TOPOLLIDAY

I am flying to Cincinnati tomorrow for two weeks, and I had planned to post an enormous novel before I left telling you all about TOPOLLIDAY, which we celebrated on Tuesday by consuming a wheel of cheese, watching Fiddler on the Roof, and singing the following lyrics to the tune of "We Three Kings":

Here comes Topol pushing his cart
Filled with milk he squirts in our heart
Thick and tasty, creamy, pasty
Slice off thy curdy wart

Oh-OH

Topol's greater than Jesus
And his facial hair's the best
Jesus is a scrawny monkey
Topol is a giant bear

However, I find myself a bit pressed for time, so you'll just have to imagine the rest. Think: candles, potato vodka, and strenuous sexual rituals accompanied by mournful klezmer noises.

TOTAL CHAOS FOREVERMONTH: Matthea Harvey

"Strawberry on the Drawbridge," Matthea Harvey

Bleeding-edge bird humor! Billowing clouds! Affrighted incontinent strawberry! Yeah, I know what you like.

TOTAL CHAOS FOREVERMONTH: Louis MacNeice

for you are out of
this life and cannot start any more hares for ever.

--Louis MacNeice, "The Casualty"

Pity poor Louis MacNeice, who today becomes the first recipient of my tender freehand pencil ministrations. If you are a space alien searching for answers--"What does a rabbit look like," for instance, or "How does a lever work," or "How is a human hand proportioned"--I beg you go elsewhere. But if you're interested in death throes and robo-hares and gloriously cross-hatched cottontail crotches, then welcome home. Also know that I got this book used and it is filled with cryptic student marginalia: "LITTERAL FINANCING," "what," "PROTESTANTS," and my personal favorite, "creating progeny--WASTED," so that may have influenced my interpretation to some degree.