BITWRATHPLOOB World Tour

The BITWRATHPLOOB hits Venice5
sgazzetti posted in Detours on July 27th, 2007

The BITWRATHPLOOB’s stay with us coincided with a visit from family who had never seen the wonders of La Serenissima, so we took him along on a grand tour of the city of canals. A photo-essay seemed in order.

We drove the BITWRATHPLOOB across the Italian border at Rožna Dolina and got on the train at Gorizia Centrale. If you want to keep people away, the BITWRATHPLOOB is as good a charm against humans as any I’ve traveled with.

Please do not throw BITWRATHPLOOBs out of the window

Arriving in Venice, we hopped on the vaporetto and wound our way to Piazza San Marco, where we immediately lay down in the pigeon excrement to photograph the BITWRATHPLOOB with the lagoon behind him, in the canonical situation:

Next we paused between the prison and the Doges’ Palace to snap a picture of the BITWRATHPLOOB with the famous Bridge of Sighs at his back. It was at this point that he very, VERY nearly fell into the canal. It was a bit breezy there on the waterfront.

The BITWRATHPLOOB teeters on the brink of disaster

Continuing along the Riva degli Schiavoni, we reached the Adriatic’s foyer, the Piazzetta di San Marco, and posed the BITWRATHPLOOB with the campanile as his backdrop:

Napoleon’s “grandest drawing room in all of Europe” decorated with some Danish kitsch

We had hoped to take him up the campanile so that he might enjoy the view out to the Adriatic, but the line was too long and tempers too short. Instead we opted for a long boat ride out to the Lido, the sliver of sand that separates Venice’s lagoon from the sea.

BITWRATHPLOOB with Venice at his back

Finally it was time to board the vaporetto that would whisk us back to the train station, leaving the BITWRATHPLOOB’s tour of Venice just the first of many such excursions. Buon viaggio, BITWRATHPLOOB, buon viaggio!

Surely not the last time he’ll travel by boat…

Scary Movie5
erik posted in Videos on July 24th, 2007

This morning, I was browsing through the BITWRATHPLOOB Flickr group, and I came upon this lovely mosaic that jagosaurus made. And then it hit me: I had to make a movie version of a prophetic nightmare I’ve been having.

If, for some reason, you can’t see the flash version of the movie, above, or you just want to download it to watch it over and over and over again, you may download the movie in Quicktime format as well. It’s only 3.62 MiB, so send it to all your friends, and spread the horror….the horror!

Information for embedding this movie in your blog is available here.

Triumphant return to Europe’s shores9
sgazzetti posted in Official Visits on July 24th, 2007

As an admin for the Flickr group I wake up screaming, I was aware of the existence of the BITWRATHPLOOB (see ‘This thing makes me sad’ for his first-ever appearance on the internet). I even believed Jane’s threats to tuck him (it?) into a shipment of odds and ends I had asked her to send over to me in Slovenia. But the opening of the package still managed to shock and amaze.

“It isn’t here!” I shouted in disbelief. “What isn’t here?” my wife Magda wanted to know. “It isn’t here!” I howled in outrage. Taking delivery of the rather large box in which the BITWRATHPLOOB had crossed the Atlantic had been a sizable frig, entailing driving to the capital an hour away on a workday, waiting for half an hour for no apparent reason, signing papers and doling out euros all to collect a box which had clearly been opened for customs inspection. The thought of those Slovenian customs officers coming face to face with the BITWRATHPLOOB had provided almost enough entertainment to make up for the hassle. But now I leaped to the obvious conclusion: these corrupt postal officials had taken the BITWRATHPLOOB for pure, baffled spite. “They’ve stolen it!” I screamed, pawing through the bubble wrap and finding all the requested items, stuffed animals for our boys, Altoids for Magda, and all sorts of wonders minus the BITWRATHPLOOB. “STOLEN WHAT?” Magda demanded. Clearly I had not adequately prepared her for the BITWRATHPLOOB’s arrival. “The BITWRATHPLOOB! It’s not here!”

