Pig and Pepper

One of my all-time favorite parts in Alice in Wonderland is the chapter entitled "Pig and Pepper," in which Alice visits the house of the White Rabbit, where she becomes embroiled in the domestic chaos of the kitchen, with a temperamental cook, the Cheshire Cat, and the Duchess displaying definitively bad parenting. After a rousing chorus of "Speak Roughly to Your Little Boy/And Beat Him When He Sneezes," Alice is left holding the baby, who morphs into a pig. (In an attempt to scoop Disney and Tim Burton—or at least glom onto the coolness, in what we in the cultural industry call synergy or cross-marketing—the British Film Institute has restored the first filmed version of Alice from 1903, which contains this very scene. (The nine minute version is on YouTube, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeIXfdogJbA)
The more relevant reference to "Pig and Pepper" is that tonight I've employed my friend John's home remedy for deterring Pablo's stalking behavior in regards to Cuddles: namely, to dissolve cayenne pepper in water and brush it over the surface of her cage. When Pablo goes to perch on the cage, he'll thus be in for a sneezy surprise--although, of course, given my own love of Louisiana and consequent heavy use of cayenne pepper in cooking, it would be no surprise if Pablo likes things a bit peppery. We'll see. Meanwhile, the link of the Alice movie is pretty cool, with a vaguely Erik Satie-ish score. And since it was posted by the BFI themselves, there's no guilt about watching it repeatedly and passing it along to your friends (unlike, say, anything made by our friends at Disney!).