Category: collections

peachy keen

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This week’s edition of Themed Things Thursday is as peachy as can be, with a hand-picked selection of juicy bits of peach. Just in time for Summer.¹

  1. Do I dare to eat a peach?

    The line from T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock“:

    Shall I part my hair behind?
    Do I dare to eat a peach?
    I shall wear white flannel trousers,
    and walk upon the beach.
    I have heard the mermaids singing,
    each to each.

  2. The peach story of Zhang Daoling, founder of a sect of Taoism. Followers had to prove their faith by leaping an improbable distance to pick peaches. (Did they dare to pick a peach?)
  3. James and the Giant Peach
    The book by Roald Dahl, and animated movie (1996) based on the book. Involves a boy and a journey in a…giant peach.
  4. momotaro The old Japanese folk tale about the “peach boy.” An old woman finds a giant peach floating down the river, which turns out to contain a boy. She and her husband adopt the boy and name him James. No, wait. Taro.

    Another, possibly older version of the momotaro tale involved the older couple eating an unusual peach they found, being rejuvenated by said peach, and then…gasp…having sex, leading to the birth of the peach boy.

  5. Peaches have often been associated with sex, and their cleft shape has been likened to buttocks. Apparently in several cultures, such as in Japan. There’s also A Pathan song (which I read mentioned in M. M. Kaye’s The Far Pavilions) is said to contain the following lines:
    giantpeach.gif

    There is a boy, across the river
    With a bottom like a peach
    But alas, I can’t swim.

  6. There’s a South Carolina roadside attraction that is a water tower shaped and painted like a giant peach. It’s said to look like a big orange butt.
  7. Peaches, by the Presidents of the United States. (Hear the song, and see the video. But I warn you, this is a song that can get stuck in your head. It was once stuck in my head for days. Insidious, I tell you.)

    moving to the country
    gonna eat a lot of peaches
    I’m moving to the country
    I’m gonna eat me a lot of peaches
    …
    peaches come from a can
    they were put there by a man
    in a factory downtown
    if I had my little way
    I’d eat peaches every day

  8. Peaches (2004). A movie featuring a peach cannery, and a young woman who works there.
  9. The Ripest Peach, a poem by James Whitcomb Riley. Likens a woman to a peach (that’s out of reach):

    The ripest peach is highest on the tree —
    And so her love, beyond the reach of me,
    Is dearest in my sight. Sweet breezes, bow
    Her heart down to me where I worship now!

  10. There’s the expression “be a peach.” As in “you’re a peach,” “he’s a peach,” or “she’s a peach.” Means more-or-less “be nice.” There was a Bloom County comic strip once about Reagan, where one character argues for his impeachment, and another talks about what a nice guy he seemed, leading to the line “impeach the peach!”

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¹ It’s Summer now, for those of us who live in the Northern Hemisphere. In fact, just today is the Summer Solstice, starting off the official Summer season by some calendars.

enough about me

Okay, I lied. It’s really still about me.

A little over a week ago, YTSL lobbed a request over that I should participate in this meme activity by which I list 7 little known things (or random facts or habits, if I trace it back further.) about myself.¹ I like things. I like lists. And apparently I like to write stuff about myself.²

7 things about me that I didn’t list in that other post with 6 things about me

  1. I used to be able to get into the yoga “lotus” position without using my hands. Oh, wait. I guess I still can. It hurts a bit more than I remember, though…
  2. I once had a collection of dimes. I was maybe 8 years old. They were just dimes. I found them aesthetically pleasing. Their size, their shape, the feel of them. I brought my collection to “show and tell” once, and the teacher asked what was special about the dimes. I was a bit perplexed by the question.
  3. I often have dreams that I can fly.
  4. I have a bit of a fear of moths. They give me the eebie jeebies.
  5. I like heights. I get kind of a rush from being up high. Kind of an anti-vertigo. (Funny. There was a Mel Brooks movie made in the 70s called High Anxiety that was a parody of Hitchcock’s Vertigo. At least one scene was filmed the Hyatt Regency Hotel in San Francisco, which had glass elevators that went up quite high. I loved that building, and those elevators.)
  6. I don’t watch TV. For someone who has written 26 posts to date with the tag “TV,” this seems odd. I watched a lot as a kid, but have little idea what’s even on these days. I watch things on TV, but only DVDs. Mostly movies. Some old TV series. The only current shows I’ve watched in the last couple of years have been available as iTunes downloads.
  7. I am fidgety. I have trouble sitting still. You’ll often find me twiddling a pen, shredding a paper napkin, twisting a straw…or doodling. I’ve got some crazy-ass elaborate doodles. Doodles, dood.

