Thursday, April 29, 2010

In Which We Look at Old Children's Books I found in the Basement

I didn't find much cleaning out the basement that looked like it could be sold. But I found these:



Look at all these old children's books! A couple of them are in tough shape, but most of them are still decent and a few of them are minty (in condition, not scent - hence why they're all being aired out here)! I got the okay to auction them on Ebay if I could clean them off. As I did, I found some surprising things within.



One of which is this strange little Campbells Kids recipe book. I think it belonged to one of my aunts and she gave it to me when I was little. This page in particular fascinated me. To this day, I have never attempted to make a Flagpole Salad and I may have to now, so that I may enjoy the wondrous taste combination of pineapple, banana, cherry... and mayonnaise.
What is it with post-World War Two-era cookbooks and (let me be generous here) unusual taste combinations? And mayonnaise?




I'll admit it, I'm very curious to see what these vintage Disney Little Golden Books go for. They are definitely the most interesting part of the collection. I like how some of the stories are condensed in hilarious ways (in "Pinocchio", the encounter with Monstro is reduced to one sentence). Of these, the "Snow White" book is the most fascinating, as it includes a scene that was deleted from the film:



Ah, the bed-building scene! I still haven't reviewed the library books I recently read about the stories behind the Disney Animated Canon, but I will mention that "Snow White", if it had included every idea cut from the original script, would have been about three days long. The reason for this? Simple. This was their first feature, and the animators had no idea how much they could add or subtract to the story to make it feature-length.
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ROFLcon, MIT's big dang celebration of internet culture, is this weekend! But apparently, a lot of people already knew that, because all the tickets have sold out. The image accompanying that news on their blog is perfect.
We can still attend it, though, in a manner of speaking. It's an internet culture convention, right? Well, if I'm understanding things correctly, they're going to stream the whole thing.

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Photo of the day!
As promised, here's my spring bulb garden as it looks currently. All the work I did in October was worth it:
4.20.10 - Look at all those tulips and daffodils!

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Addendum: I can't believe I forgot this, but this Saturday is Free Comic Book Day! (You'd think this would be easier for me to remember.) Go visit a comic book store near you and get some free stuff.