Category: movies

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.

think pink

It was recently pointed out to me that October is Breast Awareness month. Our society is far too oblivious to the existence of breasts. Every day, millions of women around the world have breasts. In spite of this, breasts go largely unnoticed by men, women, and advertisers alike.

Wait, maybe it’s Breast Cancer Awareness month. That probably makes more sense.

Pink has become the color associated with breast cancer awareness, originating in the use of the pink ribbon symbol in the early 90s. So this month seems a good time to bring out the pink things. In the spirit of my Themed Things lists of green, red and blue folks and critters, I give you a list of pink animals, characters and other creatures.
The Breast Cancer Site
Before the pink fur starts flying, let me direct your attention to the button to the right. If you click on that, you’ll be directed to a site that funds free mammograms to women in need. All you need to do is click a button. So…you know…click on it.

Ok, once more into the pink.

    Some Pink Creatures

  • The Pink Panther. A cartoon character originally appearing in the credit sequences of the (live action) Peter Sellers movie The Pink Panther (1963), but who later got his own TV show.
  • Barbapapa. A shape-shifting pink blob character who appeared in kids’ books and short animated shows. I have vague but fond memories of the cartoons from when I was little. I also had at least one of the books.
  • Serendipity. A bright pink, aquatic, dragonlike creature from the book (of the same name) by Stephen Cosgrove. (One of the first books that I ever read.)

  • several Care Bears are pink, such as the one called Cheer.
  • There are likewise various My Little Pony characters who are pink. (One called Pinkie Pie, for example.)

  • pink elephants Said to be seen by those who have had too much to drink. The expression seeing pink elephants is believed to have originated in a book by Jack London. Pink Elephants were featured in a scene in Dumbo (1941), along withe song “Pink Elephants on Parade.”
  • some Muppets are pink, such as one of the Martians, or “Yip-Yips.” (You can see the Yip-Yips discover a radio on this YouTube clip.)
  • Pearl: A pink octopus from Finding Nemo (2003)
  • the Energizer bunny. A mechanical drumming bunny toy with pink fur used in Energizer battery commercials.

  • flamingo. A bird with pink feathers, at least as an adult:

    Young flamingos hatch with grey plumage, but adults range from light pink to bright red due to aqueous bacteria and beta carotene obtained from their food supply.

  • Plastic pink flamingos are a popular lawn ornament in the US starting in the 1950s. They are often considered the epitome of kitsch.
  • Amazon River Dolphins. There is a species of freshwater dolphin living in the Amazon. For real. I actually saw some when I was travelling in the Amazon in 1991. (Or I may have possibly seen tucuxi, which are apparently saltwater dolphins, but live in the Amazon and can be pink.)
  • pigs. While the actual pigs I’ve seen haven’t been, pigs are often shown as pink in cartoons, toys, etc. The Disney version of Piglet, for example is bright pink. Cincinnati’s flying pig mascot is pink, as is the Kids in the Hall Flying Pig.

————-
image sources: Barbapapa, Serendipity, Care Bear, flamingo and elephant, Pink Panther.

some key things

Damn. It’s now less than an hour before Thursday’s over, and I haven’t put up my Themed Things list. I always think I’ll find more time…

Anyhow, my lost keys of yesterday (which have now been found, by the way) had me digging around in my mind to find various key-related things. Here are some keys I found in the cluttered piles of my head.

A few key things

  • key. An item used to unlock something. Traditionally a metal object which fits a lock, but extended to refer to other things that give some sort of access, such as cards, passwords and codes.
  • the key to X: an idiom meaning “the means to achieve X, or gain access to X.” (eg. the key to success, the key to happiness, the key to my heart, the key to my pants…)
  • key. an adjective meaning crucial or primary. As in “the key participants” or “getting sleep is key.”
  • Dawn, the character introduced in Buffy, season 6.
  • Zero Effect (1998). A movie where a detective is hired to find a set of lost keys.
  • “The Golden Key“, a fairy tale from the Grimm brothers.
  • the key to the city. An award that is “presented to esteemed visitors, residents, or others the city wishes to honor,” typically in the form of an ornamental key. At least in TV and movies.
  • keys. The things you push on a typewriter or, um, keyboard. Or piano.
  • key. a musical term about the tonality of a composition such as “in a minor key”
  • “Musical Key.” A song by the Cowboy Junkies.
  • movie/TV cliches featuring keys: I feel like I’ve seen tons of movies and or TV episodes where a character is in a jail cell, and tries to escape by means of reaching keys either left unattended (eg. Harold & Kumar) or held by a dog (eg. the first Pirates of the Caribbean). The spy/heist genre also frequently features the need to sneak a key away from a character who keeps a key on their body. (eg. in Danny Kaye’s Court Jester, or apparently in the second Pirates of the Caribbean) If you can think of examples of these, please share. My brain couldn’t dig up more.
  • Then there’s the scene from The Princess Bride where Wesley, Inigo and Fezzig storm the castle and confront the gatekeeper:

    “Give us the gate key.”
    “I have no gate key.”
    “Fezzig, tear his arms off.”
    “Oh, you mean this gate key.”

