Category: lists

berry me deep

jamberry.jpgOur blueberry-picking excursion of the weekend has me thinking about berries. Mmmmmm, berries.

I love berries. And so do lots of other people. Berries show up in muffins, pies and other baked goods. Also in lots of books and folktales, and few songs. Plus a few other places you wouldn’t expect to find berries. Which is how berries ended up in my list of themed things.

  • Jamberry, by Bruce Degen
    A book of a bear, a boy, and many, many berries. Blueberries, strawberries, raspberries and blackberries. And silly rhymes.

    Quickberry, quackberry
    Pick me a blackberrry

  • Blueberries for Sal, by Robert McCloskey
    A picturebook of berry-picking and bears, and mistaken identity.
  • Blueberry. The name of my stuffed bear I got from my mother for my fourth birthday. I still have him.
  • Violet, the gum-chewer of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (the book by Roald Dahl, and the movies based on it) turns into a giant blueberry.

    • blueberry_crop.jpg

  • Firefly & Buffy. Maybe Joss Whedon has a thing for strawberries. In Firefly, strawberries are a luxury item and valued commodity. A box of strawberries is what Book uses to convince Kaylee to take him on as a passenger in the pilot episode. In the Buffy Season 6 episode “Wrecked,” the creepy Rack tells Willow “you taste like strawberries.” (I also feel like there was a scene in the bronze at some point where some random dancing person gets briefly turned into a giant strawberry. Am I imagining this?)

    • strawberrywatercolor.jpg

  • Strawberry Shortcake. The doll. The cartoons. The empire. I still remember the commercials for the doll from when I was little. I can still hear the song, with it’s mockable swellness:

    Strawberry Shortcake
    My she’s looking swell!
    Cute little doll
    With a strawberry smell.

  • The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry and the Big Hungry Bear, by Don Wood Another picture book. About a mouse. And a strawberry. Also some mention of a bear.
  • The Grey Lady and the Strawberry Snatcher, by Molly Bang. I don’t actually know this berry-oriented book, though it won a Caldecott Honor medal. I liked the author’s story of struggling to get it published.
  • The Strawberry Legend. A Cherokee Legend where a woman forgets her anger and remembers her love as she eats some berries. (There’s at least one book version, too.)
  • The Blackberry Bush, a folktale in the book Stories to Tell to Children by Sara Cone Bryant.
  • Blackberry . One of the rabbits from Watership Down, by Douglas Adams.
  • BlackBerry. An electronic device. John had one for a couple of years. He would sometimes throw it when he got email because it would irritate him so much with its onslaught of interruptions.
  • Blowing a raspberry. Okay, it has nothing to do with berries. It’s when you make a sort of continous spitting noise by sticking your tongue between your lips and blowing, or by blowing through loosely closed lips. I have no idea why it’s called a raspberry.
  • Knott’s Berry Farm. Not actually a farm, and not so much berry-ish. It’s a large amusement park. But the founder did sell berries.
  • Frankenberry. A cereal. Berry-flavored. Also a cartoon character from the cereal box and commercials. Has a bit of a cult following. (There also seem to be some other meanings to Frankenberry, as seen on Urban Dictionary, but they seem pretty lame to me.)
  • Finally, here are a few berry songs that I picked for you:
    • Raspberry Beret, Prince (Okay, not really about raspberries)
    • Blueberry Hill, Louis Armstrong (Not really about blueberries)
    • Strawberry Fields Forever, the Beatles (…nothing is real…)

      • blueberries_2.pngraspberry_sm.pngblackberries_orig.pngstrawberries.png

    • breaking the spell of procrastination

    I’ve lateley spent some time thinking about procrastination. And not just about procrastination, but about procrastination. The word, that is. Perhaps because I’ve been spending a lot of time procrastinating. Inspired by Sage‘s Word Wise Wednesday tradition, I thought I’d share a bit that I’ve learned about the etymology of procrastination. Remarkably, the meaning of the word has not drifted far, at least according to the Online Etymology Dictionary:

    procrastination
    1548, from L. procrastinationem “a putting off,” noun of action from procrastinare “put off till tomorrow,” from pro- “forward” + crastinus “belonging to tomorrow,” from cras “tomorrow,” of unknown origin. Procrastinate is recorded from 1588.

