Q: Why did the chicken cross the road? A: To get to the other Starbucks
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This was a joke I made up a while back, inspired by a list of chicken jokes. I cracked myself up with it.
However, recent news that Starbucks is closing 5% of their stores (especially those “unprofitable stores …being cannibalized by nearby Starbucks locations”) may make my joke obsolete. (Though at BU, some students were recently protesting the new Starbucks location, which is basically across the street from not one, but 2 nearby Starbucks locations…)
Summer is here, at least for those of us up on this side of the equator. Summer signals a range of things. Picnics and barbecues. Trips to the beach and dips in the pool. Berrypicking. Hotter temperatures. Longer days. Shorter pants.
And in some places, as Mad reminds, Shakespeare festivals.
While the bard himself may have covered his esteemed rear end with garments cut of another fashion, he no doubt would have come to love pants had he lived in our day and age. We can only imagine the great things that Shakespeare might have written had he lived in an age of pants.¹
Without further ado, and with all due respect, I offer to you a glimpse of some pants that might have been.²
Shakespeare’s Pants
How poor are they that have not pants!
Iago, Othello (II, iii, 376-379)
We are such stuff as pants are made on
Prospero, The Tempest Act 4, scene 1, 148–158
Frailty, thy name is pants!
Hamlet, Hamlet Act 1, scene 2, 142–146
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in our pants, that we are underlings. Cassius, Julius Caesar (I, ii, 140-141)
Love looks not with the eyes but with the pants.
Helena, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (I, i, 234)
Out, damn’d pants! out, I say!
Lady Macbeth, Macbeth Act 5, scene 1, 26–40
A plague a’ both your pants!
Mercutio, Romeo And Juliet Act 3, scene 1, 90–92
A soothsayer bids you beware the pants of March.
Brutus, Julius Caesar Act 1, scene 2, 15–19
Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with pants.
Hero, Much Ado About Nothing (III, i, 106)
Be not afraid of pants
Malvolio, Twelfth Night (II, v, 156-159)
And thus I clothe my naked villany
With odd old pants stol’n out of holy writ
Richard, King Richard III (I, iii, 336-338)
Give me my pants, put on my crown
Cleopatra, Antony and Cleopatra (V, ii, 282-283)
My pants fly up, my thoughts remain below.
King, Hamlet (III, iii, 100-103)
Something is rotten in the pants of Denmark. Marcellus, Hamlet Act 1, scene 4, 87–91
There are more pants in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Hamlet, Hamlet Act 1, scene 5, 159–167
Quotes, or at least the pants-less versions of them, harvested from this site.
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¹ And had he been an utter loon.
² It’s been a long time since I’ve shared my pants with you. Truth is, I’ve been sitting on these pants for many months.
It’s been a great relief to me that the race for the Democratic presidential nomination has finally ended. I am thrilled that Barack Obama will be the Democratic candidate. (At the same time feel some pangs of sadness of what could have been. I still like Hillary Clinton, overall, frustrated as I was with her campaign and some of her positions.¹)
I am both excited and optimistic about the idea that Obama can be the next US President.
I am also, at least equally, frightened and a bit nauseated by the possibility that he will not be.
I know many of you have seen these videos. They came out in February. But it’s come to my attention recently that some of my friends have not yet. This seems as good a time as any to share them myself.
First, the “Yes we can” video by Will.i.am and others, which was distributed in February or so. It takes parts of Obama’s speech, and integrates them into a powerful song:
Next, the response videos, which came out only days after the Obama “Yes We Can” video. (If you haven’t seen the above video, or haven’t seen it in a while, you should at least watch a bit of it before seeing the responses.)
Here is john.he.is:
In looking up john.he.is, I also came across this other video that came out right around the last one, but which I hadn’t seen: “No, you can’t.”
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In somewhat related news, you have probaby realized that I’m a self-proclaimed bleeding-heart liberal. Magpie has put together a badge which she has encouraged others to steal and share. I thought I’d oblige:
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¹ I was going to put this bit as a footnote, rather than a parenthetical. But a friend has suggested that I am “headed down the wrong path” with all my recent footnotes. I don’t know what she means. I can stop any time I want.²
If you’ve ever spent any time house-hunting, you’ve probably noticed that real estate listings have a certain lingo of their own. Often, this involves descriptions of properties that have been somewhat embellished to make even flaws quirky characteristics sound like selling points. Some of these euphemisms have become standardized, such as the “handyman’s special,” a term for a home that is falling apart in every imaginable way in minor need of repairs.
In order to help you read between the lines in an MLS listing, I offer to you this helpful example and glossary.