    • —
    Okay, it’s 11:56. Still Thursday!

    going nuts

    It’s fall now up here in the Northern Hemisphere, and the squirrels are busy squirreling away their nuts for the winter. Meanwhile, I’ve been eating a lot of nuts, and going a little nuts. And reading about nuts¹. It’s almost as if nuts have been falling out of the trees and bonking me on the head². So, grab your nutcracker³, because I’ve gathered up a few nuts to share with you for this week’s list o’ Things.

    a selection of mixed nuts

    • nuts. (adj.) An expression meaning “crazy.” As in “you are totally nuts.” There are also other nut-themed variations, such as the additional adjectives nutty and nutso, and nouns like nutjob and nutcase.
    • Nuts (1987) A movie starring Richard Dreyfuss and Barbra Streisand.
    • Nuts (2007) A short movie directed by Irvine Welsh. (You can actually watch it on IMDB.)
    • nut: a piece of hardware: “a type of hardware fastener with a threaded hole.” Typically used with a bolt.

    • wingnut: a kind of nut (the hardware kind) with the appearance of wings
    • wingnut: someone with extremely right-wing political views. As in “please don’t let us have a wingnut for vice president!”
    • nuts: a slang term for testicles.

    • Mr. Peanut. The mascot for Planter’s nuts. An anthropomorphic peanut wearing a tophat.
    • in a nutshell: an expression meaning “in summary” or “in brief,” evoking the compact size of a nutshell, and what can be stuffed in it.
    • O’Reilly’s In a Nutshell series: technical reference books, such as Perl in a Nutshell and Java in a Nutshell
    • The Nutshell Library: A box set collection of miniature books by Maurice Sendak. Not about technical topics.
    • “Death in a Nut“: A folktale (in various versions) about a boy who tries to save his mother from death by stuffing Death into a nut shell.
    • “Thumbelina“: a fairytale about a tiny girl. She had a cradle made of a walnut shell.

    • Kate Crackernuts: an English fairytale about a girl who frees her stepsister from a curse that hides her beauty. The nuts are somewhat peripheral to the story. Kate collects them while going about her tasks and eats them for breakfast.
    • Nutcracker: a device used to access nuts that are encased in a hard shell. Decorative ones sometimes are made to look like people.
    • The Nutcracker: a ballet by Tchaikovsky, based on the story “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King” by E.T.A. Hoffmann featuring a decorative nutcracker toy.
    • Harlan Pepper, played by Christopher Guest in Best in Show, likes to name nuts:

      I used to be able to name every nut that there was. And it used to drive my mother crazy, because she used to say, “Harlan Pepper, if you don’t stop naming nuts,” and the joke was that we lived in Pine Nut, and I think that’s what put it in my mind at that point. So she would hear me in the other room, and she’d just start yelling. I’d say, “Peanut. Hazelnut. Cashew nut. Macadamia nut.” That was the one that would send her into going crazy. She’d say, “Would you stop naming nuts!” And Hubert used to be able to make the sound, he couldn’t talk, but he’d go “rrrawr rrawr” and that sounded like Macadamia nut. Pine nut, which is a nut, but it’s also the name of a town. Pistachio nut. Red pistachio nut. Natural, all natural white pistachio nut.

    —————————-

    ¹ Two of my favorite bloggers coincidentally (or perhaps both sparked by the start of school) wrote about how they are dealing with nut restrictions in their schools. Emily wrote Nutty, and Denguy wrote Aw, Nuts, two thoughtful posts that raise awareness about nut allergies. (I’d like to add that neither of them has a child with a nut allergy, and in fact have kids who love peanut butter. But they are both concerned and considerate.)

    ² That happened to me once with a chestnut. It hurt.

    ³ …or your epipen…

    Thumbelina image from Hans Christian Andersen, Fairy Tales (Chicago: W. B. Conkey Company, ND).

    the sound of two hands typing

    Ah. I have a bit of time to type with two hands. Theo is snoozing away in a swing, after a long day of fussing. (I’m starting to think that perhaps Theo is not “ultra mellow,” as babies go, but perhaps merely “not colicky.” Which, compared to Phoebe, seems mellow. But we’ve had a few rough days. Especially since Theo’s cold, which lasted a good week or more.)

