Category: lists

setting the table

Today is Thanksgiving Day in the United States, a holiday marked by primarily by sitting around a table and eating. In honor of the day, I’ll set the table for you.

This ThThTh list features utensils. Actually, just forks and spoons. I’ll keep the knives stored safely away for another day. Likewise, I will avoid the hazards of the spork.
spoon_psf

A collection of spoons (and forks)

  1. Spoon!: The battlecry of The Tick.
  2. spooning: a position for cuddling.
  3. born with a silver spoon in one’s mouth: an expression said of one who is born into a wealthy family.
  4. Silver Spoons (1982-1987) A TV show about a rich kid and his father. (Did anyone else remember that the show had regular appearances from Jason Bateman as a kid?)
  5. Can you hang a spoon from the tip of your nose?
  6. gag me with a spoon: an 80s Valspeak exclamation used to express contempt and/or disgust.
  7. A Spoonful of Sugar: a song from the movie Mary Poppins.
  8. Hey Diddle Diddle: A nursery rhyme in which a dish rus away with a spoon:

    Hey diddle diddle,
    The cat and the fiddle,
    The cow jumped over the moon.
    The little dog laughed to see such fun,
    And the dish ran away with the spoon.

  9. And the Dish Ran Away With the Spoon: a picture book by Janet Stevens.

    10. 696px-heydiddle and_the_dish

  10. “There is no spoon”: a line from The Matrix, and a reference to this spoon-bending scene:
  11. fork in the road: a type of intersection.
  12. The Dirty Fork Sketch, from Monty Python:
  • The Blue Rajah: a character played by Hank Azaria in Mystery Men (1999). A superhero who throws forks (and fork-filled dialog):

    • An effete British superhero, to be precise. I am pilfering your tableware because I hurl it. I hurl it with a deadly accuracy. The Blue Raja is my name. And yes, I know I don’t wear much blue and I speak in a British accent, but if you know your history it really does make perfect sense…The point is: Your boy’s a Limey fork-flinger, Mother.
    • I say, what the fork! Let’s do it!
    • May the forks be with us.

    • So there’s my list. Stick a fork in me, I’m done.
    800px-fork6233

    If you’re looking for more tasty bits to gobble up once your t(of)urkey is gone, go stick your fork into the 107th Carnival of Satire over at The Skwib. A spoonful of satire makes the holiday angst go down! (Especially when taken with a Wild Turkey chaser.)

    yes we can (can)

    cylinder-19_42791_smWith winter around the corner (or actually in the building for some of us), many people are looking to preserve their foods for the colder months. So some people can.

    Can you can? Actually, I can’t can. Well, maybe I could can. But I don’t can. Perhaps I should can. Maybe someday I will can.

    But for now, what I can do is make a list. Of cans. For ThThTh¹.

    A big can of cans

    1. can: an English modal verb. Like other modals (eg could, should, would, will, may, etc.), it doesn’t take the third person singular -s suffix. It is typically spoken in a very reduced form, with a syllabic alveolar nasal for the rhyme [kʰn̩] unless it bears sentence-level stress (eg. a pitch accent), in which case it has the full low front vowel [æ] like the other cans (i.e. [kʰæn]²).
    2. can: a verb meaning “preserve food in jars or cans”
    3. can: a noun meaning “an enclosed metal container” (also a tin, though cans not need be made of tin. Actually, I guess some cans are not even entirely metal.)
    4. the can: a slang term for a bathroom, or for the toilet itself.
    5. can: a verb meaning “discontinue.” As in “the show was canned.”
    6. can it!: an expression akin to “shut up.”
    7. Pringles: potato chips that come in a can
    8. cheeseburger in a can: exactly what it sounds like. Yick.
    9. Prince Albert in a can: A kind of tobacco sold in a tin made famous for the use of its name in prank phone calls:

      prank caller: Do you have Prince Albert in a can?
      shopkeeper: Yes we do.
      prank caller: Well, why don’t you let him out?

