OMG. Today, not too long after posting the last filler article on search terms, I looked at the search terms again and saw this:
| Search | Views |
|---|---|
| african pygmy hedgehog poo | 1 |
| http://www.free lovely images of princesses.in | 2 |
Okay people. Two http://www.free lovely princesses.in searches? Are you messing with me? Or really looking for hedgehog poo? Regardless, thank you.
Also, look:
The highlights are blown, but it’s still cute.
It’s time for another episode of “I think you guys are using the Internet wrong, or something.” Here are the searches that brought people to our rather quiet blog over the last 30 days:
| Search | Views |
|---|---|
| pain penelope | 1 |
| princess penelope and the dragon | 1 |
| hedgehog geographic location | 1 |
| peregrinate wit me | 1 |
| hedgehog napping | 1 |
| princess penelope answer key | 1 |
| http://www.free lovely images of princesses.in | 1 |
| african countries that don’t hate pygmies | 1 |
| what are the metaphors in princess penelope f |
Okay people. Almost all of you are doing the Internet wrong! Wrong, wrong, wrong! Let’s enumerate the ways so we can use an ordered list.
Also, look, isn’t she cute?
Class of 2014
Brief post of handy things and one bonus. More to come later. Must nap.
Whee!
Recently while admiring the recent wonderful photo of birds and other things from our trip to Disney World (with a Gatorland side-trip), we meandered a bit further back in time and reviewed the photos from Princess in her anarchist period. There are always a lot of things we don’t post since we generally try to distill things down into the 8-23 photo range.
Here’s one that would have been perfect, but which was supplanted by a different perfect photo:
Seriously, that hedgehog smirking at Mary-Kate and Ashley, thinking of a hilarious thing mocking them in hedgehog language, it’s perfect.
While perusing them, we found two photos that divided the household. While one faction insisted on the cuteness of one of the photos, another faction insisted on the cuteness of the other and the weakness of cuteness judgment skills of certain family members. This resulted in a disagreement that we need you, the Internet, to resolve… There is a thing that the web-visionary types who give TED talks used to like to talk about a few years back called “The Wisdom of Crowds,” which meant that if you ask a lots of people about something, they’ll be right. It’s worked amazingly well in always choosing the best presidents and other elected officials, so obviously it’s a great idea for making all choices.
So we bring you, the Internet, a new poll. Or we do in a second. First we need to introduce you to the two photos at the center of the disagreement. Since this poll is part of the important democratic duties of the Internet, we will be as fair, neutral, detached, objective, disinterested, unbiased, evenhanded, equitable, and every other related synonym as possible in presenting these photos.
First, look at the incredibly cute photograph A:
Note the adorable expression, the heart-melting adorableness of the pose, and general cuteness of this sweet, lovely hedgehog. Also the general brightness of the photo, and color tones that bring out a light and happy mood, that silly and amusing pose, and all the other factors that make this an incredibly cute photo that you plan to vote for as a more discriminating connoisseur of cuteness.
Next, look at photograph B, which while admittedly well photographed by a skilled photographer, still isn’t as sharp or clear as the former. The covered eyes, while cute, also keep you from seeing the expression of Princess, while the color temperature seems a bit too warm. Obviously cute, but in our evenhanded, equitable, neutral, and unbiased opinion, as well as in the opinion of those who are among the better and brighter types like you, still lacking.
So, Internet, we present you with this poll so that the wisdom of your crowds can solve this question for us:
Princess Pricklepants was sitting around not writing blog posts. She got the internet working on her semi-new laptop, braced herself to write something, then checked Wikipedia to look up something about procrastination, to maybe understand it better. Four hours later she had finished many Wikipedia articles, culminating with methods of weaving with a loom. It was really surprisingly interesting.
She had to write. Write, write, write. Something. Something original. Worth reading. Fun. Engaging. Witty. Clever. The Great American Novel of blog posts. Better punctuated than this. And, ideally, with more verbs and fewer sentence fragments. Maybe a little less self-referential. Maybe not.
