Category: books

sinking my teeth in

I’ve decided I need to organize my things. I have a tendency to make lists of things, willy-nilly, whenever the urge strikes. Any old day of the week. Whether it’s blue dudes on a Saturday, balls on a Friday, or pigs on a Sunday, or cheese on a Tuesday. Willy-freakin’-nilly, I tell you.

So I was all like “hey, I should pick a day. Have a thing day. A themed thing day.”¹ So to go all out with the alliteration, I’m going with Thursdays. Thus creating the Themed Thing Thursday.

So in honor of the onset consonant of the words theme, thing and Thursday, the voiceless inderdental fricative, my first official theme of things for this Themed Thing Thursday will be teeth. Because without teeth, it’s really hard to say things.

teeth.jpg

A few things toothy

  1. ϴ or theta.
    The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) symbol for the voiceless dental (or interdental) fricative. This sound is usually written “th” in English, though the sound is nothing like a t followed by an h. (Note also that not all instances of “th” are stand-ins for theta: there’s the evil twin ð, too. Sometimes called the “eth.” It’s the voiced dental fricative. You know, the one in the.)
  2. The Tooth Fairy
    A legendary individual who pays children for losing their teeth. In the version of the myth I grew up with, when you lose a tooth, you put it under your pillow when you go to bed. In the morning, you wake up to find a coin in place of the tooth. The explanation for this phenomenon is not that the tooth has metamorphosized, but that a strange woman, possibly with wings, sneaked into your room while you slept, and felt around under your very head for the tooth, grabbed and pocketed said tooth, and then left you a small payment. This was supposed to be a comforting tale.
  3. The Wikipedia Tooth Fairy page has a whole bunch of fun popular culture references to the tooth fairy by the way, such as the episode of the Simpsons where Bart loses his last baby tooth, or Darkness Falls (2003), horror movie about an evil tooth fairy.
  4. The movie Toothless (1997)
    I had actually never heard of this movie until some soul out there tried desperately to find quotes from the movie. I have no idea why. I’m assuming it was the same person, trying variations of “quotes from the movie toothless” and “toothless movie quotes.” And they kept getting my post on movie quotes where I quote the “tough and ruthless/rough and toothless” bit from Kentucky Fried Movie. Anyhow, the movie “Toothless” was a TV movie from 1997, and looks to have been pretty sucky. Kirstie Allie played a dentist turned tooth fairy.
  5. Speaking of dentists, there’s the movie Marathon Man (1976) (And also the novel by William Goldman, author of The Princess Bride.)
    The story features a famous (or infamous) torture scene involving an evil, sadistic dentist. (“Is it safe?”)
  6. Little Shop of Horrors. A 1960’s B movie that was later adapted to a Broadway musical which was later adapted to another movie. The main story is about an alien man-eating plant, but it also features a sadistic dentist. (Clearly, some people have issues with dentists.) Steve Martin plays the dentist in the 1986 movie.
  7. Just in case you fear that all pop culture portrayals of dentists are unfavorable, Monty Python offers this counter-example, featuring heroic feats performed by a member of the BDA. (“It’s a man’s life in the British Dental Association”):

  8. And speaking of Python, what list of teeth could be complete without those big pointy teeth from the Holy Grail. You may be happy (or dismayed) to learn that you can now purchase associated merchandise, such as slippers and hand-puppets featuring rabbits with big pointy teeth.

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¹ I’m also inpsired by some folks I admire who have their own weekly theme days, like KC’s Medical Advice Mondays and Sage’s Word Wise Wednesdays.

say cheese

swiss_cheese.jpgYou might think you need to go to the grocery store to find cheese, but I have found cheese in a variety of unexpected places: books, movies, music and more. (And yes, it can get messy. Let me tell you, camembert is not something you want to find in an unexpected place.) I’ve come across so much cheese that there’s far too much for just me. So, I offer up to you this delectable platter of assorted cheesy goodness. Get your crackers ready.

