they say in heaven love comes first

I'm rocking out this morning to this killer '80s mix. Yes, go ahead, laugh. I am unabashedly a huge fan of the decades music, from the Thompson Twins and Quarterflash to Prince and the Culture Club, right on through Whitesnake and Motley Crue. Its all fabulous, it was my childhood. Call it a guilty pleasure if you will. I just call it a pleasure.

I can swallow the ocean in one gulp (and I'm not Paris Hilton)

so I guess listening to all of this music from my youth has made me nostalgic and I was thinking about the book the Five Chinese Brothers. The five identical brothers who each had those crazy abilities. The first could swallow the ocean, the second had an iron neck, the third could stretch his legs, the fourth couldn't be burned and the fifth could hold his breath indefinitely. I LOVED this book when I was younger, I have vivid memories of making paper mache masks of the brothers in kindergarten.

if I remember the story correctly, the first brother kills a kid, right? And then in sequence all of the brothers use their powers to save the previous brother from execution. The book is like a roll call of different ways of capital punishment. I believe in this post pc world, it would also probably be considered racist now too, huh?

I still have tremendously fond memories of this book, but was just thinking about how little of it I understood as a child.

same thing with Rikki Tikki Tembo (bonus points for anyone who can say the kid's whole name). Loved the book, but the big overriding moral is don't give your kids really long names because they'll die. strange, no?

any thoughts?