Passover with Poppets

It's Pesach here at the house ,and because of All Of The Things That Conspire Against Me, I have been busy straightening out other people's houses and businesses and things that require bringing forth Order from Chaos.

Interestingly enough the word "Seder" means Order. 

To get to the point where you have Order for the Seder you have about 4 weeks to get your house ready.

I didn't manage to do that in 4 weeks. I actually started about 48 hours before Pesach ( which is the real word for Passover). This is not good. I'm usually much more on top of this but the Things That Conspire were very active this year.

There were no Poppets in my life at this time last year - odd to think about, isn't it? So the little guys were very amused at the sudden spate of ridiculous cleaning and a five hour shopping trip, reported upon by The Most Adventurous Red, who accompanied me on my desperate search for the right gefilte fish jars.  Poppets, at least the ones in my house, don't really seem to have any knowledge of Judaism and while they like to hang around the ritual objects in the house and appreciate that we set things on fire every week, this looked different to them. Some of them wandered around with questions. I couldn't really help them out,since I was trying to compress time and space through frenetic action, so I gave them some books to look at until I was done with the first round of emergency clean up.

The book they started with was the Moss Haggadah which is a beautiful book of art. There were times that observant Jews felt that you couldn't make images of things that were divine, and that included people, because people were divine, but at the same time there is a commandment to beautify the items that you use to fulfill the mitzvot. (Mitzvot means commandment - there are 613 of them so that's a lot of beautifying).

Haggadot ( the plural of Haggadah) were one of the few consistent places in the history of Jewish Visual Arts that were truly reflections of tastes and talent and locality. It was important to make them beautiful and it was heavily influenced by the regions that the calligraphers lived in. The Moss Haggadah is all hand calligraphed by a single artist in that tradition, and it is a wonderful teaching tool for the history of the Haggadot. I thought they might like it.  It belongs to the Boy of the house, because he earned it and it the source of one of my great joys in life when he finds something in it that he thinks is really cool and tells us about it in his out-loud voice.

Question Everything really has a lot of doubt about the whole religion thing and certainly had even more doubts when he noticed me checking the pockets of the coats in the closet for bread crumbs. 

He wondered about all those commandments and why we followed them and why other people didn't and why I was considering vacuuming the keyholes. Since I was in the process of skipping the whole keyhole vacuuming thing I explained to him that there was a whole section of the Haggadah about asking questions and why you should answer questions and taught our children that when they wre old enough to study on their own it was their religious duty to ask questions. So  really, in Judaism that made him the Holiest Poppet of all.  And then I left him to read the whole section while I set the oven on fire. It was on purpose - it's OK.

Question Everything was pretty impressed. Throughout the whole ritual book people were asking questions, and getting answers and disagreeing about the answers, and then asking more questions. He wondered how a religion could function that way, but I was busy reading labels for signs of autolyzed yeast extract to get them out of the cabinets and then scrubbing them down with bleach so I told him to let someone else have a turn with the book. You see very much like Jack Bauer I WAS RUNNING OUT OF TIME!

Violet found a really pretty page that matched her perfectly but it was all Hebrew, so she asked what it was. I explained that it was the 10 plagues, she was standing on the section of the Haggadah where when we read the plagues that Egypt suffered we remove a drop of wine from our glasses and drop them on to the napkin beside us. They were very pretty purple plagues , but Question Everything wanted to know why, so I did take the time to tell him. Even though the Seder celebrates that we were freed from oppression, many Egyptians suffered and died because of the actions of their ruler, and God and the plauges, so for each plague we remove a drop of wine from our glass to reduce our joy and mourn their lives and suffering. We need to remember that what we accomplished came with a cost, and they need to be respected, mourned and remembered too. 

Violet decided that the plagues were still pretty, even if the whole thing was a little creepy and the Drunken Poppet called out from the mantel that it was a terrible waste of wine, but a stern look from Winter, and he apologized. 

Meanwhile, Question Everything had moved on to another book that explained how to get ready for the Holiday by cleaning in a special way, and when he got to the section that explained why I might have wanted to vacuum out the keyholes, he asked me if I was going to Hell if I skipped it. 

