We received a very strange book by the name of “The Adventures of Mournful Mouse”.

At first it seemed pretty cool; Sara’s Grandma bought this book from a lady who self-published it almost 50 years ago and sold it in the grocery store. It’s like a piece of literary history (and autographed too)! However, as you start to read it, there is something a little…strange about the book.

So let’s play a little game: I will show you the pages of the book, and you can read along. Out loud if you please.

We start off with a bang, right on the title page. Is that a pool of blood? Are we looking at some kind of murder scene? A fresh one too, based on the blood which is still dripping down. Maybe it’s supposed to be the tears of Mournful Mouse, who is sad because he CRIES BLOOD. Or maybe he cries when he thinks of all the people he’s murdered, I don’t know.

Okay, here’s where we start to notice the weirdness, especially if you’re reading out loud. Each page starts with a certain sing-song pattern, like a poem, only to end on a non-conforming last line, which neither rhymes, nor fits the meter of the paragraph. It’s like a maniac stole the book and finished all the last lines of the poems, mad-lib style. And they’re all in caps, as if to highlight the discrepancy, or possibly because the maniac who wrote the last line never talks, only screams his words like a lunatic.

My favorite thing to do with this book is to watch people read it out loud. They automatically fall into the rhythm of the book, and then try to enforce that rhythm on that last line. There’s just this look of confusion that comes over them, like “Did I make a mistake somehow? Did I miss the rhyme? Or maybe I mispronounced it, and sorrow should rhyme with friend? Am I supposed to talk really fast so that all these words fit?”

So does the “ANYTIME” box allow you to time travel, go to any time you want? That’s what the name would imply, but no, it takes you to “ANYPLACE” instead. So is it a teleportation device? Maybe it’s a Puzzlebox from hell, and the Triangle Man is some kind of Cenobite? I’m going to go with teleportation device, since the destination is clearly labeled as being in the United States. (or at least the text says the button is labeled, because I don’t see any labels in the picture. Maybe the writing is very tiny.)

Yes, that is angles, not angels. You will quickly see that this is not a typo! I love to watch people read “angle” and then go back and correct themselves to “angel” before getting to the next page. Just when you think this book is weird enough, we take a true trip into the surreal. Maybe the “ANYTIME” box is just full of drugs.

You know, I want to take a minute to ask why is the main character of a children’s book can barely contain his suicidal depression. Did that really seem like a good quirk for the protagonist of a kid’s book? And why are the Angles named things like Nosey, Brainy, and Hardwork? I was expecting something a little more like 90, 180 and 270.

Never ride with strange Angles my friend. So the book is supposed to teach us geometry? Or maybe the lesson is “there’s no place like home”? (I’m assuming Elmwood Lane and Hilltop House are where he lives, although that hasn’t really been mentioned anywhere. To be fair, this is book 2 of a series, so I’m sure the author assumed book 1 had already been wildly successful at this point.)

This “trip” ain’t over with yet, Mournful ol’ pal, because the moon (who is not made of angles, I’m just sayin’) is trying to eat your tail! Now, I can’t help but notice that the moon is in a different position when he gets home. Does this imply time travel? Perhaps inter-dimensional travel? But I thought “ANYTIME” was in the U.S.?

OH SHIT, LOOK OUT! THE CARNIVOROUS MOON FOLLOWED YOU HOME! Perhaps in the previous picture it just had it’s back turned. Hey, wait a minute, the last line rhymed! Where’d that come from? Okay, wait, I thought he learned his lesson that there’s no place like home? Five minutes with Grandma and he’s ready to jet again. Grandma’s such a buzz kill.

Apparently you need to “know the Angles” in order to operate the box. We didn’t see Mournful actually learning any geometry, so I guess when you meet the Angles they somehow implant information into your brain about how to compute the complex geometry required for star travel. But wait, don’t you just push a button? Where do the Angles even come into it?

I don’t know man, but there you have it. The long strange trip known as Mournful Mouse and the Anytime Box.