Category: idioms

head in the clouds

For no particular reason, this Themed Things Thursday list is about clouds.¹

A Cloud List

  1. Little Cloud. A picture book by Eric Carle about a cloud who likes to change shapes.
  2. Sector 7, by David Wiesner. A Caldecott Honor-winning picture book with no words about a boy’s remarkable encounter with some clouds.

  3. Winnie-the-Pooh. In the first chapter of A. A. Milne’s classic book, Winnie-the-Pooh attempts to pass himself off as a small dark cloud in order to sneak some honey away from a beehive in a tree. Eeyore, for that matter, is often depicted as having a cloud hanging over his head. (In this case, though, it is not Pooh.)
  4. head in the clouds. An expression meaning “having a poor grasp of reality” or “not paying attention.”
  5. on cloud nine: an expression meaning “extremely happy.” (So what if you are on cloud one? Are you only marginally happy?)
  6. every cloud has a silver lining: a saying suggesting that there is always something good to accompany the bad. (And an irritating thing to hear if you are a pessimist.)
  7. head under a cloud: means “in a bad mood,” typically either gloomy (eg. Eeyore, above) or cranky (eg. me, sleep deprived).
  8. (storm) clouds on the horizon: an expression meaning that trouble of some sort is foreseen.
  9. The Simpsons opening sequence: The parting cumulus clouds from the opening to this cartoon are quite memorable.
  10. “Little Fluffy Clouds,” a song by the Orb. (video on YouTube)
  11. “Cloudy,” a song by Simon & Garfunkel. (listen on YouTube )
  12. “Cloudbusting,” a song Kate Bush. The video is a short narrative film featuring a machine that manipulates clouds. (YouTube)
  13. Cloud Jumper: a free flash game you can play online that primarily involves jumping from cloud to cloud.
  14. Cloudscapes stamps: a 2004 series of stamps from the US postal service. You can learn more more about the cloud types depicted in the stamps from this National Weather Service page.

  15. If you find yourself hankering for more clouds and cloud trivia, you could consider joining the The Cloud Appreciation Society. Those people love their clouds.

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¹Sometimes, I just need to write about a light and fluffy topic. What could be lighter and fluffier than clouds?²

² Actually, I’m really quite partial to clouds. I recently had a little conversation with YTSL on this topic when she posted about her own affinity for clouds, along with a cool photo of a dragon-shaped cloud. And I found myself thinking: “I should do a cloud list.” So I done went and did it.

a butterfly collection

A while back, I gave you a list of moths for a Themed Things Thursday list, and I said I’d get around to the other major set of lepidoptera shortly. So here is a collection of butterfly things, which I have carefully skewered with pins and lined up for your enjoyment.

    A Butterfly Collection

  1. butterfly collecting: a hobby that involves collecting specimens of butterflies, and typically pinning them to a board and displaying them under glass in rows. It was a particularly popular hobby during Victorian and Edwardian times.
  2. The Collector (1965) A movie about a butterfly collector who kidnaps a woman to add to his collection of creatures.

  3. butterfly net: a type of handheld net used for catching butterflies (often for a collection). The image of using oversized butterfly nets to catch people is sometimes used in cartoons (or the imagery is evoked in humor writing). Particularly when depicting the “men in white coats” in pursuit of an escapee from a mental institution. (cf: this, this, or this cartoon.)
  4. “The Butterfly”, a fairy tale by Hans Christian Anderson. A tale of a butterfly seeking a flower to be his bride. Unsuccessfully. In the end, he gets caught by people and pinned down, a state he likens to marriage.
  5. The Very Hungry Caterpillar, by Eric Carle. A picture book about a caterpillar who is hungry and eats a lot before becoming “a beautiful butterfly.” (Sorry, did I give away the ending?)
  6. Heimlich : a caterpillar (who is generally very hungry) from Pixar’s animated feature, A Bug’s Life. At the end of the movie, he emerges from his cocoon as a butterfly with wings disproportionatley small for his body, saying: “Finally, I’m a beautiful butterfly”?) (You can watch the scene on YouTube.)
  7. butterfly kiss: a nickname for the act of brushing one’s eyelashes against another person’s skin as an act of affection.
  8. In the Time of the Butterflies. A novel by Julia Alvarez about 4 sisters who participated in a resistance against a brutal dictator in the Dominican Republic. Their codename was “las Mariposas,” or “the Butterflies.” Also a 2001 TV movie based on the novel.
  9. butterflies in the stomach: an expression referring to temporary minor gastrointestinal distress triggered by stress, such as that due to an anticipated meeting or public performance. (Doesn’t that sound poetic?)