  1. “The Big Cheese”: an expression meaning “the top banana” or “the head honcho.” (Please note that the “head cheese” means something totally different.) Here’s something I did not now about the origins of the expression “big cheese“:

    This use of the word probably derived not from the word cheese, but from the Persian or Hindi word chiz, meaning a thing.

  2. Little Miss Muffet This nursery rhyme girl not only sits on her tuffet, but she eats her curds and whey. That’s cottage cheese, my friend.
  3. “The Cheese Alarm,” a song by Robyn Hitchcock. This is a song of many cheeses:

    Roquefort and grueyere and slippery Brie
    All of these cheeses they happen to me

  4. “the cheese stands alone“: a line from the song “The Farmer in the Dell”. The title of I am the Cheese, a young adult book by Robert Cormier, and also a movie based on the same, references this line of the song, and the loneliness of being cheese.
  5. Cheese has long been used as a bait in mousetraps, and is especially good for trying to catch cartoon mice. Recently, this cheesy bait concept has been extended to motivating office workers with the book Who Moved My Cheese. This irritating-looking parable appears to have spawned a slew of cheese parody books, at least three of which are entitled “Who Cut the Cheese?”
  6. The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales, by Jon Scieszka and illustrated by the illustrious Lane Smith. This picture book features, among other things less cheese-oriented, a cheesy reinterpration of the gingerbread man fairy tale. Catch it if you can.
  7. “Cheeses of the World Series“: Jefferson Mint’s series of hand-painted collector’s plates featuring the cheeses of the world. Available only as an extra on the Austin Powers DVD. This is funniest deleted scene I can remember. It’s part of the overview that Number Two (Robert Wagner) gives of the activities of Virtucon, the “legitmate face” of Dr. Evil’s evil empire.
  8. Wallace and Gromit, Grand Day Out. Wallace loves cheese. Enough to go to the moon for it. And as we all know, the moon is made of cheese. (The other W&G features also feature some cheese, at least I know that The Wrong Trousers, and A Close Shave do. I have yet to see The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, but I would be sorely disappointed if it was cheese-free.)
  9. You know, there just aren’t enough movies featuring cheese. Paul Davidson, whose blog I found while doing my takehome final, offers a solution to this perennial problem by suggesting “ten movies whose plotlines would change by simply adding the word cheese to their titles.” An excellent proposition. (cf. “A Touch of Evil Cheese” and “Stand by Me Cheese”)
  10. The Cheese Shop sketch. In the land of the cheese, this sketch reigns supreme. John Cheese, I mean, Cleese and Michael Palin perform this legendary Monty Python gem. Hey, I was just making a joke about the John Cheese thing, but check out this slice of trivia from the John Cleese Wikipedia entry:

    John Cleese was born in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, England to Reginald Francis Cleese and Muriel Cross. His family’s surname was previously “Cheese”, but his father, an insurance salesman, changed his surname to “Cleese” upon joining the army in 1915.

    Anyhow, the Cheese Shop Sketch features 43 kinds of cheeses. Well, the names of 43 kinds of cheeses. Whether you’re looking for Cheddar, Brie, Wensleydale or Venezuelan Beaver Cheese, you will find no better place not to buy it.

so blue

Feeling a bit blue, folks? Well I’ve got blue folks for you. A whole list of blue folks. Some serious, some silly. Blue-skinned, blue-furred or just blue in the face. Some people, some people-like creatures. One sort of blob. Plus one god.

A List of Blue Folks

  1. Smurfs. (By the way, I’m actually very disturbed by the Unicef Smurf commercial. Which is I guess the message they were going for.)

    smurf.jpggrouchy.jpg-ette.jpg

  2. Sesame Street offers Cookie Monster and Grover.

    3. tv_sesame_street_cookie_monster_interested.jpggrover.jpgbloo.png

  3. Then there’s the more contemporary Bloo from the cartoon Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends.
  4. Blue Man Group. A group of men who are blue. Well, who paint themselves blue to perform some sort of performance. In the show Arrested Development, the character Tobias, a blue man who has aspirations to be a Blue Man, spends several episodes painted blue.