She decided to go for a little walk. On her walk, she discovered something truly remarkable. Behind the place where her desk was, at the very spot where she’d once peed on the floor, there was a mysterious doorway. The sign said it led to a secret garden, though you could read that yourself.
She hurried through to the other side. No photos were taken in order to protect the mystery.
The other side was truly mysterious. Amid IKEA furnishings stood whimsical fantasy elements, seemingly put together haphazardly. This was very puzzling. Also why was the radio up where she couldn’t reach it? Why was it playing Enya songs? Why did the door look the same on both sides? Why did it have a sign up saying it led to a secret place? Wouldn’t that very sign mean it wasn’t secret? Curiouser and curiouser.
Then she realized, this would make a great blog post!
A really great one!
But first she had to find the hidden treasure.
Treasure!
She decided she would read a Wikipedia article on narrative structure, perhaps there was a way to give her post a clear beginning, middle, and end.
Hedgehogs and humans don’t always react the same way to things. Reading an article on narrative structure was so incredibly exciting for a hedgehog. When she found tvtropes, it was so exciting to a budding hedgehog blogger that she peed a little on the floor.
And then she woke up in her favorite green blanket. It was all just a dream.
But wait, waking up in the green blanket was all a dream too. She woke up, peeked out of her cuddle bag, and planned for her real blog post, rather than the dream one.
And, dear readers, we’re very sorry that we had that brief hiatus. Princess would like you to know that she loves you this much:
First off, look at this shirt.
Okay, now that you’ve seen it, does it make you think of a hedgehog crawling out of the chest like a chestburster from Aliens, like you’ll have a prickly spiky feeling in your chest, look down, and bam! There’s a hedgehog burrowing out of your chest, having just eaten your vital organs like they were crickets or mealworms or something, then burrowed out through your breastbone, your last sight before you pass away a cute hedgehog who has just murdered you. Your last thought, “well that really hurts, but aww, what a cute hedge…” before slipping away.
Or is it harmless and just kind of cute?
We offer this poll to settle the matter:
This is not a product endorsement, or a product disendorsement, rather it’s just a poll, we are in no way affiliated with themoutain other than in that we were briefly disturbed by the imagery in the shirt, though it you want one for some reason to scare children, or because you like it, you can find one here:
http://shop.themountain.me/big-face-hedgehog-t-shirt/
Princess Pricklepants’ kingdom of Quillonia was a peaceful and prosperous place, ruled by the benevolent Princess along with the kind regent Sir Sandwich.
Sadly, the jealousy of the neighboring kingdoms (and perhaps some indiscrete raids by Princess Pricklepants in her younger days) brought war to the land. The Redvian siege towers, ballistas, catapults, and other well constructed siege equipment rambled up to Castle Fischer-Price, cruel weapons of war brought forth the dread of dark doom. The enemy called forth demanding a tribute of treasure and that nice chalice looking thing on the roof of the castle.
Princess came forth and taunted the enemy cruelly, telling them that their mothers were hamsters.
Anger swelled in the hearts of the cruel warriors, who while knowing very well that their mothers were not actually hamsters, still took that kind of thing very personally. Princess added further insult by showing them her back side.
Sir Cowflinger, leader of the Redvians cried back, “I am not angry, just very disappointed. That was incredibly rude. We now demand both a tribute, and an apology for that hurtful taunt.”
“You want rude? You don’t frighten us you red-sworded cotton headed ninny-mugginses. Now go away, or you just might find your feelings will get hurt again!” (Due to their unique evolution, Hedgehog taunts are a little odd.)
Unfortunately just after she finished her rousing speech, she slipped, which took a lot of the impact away, as the Redvians laughed. This made her feel very embarrassed.
She quickly righted herself, composed herself, and smiled, and pretended that the slip didn’t actually happen. The smile was helped by the fact that she knew about her secret weapon.
Will war tear the kingdom apart? Will cows fly? Will we get a better lighting setup? Will we iron the sky? Some of these questions will probably be answered in Part II.
Penelope drying off after a bath. The cuteness, it is so epic.
Title says it all.