I sighed, and told him Jews don't really have a Hell, and besides there's a magic spell at the end that makes everything OK just in case. I had to leave them alone for a bit while we put away all the things that aren't kosher for Pesach and brought up all the things that were. You see every year we clear out all our cabinets and pots and pans and dishes and silverware that touched things that rise, and replace them with pots and pans and dishes and silverware that never touch things that rise. It's like spring cleaning on steroids. And it leads to a lot of jokes about why in hell a desert God would command us to carry six sets of dishes. But of course it's a joke, because the six sets of dishes are not part of the mitzvot, they're what a bunch of Rabbis decided to agree on after they had asked a whole bunch of questions and argued about a whole bunch of answers, and that desert God wasn't talking to them anymore so they just sort of guessed and Voila! six sets of dishes. Someday I'll talk about me and God but today isn't that day, let's just say I'm sure that God didn't ask us to do a bunch of this but I do a whole bunch of this anyway because there are better reasons than "God says so" but they are complicated so it's easier for people to think that's why I do it. 

Well, I shouldn't have left Question Everything along with the rules for leavened versus unleavened things. Leaven is chametz and you have to have a chametz free house before the Seder. So the next thing I know, I walked past the living room and there was Question Everything reading aloud to the Gingerbread. Silly preoccupied me, I didn't think anything of it until I saw that the House Reds had pulled down my How To Run a Jewish Household book.

It seems that he had wondered aloud if

Gingerbread was allowed to stay in the house because she might be chametz. Since I wasn't around they asked Spike to figure it out. Spike corrected the misconception. He's very educated. Gingerbread was a Poppet, not a cookie, so she was fine to stick around.No one was going to be able to ingest her on a bet. 

Except for maybe Cthulu or something like that, and Spike was pretty sure I wouldn't invite Cthulu to the Seder.  Actually, Spike was a little off base there. If Cthulu comes to the door and asks politely to join us I'm supposed to feed him and make him welcome because he's a stranger here and we were once strangers in the land of Egypt. Of course I'm only going to let him in after he promises to behave and tone down the whole causing insanity thing. I'm not obligated to martyr myself for hospitality or anything. So really it's all up to Cthulu, but I digress. I'm sure Question didn't mean to upset her, it was my own fault for leaving them alone with multiple books and no moderator.

They sort of were getting the gist of things now, having split the reading between them, but certainly the ones having the most fun were the Poppets who chose to read the Kosher by Design cookbook. They spent a decent amount of time wondering if you could really have dessert without cake. However since the dessert menu for the Pesach week read " merengue cookies, coconut sorbet, toasted coconut marshmallows, strawberry mousse, chocolate mousse and ice-cream sundaes",  the Pumpkin Spices, Chocos and Coffee Poppets agreed that you weren't really  suffering for desserts during Peasch and you weren't really likely to lose weight during the eight days of the dietary restrictions either. 

Now that they had the gist of things they realized that I was really rather insane trying to get everything that normally took the better part of two weeks accomplished in 24 hours with one full day of regular office work thrown in, and they decided that even if they didn't understand why I felt the need to do it, they would help. They enlisted the aid of the only actively Jewish-like Poppets in the house and began by Kashering the new kitchen that came in recently for Poppetropolis. 

When they were done they waited until I got home from work and helped me with the six hours I had left to set up for the actual seder. 

The Poppets learned alot more about the whole Seder thing then.  And our Orange Brain saved the day - more on that tomorrow.

Tales of the Tiny Alien Episode 7- Beyond the Horizon

When we last left the Tiny Alien, he was finally in control of his goals. He had seen a Vision of a tiny bakset on top of a very tall pole, and he knew that he needed to be in that basket to get to where he needed to go. The Alex had hailed a cabbie named Crash to take him to the pirates, and the were soon underway to Sheepshead Bay.

"You do realize that here in New York most of the pirates are riding around on office chairs in cubicals with massive quantities of computer power?" inquired Crash.

The Tiny Alien was hardly taken aback by this news. He needed the type of pirate that buckled swash and complained about the lack of rum. He was quite glad to be sure of something for a change, since he had been rather disoriented since coming to the land of Tiny Doors. 

"I do not care about the kind of pirates that raid bank accounts, I need the kind that sail, and none of those cruise ship types either. I need the old fashioned, campy versions. And then I need to sail. " 

"OK, but you know that trans-dimensional trips can get a person motion sick. You should take some Dramamine" and Crash stepped on the gas. Now the Tiny Alien had never been to Sheepshead Bay, so he couldn't tell that anything was out of the ordinary. If you had been to Sheepshead Bay, you would have known that it looked pretty close to the original, and it smelled a lot like the original, but there was an odd Spider Robinson kind of vibe to the one that Crash took the Tiny Alien to. Of course if you've been to the real Sheepshead Bay, you'd also know that any of the things that tipped you off to the change would not have raised a single eyebrow if they had shown up at the real deal, because well, it is Brooklyn and it is a dock, and that's really just the way things are. (Except for Park Slope where they are trying too hard). 