    5. bmg12_tn.jpgthe_tick.jpg

  5. The Tick. Mighty blue justice. A big blue superhero from the animated and live action TV shows.
  6. Various X-Men characters. The movies add one new blue mutant with each sequel. The first had Mystique, the second added Nightcrawler, and the third added Beast.

    m.jpgn.jpgb.jpg

  7. The Wee Free Men and other books by Terry Pratchett featuring the Nac Mac Feegle. Little blue people based loosely on the Picts of Scotland, who would paint their skin blue before battle. (See also Braveheart, which depicted blue face-painting that may or may not have been historically appropriate.)
  8. The Blue Fugates. An Appalachian family prone to methemoglobinemia, a medical condition causing the appearance of a bluish tinge to the skin. You can read more about them and other historical and mythical blue figures, like
  9. Blue Moovians. Ancient blue humanoids. Who knew?
  10. The Tuareg, a Berber ethnic group. Not actually blue, but

    The Tuareg are sometimes called the “Blue People” because the indigo pigment in the cloth of their traditional robes and turbans stained the wearer’s skin dark blue.

  11. The Hindu deity Krishna.* You can also learn more about why Krishna is colored blue.

    12. krishna.jpg

*(Note: I hesitated to include Krishna in my list, even though he is so very blue, seeing as he is an actual god and all. I don’t want to be disrespectful. However, upon remembering that he is often depicted as a playful god, I hope that his inclusion in my playful list will not offend. (cf. This line from a story in Shri Shyam Katha: “Then the playful Lord Krishna said. ‘First you promise me and then I will ask for a boon'” (Note: I must share that the preceding quotation made me giggle, as my most recent encounter of the word boon was about something else.)))

morning bowl of flakes

Last week, I told you about a book I have in my collection written by none other than J. H. Kellogg, a book of “plain facts” about sex which offers inadvertent amusement on nearly every page. Last week, I offered up some choice bits I’d found. And as a game, I asked for people to give me numbers so that we could look for something entertaining from those pages. We had 5 participants, who each requested 1 or 2 numbers each. Here are the results:

maverick roark requested pages 3 and 12. Page 3 is the title page, which I’ve typed out in entirety.

Plain Facts for Old and Young by J. H. Kellogg, M. D.
Member American Public Health Association, American Society for the Advancement of Science, American Society of Microscopy, Member Mich. State Board of Health, Medical Superintendent of the Battle Creek Sanitrium, Author of Numerous Works of Health, Etc.
Published by I. F. Segner, Burlington, Iowa, 1882.

Just so we know he’s qualified to say that sex should be avoided.

Page 12 gets you this bit from the table of contents:

The Social Evil.
Unchastity of the ancients–Causes of the “social evil” –Libidinous blood–Gluttony–Precocious sexuality–Man’s lewdness–Fashion…

NotSoSage requested a bit from page 323. This one is from the chapter called “Solitary Vice”:

The entrance of a single corrupt boy into a school which may have been previously pure–though such schools must be extrememy rare–will speedily corrupt almost the entire membership. The evil infection spreads more rapidly than the contagion of smallpox or yellow fever, and it is scarcely less fatal.

Mind you, we’re not actually talking about an STD or some such here, we’re talking about the spread of the “solitary vice” itself.

ericalee requested pages 46 and 72. These are from the chapter “Sex in Living Forms”, which actually does seem to contain some fairly scientific information. Page 46 is mostly about plants:

Nothing is more interesting in the natural world than the wonderful beauty, diversity, and perfect adaptaility to various conditions and functions, which we see in the sexual parts of plants.

He does get a bit excited about plant sex…

Page 72 covers male anatomy:

As the production of seminal fluid is more or less constant in man and some animals, while its discharge is intermittent, the vesiculae seminales serve as reservoirs for the fluid, preserving it until required, or allowing it to undergo absorption.