Sorry, we read on the internet that using hyperbole, including questions, and referring directly to the reader are ways to get read, so we were trying it out. Look, it worked on you.
So, can you guess what amazing things been going on lately? Oh, sorry, doing it again…
Anyway, we now have our own domain – http://princesspricklepants.com
Very exciting.
You might have noticed fewer things going on the blog lately. Princess has been a little grumpy lately. Many pictures look something like:
That’s her “I would like to stab you” look.
She warmed up a little tonight:
Then fell asleep on me:
Princess Sophie took a selfie with me and both princesses in it. Princess Sophie’s selfie is very fragmentary.
Then Princess Pricklepants fell asleep on my shoulder.
Oh, hey, the new domain also means that we have some fancy email addreses:
One for Princess Pricklpants:
theprincess at princesspricklepants.com
One for Haley:
fancy at princesspricklepants.com
One for the old guy:
sirsandwich at princesspricklepants.com
One for Sir Maxwell:
sirmaxwell at princesspricklepants.com
And one for Princess Sophie
princesssophie at princesspricklepants.com
So there’s that.
On Sunday one of our readers, Megan, called to see if we wanted to meet at Zilker Park to visit Barton Creek Trail. Well, when half your readers want to meet up, it’s hard to say no. As it turns out, the other half of our readership was also able to join us too, more about that later! So we took Princess for an outing to the park to see a really nice trail.
Once we arrived, we let Princess take a walk in the park. She loved it. This is what her loving taking a walk in the park looks like head on.
And this is what her loving taking a walk in the park looks like from above.
Since we were playing with a hedgehog in a busy park, people noticed. Mostly little people. We introduced Princess Pricklepants to potential readers. She was pleased to meet them.
“That’s princesspricklepants.com, yes, um, we registered a domain for our pet… No, I mean, no it’s, it’s normal… Really, people do this all the time… No, I’m not from a different country… Well, no, but I just think it’s normal for me.”
Here is Megan’s little one Bridget, also known as BB, but who we will call Fred, saying hi to Princess. Hi Fred!
Here’s Ron below, Megan’s very precocious progeny with Princess Pricklepants. He explained to me that he is a mercenary who would work for good food. We talked about owls a lot.
Also, if you look carefully at the photo below, you’ll see that there are actually two people in the photo. The person in the back is the kind and gentle Swarley, another reader who came along. Swarley is Princess Sophie’s pal and the other half of our readership. She is also awesome. Hi Swarley! Hi Ron!
We packed Princess in a personal Princess pack, and proceeded to port her on our peregrination on the path in the park.
Editor’s note: Actually we put Princess in a ‘baby sling’ fashioned from a long scarf. Perhaps we should purchase a purse in Purple Punch from Vera Bradley, for the potential purpose of private princess portage in a personal pack.
It was very lovely.
Editor again: What was lovely? The purse, the path, the park?
It was all very lovely.
There were coots and gadwalls in the creek. I explained to someone that coots were not ducks, but a kind of rail, with a very interesting foot adaption that I couldn’t go into much detail about since they walked away. And the gadwalls, well those are one of my favorite ducks. From a distance they look rather plain, but up close their plumage is fantastic. Here’s a gadwall dabbling.
I took a lot of pictures of coots and gadwalls, also some cormorants, and a few other birds. But this isn’t a bird watching blog, it’s a hedgehog blog. So we’ll leave it at that.
We wandered and talked about things, and looked at lovely things, and went over a precarious bridge, and sat on a bench and took photos that didn’t come out. We also saw fish and turtles, and I never said I wouldn’t post more pictures of those, so look, isn’t this painted turtle lovely?
That’s really what it looks like – no Photoshopping. The water in the creek has a really lovely hue due to the lighting, the light limestone creek bed, and probably some algae too. We eventually finished our walk, and hung out in the park.
We took out Princess P. P., who had been really patient, and let Fred and everyone visit with Princess. Fred was pleased to pet Princess Pricklepants.
So pleased that she pet Princess repeatedly.
We set up a small circle to let Princess play in the park. She tubed. It’s what a hedgehog does.
We set up a picnic for her.