    10. Campbell’s Soup Cans: Andy Warhol’s famous work of art, which consists of 32 canvasses each with a silk-screened picture of a can of Campbell’s soup.
    11. canned laughter: recorded laugh tracks used with TV shows.
    12. kick the can: a game usually played outdoors. (I’ve never played it, actually. It appears to be akin to both tag and hide and seek)
    13. can of worms: an expression meaning “complications” or “difficulties.” As in “we don’t want to open up that can of worms.” Which strikes me as kinda funny, as I imagine that a can of worms, if not exactly pleasant, would be rather straightforward.
    14. There is a tradition to string empty cans from the back of a car (usually emblazened with “just married”) which a bride and groom will use to leave their wedding
    15. The Can can: a French chorus line dance. (Also written cancan or can-can.)

      16. can_can_dancers

    16. “Can You Can Can?”: lyrics by Richard Perlmutter (of Beethoven’s Wig) set to Can Can from Orpheus in the Underworld by Jacques Offenbach. The chorus goes like this:

      Oh can you do the Can Can?
      If you can then I can
      I can Can Can if you Can Can
      Can you Can Can

    17. Yes We Can Can: a Pointer Sisters song.
    18. “Yes We Can”: a campaign speech by President-elect Barack Obama³ about the benefits of preserving food, and a song using elements of that speech [YouTube]. (Okay, it’s not really about canning.)

    ———

    ¹This list of cans was inspired by a post on preserving foods from Flying Tomato Farms. In particular, this bit got me thinking about can:

    Because I can (that is, preserve food in jars using boiling water and pressure-processing methods), and because I teach a couple of people each season to can, I sometimes get frustrated with customers at farmers markets who decline to take the farmers up on their bulk discounts for produce that could easily be put up using simple methods of boiling water bath canning, drying, or freezing.

    In addition to it providing me with amusement over the need to disambiguate the word can, it was a very intersting post about the need for local processing of food in order to better support local food economies.

    ² This should actually have a tilda diacritic over the vowel, too, but I can’t get the unicode symbol to work right.

    ³ Wahoo!

    —-
    images: can-can dancers from wpclipart.com, soup cans from Florida Center for Instructional Technology Clipart ETC

    80s Pants Party!

    pants_party1

    80s Pants Party! Volume 1:
    Put on your party pants and prepare yourself to party to the max with this totally awesome New Wave Pants-o-rama party!
    Tracks:

    1. Tainted Pants 3:52
    2. Goody Two Pants 3:12
    3. West End Pants 4:01
    4. She Blinded Me With Pants 3:25
    5. Pants in a Northern Town 2:56
    6. Under the Milky Pants 3:33
    7. Everybody Wants to Pants the World 4:59
    8. Don’t You Forget About Pants 2:45
    9. We Got the Pants 2:47
    10. Don’t Stand So Close to Pants 3:03
    11. Hungry like the Pants 3:23
    12. Lay Your Pants on Me 2:57
    13. Pretty in Pants 3:25
    14. Girls Just Want to Have Pants 3:03

    Bonus Track:

    • Safety Pants (extended pants remix) 7:52

    This production was brought to you by:
    • Painted Maypole and the Monday Missions! (supporting CD liner note style since 1984)
    • My Big Sister and the News of 80s Pants Revival!
    • The word Pants!

    Sales from this album will benefit the American Pants Society, The United Charter for Pants, and Pants Across America.

    Look for More 80s Pants Party Music in Stores Soon!

    sixth of one, a half dozen of the other

    I’ve been tagged to do the 6th of the 6th photo meme. Twice, even. By kyla and Mary G. For this, we are supposed to post the 6th photo in our 6th photo folder, along with details. Of course, these instructions are somewhat open to interpretation. Painted Maypole went to her old computer in order to get something less recent. I considered doing this, too, seeing as it would be more interesting to dig up something old, but laziness prevailed. (Also the fact that my old computer is right next to Phoebe’s room, and is really loud for the startup.) Mimi used the 6th event from her iPhoto library. After exploring various interpretations, I’m picking the 6th photo from the 6th “album” in my iPhoto library.