  10. The Monarch. A bumbling arch-villain from “The Venture Bros.”, a cartoon shown on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. Wears a butterfly costume, as do his henchman.
  11. Madame Butterfly: an opera written by Giacomo Puccini about a Geisha in Nagasaki called “Butterfly.”
  12. “Butterfly”, a song by Weezer about catching a butterfly in a mason jar. It also makes reference to the opera Madame Butterfly, and is on the album Pinkerton, which is the name of the male protagonist from the opera.
  13. the butterfly effect:
    An idea from Chaos theory whereby minor events can trigger a chain reaction of other events, which can sometimes lead to big events. Such as the fluttering of a butterfly’s wings leading to a tornado changing its path. (Also a 2004 movie.)
  14. butterfly ballot: a voting ballot notorious from the 2000 US presidential election, as its confusing layout may have led some would-be Gore voters in Florida to mistakenly vote for Pat Buchanan.
  15. The Sinister Butterfly: “Nefariously fluttering from leaf to leaf.” John’s blog. Which he doesn’t update very often these days. But he has posted some great photos there before, as well as some other stuff that’s worth reading.

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Butterfly collection image source: Worcester City Museums, UK. The Monarch image was found herehttp://cakerockstheparty.wordpress.com/2007/09/24/ncaa-heisman-trophy-avatars/.

bucket list

Late last year, a movie came out called Bucket List, which then inspired a bunch of people to write their own “bucket lists”. Somehow I missed all of it. However, having seen the movie poster hanging in a video store window a few days ago, I’ve had that title running through my head. Running through my head and collecting things in a little bucket, as it were. Things about buckets as it turns out. So I present to you a ThThTh list of buckets.

A Bucket List

  1. kick the bucket: an expression meaning “keel over”, “bite the dust”, or “buy the farm”.
  2. bucket list: a list of things one hopes to accomplish before one’s death. (As in before one kicks the bucket.) The term may have originated with the screenplay from the movie (below).
  3. Bucket List (2007): a movie directed by Rob Reiner and starring Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson. About 2 men who write a bucket list and work on accomplishing the items on the list. Said to be a tear-jerker. You can watch the trailer (YouTube).
  4. “There’s a hole in my bucket”: a folksong, possibly with German origins.
  5. mercy buckets: an English distortion of the French merci beaucoup, meaning “thank you much.”
  6. a drop in the bucket: an expression meaning “an inconsequential amount in relation to a larger quantity”.
  7. sweat buckets: an expression meaning “perspire copiously”
  8. Mr. Bucket: a game/toy (by Milton Bradley) from the early 90s. The commercial, (which you can watch on YouTube, if you like) had lyrics which apparently raised a few eyebrows:

    I’m Mr. Bucket put your balls in my top.
    I’m Mr. Bucket, out of my mouth they will pop…

  9. Buckethead: a musician noteworthy for performing with a bucket on his head.
  10. bucket drummers: percussionists, typically street performers, who use upended buckets (usually plastic paint buckets) as drums. Buckets are often supplemented with pots, pans, and other improvised instruments. There’s a blog on bucket drummers. You can also find a bunch of short clips on YouTube of some very impressive bucket drummers, like these guys:


  11. lolrus: A pinniped, usually a walrus, featured in a lolcat-style image. The captions of these typically feature commentary about buckets, especially the loss of buckets and the seeking of buckets. (Or, in the language of lol, buckits or bukkets.) To explore lolruses and their buckets (and to see the original), i can has cheezburger has the tag “bucket” for your convenience.

    funny pictures

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The picture at the top of the page is Phoebe with her bucket. Well, it’s small for a bucket. Really more of a pail, by comparison. (I’m sorry. I had to say it.)

flagging enthusiasm

Tomorrow is July 4th, which is the US is known as the Fourth of July. (Oh, right, it’s also called Independence Day.) It’s a day traditionally marked by fireworks and displays of flags. Lots and lots of flags.

Flags are often used as symbols of national and political identity, but this list isn’t about those. I figure that enough flag-waving of that sort will be going on tomorrow. Instead, I’ve lined up a few other types flags to wave around for this week’s ThThTh list.

  1. capture the flag: an informal game or sport, typically played outside. Two competing teams try to steal each other’s flags.
  2. flag someone down: an expression meaning to gets someone’s attention who is moving in order to get them to stop. Generally signalled by waving, though not necessarily by waving a flag.
  3. raise a red flag: an expression describing a situation when a person perceives that some action or event should be taken as a warning. As in “When the man showed up at the interview without pants, it raised a red flag as to the applicant’s suitability as a funeral director.”
  4. white flag: a symbol of truce or surrender. Wave the white flag (or raise the white flag) is also used metaphorically for signalling surrender or defeat.
  5. Black Flag: a punk band. For a quick sample, check out a video of their song “Wasted,” which clocks in under a minute long.
  6. Black Flag: a line of bug-killing products, the most famous of which is the Roach Motel.
  7. International Marine Signal Flags: flags representing letters and numbers that can be strung together and displayed on a ship to spell out messages.