This is one of those things where I’m supposed to tag others. I’ve considered tagging people I don’t know at all, like, say, Kevin Smith or someone else who’s used the tag pants. Or a blog I hit by using the “next blog” function on WordPress, that gives you random blog after random blog. (And hey, if any of you, Kevin, pants person, or even more randomly selected person would like to play along, please consider yourselves tagged!) Or I can play by the self-selection, tag-free rules, as exemplified by the extraordinary KC. Anyhow, if you are reading this, consider yourself tagged. Like a polar bear or sea turtle that scientists are tracking. (Don’t worry. The tranquilizer will wear off soon.)

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¹ I also owe another meme to her. Plus I got tagged by NotSoSage for a different meme the same day. Woohoo. Meme me, baby. (I’ll get to that one at some point, too, Sage.)

² As we all know, writing about oneself is the prime motivation for 98.725% of bloggers.³

³ I made up that statistic. But anyone want to prove me wrong?⁴

⁴ Huh? Huh?

green party

I’ve been trying to live greener of late. Cutting back on waste. Reducing, reusing, recycling. And I’ve also been eating a lot of vegetables recently, greens even, which make me feel like I might turn green. However, even with all this green-ness, I’ll never ever be as green as the green dudes I’ve listed below. Because this Thursday’s theme is green people.

So here we have them. Following up on the blues and the reds, we got the greens. Green people and green people-like creatures. Sporting green fur, green skin, green what have you.

Green People

    green_giant.jpg

  1. The Wicked Witch of the West, from the Wizard of Oz, the 1939 movie.
  2. Elphaba from Gregory Maguire’s Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. Based on the green woman of Oz. (Also in the Broadway muscial based on the book.)
  3. The Green Goddess. The title of two movies from 1923 and 1930. (I’m not actually sure how green the goddess actually was, seeing as the movies were in black and white. But potentially green.) Also a salad dressing.
  4. The Jolly Green Giant. Big. Really big. Likes his vegetables.
  5. The Green Children of Woolpit. Two children who supposedly appeared in a village in England in the 1100s. And were green.
  6. Little Green Men. Aliens. From space. Who are green. And small.
  7. Yoda. Of the Star Wars series. Green, he is.
  8. Kif from Futurama. A little, green, long-suffering and sensitive man.

    9. kif.jpg

  9. Orions from the planet Orion, as featured on Star Trek. Remarkably human-sized, as green aliens go. The Orion women have crazy-powerful sex pheromones: “They are like animals, vicious, seductive. They say no human male can resist them.”
  10. Dipsy. A freakin’ Teletubby. A bit on the chartreuse side, as greens go, but green nonetheless, and allegedly “stylish”:

    Dipsy is the second-biggest Teletubby, and undoubtedly the most stylish, but being super cool doesn’t stop Dipsy loving big hugs.

  11. Green is generally a popular color for monsters. Like Mike Wazowski from Monsters, Inc.
  12. Wally, the Green Monster. Apparently based on the nickname of the wall at Fenway.
  13. Shrek. Green ogre from the book by William Steig. Also from the movies (2001, 2004 and 2007). Also Fiona.
  14. Various muppets. Such as Green Anything Muppets. Also Oscar (the grouch). (And Kermit, though in his case, green is not too surprising a color. Being a frog, and all.)
  15. The Grinch. The Dr. Seuss character.
  16. The Hulk. Big. Green. You wouldn’t like him when he’s angry. As seen in the 2003 movie, 70s TV show, comics, and more.

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wicked_witch.jpgwally_the_green_monster.jpgyoda.jpg

I yam what I yam

It’s time for another helping of Themed Things Thursdays. It being vegetable week here, in honor of my first pick-up of my CSA veggies, this Thursday Theme for Things is vegetables. Okay, the list is a bit heavy on the onion bits (with apologies to those who don’t like onions), but you can pick them out.

some vegetables

  • beans
    Jack and the beanstalk, a fairy tale featuring magic beans that grow a towering beanstalk.
  • corn
    Children of the Corn (1984) A movie based on a Stephen King story. Horror in the corn fields.