    This is Phoebe looking out the window at the airport at the start of our big trip to Europe in August of 2007. She was about 18 months old.

    Phoebe at Logan Airport at about 18 months old.
    Phoebe at Logan Airport at about 18 months old.

    Kyla also tagged me for the random things meme, with the instructions to list 7 random things about myself or my kid. Seeing as I’ve already listed plenty of things about myself, I’ll go with listing things about Phoebe. The instructions said 7 things, but I’m going to stick with 6, just because it goes better with my post title.

    6 random facts about Phoebe:

    1. She is not especially partial to pink, which many seem to believe not possible for a young girl. (She doesn’t yet seem to have favorite color, and has even shown some affinity for black.)
    2. She loves tofu.
    3. She likes to eat frozen vegetables. As in not thawed. Like little green bean popsicles.
    4. She is named after John’s maternal grandmother (first name) and my maternal grandmother (middle name).
    5. She is a night owl, like her parents. She will even sleep in, when given the opportunity.
    6. She loves to travel. She is not even 3 years old yet, and has already been on 5 major trips by air (3 times to California, once to Texas, and once to France and Germany), as well as many, many car trips down to New York.

    abbreviated

    City Girl (of Country Girl / City Girl) tagged me for the one word meme last week.

    I actually had done a version of this a while back. Some people had been calling it “monosyllablic,” and I was shocked (deeply, deeply shocked) that many people used words that were disyllablic or even polysyllabic. So I made sure that none of my own answers exceeded one syllable.

    Anyhow, all my answers are still single words, according to the instructions. But I decided to spice things up additionally in my own way.

    1. Where is your mobile phone? attaché
    2. Where is your significant other? abed
    3. Your hair colour? auburn
    4. Your mother? adventurous
    5. Your father? absent
    6. Your favourite thing? acoustics
    7. Your dream last night? amusing
    8. Your dream goal? achievement
    9. The room you’re in? alcove
    10. Your hobby? anagrams
    11. Your fear? aggression
    12. Where do you want to be in 6 years? academia
    13. Where were you last night? abode
    14. What you’re not? aardvark
    15. One of your wish-list items? Avengers
    16. Where you grew up? around
    17. The last thing you did? ate
    18. What are you wearing? argyle
    19. Your TV? adequate
    20. Your pets? ants
    21. Your computer? Apple
    22. Your mood? appeased
    23. Missing someone? ancestors
    24. Your car? adorable
    25. Something you’re not wearing? anorak
    26. Favourite shop? Amazon
    27. Your summer? active
    28. Love someone? absolutely
    29. Your favourite colour? azure
    30. When is the last time you laughed? antics
    31. When is the last time you cried? announcement

    Most of the answers aren’t altogether apocryphal, although a few approach.¹ (Can you guess which I just made up?)

    Oh, yeah. Today’s word of the day is alliteration.

    —–
    ¹ They say a little alliteration goes a long way. I’m assuming a lot of alliteration is an assault.²
    ² I apologize. Kinda.

    change is good

    With Tuesday’s election in the US, people all over have been talking about change. Lots of people are saying they want change.

    As such, it seemed a good time to offer up some change myself. Some spare change.

    I dug out these coin things from deep in the pockets of my brain (and a few from between the couch cushions) just in time for ThThTh.

    A Coin Collection¹

    • “Christmas is Coming:” an English Christmas carol

      Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat
      Please put a penny in the old man’s hat
      If you haven’t got a penny a ha’-penny will do
      If you haven’t got a ha’-penny
      then God bless you

    • a penny for your thoughts: an expression spoken as a request to hear about what someone else is thinking. Does not usually actually involve a cash transaction.
    • “A Penny for Your Thoughts,” a treacly song from the faux musical from Waiting for Guffman. (You can hear a version of it performed by Elvis Costello, even. It’s still painfully treacly.)