    It’s terribly unmysterious.

    I was quite interested to note, however, the description of the word as a “noun of action.” In my experience, it often seems to be more of a noun of inaction. And what’s more, observe that one can spell the word inaction from a selection of the letters of the word procrastination. Coincidence? I think not.

    Because let’s face it, without inaction, procrastination just wouldn’t be the same.¹

    You may also be interested to learn that, in addition to inaction, the following words (and many, many more) can be made by using letters of procrastination:

    pasta, carrot, onion, poi, toast, pots, coin, top
    trap, scrap, ration, nation, station, Patton, stint, coot
    tint, print, caption, croon, tiara, stair, star, icon, coop
    scoop, poo, poots, crap, strip, carrion

    and, you may be happy to learn

    stop

    And do you want to know what got me a-ponderin’ about procrastination, and the words one can spell from its letters? I realized that one can spell…pants.

    Pants!

    And of course, realizing that made me want to come up with a full-blown anagram for procrastination with pants. It’s been tricky, but here are my candidates.

    Croatian roi pants²

    coir pants ration³

    I think my best attempt is this one:

    Rio pants action: R

    ————————-
    ¹ Actually, without inaction, procrastination would end up something like prorast. And where would that get us?

    ² Using the a French word roi, meaning “king.” Or alternately “Croation iro pants,” using a Japanse word, iro, meaning “color.”

    ³ Where coir is a fiber that might be a bit rough for pants.

    public display of procrastination

    Sometimes I feel like that should be the title of my blog. Public Display of Procrastination. Actually, many blogs could fit that bill. Perhaps it could be a blog genre: the PDP.

    How did it get to be past 11:00 again? This is the eternal question. At least the nightly question. I’ve been trying to make sleep a priority lately, as sleep can lead to general well-being. And lack of sufficient sleep (which is what I’ve largely been dealing with, or not dealing with, depending on your parse) can lead to the following: memory loss, crankiness, sloth, chocolate cravings, crankiness, low tolerance for the shortcomings of others (“crankiness”), low tolerance for the shortcomings of self (“crankiness”), chocolate consumption, ice cream cravings, chocolate ice cream consumption (which is odd, because I never even used to like chocolate ice cream), reduced productivity, decreased patience (“crankiness”), confusion, speech errors (“each sparers”), muddle-headedness, shorter tempers (“crankiness”), increased stress, distraction, nap envy and memory loss. Also, there is some chance of crankiness.

    I was all gung-ho to get some work done tonight, after Phoebe got to bed. And while I’ve been busy since then, actual work has not happened. Here is what has happened. (And I have less than 8 minutes to write it before midnight, at which point my laptop will turn into a pumpkin. And lord knows I’ve got enough vegetables to deal with.)

    • I read a few blogs
    • I read some news
    • I pimped out a minivan with flames
    • I ate some ice cream
    • I wrote and sent a vegetable-related email
    • I wrote a list of bird songs
    • I ate some more ice cream
    • I put in some laundry
    • I wrote this

    Time’s up.

    tweet, tweet, tweet (and a few other bird songs)

    Yesterday’s bird-themed list was remarkably lacking in musical references. Which is a shame, because many birds sing so very musically. And apparently inspire so much singing. So, I offer up a supplemental bird song list.

