungle and Jungle was 100% my everything, slept in m bed every night, went on all trips with us, etc. I never took her to school or anything (except for a couple show and tells….) but she was so loved-on she had the scraggy fur, mooshed whiskers, etc. Then, on my first trip ever to New York when I was 11, I lost her on the plane. I was so devastated and my mom tried so, so fucking hard–calling the airline, the airport lost and found, the fucking custodial service for hours on our HOTEL PHONE–but it was like she just vanished without a trace, never to be seen again.
Now if I try hard I can look on it as some woo-woo life change thing like, it’s time to grow up now, but it mostly just sucked and still makes me sad if I think about it too much.
I had heaps of stuffed toys, but my favourite was a pound puppy called Pound Puppy. My Nanna gave him to me originally when I was about 3, I think.
I took him on a road trip holiday to Queensland when I was 4, and he fell out of the car on the way between Queensland and South Australia. I was beyond upset at this, until my Mum found a place that sold pound puppies, and I got a new one exactly the same.
But that wasn’t the end of his adventures! I took Pound Puppy the Second with me to the park once, with my Grandma. I was about 6, I think. This particular park had man-made creek flowing into an artificial lake. You guessed it, I dropped Pound Puppy into the creek and he started to float away into the lake! I was screaming my head off, terrified of losing another Pound Puppy, and my poor Grandma had to jump into the creek to get him! About 23 years later and no-one has forgotten I made Grandma jump into a creek to rescue Pound Puppy.
YOU DID A FAMILY ROAD TRIP FROM QLD TO SA? Your parents are BRAVE.
I had heaps of stuffed toys, but my favourite was a pound puppy called Pound Puppy. My Nanna gave him to me originally when I was about 3, I think.
I took him on a road trip holiday to Queensland when I was 4, and he fell out of the car on the way between Queensland and South Australia. I was beyond upset at this, until my Mum found a place that sold pound puppies, and I got a new one exactly the same.
But that wasn't the end of his adventures! I took Pound Puppy the Second with me to the park once, with my Grandma. I was about 6, I think. This particular park had man-made creek flowing into an artificial lake. You guessed it, I dropped Pound Puppy into the creek and he started to float away into the lake! I was screaming my head off, terrified of losing another Pound Puppy, and my poor Grandma had to jump into the creek to get him! About 23 years later and no-one has forgotten I made Grandma jump into a creek to rescue Pound Puppy.
While my childhood Winnie has been retired, I have gone through a series of more disposable bears for sleeping with throughout my adult life. They're the right size for doing something with your arms while you sleep!
I thought it was the rule in movies that you don't kill off the dog, EVER? (Except for Old Yeller and, obviously, Family Guy.)
Giraffe Friend is the name of my folk-world music collective.
(That's adorable, figgie!)