She preferred tubing.
Princess played with Megan and was pleased to play with one of her fans.
Megan and Fred both seemed to have a warm spot in their hearts for the pygmy hedgehog.
And there was much holding.
Then something really exiting happened that forces me to briefly return to the topic of birds, because it was so cool! We (Editor’s note: he) spotted Monk Parakeets flying in nearby. Monk Parakeets are a species of parrot that can live in much colder climates than most, so there’s a breeding population in Austin. We (Editor’s note: he) could easily spill a few hundred words about may things related to Monk Parakeets, but will spare you.
Here’s one in a tree eating seeds:
Here are a pair grazing. Who knew parrots ate grass?
And here is one doing a precarious looking flyover. Fear not, there was no parrot poop pelting photographers.
After that we got dinner, which was very good. Thanks to Megan and Swarley, it was pure pleasure to have plentiful Princess pals present in one place.
The internet is full of cute photos of hedgehogs with flowers. I found one years ago and thought, “oh, what a cute photo of a hedgehog with a flower.” Here it is:
I made it my AOL Instant Messenger icon. This was many years ago. I cropped it some so it was mostly the little face and flower. You don’t need to know all these details. It was the beginning of me wanting a hedgehog, though. Interestingly Princess Pricklepants does bear a striking resemblance to that mystery flower-bearing hedgehog of yore.
Anyway, we were excited to have the opportunity to take pictures of our hedgehog with a flower. I was, anyway. Ideally we’d get a picture with a little yellow dandelion stuck behind her ear, with her standing in a cute little pose. Perhaps I could use it as my Facebook icon for a while…
She wasn’t feeling cooperative.
Princess Sophie’s help didn’t exactly help.
We tried adding in a toy truck so it would be more fun.
She didn’t find it fun. On the plus side, we got a flower behind her ear.
Soon thereafter she assaulted the truck.
OK, no truck, just heap the flowers, and put her near them? Still not a happy camper.
How can a hedgie be so grumpy about flowers?
Somehow shoving flowers in her face was considered an affront.
She definitely did not like this.
She worked on an escape plan.
Her escape plans got more elaborate.
Then she taunted us by posing with a flower under her face. She stood half off the green cloth to ensure my inner picky photo critic would be extra annoyed.
Posing near a pile, would that do? With bad lighting that’s way too warm and the whites partly blown out by the exposure?
Finally we got this one. It’s not the hedgehog with a flower behind its ear that got us started on this quest, but it was late, and it was close enough. Fine.
Photos of hedgehogs with flowers behind their ears are really kind of overrated.
We were visiting our friend Victoria recently, and so of course I had to wander away from people and lie on my stomach to take photos of the hedgehog walking around. I have the mad social skillz.
Guess what? Princess butt.
A hand full of hedgehog head on.
Low angle, low key.
When she curls up on you and sleeps it hits quantum adorableness and tears into the space-time fabric. We try to keep her awake.
One thing I’ve wondered about is whether hedgehogs keep their eyes open or closed when tubing. Thanks to some photographic investigation, we now know. This seems to explain why they bump around so much when tubing.
Lava lamp, your green grooveadelic globs are so far out, can you dig it? Visiting our fried Victoria with her groovy lamp was a gas.
I propose that Jan. 30 should be Talk Like David Bowie Day. We could all say things like, “crazy, man,” end sentences with “you know,” use “far out” a lot. Let me know if you are in, man, it could be such a crazy scene, you know? Dig that poll below the photos.
Princess Pricklepants digs that green grooviness.
ISO 1600, f/4, 1/50 – kit lens so f4 was as open as it got.
Low key grooviness, man.
ISO 1600, f/4, 1/50
Some Bowie inspiration, man.
In the grim future of Princess Pricklepants there is only war.
If ever in the future you were looking for some depiction of the madness of war, we have one for you here.
The IKEA doll furniture set’s scaled really well for Princess. We have been thinking about adding it to her cage since she seems to actually like the couch. The slip cover is washable, and after this shoot it needs a wash. I often hide a small plastic red squirrel in these because I like taking photos of squirrels too. It’s on the IKEA shelf.