    Bird Songs

    Three Little Birds, Bob Marley
    The Littlest Birds, The Be Good Tanyas
    Wonder of Birds, Innocence Mission
    King of Birds, REM
    Bird on the Wire, Leonard Cohen
    Blackbird on the Wire, The Beautiful South
    Blackbird the Beatles
    Blue Jay Way, the Beatles
    Cuckoo, Kristin Hersh
    Kookaburra, Marion Sinclair
    Rockin’ Robin, Bobby Day
    Mockingbird, by Eminem
    Parrot Polynesia, Shonen Knife
    The Peacock Song, Bif Naked
    Fly Like an Eagle, the Steve Miller Band
    Free Bird, Lynard Skynard
    And Your Bird Can Sing, the Beatles
    Canary in a Coalmine, The Police
    Poisoning Pigeons in the Park, Tom Lehrer

    And in case you were expecting some more creative song titles, I refer you to this list someone put together a couple of years back, which offers up A whiter shade of quail and Wren drops keep falling on my hen.

    the eleven-o’clock salad

    lettuce.jpgIt’s just past 11:00 p.m., and I just ate a big salad. I realized that before you know it, it will be time for my next CSA pick-up, and I still had 3 heads of lettuce, plus lots of other greens, onions, and kohlrabi. You will be proud of me to know that I opted to make and eat salad rather than going right to the freezer to get out the ice cream which we bought earlier this evening. (Note that I have not yet forgotten the ice cream. Its time will come.)

    The salad was good. I do like salad. Especially when it’s been tossed with the dressing in a bowl, so that the dressing is all evenly spread around. An equal distribution of wealth, as it were. (I like to eat a good helping of socialist metaphors.) And by the way: boy-oh-boy has our salad spinner been seeing a lot of action lately.

    I keep feeling like I want to record more of my life, of our life. I’m not sure why, exactly. Part of it is that I like my life, and imagine that some day I’ll look back fondly on this time, and feel a bit sad if I don’t remember what my day to day life was like. My future self will think things like: “Back when I was a new mother, did I eat enough vegetables?” or “Did I get enough sleep when I was a grad student?” or “I wonder what I thought about pants when I was in my 30s?”

    I keep meaning to update the Phoebe Blog more frequently. Phoebe keeps growing and changing, and well, doing things. Again, things that I feel like I’ll want to remember. My memory fades so quickly, and the days blur together. Hell, the weeks and months blur together. I just managed to post a bit to the Phoebe Blog last night, but there are gaps. It’s strange this feeling that I need to record all of it. I don’t think my parents recorded too much about me, or even my sister (the first-born). I wonder if it’s partially my packrat tendencies making me want to store things away. (The packrat in me badgers me to squirrel things away? Can I fit a rabbit into this somewhere?)

    The trip plans are coming along moderately well. I have squared away an apartment in Paris. I have filled out the form from the conference organizers to get a hotel room in Saarbrucken, who seem to have reserved every last hotel room in the town so that you must go through them. (Which means you may not actually get a choice about which hotel you’re going to stay in. Which may lead to some difficulties, as we have special public transportation and crib needs due to travelling with a toddler. I sent an email. I think I’ll be known as a troublemaker to the conference organizers. Because I also questioned their request to have a letter faxed from “the head of my institution” stating that I am a student in order to get the student discount for registration, in addition to sending a scan of the student ID. They claim that such a letter should only take “2 minutes” and is standard procedure. Which is a load of hooey.) I also still have to look more into trains.

    And I keep thinking it would be nice to watch a movie. It’s possibly been weeks since I watched a movie. Oh yeah, and I’m supposed to be doing work. Oh wait. Now I’m supposed to be sleeping. Crap.

    And you know how I felt compelled to write more 7 lists? Well, as I anticipated, I didn’t have much time. Phoebe’s nap ended, followed by needing to get her a meal, and get her dressed, and who knows what all, resulting in a time lapse of two hours. Then we went out a shopping excursion to get a birthday present for John’s aunt. (We’re going to her 80th birthday party tomorrow. Possibly not the 80th such party that she’s had.) We didn’t get home till 8 or so, then it was time for Phoebe to get a bath and get to bed. It was 9 by the time she was in bed. (Way past her bedtime, but she seems to have her parents’ night owl proclivities.) So, no time to work on lists. But since I don’t want to throw them away, or toss them into the compost pile with the beet greens, I’ll lay them on you here.

