First, an admission: When I was in college, I thought the funniest thing was to read Heavenly Recipes, a spiral-bound cookbook that somehow appeared in my apartment, and relied heavily on canned soup, jello, and far more suspect ingredients (canned fruit, etc), always mixing them in a way that made me laugh so hard I cried. Cried! Something about the cheery introductions, "This one always pleases a crowd!" with the crazy recipes just did it for me. I laughed and laughed.

And when I found this, I laughed some more. Though it is no longer being updated. Though clearly, someone did make and eat those things. I knowingly mocked whoever it was.

And all of this, though I know it's not nice to mock others. Truly, I do know this. And yet—what else is there to laugh at, really, than other people?

Which brings me to my latest tale of literary and familial triumph failure triumph failure triumph oh for real I don't really know what to call it.

Diana has been striking out and away from the family home camp of known literature for valleys and lands unseen. And one of these is The Eye of Argon. Specifically, watching this very talented gentleman read it aloud.

Like so:

She listens to it (watches it?) and laughs. And laughs. And laughs some more. And truly, part of me thinks "Oh no, it's so much better to seek out things to read than it is to laugh at them!' and then the other part thinks, "Oh seriously, how can I begrudge any person in the world a laugh, when laughing uncontrollably is one of the best things about being human?" 

So we did what anyone would do in such a situation: we sat down, all four of us as a family, and watched it. We got through chapters 1 and 2. The closest we get to reading aloud these days to the two teenaged daughters. Triumph, right? Anyway, it was pretty funny.