Photographer’s note: The flash managed to fill things in pretty well. I took a few shots using various settings with and without flash. It was late at night, so ambient lighting was poor, and I didn’t want to spend time setting up lights since we needed to get to bed. This was a quickie as Max and I had just built the tower (thanks Mom), so I didn’t get a tripod or the new monopod. The shadows on the wall are a bit harsh, though they’re the only place it stands out. We have a second tower in the works. It was a very easy build.
Whether you had any idea that I thought that much about taking pictures of the hedgehog, or were you were more shocked at how quick and dirty I was with the setup? If it was the latter you’re a photographer, and you’ll be thinking about how I could have better composed the photo, and that the colors are kind of muddy, and on and on.
f/5.6 1/30 ISO 800 – I used the kit lens, had to go with a bit more closed aperture to get the DoF to include the tower and hedgie.
Part II – The Long Louisiana Slog, and Even Longer Post
(See Part I here.)
Since the last post used a lot of words and not as many photos we’ll overcorrect here with lots of pictures and fewer words.
On New Years Day we got up, ate, and then began the really, really long day of driving to get back to Austin. We loaded Princess’s home and all our baggage into the car and headed out into the rain. Within minutes of being on the road we reached the Louisiana Visitor’s Center.
It looked cold and not exactly inviting.
Fancy wasn’t thrilled.
Once he found a sign telling him not to do something he perked up a bit.
MUST BREAK RULES! WHOO!
As quickly as we arrived, we left, but Ryan was still annoyed.
We drove many more hours.
Kermit got a little stir crazy.
He began investigating potential risks.
Hours passed. Fancy also grew stir crazy as we crossed through the Atchafalaya.
Princess slept and we left her alone.
Then we reached the Atchafalaya Visitors Center. Yay. It’s on the west end, so we actually passed through the gigantic swamp before reaching to place where we could learn to appreciate it. We were fully prepared and rather excited since it’s a really interesting place.
Dang.
We took Princess out so she could experience the place anyway.
Many things were closed.
And our old enemy returned.
Happily, there was a comment box. We quickly formed a brilliant plan.
Princess and Fancy helped to deliver the note.
Fancy was impressed at the brilliance of it all.
Then Fancy found his favorite thing. A sign telling him not to do something.
Kermit joined in.
A turtle tried to eat Kermit, while Princess watched in mild confusion.
Fancy tried to eat Princess to help her better understand why this was happening.
Kermit got a first-hand lesson in what it was like to be shrimp bait in a shrimp cage.
And learned how shrimp traps worked.
For a surprisingly long time. Prickly-bear learned too.
Princess visited the famous Louisiana Pelican. “Why are these famous?” She wondered.
Princess was attacked by an alligator, while Kermit hopped in to help.
Kermit was of limited help.
Princess rode a huge tortoise. I guess there are huge tortoises in Louisiana somewhere?
The Alligator attacks continued. Princess Sophie was a victim.
Princess P.P. visited with what we believed might be a Sandhill Crane.
She posed attractively on a nice piece of wood.
We took kind of a lot of photos, including one of Kermit in a swamp.
Princess fought the power!
Then we left, but took no pictures of us leaving, allowing the reader to build a dramatic scene in their imagination.
Next: Part III – Texas Touring Turns Troubling
Now begins part 3 of our travelogue, heading on the final stretch, over the river and through the woods to Grandmothers’s house. It was a long drive, so Fancy made good use of the time rehearsing for his role in Annoying Private Ryan:
Still nailing it!
Alabama has a welcome center too, we are sensing a pattern. The first thing we find is a phone booth, a strange relic from the lost past of telephony. Maybe it is a time machine! Princess attempted to communicate with it, but found it strangly unresponsive. Fancy tried to help, but also found it unresponsive. Princess wanted to change into a superhero costume in the phone booth, but we didn’t bring any superhero costumes with us, so Princess and Fancy just played in the booth for a while instead.