    So, here are some sevens (and sevenths) I thought about incorporating into some lists.

    More than seven more seven things.

    books:

  • The House of the Seven Gables, by Nathaniel Hawthorne. (I haven’t read it, but it seems to have a Phoebe.)
  • The Seven Dials Mystery, by Agatha Christie
  • The 7 habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen Covey (Not that I’ve read it. I have a low tolerance for self-help books)
  • Seven Spiders Spinning, by Gregory Maguire (one of his kids’ books)
  • Seven Daughters and Seven Sons, a young adult novel by Barbara Cohen, based on an Iraqi folktale.

    • music:

  • Seven and the Ragged Tiger, an album by Duran Duran
  • “lucky number 7 passed me by,” a line from Cracker’s “Lonesome Johnny Blues”
  • “Love is the seventh wave,” a song by Sting
  • A line from “Monkey Gone to Heaven” by the Pixies:

    • If man is five (if man is five…)
    and the devil is six (and the devil is six…)
    then god is heaven (then god is heaven…)
    this monkey’s gone to heaven

  • There are also seven days in a week, seven deadly sins and seven wonders of the world. You can be in seventh heaven, you can get seven years of bad luck if you break a mirror, or you can sail the seven seas. Agent 007 is Bond. (James Bond.)

    • If you’ve got more 7s for me, toss them my way. Toss them like a salad.

    seven seven movies for 7/7/7

    Today is July 7th, 2007. As in 07/07/07. A freakin’ cool date. Inspired by sevens, I had to put together a list. (My urge is to put together several lists. Seven, even. But I doubt I’ll have time.) This list is of movies. Seven movies. Seven seven movies.

    seven movies featuring seven

    1. The Seventh Seal/Det Sjunde inseglet (1957)
      Ingmar Bergman’s classic drama of Death.
    2. The Seventh Sign (1988)
      These would be signs that the end of the world (as we know it) is near.
    3. The Seven Samurai/Shichinin no samurai (1954)
      Akira Kurosawa’s classic film with samurai (7 of ’em) who aid a village besieged by bandits.
    4. The Magnificent Seven (1960)
      The Seven Samurai reinterpreted as a western.
    5. The Seven Year Itch (1955)
      The image of Marilyn Monroe standing over a subway grate with her dress blowing up may be more famous than the movie it came from…
    6. Se7en (1995)
      A thriller about a serial killer who takes his inspiration from the seven deadly sins. (I don’t believe itching is one of them.)
    7. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
      Doc, Dopey, Sneezy, Sleepy, Sleezy, Happy, Bashful and Grumpy. Oh, wait. That’s eight.

    ants in my pants

    Yesterday was the 4th of July. A rather straightforward statement to make on the 5th of July. But, as you likely know, the Fourth of July is also the way most people refer to the US holiday officially called ant_bunch_sm.jpgIndependence Day. This holiday is often celebrated with parades, fireworks, barbecues and picnics. In fact, yesterday we managed to pull of a picnic of sorts at a nearby park. And in the great tradition of outdoor eating, we did get visited by some ants.

    In honor of picnics, I bring you some ants.ant_sm11.jpg

      them02.jpg

    1. A Bug’s Life (1998)
      The Pixar animated movie about bugs. A sort of retelling of the Seven Samurai, but with bugs. (Also a bit like ¡Three Amigos!, but with bugs.) ant_sm2.jpgThe main character is an ant, voiced by Dave Foley, who seeks help to save his ant colony from bullying grasshoppers.
    2. Antz (1998)
      1998 was clearly the year for animated ant features. This Dreamworks one was more adult-oriented and had the voice of Woody Allen.
    3. Them (1954)
      A movie featuring giant mutant ants.
    4. The Ants Go Marching, a children’s counting song, to the tune of “When Johnny Comes Marching Home”