  8. semaphore: a system of long-distance communication that commonly uses flags.
  9. Okay, I admit. This whole list is just a premise to share with you one of my all-time favorite acts of flag-waving: Monty Python’s brilliant production of Wuthering Heights in semaphore.

having my cake

I got to have me some cake this week.¹ I ate it, too. And this cake-having inspired me to think about cake. So I’ll be serving up a list of cake-oriented things for this week’s ThThTh.

Bon appétit!

A Cake List

  1. Cakes are used for lots of holidays and celebratory events in many cultures. Some examples include birthday cakes, going away cakes at office parties, French bûches de Noël or German stollen at Christmas. Also…
  2. Wedding cakes. Usually elaborately decorated multi-tiered cakes meant to serve all the guests at a wedding. They can be quite tall, and easily knocked over or smashed for comedic effect in movies or sitcoms.
  3. stripper in a cake. A tradition (if it really happens outside of TV and movies) of having an exotic dancer jump out of a large cake-shaped container. (You can make your own, if you like.) (I toyed with making a list of movies/shows where you see a stripper cake, but could only remember “Under Siege,” where the stripper fell asleep in the cake. Anyone have any others?)
  4. sexy cakes. A sketch on Saturday Night Live with Patrick Stewart as a baker of cakes decorated with erotic images. That is, erotic if you have similar ideas to the baker as to what’s “sexy”. (The video seems not to be up on the SNL website, but you can read the transcript. Come on, go read it. It’s funny. Especially if you imagine Patrick Stewart’s dignified stentorian voice for the baker’s lines.)
  5. “Let them eat cake!” A phrase attributed to Marie-Antoinette, reflecting her insensitivity to the hungry masses who could not afford to buy bread. It was likely not really said by her. (And certainly not in English.) Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote of someone using a similar phrase under similar circumstances in 1767, several years before Marie-Antoinette even arrived in Versailles.

  6. the icing on the cake. An expression meaning an additional bonus, benefit, or other desirable thing. As in something good on top of something else that’s good.
  7. cupcake. A small individual serving-sized cake. Also an endearment.
  8. babycakes. Another, even cutesier, endearment. (Want to see something creepy? Check out this YouTube video of someone making a realistic sculpted baby cake. Perhaps not as deeply unsettling as bread made to look like dismembered body parts, but creepy nonentheless.)

  9. Pat-a-cake. (or Patty-cake). An English nursery rhyme. Also used for a clapping game.

    Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man.
    Bake me a cake as fast as you can.
    Pat it and roll it and mark it with “B”
    And put it in the oven for Baby and me.

  10. a piece of cake. An idiomatic expression meaning “easy.” As in “eating up all that chocolate was a piece of cake.”
  11. have your cake and eat it, too. An expression describing a desire to have things 2 different ways that are not compatible. More along the lines of “save your cake and eat it too.”
  12. takes the cake. An expression meaning “the most extreme example,” such as the winner of a contest or other comparison. As in “I thought Martin was a geek, but his brother Andy really takes the cake.”
  13. Cakewalk. A game, set to music, where the winner gets win a cake. I hadn’t realized it had origins as an actual dance:

    Cakewalk is a traditional African American form of music and dance which originated among slaves in the Southern United States. The form was originally known as the chalk line walk; it takes its name from competitions slaveholders sometimes held, in which they offered slices of hoecake as prizes for the best dancers.[1] It has since evolved from a parody of ballroom dancing to a “fun fair” like dance where participants dance in a circle in the hopes of winning a free cake.

  14. Cake. A band. My favorite song of theirs is probably their cover of Gloria Gaynor’s “I will survive.”

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¹ Actually, what I technically had was a celebratory fresh fruit tart, with a preamble of a couple of donuts holding some candles. But these were symbolically cake:

list gone wild

What with all the travelling I’ve been doing, it’s been a while since I managed to put together a ThThTh list. But this week, inspired by our recent visit to the zoo, I’ve managed to round up some zoo-themed items. You are welcome to feed the list, but please keep your fingers outside the cages.

A Zoo List

  1. the zoo in metaphors: The term zoo is used idiomatically to evoke chaos, wildness and other general craziness in places or situations. Cf: “This place looks like a zoo!” or “It was like feeding time at the zoo.” (Of course, I have to say that the zoos I’ve been to are not so much like the crazy situations that are likened to them: they tend to be well-organized and orderly. At least the animals. The people buying snacks and such can get out of hand.)
  2. animal crackers: Cookies shaped like animals. Though often packaged/marketed in ways evocative of circuses, the animals featured are much more zoo-like than circus-like overall. (See, for example, a picture of animal cookies from the Barnum’s Animal Crackers. Have you seen a giraffe or a rhinoceros at the circus? I rest my case.)
  3. zoo keeper: a computer/arcade game where you need to line up animals in rows. You can play a flash version online.