      So here’s penny for your thoughts, a nickel for a kiss
      A dime if you tell me that you love me

    • lucky penny: Pennies are sometimes kept as good luck charms. Finding a penny is said to bring good luck: “Find a penny, pick it up, and all the day you’ll have good luck.”
    • There is a wedding custom for the bride to put a penny in her shoe for the ceremony for “good fortune and protection against want”:

      Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue and a copper penny in your shoe!

    • penny loafers: shoes in which people would stick a penny as an ornament.
    • “Pennies from Heaven,” a song and a movie from 1936. Originally sung by Bing Crosby, then by many others. (Here’s a youtube version by Billie Holiday.)
    • it’s your nickel: an expression meaning “you made the phone call” and also “it’s your turn to talk.” My grandmother used to say this when I’d call her long-distance.
    • nickel and dime: an expression meaning “cheap” or “inconsequential.”
    • Nickel and Dimed: a book by Barbara Ehrenreich about her experiences working at various low-wage jobs.
    • dime store: a somewhat archaic term for a store carrying various and sundry low-price items.
    • dime bag: the quantity of marijuana that can be purchased for 10 dollars.
    • “Dime,” a song by Cake. About a dime. Really.
    • “shave and a haircut two bits:” a very short song. Two bits is a quarter, or 25 cents. (Apparently small change was once cut wedges of a silver dollar, each worth an 8th of a dollar.)
    • Pac-Man Fever, a song from the 80s (duh) beginning with the line:
      “I got a pocket full of quarters and I’m heading to the arcade.” (Oh, the nostalgia triggered by bad 80s music and references to arcade video games. If you want to subject yourself, you can hear the song on YouTube.)
    • 50 Cent: the stage name of rapper Curtis James Jackson III
    • silver-dollar pancakes: very small pancakes, such as might ressemble a large coin.

    dime
    ———
    ¹ It’s a bit heavy on the pennies, but so are most change piles.²

    ² I almost forgot the word of the day. I’ve chosen denticles : “Small tooth like raised points on the inside edge of coins.” How could I resist a word that rhymes with tenticles?

    hee-haw, hee-haw

    It’s Thursday again, and that means I’m due for a ThThTh list. What with my having the upcoming election on the brain, it seemed a good time to bring out the donkeys.

    Some donkeys

    • The Democratic donkey: the donkey is an unofficial symbol of the U.S. Democratic Party. The jackass was first associated with Andrew Jackson in his 1828 campaign, according to the official Democratic Party’s website page on the history of the democratic donkey.
    • Pin the tail on the donkey: A party game in which blindfolded participants attempt to attach a representation of a tail to a drawing of a donkey. The one who gets the tail closest to the tail end of the donkey wins.
    • Donkey pronoun: a term in linguistics for a certain type of pronoun in which the syntax does not map straightforwardly to the semantics. Named after this example, in which “it” is the donkey pronoun:

      Every farmer who owns a donkey beats it. — Peter Geach, Reference and Generality

    • Hee Haw: a country-themed (in the sense of “rural” and “Western”) sketch comedy show with a donkey mascot. It was mostly on in the 70s. (The show’s title is the English onomatopoeic word for the sound of a donkey’s bray. For the record, my post titile makes reference to the sound, not the show. I find the show, or the memory of watching the show as a child, somewhat painful.)

    • Eeyore: the gloomey donkey from Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh.
    • The Golden Ass: Another name for the Metamorphoses of Lucius Apuleius, an ancient Roman novel in which the protagonist turns himself into an ass.
    • Nick Bottom: a character in the Shakespeare play A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Bottom’s head is turned into an ass head.
    • Benjamin: the donkey in Orwell’s Animal Farm.
    • Donkey: the animated donkey, voiced by Eddie Murphy, from the Shrek movies (2001, 2004, 2007).
    • Dapple: Sancho Panza’s donkey in Cervantes’ Don Quixote.