Hmm…I didn’t really find anything amusing on this page. Perhaps someone with more knowledge of anatomy would, though.

bs requested page 208, which is in the chapter “Incontinence”:

No continent man need be deterred by this apocryphal fear of atrophy of the testes, from living a chaste life. It is a device of the unchaste–a lame excuse for their own incontinence, unfounded on any physical law.

I hadn’t realized how old the expression “a lame excuse” was…

jwbates requested 69, which is also from the “Sex in Living Forms” chapter:

We have sufficient evidence of this in the fact that among barbarian women, who are generally less perverted physically than civilized women, childbirth is regarded with very little apprehension, since it occasions little pain or inconvenience.

Yes, well, you know how barbarians are…it’s amazing they notice at all when they’ve just given birth.

Okay, them’s the numbers you requested. Thank you for playing. Come play again with me soon. (Because as we learn from Kellogg, you wouldn’t want to play with yourself.) If you throw some more numbers (between 1 and 512) at me, I’ll offer up some more nuggets next week. We’ve barely scratched the surface!

crispy flakes of wisdom and crunchy nuggets of knowledge

One of the prize books in my collection is a book by none other than J. H. Kellogg, M.D. Yes, of corn flakes fame. Many have heard of this notable personage from the book The Road to Wellville by T. C. Boyle (and movie based on the same).

I stumbled across this book while browsing in a used book store in East Lansing, Michigan. (I was there for Linguistics Summer Camp.) Having heard of Kellogg, I was intrigued. And with a title like Plain Facts, and a publication date of 1882, I had to see what it was about. I opened the book to a page at random. And laughed out loud. I flipped through more pages, and laughed again. (snort, snicker…) I had to buy the book before I was thrown out.

It turns out that the “plain facts” are all about sex. As written by someone who felt that sex should be avoided whenever possible.

I don’t remember what the first passage I read was. But the beauty of this book is that nearly every page offers some piece of wisdom that I just couldn’t make up. I must share it with the world at large.

For example, we learn from page 87 that young women must not get their feet wet at certain times of the month, or they may do permanent damage:

A young lady who allows herself to get wet or chilled, or gets the feet wet, just prior to or during menstruation, runs the risk of imposing upon herself life-long injury.

Even babies may be in danger from the “stamp of vice,” as we learn from page 183:

Sometimes–rarely we hope–the helpless infant imbibes the essence of libidinous desires with its mother’s milk, and thence receives upon its forming brain the stamp of vice.

And not to leave out the dangers to men, there’s page 366, which offers this dire warning about the perils of auto-eroticism:

Many young men waste away and die of symptoms resembling consumption which are solely the result of the loathsome practice of self-abuse.

So I offer to you a game. Please give me a random (or carefully selected by whatever means you like) number between 1 and 512, and I will attempt to locate some notable nugget of wisdom for you in the vicinity of that page.

[Note: I’ll get back with the nuggets for you next Tuesday, April 10th.]

5 5th things

Here’s a list of 5 things of the 5th persuasion. Want to know more than that? I take the fifth.

Five fifths

    5. Fifth Business, a novel by Canadian author Robertson Davies. Part of the Deptford Trilogy.

    5. The Fifth Dimension. An American band from the 60s known for songs such as “One Less Bell to Answer” and “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In”. (Also amathematical abstraction.)

    5. a fifth interval. A musical abstraction. A difference between two notes in (Western) music theory. A perfect fifth is 7 semitones.

    5. The Fifth Element. A movie by director Luc Besson.

    5. The Fifth Elephant. A book by Terry Pratchett.

(Note: I was going to submit this as part of the //engtech 5 things contest, but noticed that I missed the deadline. I have trouble with deadlines. But what the hell, I’ll post away anyhow. I like lists, I like things, and 5 is as good a number as any. And way better a number than 4.)

18 of my favorite books

YTSL of Webs of Significance has (more-or-less) tagged me with a meme, by way of emails suggesting that I write about one (or more) of the (two so far) meme-related topics she’s posted on. One of the posts is on the book she couldn’t live without, inspired in part by a survey asking for people to list the 10 books they could not live without and a resulting list of the top 10 most frequently listed books. (The other meme-tagged post she’s written is called “wannabe“, which is about things she’s been and things she’s wanted to be. I may get around to this at some point, too.)