The Tiny Alien noticed that he and Crash were a little small while they were speeding under the human sized cars and such down a long black ribbon with many vehicles called Kings Highway, but when they got to the Port of the Fisher King at Sheepshead Bay everything seemed to be just the right size, and Crash let the Tiny Alien off in front of the dock gate.

The Tiny Alien knew some sort of payment was involved, and tried to pay his way with the candy coins of his home planet, but Crash assured him that with the Vision Quest Service all payments that were due to him would show up in their own time. He did accept a roll of "Smarties" as a tip.

An Old Man waited at the end of the dock, looking the Tiny Alien up and down. The poor little traveller suddenly realized that he didn't know the appropriate greeting for Old Men At The End of Docks. He though about it and realized that perhaps it was the same as the appropriate form of address for off-duty witches. "Hail and well met- Please don't kill me in my sleep." he said, formally.

"I see, you're looking for the Ultimate Treat, and you've been affected by the Indies instead of the Indians for the whole Vision Quest Tour Package." the Old Man rummaged around in his bag that seemed to be full of something active. "Of course they're not really Indians are they, and Native Americans is wrong too, since no one's really native anywhere and there are over 280 recognized tribes most of whom hated each other's guts in various combinations. It would have been like the Israeli Knesset if they'd formed their own government, Indian Nation indeed! Except instead of 30 political parties you probably would have had to invent some new algorithms in order to get a majority government HA! The Mayans would have kicked everyone's butt if you had to form coalition government through math. That would have shown those Apaches . . . . found it, here you go kid." and with that the Old Man hand the Tiny Alien a stick with batteries and some sort of long thing with lights. The Old Man showed the Tiny Alien how to turn it on and make it rotate with a continuous wrist movement. The Tiny Alien concluded that he had made a proper greeting based on the enthusiasm of the OLd Man's Response.

The Tiny Alien made the horizontal bar spin and from random patterns the spinning created letters and words in glowing red dots. It read, "I know why the rum is always Gone".

"You'll have to spin this for a while, probably about eighteen minutes or so, because it's more elegant that way. But your ride will show up and you'll be able to continue on to the Trouble."

"Crash, the cabbie, did warn me that there might be Trouble." The Tiny Alien braced himself and looked steely eyed to warn the Trouble that he was prepared.

The Old Man found that pretty impressive, and they passed some time discussing the various types of Trouble that people on Quests of one sort or another usually got into. With time pleasantly passing, the Tiny Alien never saw the raft with the sharks head and the basket on the pole show up. The Old Man, however, did not miss a beat. 

"You're not the regular pirate."

"Oh no," remarked the rather sweet-faced pirate with the patch."I'm not the Real Pirate at all. I'm just the Fake Pirate and only for the weekend." He pulled expertly to the dock. "I hope that will be OK. Truth be told I really don't even like rum, so if we could pass on the formalities, I'll just be taking the passenger on his way."

The Old Man sniffed the air around his head. "Well you smell legit, so I suppose that's what you are. Off with you, " He patted the Tiny Alien on the back, and whispered into where his ear might be if he had one. "Be careful, he smells of E-Ticket ride, there's Trouble ahead for sure." and he lowered the rope ladder from the dock down to the sailing raft. 

The Fake Pirate showed him around and invited him to climb up to the basket called a "Crow's Nest" for the ride if he liked. The Tiny Alien settled in, ray gun at the ready for the next part of his adventure. As they pulled away from the dock, he could hear the Old Man singing a familiar tune.

"You can't see which way you're going

 Or Which way that Time is flowing . . . ."

What is the Trouble Ahead? Stay tuned and find out in the Next Episode of Tales of the Tiny Alien!

Poppet Sale on Saturday, March 28!! And Sunday!!

The Poppets are cleaning up the store, the artist is clearing out her space.

Strange Studios,where Lisa Snellings houses Poppet Planet, is clearing out the studio to get ready for new and different projects.

Thus there will be a clearance sale on Saturday.

If you're one of the people who uses this blog just to check and see if I'm alive and you've never seen any of Lisa's art besides my Poppets you should check out some of her other work here and here.

I love the poppets, but her larger scale work is the first good, completely selfish reason I've ever had to become independently wealthy and have a gallery. 

The link to Poppet Planet proper is on the sidebar but it is also here.

The Sale will be through her ebay store here.  Saturday  March 28th. She is promising to put up a lot of older stuff. I'm personally hoping that she has one of these still:

She probably doesn't, but I'm warning you if she does, and there's just one, it is SOOOO mine. 