  • spinach
    The cartoon character Popeye (The Sailor Man) gets super-duper strong when he eats a can of spinach. Even has a little song he sings when he gets all juiced up: I’m strong to the finish, ’cause I eats me spinach…
  • broccoli
    Powerpuff Girls episode 17 “Beat Your Greens“. Alien broccoli attacks.
  • cabbage
    The Kids in the Hall offers Cabbage Head, a man with cabbage for hair. (There are also the Cabbage Patch Kids, scrunched-up looking dolls that were all the rage in the 80’s, and that now have their own urban legend.)
  • pumpkin
    Peter Peter pumkin eater. A nursery rhyme. Also a song you can play on the piano using only the black keys.

    Peter Peter pumpkin eater
    Had a wife and couldn’t keep her
    He put her in a pumpkin shell
    And there he kept her very well

  • peppers
    Peter Piper A nursery rhyme and tongue twister: “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers”
  • carrots
    Bugs Bunny is known for his trademark carrot-munching. But did you know that his carrot-munching was a Clark Gable immitation?

    bugs

    Bugs Bunny’s nonchalant carrot-chewing stance, as explained many years later by Chuck Jones, and again by Friz Freleng, comes from the movie, It Happened One Night, from a scene where the Clark Gable character is leaning against a fence eating carrots more quickly than he is swallowing, giving instructions with his mouth full to the Claudette Colbert character, during the hitch-hiking sequence.

  • potato
    Everybody’s favorite spud has got to be the ever-dignified, interchangeably featured Mr. Potatohead (Apparently, there are many new Potatohead varieties that have sprouted, including the venerable Star Wars Darth Tater
  • sweet potato
    “Sweet Potato,” by Cracker. (Off the album “Kerosene Hat”) A rockin’ romp of a song. Be my sweet potato, I’ll be your honey lamb

  • yams
    Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe. Yams play a central role in the Nigerian community depicted in this novel. (See? I can get all literary, too.) (By the way, these yams aren’t the same as sweet potatoes, which are often called yams in the US)
  • turnip
    You can’t get blood from a turnip, or “You can’t squeeze blood out of a turnip” (You can also find more garden-variety cliches) An expression meaning that it’s not possible to extract something from a source that doesn’t contain that thing.
  • onion
    1. The Onion (“America’s finest news source”) My own favorite Onion article? This eerily prescient one from January, 2001.
    2. Shrek (2001) An animated movie featuring an ogre who likens himself to an onion:

      Shrek: Ogres are like onions.
      Donkey: They both smell?
      Shrek: NO! They have LAYERS. There’s more to us underneath. So, ogres are like onions.
      Donkey: Yeah, but nobody LIKES onions!

    3. The End: Book the Thirteenth, the final installation of A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket begins with the following layery, teary-eyed, oniony sentence:

      If you have ever peeled an onion, then you know that the first thin, papery layer reveals another thin, papery layer, and that layer reveals another, and another, and before you know it you have hundreds of layers all over the kitchen table and thousands of tears in your eyes, sorry that you ever started peeling in the first place and wishing that you had left the onion alone to wither away on the shelf of the pantry while you went on with your life, even if that meant never again enjoying the complicated and overwhelming taste of this strange and bitter vegetable.

  • bok choi
    Bok Choi Boy, the story of a young lad raised by vegetables to become a legendary leafy-green fighter for truth, justice and better nutrition. (Okay, I made this one up.)
  • a whole bunch o’ different oversized veggies
    June 29, 1999 written and illustrated by Caldecott award-winnder David Wiesner. A picturebook featuring gigantic vegetables raining down from the skies. A beatifully illustrated, beautifully absurd book:

    Cucumbers circle Kalamazoo. Lima beans loom over Levittown. Artichokes advance on Anchorage.

    Check out some of the illustrations on the publisher’s webpage for the book.

    • site statistics

    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.)

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    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.

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    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.)))

    I’ve got a lot of balls

    I’ve got balls. Bouncy balls. A whole lot of ’em.

    Here’s a list of some bouncing balls I’ve encountered. A list of 5 things of the bouncy ball persuasion. And a whole lot more balls than that. On with the bouncing!

    1. The Sony Bravia commercial. My sister sent me a link to this ad, which I hadn’t seen before. It features a whole lot of bouncing balls, bouncing down a street in San Francisco. And through the wonder of YouTube, I can bounce it to you here.

      The making of video is fun to watch, too. You can also read more about it, and see some cool photos. And want to get some balls of your own? Get a bunch of downloads.

