Last winter, Your Humble Blogger sort of defended Germaine Greer, well, not so much defended as failed-to-join-in-mockery-of, on the occasion of her being awarded a Golden Bull for blathering about art and the unsynthesised manifold. In today’s Guarniad, however, Ms. Greer informs us that Cuddly toys are ugly monstrosities. Here, I feel I must join in the mockery.
Not only are stuffies ugly, but “soft toys appear ... uniform; besides billions of bears, none of which look anything like real bears, we have dolphins, elephants, turtles, even sea lions and giraffes, all of which look more like one another than they do like the creatures whose names they bear.” Yes, yes. And, in fact, later in the column she is offended by four children, “one with a rather grubby duck, another with a purple hippo, one with a hairy green something that defied identification, and one with a glaring pink rabbit in an electric-blue cardigan.” Uniform indeed. And the worst part is, that, um, I think the worst part was that when Ms. Greer was eavesdropping, the children failed to entertain her with sufficiently intellectual prattling. Or the stuffies so failed. Anyway, it was bad. And it was on the ferry back from France, so there you are.
Now, Gentle Readers, if you were to write an article including the words “decoying children away from demanding relationships with humans by providing them with undemanding animal fetish objects”, how would you begin it? I mean, to make the whole thing perfect, and as annoying as possible?
Full points to whoever answered the following: “When I was a little girl, there was a war on, so there were no cuddly toys.”
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.
she didn’t go into the romanticizing of separable “childhood”. i like that better. abstract animals actually fit that one.
Did you really mean to spell the name of the newspaper as “Guarniad”? Because I think it’s funnier that way.
Regarding Ms. Greer: ppphphphphpbpbpbpbbbbbttttttt. (To her, that is, not you.) Apparently she was never a child, but rather sprang, fully formed, from the forehead of….uh…..oh hell, I don’t know, someone like Ayn Rand but probably not actually Ayn Rand. Lordamercy.
The Guarniad is a term of semi-affectionate abuse for the Guardian, much like the San Francisco Comical or Philadelphia’s Inky. The Guardian is supposed to have particularly bad proof-reading and line editing, although I haven’t noticed it being particularly bad, at least comparing its on-line version with other newspapers’ websites. Still, that is the origin. Also because Guarniad is fun to say and type.
I should probably mention that Ms. Greer has written insightfully and powerfully about, you know, stuff, and that I encourage Gentle Readers to have at her serious work seriously, whilst of course mocking crap like this with the whatsit it deserves.
Thanks,
-V.