    10 Classics of Pants Horror Cinema

    Just when you thought you were safe from my pants, they come back at you with a vengeance! Hold on to your pants, as Pants Cinema presents these 10 Classic Horror Movies.

    1. Night of the Living Pants
      A group of people seek refuge in a farmhouse after radiation from a fallen satellite causes their pants to come to life.
    2. The Pants of Frankenstein
      After stitching him together from corpses and bring him to life, Dr. Frankenstein struggles to clothe his monstrous creation.
    3. Island of Lost Pants
      A shipwrecked man finds himself on an island inhabited by a madman who performs bizarre experiments on pants that were believed lost at the laundromat.
    4. Invasion of the Pants Snatchers
      A small-town doctor learns that the pants of his community are being replaced by ill-fitting alien duplicate pants.
    5. Rosemary’s Pants
      A young couple moves into an apartment only to be troubled by the appearance of a pair of pants that neither of them purchased.
    6. Children of the Pants
      Children in rural Nebraska are incited by a creepy young preacher to steal the pants from every adult in the town.
    7. The Amityville Pants
      A family purchases a selection of second-hand pants, only to be haunted by the discovery that the pants were worn by people with really bad taste.
    8. The Invisible Pants
      A mad scientist finds a way of making things invisible, but since he’s insane, the only things he cloaks with invisibility are his pants.
    9. Pants Sematary
      A couple is horrified to discover that pants fashions discarded in recent decades come back to haunt them, hideously altered.
    10. Dawn of the Pants
      Zombies rise from the dead and drive a small group of survivors to seek refuge in a secluded shopping mall, where they find great bargains on pants.

    ——-

    This monstrosity of a post can be attributed to radiation emitted from this week’s Monday Mission, hosted by Painted Maypole, which causes innoncent-looking posts to take the form of a horror movie plot summary. Or in this case, 10 of them.

    pants blogger slacks off

    I haven’t really been slacking off, but I really wanted to use that title.

    Anyhow, it’s been a busy week. We had our Halloween party last night, and I spent a lot of time the past few days cleaning, organizing, running errands and generally running around like a chicken with its head cut off. (That was not my costume by the way.) Maybe I’ll have a chance to write about the party (and our real costumes) a bit later. Right now we are running out the door to Ikea, resuming our quest to get Phoebe a big girl bed.

    Like Magpie, there are a lot of posts that I have been working on. Some are drafts, some are still lurking around in my head. I’ll filch¹ Magpie’s idea to post a list of posts I have been thinking about this past week:

    1. I have several ThThTh posts in progress, but couldn’t find the time to shine one up enough to post. (Those things take a long time to do when I use images.) You almost got to see my ass post on Thursday. Well, you almost got to see a list of donkeys…
    2. Phoebe has entered the “why” stage. It sort of sneaked up on us.
    3. All this talk about Palin “dropping her Gs” makes me want to write a phonetics/sociophonetics post. (I had great plans to write on for this past Tuesday’s “Talk Like Sarah Palin Day” business.)
    4. I can’t stop thinking/reading/talking about the election.
    5. I am feeling really exicted about the election and the (dare I say it?) likelihood that Obama will win.
    6. Did I mention that I am thinking a lot about the election? And I am feeling some powerful optimism. My Republican best friend and I can talk about politics without fighting for the first time in our 20-year friendship. Today John sent me this link to a very short post this morning and I got choked up. And then this line from Magpie’s post gave me chills:

      My Republican father – who told me the other day that he thought Obama had the chance to be one of the best presidents ever.

    ———————-
    ¹ The word filch is also something that I filched from Magpie…²
    ² I am declaring today to be International Filch From Magpie Day.³
    ³ Which reminds me, I should update on the last idea I filched from Magpie, for Blog Action Day. I owe Unicef some money…