Next to the booth was a large concrete monolith with an inspirational saying on it. Fancy thought it must have been placed there by a fellow pet’s rights activist – the persecution of pet’s rights and the sinister signage of institutionalized pet prejudice is an injustice Fancy hopes to overcome some day. He has a dream. Fancy is sure that concrete block is meant to inspire pets everywhere to fight the peculiar and perversely pernicious idea of defending the idea that it’s a “right” to keep pets from visiting visitor centers. Fight the power, hedgehogs, you have nothing to lose but your leashes!
Princess bristled at Marxist undertones of Fancy’s proclamations. As a member of the aristocracy she feels torn. Fancy thought it best to change the topic, since it was a bit of a prickly subject.
“Cousin Phil?”
There were some lovely holly bushes, so we posed Princess in front of them and got this super lucky photo of Princess waving! Whoah!
Once again we met our old nemesis. Rather than explaining with complicated words and sentences why this is bad, we didn’t.
Princess and Fancy were both appalled.
Fancy can be quite the activist…
Is this what happens when a puppet has nothing left to lose? Pushed to the edge, will Fancy, once a mild-mannered and law abiding puppet, become a rule-breaker?
Clearly.
Fancy even turned to handing out brochures he wasn’t authorized to dispense!
And engaged in doing whatever it is that’s happening here.
The breakdown into anarchy continued. Princess turned from her mild mannered rigid authoritarianism to anarchy to the point that *she went past the NO PETS ALLOWED sign*! At this point things were careening off. Princess even tried to climb into that little buttoned down spot on my collar that there was no way she’d ever fit into.
But with family intervention and care she settled down a bit – note she still was rebelliously sticking out her tongue here.
With more time cooler heads prevailed, and we persuaded Fancy and Princess of the value of the social contract, and that we had a Grandma to get to.
On the way out, we decided that there must be a politically connected brother with a sign making business, because seriously.
And later that day we got to Grandma’s
And Great Grandma Gracie even got to see Princess Pricklepants:
THE END
We made our way on the long drive from Louisiana to Mississippi, a state with constant and consistent consonant complications.
Princess liked it since it had two Ps in the name. Fancy had many opinions about Mississippi but nobody was interested in hearing them. So he rehearsed for “Annoying Private Ryan”:
Nailed it.
For various reasons Mississippi claims to be “The Birthplace of America’s Music,” which seems like a very grand claim. We could have been pedantic quibblers, but hedgehogs don’t really promote pedantic quibbling so we tried to work with it:
:
Once again we encountered the sinister signage of institutionalized pet prejudice.
While we were taking photos of our hedgehog out front, various people noticed our hedgie, and we were showing her to them. One of the workers at the visitor’s center noticed Princess and liked her, and wanted us to bring her in, though when he tried to get us in, security actually stopped us. The Man Holding the Hedgehog Down. (Technically security was actually a lady, and she didn’t hold the hedgehog). Here was the worker who liked Princess holding her:
We sort of took our a stand for pet civil liberties, in a way, by taking pictures of our hedgehog near the sinister signage of institutionalized pet prejudice.
Others kind of joined us, in a sense, by also taking pictures of our hedgehog near the sinister… the “No Pets” sign.
Given the circumstances, we left Princess safely in the car and went inside the Mississippi Welcome Center with Fancy to take a stand. Inside there was this painting of an American ship exploding, as if Mississippi wanted to say, “welcome, ships explode here sometimes, but not often.”
Since the Visitor’s Center was under Pet Segregation, only Fancy was able to pose before the state seal, though he tried to appear hedgehog-like in solidarity. Next time we plan to bring toothpicks to really show them.
Fancy also met Miss. Mississippi, who he enjoyed meeting. Luckily she wasn’t Mrs. Mississippi since that would have been far too difficult to say, and also Fancy might have been challenged to a duel.
After talking to the nice people and forgetting to mention that they really shouldn’t be prejudiced against pets, we headed back to the car. Princess was sleeping in her huffledome, so we let her be without further photographic documentation.
Next – The Perils of Pet Prejudice Part 3 – Alabama’s Revenge (and Land of Too Many Signs).
The Pleasantries of Princess Pricklepants 