Pajamas

[porphyry]

Andrew needs new pajamas because of the changes in the season and his height (and nearly his girth, the inactivity of the cast had its effects).

The four pair he has now are all spiderman themed.

Why can't we get some that are, for instance, Orlando Furioso Themed? What could decorate a night shirt with more grace than Angelica fleeing with Medoro and Orlando pursuing, uprooting the odd towering oak and dispatching barehanded a few bears on the way? What red-blooded boy wouldn't like to see on his PJ top Bradamante wooing...whatever her name was (although that theme might be more popualr with teeneagers)?

Really, though, you'd think you'd at least be able to get King Arthur.

Comments

[himmapaan.livejournal.com]

Hahahahaha!!! Excellent!

[mercyorbemoaned.livejournal.com]

Make them, they will sell.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

I'm sure you're right about that, but of course the making would fall to me. I don't know how to sew and have absolutely no desire to learn. I don't have the patience for it. The few times I tried, it made me want to kill people ;)

I would buy such pajamas, though.

[mercyorbemoaned.livejournal.com]

You don't MAKE them personally - produce the graphics and have them printed on, silly.

[mercyorbemoaned.livejournal.com]

Dyeables! (http://www.dharmatrading.com/html/eng/3283-AA.shtml)

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Oh, I see! Seems simple enough, then, and given how quickly children outgrow clothes, thrifty. I never understood why anyone who hasn't money to burn would insist on spending a lot of money on children's clothes. Or maybe it's just my kids... Madeline, especially, is hard on clothes; I just bought her four new pairs of shorts and already two of them have mud in the seat such that I can't get it out no matter how much Spray & Wash I use.

[stefanie-bean.livejournal.com]

Bayeux Tapestry pajamas would go over well, I'd think, especially the part with King Harald pierced by the arrow...

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Yes, or the comet scene!

[majolika.livejournal.com]

omg I want that! the pants with lots of little hippogryphs and the top with Angelica chained to the rock. Can't you just design it please? (I also want some Paradise Lost wellingtons btw. Hell, I'd buy a whole Doré collection!)

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

I'd thought of extending the idea the same way, but the list wouldn't end.

[lordtangent.livejournal.com]

When I was a kid I had a Lusiad-themed bed set and and a Gerusalemme liberata mobile.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

If only that were true! But surely it couldn't be?

[(Anonymous)]

I think you mean Fleurdespine (who mistakes her for Richardett) wooing Bradamante (XXV-XXVI), but she herself of course always stayed loyal to her destined Ruggiero.

"Mon gouverneur qui cognoist devoir remplir la volonté de son disciple, autant ou plus d'affection, que de reverence envers la vertu, luy sçaura dire, que les poëtes suivent les humeurs communes : et luy faire toucher au doigt, que les dieux ont mis plustost la sueur aux advenues des cabinetz de Venus que de Pallas. Et quand il commencera de se sentir, luy presentant Bradamant ou Angelique, pour maistresse à joüir : et d'une beauté naïve, active, genereuse, non hommasse, mais virile, au prix d'une beauté molle, affettée, delicate, artificielle ; l'une travestie en garçon, coiffée d'un morrion luisant : l'autre vestue en garce, coiffée d'un attiffet emperlé : il jugera masle son amour mesme, s'il choisit tout diversement à cet effeminé pasteur de Phrygie" (Montaigne, Essais I. xxv: "De l'institution des enfans").

[But the governor that I would have, that is such a one as knows it to be his duty to possess his pupil with as much or more affection than reverence to virtue, will be able to inform him, that the poets have evermore accommodated themselves to the public humour, and make him sensible, that the gods have planted more toil and sweat in the avenues of the cabinets of Venus than in those of Minerva. And when he shall once find him begin to apprehend, and shall represent to him a Bradamante or an Angelica for a mistress, a natural, active, generous, and not a viragoish, but a manly beauty, in comparison of a soft, delicate, artificial simpering, and affected form; the one in the habit of a heroic youth, wearing a glittering helmet, the other tricked up in curls and ribbons like a wanton minx; he will then look upon his own affection as brave and masculine, when he shall choose quite contrary to that effeminate shepherd of Phrygia. - Of the education of children.]

Also I love your "red-blodded" typo: "teen-eager" in this context. :-)

SVBEEV

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Well, its the choice of Hercules--which I am sure Plato must mention somewhere but I can't think where at the moment. It reminds me more directly of Boethius-- the passage wherre Dame Philosophy comes down from heaven and banishes B.'s 'whores' (the Muses).

[(Anonymous)]

I think you're right.

What I was thinking of was not the choice between the two Ladies, but the idea that Virtue is to be presented as the more attractive, not only the more heroic option (e.g. in Politeia 360e-367). Just as educators nowadays try to make non-smoking look "cool".

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Absolutely. Since when is the virtuous path the more seductive, for God's sake?

[(Anonymous)]

And that's what Plato seemed to have had in mind. To give a real life Utopian example: Will H. Hay's "Motion Picture Production Code of 1930" tried to correct entertainment to raise the moral standards of society.*

He says so quite explicetly: "No picture should lower the moral standards of those who see it. This is done: (a) When evil is made to appear attractive, and good is made to appear unattractive. (b) When the sympathy of the audience is thrown on the side of crime, wrong-doing, evil, sin. The same thing is true of a film that would throw sympathy against goodness, honor, innocence, purity, honesty."

I think Montaigne's method is a more liberal one, but he still wants the child to choose Bradamante=Minerva=Virtue before Angelica=Venus=Depravity by making Angelica look unattractive. ("Make him sensible, that the gods have planted more toil and sweat in the avenues of the cabinets of Venus than in those of Minerva.")
__
*Actually, this Code was an emergency measure to prevent the dangers of Boycott and Censure, not the crusade of a moralist. But still it effected so drastical changes that from 1935 on American movies appear rather dull in my opinion.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Well, there you go, the dulling effect is obvious.

To return to the Republic, just as Plato would have outlawed tragedy, the Hayes code would have made it impossible to film Oedipus or Medea since the very point of those plays is that is impossible to tell if the protagonsit is good or evil, which actually seems to me a much more satisfying trope.

To return to Montaigne, the problem is that you don't get to depcit good and evil as you wish, they merely exist as they are, and evil is often terribly seductive. I recall in this connection Epictetus' treatment of the subject. If you have a 15 year old philosophy student, and a serving girl, well, you know what is going to happen reguardless of how you lecture him; but he won't be 15 for ever.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

All I have to say is, if Marlon Brando had come to my door (before I met you, of course) with a cigarette dangling out of the corner of his mouth, that would have been a really great ethical problem as opposed to, say, a rabbi or a minister looking to show me the path to virtue.

[(Anonymous)]

(Great...: talking about your amusing typo "teeneager" and making a boring one in the very same line: blodded.)

[(Anonymous)]

One more after-thought: Is it only me or does the Montaigne quote really have a Platonic ("Politeian") ring to you as well?

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

For more on Orlando, be sure to look at the vertically preceeding, but chronologically following, post.