We will of course try to attempt to show some restraint but I for one am fascinated by the idea of "older stuff".

There are Poppets I might not even know about and maybe they will be there.

There are Poppets that might need to come to Poppetropolis and the Embarrassed Embassy.

There might be a version of a Poppet that Got Away.

There might be Brains.

In my head it's a little like Willie Wonka having a yard sale. 

We will be there (virtually of course, and after sundown).  We suggest you be there too. 

We already have a strategy  . . . . . We are prepared. 

To summarize 

Poppet Sale 

Saturday, March 28th 

Be there.

It's here.

Tales of the Tiny Alien Episode 6 - Follow that Pirate!

Thank Goodness, things are back to properly abnormal.* When we last left our Tiny Alien the forces of the Universe and the various Powers-That-Be, had turned everything topsy turvy with colors and fire and prophesying.  The Oracle had burst into song and the Tiny Alien suddenly knew what he had to do but he had no idea how . . . . our story continues. . . . .

The Oracle was busy glaring at her brother whom the Jacko's had called "The Alex". In his hand he held a gold wrapped Treat of the chocolate variety. The world had seemed somehow slippery and much brighter, the strange song the Oracle had sung hovered in the air . . .  one line echoing over and over " For the pirates keep on rowing" . 

He had seen space pirates, they didn't row at all but they had ray cannons and you really tried very hard to avoid them. But a vision swam in front of his eyes, and he saw a tiny basket on top a of long pole with a gathered curtain and a one-eyed entity in front of a large wheel. The entity was wearing odd clothing: an eyepatch and a hood, a cambric shirt, pants that really weren't, and shoes that covered no feet.  In the vision, the Tiny Alien was inside the tiny basket looking out and forward surrounded by water and stars and he knew, knew he must find his way into that basket . . . . . 

The vision receded. He was once again in the neighborhood. The Alex was next to him with a tray of chocolate covered apples on sticks drizzled with caramel and coconuts. 

The Oracle was behind the window mixing things with the strange tubes and nozzles and grinders that created brightly colored drinks. The only music was coming from the radio waves emanating from behind a tiny door that that Tiny Alien had not yet knocked on and it sounded nothing like the song that he had heard so clearly a minute ago. There was no sign of the Jackos or the neighbors that had joined them. A light snow was threatening to fall. the lighting and colors had all returned to the proper ambiance for a planet at this cycle of rotation around it's single sun. Everything seemed perfectly normalish except for the energy readings on the Tiny Alien's ray gun that indicated that the Alex was expending an awful lot of some kind of energy pretending to be mostly there. Then the energy reading gave up, and started flashing "Would you like some chocolate, instead?" in Intergalactic Esperanto. 

Reoriented, the Tiny Alien quickly checked his bag, and the rest of the settings on his ray gun. He took a sip of the egg cream the Indie Oracle had made for him. It was delicious and bubbly and milky and chocolaty. There were no eggs.  Thus refreshed he asked. "Where did everybody go?"

The Oracle looked up from the electric blue drink she was mixing. "Oh that was just their spirit forms, except for Alex, but including me. They mostly went back to their bodies. It seems like you are officially on a Vision Quest. Did you have any extra visions?"

"Yes, yes I did!" and the Tiny Alien excitedly told her all about the tiny basket and the odd entity and the line from her song . He was quite pleased that he seemed to be ahead of things for a change. "I must get to look from that basket. I know it. The rowing pirates will be able to take me where I need to go." And with great clarity he realized something and then found himself saying it aloud. "I am going to follow this quest and it will take me to the Ultimate Treat, and when I have this treat I will be completely happy to wait until the Time of Trick or Treating." His heart swelled and he began to realize what the Green Gentleman must have felt like when his heart grew three sizes. There was hope and adventure ahead! He knew it right down to the alien equivalent of the mitochondria of his cell-like structures. How wonderful it was to Know Things! How exhilarating it was to Have A Plan!

He turned to the Alex, who was expending a little less energy on Being There. "I think I need to find pirates, how should I do that?"

The Alex shrugged and offered him an apple with chocolate and carmel and pecans. Without saying a word, he stepped off the curb and into the street. He stuck two fingers in his mouth and a piercing noise cut through the hub-bub of the city lunch crowd. From around the corner, a yellow vehicle with black markings and the word "Taxi" pulled up in front of them as the Alex made a flagging symbol with his hand. The driver was a yellow being with black lettering on his gray clothing.

"Where to!" asked the being. 

"It's for my friend," said the Alex.  

