The uses and misuses of Piglet's friend Pooh

Having named our house after a certain "wise" feathered character in the Hundred Acre Wood, I am obligated to make a statement about our dear friend Pooh.  Over the years, the bear of little brain has lost a great deal of his fur to the mass-market corporate world.  From diaper advertisements to disney sing-a-longs, Pooh has received far more bruises than he did in his days of bump-bumping down the stairs behind young Christopher Robin.  But now the heffalump-hunter has been disgraced in a way I fear to even name.  The story can be found here (click).

It's a silly little phrase at first glance, a harmless, charming, witty little jig: "Return to the Hundred Acre Wood."  And to that I say, Humbug.  Some loon has decided to write the sequel to A.A. Milne's classic story, even after Milne went to so much trouble writing a perfectly fitting ending himself.  It's like joining a game someone else has already won.

If Pooh had his say on the matter, he'd probably mumble something about a "bother" and then go off and forget what he'd bothered about.  Piglet, meantime, would try and be very brave by imagining himself fighting off the hordes of misguided publishers.  Eeyore, of course, would be neither fazed nor surprised.

Perhaps it won't be all that bad, you may say.  And then, you should at least read it first before you say anything about it.  Well, Bubba, I *have* read it - or at least the free excerpt they put online (here) - and it was most disconcerting.  The author strikes me as one of those types that thinks good children's literature must include lots of simple sentences to help the child understand.  Even Dr. Seuss would not be amused.

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But now to happier things.  First of all, there's Pooh Hour - which clearly falls in the the Proper uses of Piglet's friend Pooh category.  Pooh Hour, as the term is used by some goodly friends of mine (and perhaps the phrase will soon permeate pop-culture), is the term for those times when everything - yes, yes...everything - is delightfully humorous.  If you walk into a room full of normally low-key types who are rolling on top of tables laughing about a bag of pop-corn popping, you're probably witnessing someone's Pooh Hour.  Typically, it hits sometime in the mid-afternoon, or, after a long, stressful day is over, in the wee hours of the night.  If you're lucky (or just plain loony), Pooh Hour strikes the clock every day of the week.  And Rabbit would not approve.

Lastly, there's this.  A group of psychologists decided to poke fun at themselves by diagnosing Pooh's friends and Rabbit's many relations with psychological disorders.  The resulting medical review can be found here (click), and the world's greatest chart can be found here (click).  Sometimes things like this can be just the catalyst one needs to be thrown directly into Pooh Hour.  One can only hope for such a fate.