    2. Want to know more about the bouncing of balls? Learn about the physics of bouncy balls, or about bouncing ball simulations.
    3. Here’s another bouncing ball commercial, this time for a museum in Mexico. Features a pair of balls.
    4. “Follow the bouncing ball.” Old-time TV (and movie?) sing-alongs used to feature a bouncing ball that would bounce along the words displayed on the screen. It’s a bit hard to find examples of this, though I came across a version someone random made and put up on YouTube. Or if you don’t mind being forced to watch an irritating ad, you can sing along with some old TV show themes songs with the help of a bouncing ball.
    5. My favorite balls of all are from the Futurama episode “War is the H-word“. (By the way, this is also the episode where Leela dresses up as a man, and where Fry buys his ham-flavored gum. For “breath as fresh as a spring ham.”) This episode features a planet of bouncing balls. And these fabulous ball-bouncing quotes, from the treaty negotiations with the head of the balls:

      We demand bouncing, followed by rolling, followed by rolling of the third type.

      and

      We cannot condone bouncing of the seventh variety.

      and

      The Elders tell of a young ball much like you. He bounced three meters in the air. Then he bounced 1.8 meters in the air. Then he bounced four meters in the air. Do I make myself clear?

      and let’s not forget when Leela says:

      We’re here. I followed the bouncing balls.

    bouncy_balls.jpg

    This post is being submitted to the //engtech 5 things contest, which strongly advocates bouncing of the 5th variety.

    5 seriously funny death scenes

    Death is serious business. No laughing matter. Except of course when there’s a funny death scene. Here are a few movie death moments that made me laugh.

    5 seriously funny movie death scenes

    1. Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)
      O-ren Ishii (Lucy Liu) decapitates a dissenting individual at a business meeting, leading to a geyser of special effect blood, and proceeds to deliver a honey-voiced lecture to the other meeting participants about behavior guidelines.
    2. Mystery Men (1999)
      Boggled by toggles, a group of superheroes of somewhat dubious powers (played by Janeane Garofalo, Hank Azaria, Ben Stiller, William H. Macy and others) bungles a rescue attempt whereby they accidently kill off the more-or-less competent superhero that they had been attempting to rescue.
    3. The Princess Bride (1987)
      Death catches Vizzini (Wallace Shawn) in mid-laugh shortly after he finishes his triumphant speech about being right: “…never go up against a Sicilian when death is on the line. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha h-“
    4. Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992)
      Paul Reubens (better known as Pee-wee Herman) performs the death scene to end all death scenes. That is, if the death scene will ever end…
    5. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
      The famous scene where Major T. J. “King” Kong (Slim Pickens) goes for a last wild ride atop a plummeting atomic bomb.

      6. slim-pickens_riding-the-bomb.jpg

    This post is being submitted as part of the //engtech 5 Things contest.

    High school movies that are more fun than high school

    I’m back from my midterm. Relatively unscathed. But I hate tests. Did I mention that? It’s not that I don’t do well on them, it’s just that they stress me out. And I’d recently thought I was done with them. I mean, I’m so over that sort of thing. Shouldn’t I be over that? Hello? Mid 30s. Have an advanced degree. Not to mention house, husband and now offspring. But studying for a test makes me feel like I’m back in high school. [Shudder.]

    Thinking about high school made me think about high school movies. Some of which are way more fun to watch than going to high school. So, here’s a list. Think of it as a syllabus. And yes, there will be a test.

    High school movies that are more fun than high school

  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992)
    The movie’s not quite as much fun as the show, but still fun nonetheless. Valley girls and vampires. Plus Paul Reubens (a.k.a. Pee Wee Herman) has this hilarious extended death scene that is such a treat.
  • Heathers (1989)
    Cliques. Cruelty. Croquet. A wonderfully dark comedy that reminds me that I’m oh-so-glad to be done with high school. Eskimo.
  • Clueless (1995)
    Based on Jane Austen’s Emma. This one’s actually quite sweet. And also has a cool soundtrack.
  • 10 Things I Hate About You (1999)
    Based on Shakespeare’s “Taming of the Shrew,” and features at least one fairly kick-ass teenage girl character.
  • Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989)
    Dude. A totally righteous high school movie. With bodacious time travel.
  • Back to the Future (1985)
    The classic Michael J. Fox work. More time travelling, more high school.
  • Better Off Dead (1985)
    I love John Cusack. Especially his earlier works. And it has raisins in it. You like raisins.
  • Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)
    This movie appealed to me more when I was actually a teenager than it does now, but it’s still fun. It bears no resemblance to my own high school experience.
  • The Breakfast Club (1985)
    Having gone to high school in the 80s, I must include a token of the brat pack oeuvre.