Because I don’t have a single favorite book, I’ll take some liberties with the meme concept, and write a list of my own favorites. The number of which will be determined when I get to the end of the list. And then hopefully I’ll get around to writing about the books in more detail. And because I have trouble determining which is my all-time favorite, I have not ranked them. Instead, I’m listing the books here roughly in the order in which I first encountered them. My list is in part selected to get a cross-section of the genres I enjoy reading, or phases I went through. I haven’t included any picture books, although that is a category of book that is very near and dear to my heart. Several of the books I list are meant to be representative of various works of that author, or a series by that author.

Some of my all-time favorite books

  1. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, by C. S. Lewis

    2. a children’s fantasy, and my favorite of the Narnia series (U.K.)

  2. The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster

    3. a silly children’s fantasy that plays with words (U.S.)

  3. The Shadow of the Moon, by M. M. Kaye

    4. a historic novel of the British in India with a bit of romance flavor (U.K.)

  4. The Peacock Spring, by Rumer Godden

    5. another British in India novel, but a more modern coming-of-age novel, by one of my all-time favorite authors (U.K.)

  5. Tess of the D’Urbervilles, by Thomas Hardy

    6. 19th century British Literature (U.K.)

  6. Emma, by Jane Austen

    7. witty 19th century British literature (U.K.)

  7. The Kitchen God’s Wife, by Amy Tan

    8. a novel of family, immigration and the meeting of cultures (U.S.)

  8. A Suitable Boy, by Vikram Seth

    9. a coming of age Indian novel (India)

  9. Winterdance, by Gary Paulsen

    10. a memoir featuring dogs (U.S.)

  10. Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

    11. a fun, funny work of science fiction (U.K.)

  11. Startide Rising, by David Brin

    12. a futuristic science fiction novel featuring talking dolphins, part of the Uplift series (U.S.)

  12. A Pale View of Hills, by Kazuo Ishiguro

    13. a poetic and almost surreal novel of memory, family and Japan (U.K.)

  13. The Witching Hour, by Anne Rice

    14. a novel of the supernatural, representing my Anne Rice phase (U.S.)

  14. The Dispossessed, by Ursula Le Guin

    15. a science fiction novel about social structure (U.S.)

  15. Bellwether, by Connie Willis

    16. a novel about fads by a favorite science fiction author, but this one’s more social scientist fiction (U.S.)

  16. Wicked, by Gregory Maguire

    17. a tale retold, about the Wicked Witch of the West from the Wizard of Oz (U.S.)

  17. The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver

    18. a novel of family, the meeting of cultures and living in Africa (U.S.)

  18. Thus was Adonis Murdered, by Sarah Caudwell

    19. one of only four books ever written by this author, a slightly racy, slightly academic, and very witty mystery and comedy of manners (U.K.)

Okay. So I ended up with 18. Which is a good number. For a start.

And as far as the meme business goes, I’ll try my hand at tagging some folks that I know to be book-oriented. Because I’d be interested in seeing your lists. Lists of whatever number you’d like to write. Perhaps within the range of 1-20. Erica, what’s your list? bs/Beckanon? jenny? John? Anyone else want to play?

questioning the need for thneeds

It’s raining today. Very wet, and quite cold. The rain is pooling in puddles on the icy snow in the front yard. And here I sit on this “cold, cold wet day.” And I’ve just realized that it’s Dr. Seuss’s birthday. Happy birthday, Dr. Seuss! (Yes, I do realize he’s dead, and unlikely to get this message.) And happy Seuss Day to everyone! (There’s a holiday I could get behind.)

I love Dr. Seuss. Well, his books. I didn’t know the man personally.

The Cat in the Hat is his best known masterpiece. This is a story about 2 small children left home alone, who are startled by a tall stranger who enters their home and wants to show them his “things.” Ah yes, those were more innocent times.