      The ants go marching one by one, hurrah, hurrah
      The ants go marching one by one, hurrah, hurrah
      The ants go marching one by one,
      The little one stops to suck his thumb
      And they all go marching down to the ground
      To get out of the rain
      boom, boom, boom

      5. ant_sm3.jpg

    5. The ant from “High Hopes,” sung by Frank Sinatra:

      Just what makes that little old ant
      Think he’ll move that rubber tree plant
      Anyone knows an ant can’t
      Move a rubber tree plant

      But he’s got high hopes, he’s got high hopes
      He’s got high apple pie in the sky hopes

      6. ants_in_line_sm1.jpg

    6. Dance Ants
      A video that someone put together to Fall Out Boy’s “Dance, Dance”. It’s pretty random, but I found it funny. Especially the textual re-interpretation of the original lyrics, like “these are the gloves you’d love to eat”. And yes, the video does have some ants. That dance.
    7. ants in your pants
      An expression. Someone with ants in their pants is so wound up they can’t keep still. A popular reference in songs, like in “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” by Rodgers and Hart, a song sung by many, including the amazing Ella Fitzgerald:

      Romance, finis. your chance, finis.
      Those ants that invaded my pants, finis.
      Bewitched, bothered and bewildered – no more

      Or “I got ants in my pants,” by James Brown (hear it here)

      ‘Cause I can’t dance,
      I can’t dance,
      I got ants in my pants,
      Got ants in my pants,
      Now, I can’t dance, ant_2sm1.jpg
      I can’t dance,
      Got ants in my pants!
      Got ants in my pants!

    8. Want to see some real ants? You can see lots of them in time-lapsed videos through the wonder of YouTube. Like ants eating ant poison, or 7 minutes of ants eating a dropped piece of food, or a variety of ants in action in ant farms.

    ants_in_line_sm2.jpg

    if the shoe fits

    Shoes and boots and slippers. (Oh my.) This week’s Themed Things Thursday is all about footwear. Try these on for size.

    1. The old woman who lived in a shoe
      A nursery rhyme. I hadn’t remembered the abusive turn:

      There was an old woman who lived in a shoe,
She had so many children, she didn’t know what to do;
She gave them some broth without any bread,
She whipped them all soundly, and put them to bed.

      (Someone’s written up a less harsh version, too.)

    2. to walk in someone else’s shoes
      walk in my shoes
      walk a mile in another’s shoes
      walk a mile in another man’s mocassins
      walk a kilometer in another kid’s bunny slippers       (or maybe not)

      bunnyslippers.jpg
These expressions suggest that we should not pass judgment on another’s actions without having lived through the same experiences. Among other things, the Depeche Mode song “Walking in my shoes” is inspired by this. (video)

    3. Blue Suede Shoes
      Don’t step on them. Walked in and passed down by many different singers, including Elvis.
    4. The Quick-Quick Slow Death
      This episode of the Avengers features a cobbler who makes shoes for a dance school, and who really wants to make a pair of shoes for Emma Peel’s perfect feet.
    5. The Twelve Dancing Princesses
      A fairytale about 12 princesses who would sneak out of their locked sleeping chamber at night, and wear down their slippers every night dancing.
    6. The Red Shoes
      A fairy tale by Hans Christian Anderson. A cautionary tale with some red shoes that won’t let the wearer stop dancing.
    7. The Man with One Red Shoe (1985)
      A movie about a man (Tom Hanks) whose single red shoe drew the attention of the FBI.
    8. Cinderella
      Many versions of this tale feature a special slipper which was used to identify the woman (who left in a hurry with only one shoe) after charming the prince at his ball. Often a glass slipper, potentially based on the version by Perrault, it was sometimes also described as a golden slipper. (It is not generally described as a bunny slipper.)