If you plan to fly into a rage about a missing BITWRATHPLOOB, allow me to recommend that you adequately prepare your spouse for the existence of the BITWRATHPLOOB in the first place, before you begin to talk about its absence.

“Is it that horrible thing Adam’s playing with?” Magda calmly inquired. Using his ninja skills, our two-year-old had managed to liberate the BITWRATHPLOOB from his transatlantic shipping container and was idly removing its head.

It was a great day for science.

“He’s broken it! Whatever, uh, whatever it is. What IS it?” Magda wanted to know.

“It’s the BITWRATHPLOOB,” I told her. “I mentioned this to you, didn’t I?”

“Uh, no.”

“Oh. Well. Anyway. He hasn’t broken it. Jane warned me that its head comes off.”

“Well, why did she send it? What is it for? And what is going on with its arms?” Magda was suddenly terribly inquisitive about the BITWRATHPLOOB. It was at that moment that I knew someone was going to have to write a FABQ.

The BITWRATHPLOOB straddles an international boundary: Italy (left) and Slovenia

“Here’s how it works,” I told my bride. “You get the BITWRATHPLOOB in the mail, you recoil in horror, take its picture, blah blah blah, you mail it to someone else. It’s going to CIRCLE THE GLOBE!” I invented. “Just so long as I don’t have to look at it for very long,” Magda said. “It’s horrible. What is it FOR? It has no purpose.” But I wasn’t listening. “Clearly it’s going to need its own Flickr group,” I was saying to no one in particular. “Or! A BLOG!“

Mr. BITWRATHPLOOB goes to Washington3
jagosaurus posted in Official Visits on July 20th, 2007

After the BITWRATHPLOOB finished terrorizing the mile high city, it was sent to the Washington, DC metro area because Marigoldie and Tina clearly hate me. I mean, why else do you bother to purchase and mail something from the magical part of any thrift store that Tina so correctly calls The Place They Put Things They Don’t Know Where To Put?

Eventually I recovered my wits from the reveal and Figaro used his kitty-fu to put BITWRATHPLOOB in its place (Abby ignored all of this with a placid demeanor that belied her sheer terror and bafflement). And then, in conversation with sgazzetti, it became apparently that BITWRATHPLOOB was going to have to keep on keeping on. But not before he had a chance to see the sites:

He seemed somewhat sad to go, and I … I kinda miss the little guy.

But not really.

And now, without further ado…3
tinushko posted in Official Visits on July 20th, 2007

…the fantastical tale of the discovery of the BITWRATHPLOOB!!

It was a dark and stormy night. Marigoldie and I had braved the weather to plunder our favorite Denver Goodwill store in search of booty (no, not that kind). We ransacked the clothing racks and she went into the dressing room to try some things on. I wandered off to the magical part of the store known as The Place They Put Things They Don’t Know Where To Put. And there, staring right at me, was the BITWRATHPLOOB. “Eeek!” I said. I picked it up and turned it over in my hands. I saw that it had no hands, just a circle of rope going behind its back. I saw that it was wearing an undoubtedly-handmade necktie. I discovered that its head would pop right off. “Eeek!” I said again. Snatching it up, I went to the closed door of Marigoldie’s dressing room. “Look!” I said, holding it up over the top of the door. “Eeek!” said Marigoldie. Much giggling ensued. So much that neither of us could breathe. We took pictures of ourselves with it. We tried to figure out what it was. We tried to understand why anyone would make it, much less buy it. We were unsuccessful.

I should have put it back, but somehow we couldn’t walk away from it. It had us in its evil power already. We knew there was only one way to break the spell: buy it and send it far, far away to torture someone else. But who? We looked at each other, and at the same time we said a single name.

“Jagosaurus.”

So then we PAID(!) MONEY(!!!) for it and I took it home, and as soon as I could I went and PAID(!) MORE(!!) MONEY(!!!!!) (horrifying several Mailboxes Etc. employees in the process, I might add) to have it boxed up and transported to the magical land of Virginia to continue its dastardly work.

And the rest…is history.