logs, blogged

It’s getting to be cold and wintry around here. Seems like a good time to throw a few logs on the fire. Or to throw some logs on a list.

a load of logs

• Yule log: a big hunk of wood burned as a Christmas or Yule tradition. Some places, like the town of Beulah, Colorado, have Yule Log Festival.
• The WPIX Yule Log Special: a televised broadcast of a log burning in a fireplace.
• Bûche de Noël: a cake shaped like a log that is a traditional Christmastime dessert in France.
• easy as falling off a log: an idiom meaning very easy to do. Doesn’t usually involve the bruising or fractures that might happen from actually falling off a log.
• log: an abbreviation of logarithm
• ship’s log: a weighted piece of wood once used to measure the speed of a ship. It was attached to a rope with knots tied at set intervals, and tossed overboard:
  

  It was tossed overboard attached to a line having knots in it at known distances. The number of knots played out, correlated with a reading from a special sandglass, called a log glass, gave the ship’s speed. The term knot, meaning one nautical mile per hour, comes from the knots in the log line.

• ship’s log: a shortening of “ship’s logbook,” a journal where the ship’s speed and other events were, um, logged.
• weblog, or “blog”: a website where short articles are published in reverse chronological order. A quaint custom of the early 2000s. Typically used to share in-depth political analyses, complain about in-laws or share horror stories of ingrown toenails.
• logjam: a blockage caused by logs clogging a waterway. Also used metaphorically to mean a clog or blockage. As in “I can’t get any work done due to this logjam of blog posts in my feed reader.”
• “Log Jamming”: a fictitious porn movie from The Big Lebowski.
• log rolling: a sport involving balancing on a log that’s rolling in water.
• saw logs: a pair of homophonous expressions pertaining to lumber and slumber. The noun is about big pieces of wood that can be sawed. The verb is about snoring.
• logger: a person who works in the logging trade, also known as a lumberjack. When not sawing logs, lumberjacks like to put on women’s clothing and hang around in bars:
  
• log cabin: A house constructed of logs.
• Log Cabin: a brand of maple syrup that used to come in a log cabin-shaped tin.
• Abraham Lincoln: a United States president who (among his other accomplishments) was born in a log cabin.
• Lincoln Logs: building toys shaped like little logs, traditionally made out of wood.
• Log: “It’s big, it’s heavy, it’s wood.” A product with a catchy commercial and jingle: “…it fits on your back, good for a snack, it’s log log log…” (Really it’s from Ren & Stimpy.)
  

fireplace image by rmahle