      9. rubyslippers1.jpg

    9. The Wizard of Oz
The movie features Dorothy’s iconic ruby slippers, taken from the feet of the witch squished by Dorothy’s house. The original book by L. Frank Baum featured silver slippers. Wicked, Gregory Maguire’s take on the tale, compromised between the two by having the slippers be of an indeterminate shiny color.
    10. These boots are made for walkin’, by Nancy Sinatra.

      These boots are made for walking,
      and that’s just what they’ll do
      One of these days these boots
      are gonna walk all over you

    11. Seven-league boots
      Magic boots that are featured in various fairy and folk tales that allow the wearer to travel great distances with each step. (Those boots were made for some serious walking.)
    12. Kinky Boots
      A movie about a shoe factory owner who tries to find a new niche by making shoes and boots for transvestites. His inspiration, a singer named Lola, is played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, known to me better as the relentless agent from Serenity.
    13. They Died With Their Boots On (1941)
      A movie about Custer’s last stand. Haven’t seen it. Probably doesn’t actually feature a lot about boots.
    14. Imelda Marcos
      The former first lady of the Philippines was well known for her extravagantly large collection of shoes. Over a thousand pairs. Imelda’s shoes can apparently now be seen in a shoe museum.
    15. In these shoes, by Kirsty MacColl intheseshoes.jpg

      I once met a man
      with a sense of adventure
      He was dressed to thrill
      wherever he went
      He said “Let’s make love
      on a mountain top
      Under the stars
      on a big hard rock”
      I said “In these shoes?
      I don’t think so”
      I said “Honey,
      let’s do it here.”

    a shocking excess of syllables

    I stumbled across a couple of meme-like posts last night that sparked both my interest and my concern. First this one, which referenced this one. The task described on the blog icedmocha was to:

    Answer all thirty-five questions using only one word. It’s harder than it looks. Give it a try on your blog.

    An interesting challenge. A provocative proposition. The particpants I read (the first two I saw, plus this third one) had come up with some fantastic single-word responses.

    The problem? The posts, and apparently the meme, are entitled “Monosyllabic.” In spite of this, I witnessed a large number of polysyllabic words. Shocking, shocking. As someone who spends portions of her professional time finding syllables, hunting them down and tracking them in the wild, I felt it my duty to round up some bonafide monosyllables of my own.

    1. Where is your cell phone?     bag

    2. Relationship?     yes

    3. Your hair?     brown

    4. Work?     sounds

    5. Your sister?     cool

    6. Your favorite thing?     sleep

    7. Your dream last night?     strange

    8. Your favorite drink?     ale

    9. Your dream car?     Peel’s

    10. The room you’re in?     den

    11. Your shoes?     docs

    12. Your fears?     war

    13. What do you want to be in 10 years?     prof

    14. Who did you hang out with this weekend?     Phoebs

    15. What you’re not good at?     hate

    16. Muffin?     please!

    17. One of your wish list items?     trip

    18. Where you grew up?     earth

    19. The last thing you did?     work

    20. What are you wearing?     pants

    21. What aren’t you wearing?     socks

    22. Your pet?     gone

    23. Your computer?     mac

    24. Your life?     whole

    25. Your mood?     calm

    26. Missing?     Red

    27. What are you thinking about right now?     words

    28. Your car?     gray

    29. Your kitchen?     mess

    30. Your summer?     short

    31. Your favorite color?     blue

    32. When is the last time you laughed?     noon

    33. Last time you cried?     days

    34. School?     grad

    35. Love?     John

    There we go. 35 monosyllables that are more-or-less true responses. Another challenging task would be to come up with monomorphemic responses to those same questions. Or to come up with 35 questions, the answers to which could all be pants.

    monosyllabic1.jpg
    A view of a production of the polysyllabic monosyllabic, displayed in Praat, with approximate syllabification into 5 syllables marked. (No commitment to the affiliation of potentially ambisyllabic consonants intended.)

    pants1.jpg
    A view of a production of the monosyllabic pants, displayed in Praat, with syllabification into 1 syllable marked.