  4. A Zed & Two Noughts (1985) A movie directed by Peter Greenaway. I’m not quite sure what to say about it. A zoo (or the animals from the zoo)(or some rotting carcasses of animals from the zoo) is involved. And also referenced in the title.
  5. 12 Monkeys (1995) One of my favorite movies, directed by Terry Gilliam. Zoo animals appear at various times during the film, and a zoo is featured in a significant scene at the end.

  6. Madagascar (2005) A Dreamworks animated feature about animals escaping from a zoo.
  7. Creature Comforts (1989) Nick Park’s brilliant claymation short with interviews of zoo animals. The soundtrack was taken from interviews with real people, describing their own living situations, and attributed to animated zoo animals. (I also discovered that there was later a related TV series that was supposed to be pretty good.

  8. Zoos are a pretty popular setting for children’s stories, such as If I Ran the Zoo, Dr. Seuss, Good Night, Gorilla, by Peggy Rathman and Animal Strike at the Zoo. It’s True!, by Karma Wilson and illustrated by Margaret Spengler, and a gazillion others.
  9. “At the Zoo” poem by A. A. Milne. Here’s a bit:

    There are lions and roaring tigers,
    and enormous camels and things,
    There are biffalo-buffalo-bisons,
    and a great big bear with wings.
    There’s a sort of a tiny potamus,
    and a tiny nosserus too –
    But I gave buns to the elephant
    when I went down to the Zoo!

  10. “At the Zoo,” a song by Simon and Garfunkel

    Zebras are reactionaries,
    Antelopes are missionaries,
    Pigeons plot in secrecy,
    And hamsters turn on frequently.
    What a gas! you gotta come and see
    At the zoo.

  11. “Christmas at the Zoo,” by the Flaming Lips. A song about letting animals out at the zoo on Christmas Eve. The animals show no interest in escaping.¹

    12. ¹I was rather disturbingly reminded of this song this past Christmas when hearing the news of a tiger escaped from a San Francisco zoo on Christmas day, killing one zoo visitor and injuring 2 others.

    Images from wpclipart.

feeling the burn

Okay, I admit it. I’m feeling a tad burned out. What with the trip for the conference, the conference itself, the prep for the conference, the hard drive failure, and the various illnesses of the past couple of weeks, I feel like I’m due for a break. But sadly, I’ve got to get cranking on the next poster for the conference in Brazil, which is now (most startlingly) less than 3 weeks away.

And not that you wanted to know this, but I am now plagued by heartburn. I had this problem when I was pregnant before, especially as I got huge. I thought things might be better this time around, but either the timing was coincidental, or the stomach bug I got pushed me out of the comfort zone, and into the fire.

Hello zantac, my old friend,
I’ve come to look to you again,
Because the acids softly creeping,
Left my stomach while I was sleeping,
And the fire that was planted in my throat
Really blows
Giving the burn of reflux.

Anyhow, I owe a ThThTh list, but I’m not feeling sufficiently fired up to do a thorough job. But here are a burning bits to toast your marshmallows. (Please feel free to fuel the fire, too.)

  • Phoenix, a mythical bird who burns and is reborn out of the ashes
  • Quest for Fire, a 1981 movie base on a 1911 French novel. About prehistoric people. Who, um, want fire or something like that.
  • Out of the the frying pan and into the fire, an idiom meaning “leave a bad situation for a worse one.”
  • Firestarter. A 1984 movie starrying Drew Barrymore as a pyrokinetic kid. Based on a Stephen King novel.
  • The Human Torch, a comic book character. Who gets all fiery.
  • Spontaneous Human Combustion. I don’t really have anything to say here. Poof.
  • Flame war or flaming: “the hostile and insulting interaction between Internet users”
  • And here, how about a whole bunch of songs I like with a fiery theme.
      Burning down the house, Talking Heads
      Beds are Burning, Midnight Oil
      Fire on Babylon, Sinead O’Connor
      London’s Burning, The Clash
      Firestarter, Prodigy
      Light My Fire, The Doors
      Ring of Fire, Johnny Cash (also Social Distortion)
      Who by Fire, Leonard Cohen
      Dig for Fire, Pixies
      It’s a Fire, Portishead
      Into the Fire, Sarah MacLachlan
      Keeper of the Flame, Nina Simone

the well of idioms may be about to run dry

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:

Idiom Shortage Leaves Nation All Sewed Up In Horse Pies

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.