I grew up with the culinary classic Green Eggs and Ham. (I will not eat them with a fox, I will not eat them in a box.)

At this point, I think Phoebe’s favorite is The Foot Book, though There’s a Wocket in My Pocket is a close competitor. We have these two in board book form, so they get read to her more often. She hasn’t had as much exposure to reading books with paper pages. Though we did read The Cat in the Hat to pre-Phoebe a bit when she was still in utero.

the_lorax.jpg My favorite as an adult has been Seuss’s moving environmental treatise on the evils of mindless consumerism and the dangers of short-sighted industrialism, with particular focus on the threat to the ecosystem posed by excesses in the logging industry. Many people know it as The Lorax. Which also has pretty pictures of Truffula trees.

And while I don’t have time to really explore them now myself (I have an indeterminate number of minutes before Phoebe awakes from her nap), there are many fun Seuss things out there. (These things are fun, and fun is good.)

Thing 1: The Dr. Seuss parody page. It includes links to such items as “Spam-I-am”:

I would not like it here or there.
I would not like it anywhere.
I do not like your e-mail spam.
I do not like it Spam-I-am.

Thing 2: Dr. Seuss games

Thing 3: An index to the characters and creatures of Dr. Seuss

Thing 4: Pictures from the Dr. Seuss Memorial Sculpture Garden in Springfield, Massachusetts. (Who knew?)

Thing 5: “Who’s Who & What’s What in the Books of Dr. Seuss“, an encyclopedic work available in pdf format from Dartmouth College.

oink

Happy New Year! As you may well already know, it’s Chinese New Year. It’s year 4705 (For some fun information and descriptions of traditional Chinese New Year’s traditions, check out these couple of cool posts on the topic by YTSL.)
piggybank.jpg
Anyhow, this year is year of the pig. (Also called year of the boar. But I prefer pig.) And while I may not be able to manage much in the way of festivities for the day (I’m away from home and forgot to pack any festive red clothing), I offer this post as a small token of celebration. To welcome in the new Year of the Pig, I’ve put together a small list of some of my own favorite pigs. (These are a few of my favorite pigs…)

  1. Piggy. Nine Inch Nails. This song has these great opening words:

    hey pig
    yeah you
    hey pig piggy pig pig pig

    2. pigs.jpg

  2. Piggies. The Beatles. A classic song. “Have you seen the little piggies, living piggy lives”
  3. Small Pig, by Arnold Lobel. This was one of the first books I ever read. It’s about a little pig (a small pig, if you will), who liked to lounge around in a mud puddle. When he gets kicked out of his puddle and forcibly cleaned up, he runs off to find a new mud puddle.( Acceptable neatness standards be damned!)
  4. Charlotte’s Web. E.B. White. That Wilbur is “some pig.” This is one of my all-time favorite books of childhood. (I haven’t seen the recent movie, by the way, and not sure I can bear to.)charlotteweb.png
  5. Piglet. From the books by A. A. Milne. In the world of Winnie-the-Pooh, I identify most with Piglet. I’m a worrier. (Strangely enough, I couldn’t score a Piglet on the 100 Acre Personality Test. I got Pooh, and when I tried to adjust my answers to be what I thought was more Piglet-like, I got Owl, and then Kanga…)
  6. The Flying Pig sketches from The Kids in the Hall. Bruce McCulloch plays Flying Pig, a flying pig who appears on the scene to rescue people from boredom while they are standing in line. (By the way, I once bought a “flying pig” mug in the airport Cincinatti, Ohio, while waiting for a connecting flight. That city seems to have adapted the slogan “where pigs fly,” based on the “when pigs fly” idiom. And developed a lot of merchandising to go along with it. I bought the mug because of my affinity for the Kids in the Hall, and their flying pig. And my affinity for coffee mugs. And I suppose somewhat for my affinity for pigs.) Anyhow, back to the Kids in the Hall flying pig. I found some of the sketches on YouTube. Here’s one. Enjoy.


[update 4/28/09: the old video was taken down, so I replaced it.]