The being looked at the Tiny Alien and what he was carrying. "Oh dear, well let me take the top down if he's going to carry that thing. Better safe than sorry, and I don't want him shooting any holes in the roof!" He got out of the vehicle and started breaking down the top covering and folded it up inside a compartment to the rear. He was whistling softly to himself. It was a tune the Tiny Alien had learned from the Green Amphibian called All Kinds of People In The Neighborhood. The whistling was very pleasant and when he was done he opened the back door for the Tiny Alien. "OK, sir, please remember ray gun or no ray gun, you still have to wear the seat belt, it's the law you know. Now, where to!"

The Tiny Alien arranged himself into the seat in the back and carefully placed his bag next to him, fastened himself into the safety harness, positioned himself for maximum ray gun coverage in case of attack, and declared "Take Me To Your Pirates!"

The Oracle called out from her window, "It's OK , Crash.  Alex got him started on a Vision Quest."

The driver sighed, " I suppose it's better than the last time, when he said "Infinity and Beyond"

Alex finally piped up. "It's classic quote you know." 

Crash looked Alex straight in the eye. "Yeah, but you meant it."

 "I did pay the fare." Alex smiled back. "Do you want some chocolate"

The driver passed, but asked to have some saved for when he got back.He let the Tiny Alien, know that he was starting the meter and that he could relax, because there shouldn't be any Trouble getting to the Pirates, all of the trouble should happen after they got there.

The Tiny Alien took this under advisement, and relaxed a tiny bit until he started thinking about the implications of traveling with a driver apparently named Crash.

Will they reach the Pirates safely? Will the Tiny Alien's Vision Quest lead to the Domination of Trick or Treating? What will happen next and what IS the fare for Infinity and Beyond anyway ? Join us next time for the answer to some, but not all of these questions in the next Episode of Tales of the Tiny Alien.

*The management would politely like to remind The Powers-That-Be that there are rules, and the rules are that you shouldn't go messing around with time and space and color photographs and pretty lighting just to show how all powerful and other worldly you are. Since you are the Powers-That-Be, one would think that it would be far classier to find some way to show such powerfulness by doing something respecting the carefully planned out homage to golden age pulp fiction and and classic 1950's sci fi movies instead of just suddenly colorizing and lighting everything. Not of course that there's anything trite or cliche about it. . . . . we, the management would never conclude that you, the Powers-That-Be were either trite or cliche. Maybe you could just consult us next time or , well no, never mind. Please pay no attention to us at all. 

Honestly, we though better of it. 

Really.

Would you like some chocolate?

"The Management"

I come from a long line of bartenders so I know . . .

You know you've been at the bar too long 

when the only people there with you are the emo/folk/punk band with two members arguing about whether or not to use an accordion, and the talking cat with the British accent tells the Irish Barkeep to flag you.

And he does . . . . .

Click on the pic for larger version.

And Now A Word From Our Philosopher . . .

Every one entrusted with a mission is an angel...

All forces that reside in the body are angels.

- Maimonides, "Guide for the Perplexed"

Brought to you by the Yetzer Ha Tov

Tales of the Tiny Alien Episode 5 - Step 3 . . . Prophet!

When last we left our Tiny Alien  . . . hey wait, No! Hold on you can't do that here . . . .

What's Happened! The world has turned, the community gathered, things are Strange and the apple water has turned to fire, the Jacko's hum. The Oracle, having just bobbed for her apple, steps back suddenly and sings:

"There's no earthly way of seeing 

Which direction causes being 

You can’t see which way you’re going

Or which way the time is flowing 

Is it starlight?  Is it snowing?  Is a sandstorm gently blowing? 

Not a speck of light is showing 

So the danger must be growing 

Is the burning man a glowing? 

Is the grisly reaper hoeing ? 

Yes! 

Dangerous flowers must be growing 

For the pirates keep on rowing 

And the Ninjas, they’re not showing 

Any signs that they are slowing!"

Boo!

The other worldly light encircles them, it is not an Other World the Tiny Alien is familiar with. The Oracle looks deep and thoughtful. She intones the directions for the Tiny Alien's journey in a deep voice full of the mysteries of ages and egg creams. The Tiny Alien shakes in fear and confusion. Then, with the full wrath of siblings everywhere, she turns her glare on her brother.

"Alex, where did you get the water from . . . . " the implied threat hangs visibly in the orange light.

Alex flickeres in and out. "I went to this waterfall I know. Do you want some chocolate?"

What will the Tiny Alien do now? Join us next time for Tales of the Tiny Alien.