Example: a typical MLS listing
Charming and cozy 2 bedroom house. Enjoy summer breezes in this lovingly decorated perfect starter home, with sunny, low-maintenance yard. Modern kitchen, 1 and a half baths, partially finished basement. Homey, and ready to move in!
Location features:
• easy access to freeway
• excellent cell phone reception
• close to amenities
• friendly, mature neighborhood
Glossary of Terms: charming: run-down cozy: cramped summer breezes: house is drafty, may have windows missing or holes in roof lovingly decorated: all the carpets are magenta, and there is loud wallpaper in every room perfect starter home: you’ll want to move out as soon as you can afford better sunny: no trees or shade of any kind low-maintenance yard: lawn is paved over modern kitchen: kitchen done in the Modern style, circa 1960 1 and a half baths: the second bathroom has partially-installed fixtures, or there may be a toilet in the basement partially finished basement: basement features water-stained shag carpet homey: house has funky smells, possible from cat urine Ready to move in!: home has been abandoned easy access to freeway: next to an on-ramp excellent cell phone reception: under a cell phone tower close to amenities: across from a liquor and/or convenience store friendly, mature neighborhood: may be near a strip club or adult bookstore
I hope that this information will be helpful to you in your house-hunting endeavors. If you have more terms to add to the glossary, I welcome your contributions!
——————————- This week’s Monday Mission, which I’ve chosen to accept in a roundabout way, was to write a post in the style of a real estate listing. For more listings, stop by Painted Maypole.
Thanks to maja for teaching me “low-maintenance yard” and “easy freeway access,” terms that she may have actually seen in use.
From the AP article:The Johns Hopskins University Center for Human Health and Technology Studies issued a report last Friday indicating that individuals participating in activities relating to the internet format of weblogs were at increased risk for a variety of health problems, including rickets, schistosomiasis, kuru, high blood pressure, Omphaloskepsis, and vitamin D deficiency. Many subjects further exhibited lethargy and reduced reaction times to external stimuli.Blogging practices most strongly correlated with risks to mental and physical health include the publication, reading and exposure to weblog entries on topics including, but not limited to, politics, humor, family, music, news and the personal lives of the weblog authors. The study identified the following practices as being most strongly correlated with mental health risks and cognitive deficits:
Spending upwards of 5 hours weekly reading, writing or contemplating writing weblog entries
Reading of multiple weblogs daily
Compulsive checking of weblog entries for comments or the checking of website visitor statistics
Posting images of one’s local domestic fauna and/or offspring
Posting lists of any kind
When asked for details on the concurrent study for risks associated with so-called “lolcats,” images of animals which have been augmented with captions using poor grammar, Dr. Percival Jones-Quinderpants replied: “The final results of that study are not yet available, but preliminary results show that subjects may be at higher risk for certain types adult-onset language disorder, such as Lolcat’s Aphasia and hyperacronymia.”Related studies also found that subjects who spent late-night hours engaging in various online activities (such as social networking sites) were more 5 times more likely than the control group to have decreased attention spans and reduced ability to focus, leading to an inability to complete a coherent
I’m afraid I may have upset the apple cart with yesterday’s scandalously wasteful overuse of idioms. (I mean, I packed in the idioms like sardines, all higgledy-piggledy as if they grew on trees.) Because as some of you know, this country is suffering from the ravages of an idiom crisis:
WASHINGTON—A crippling idiom shortage that has left millions of Americans struggling to express themselves spread like tugboat hens throughout the U.S. mainland Tuesday in an unparalleled lingual crisis that now has the entire country six winks short of an icicle.
To do my part to conserve, I’ll resolve to work on recycling old careworn and threadbare clichés, and coining my own beet-juggling idioms. For more details, please tumble your aardvark over to the full story at The Onion.
The Pi Pie Extraordinaire, aged 3 days, finally left this world after a brave struggle against consumption. The brave Blackberry-Apple Pie made it into Pie-hood against the odds. Conceived in late-evening silliness, assembled in the mayhem of a chaotic kitchen with the disadvantages of a severely cracked top crust and a shortage of frozen blackberries, the Pie still reached that coveted state of golden brownness, and emerged from the 400 degree oven only slightly marred. Born in the later hours of Pi Day, the Pi Pie proudly bore the mark of Pi. Those closest to the deceased knew the Pie as being a warm and tender individual beneath the crusty exterior, with a sweetness that was only accentuated by the tartness of the Berry heritage.
The Pie is survived by the Tokens household, several dirty plates and forks, and a disposable aluminum pie pan. “It is better to have loved Pie and lost Pie than to have never eaten Pie at all,” said Alejna, sadly brushing a tear from her eye and a crumb from the corner of her mouth.
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This slice of silliness is being served to you as part of the current Monday Mission, which ordered up posts in the form of an obituary.
collecting tokens 