    Anyhow, I’m feeling less cranky the last few days. I’ve still been busy, but have been enjoying myself more. Part of the crankiness has been coming from the feeling that I should be getting stuff done, and as a result, (in addition to not getting stuff done) I have not been giving myself much of a break. I had a great weekend, though. A cousin was in the state on business, and stayed with us a few nights. We played scrabble (on a real board with real wooden tiles) and chatted, and had dinner out at a Japanese buffet. (I had sushi for the first time since before my pregnancy.)

    John and I have also watched a couple of silly movies. (Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, and The Forbidden Kingdom. An interesting pair of quest movies, now that I think about it. I’d actually commented last night that the Forbidden Kingdom was a bit like cinematic junk food. Enjoyable, but not a masterpiece. And in Harold and Kumar, there is a quest for junk food.)

    Now I’m looking forward to having a Halloween party. I’ve been missing seeing friends, most of whom live closer to Boston. (We live out in the boonies.) And some of whom don’t have cars. And pretty much all of whom are quite busy. (Only one friend has been able to come visit us since Theo was born–Thanks Erica!) Anyhow, I hope to get a bunch of people over here for the party. (If you are reading this, and live in or near New England, and are not a crazy psycho-stalker, consider yourself invited. Leave a comment, and I can email you the details.)

    I still have plenty of stuff I need to get to. It’s so hard to accomplish things when time is so limited. I find myself wasting the little availble time that I have. (Damn those word games on Facebook. I found one that I can play with one hand, though.) I keep meaning to make to do list. (You know how I love me some lists.) Here, I’ll make a bit of one here. That way I can feel like posting is productive, and not merely procrastination…

      To Do List

    • Write a to do list
    • put laundry in dryer
    • Update my about page to include Theo
    • Update Phoebe’s blog
    • Post pictures of Theo
    • Print/send birth announcements
    • organize/pay bills
    • clean/organize house
    • finish PhD

    There. 9 items. That doesn’t look so bad, does it? (Well, I may have left a few items off. And perhaps condensed one or two.)

    Oh, on the productivity front. I have good news. Phoebe has graduated to wearing “big girl underwear” to daycare. I feel like that deserves a ceremony.

    I can’t believe how big she is getting.

    My big little baby, today.
    My big little baby, today.
    My little baby, a couple weeks ago.
    My little little baby, a couple weeks ago.

    Here are sister and brother, together, from Friday:

    Phoebe and Theo
    Phoebe and Theo

    And here is Theo, as of a minute ago or so. See, eyes are still closed:

    Theo swings left.
    Theo swings left.
    Theo swings right.
    Theo swings right.

    Arrrrr!

    Friday, September 19th is International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Last year, I celebrated the event by writing a series of pirate-themed posts, including a pirate’s resume (and subsequent job rejection letter) as well as a tutorial on how to talk like a pirate. Oh, and also by saying “arrr” a whole lot. Arrrr.

    This year, I prepare for the occasion with a list. Barely making it under the wire for this Thursday (at least in my time zone) is this pirate-themed ThThTh list. (This list be just a smattering of things piratical o’ me own choosin’. If ye be craving more, ye scurvy dogs, ye may want to drink o’ the grog offered by the scalliwags o’er at the official Talk Like a Pirate Day website. )

    Yo, ho, ho.

    1. Get yerself a pirate name with this quiz. (Oddly, me own name has changed since last year, when I were Black Anne Cash.)
      My pirate name is:
      Black Anne Bonney

      Like anyone confronted with the harshness of robbery on the high seas, you can be pessimistic at times. You can be a little bit unpredictable, but a pirate’s life is far from full of certainties, so that fits in pretty well. Arr!

      Get your own pirate name from piratequiz.com.
      part of the fidius.org network

    2. Treasure Island. Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic novel of pirates. Adapted into various movies. Including one with muppets.

    3. The Pirates of Penzance. A comic opera by Gilbert and Sullivan. A young man be apprenticed to pirates until his 21st birthday. (Which seeing as he was born on February 29th, won’t happen till he’s in his 80s.)
    4. “Pirate Jenny“. A song from the Threepenny Opera. I know the version by Nina Simone, which I didn’t find on YouTube. I did find (among others) a Dresden Dolls version of what may be the original German version of the song. (I can’t get the sound on YouTube right now, so I can’t tell…)
    5. Cutthroat Island (1995). Geena Davis plays a pirate. She kicks ass, in spite of the general suckiness of the movie.
    6. Pirates of the Caribbean. A Disneyland ride. Also some movies.
    7. The Dread Pirate Roberts. A character from The Princess Bride (book and movie). A pirate whose identity is used serially by various individuals.
    8. If ye want to get your swashes well buckled, loads more pirate movies can be found on a pretty comprehensive list by a pirate fan.
    9. MythBusters Episode 71: “Pirate Special”. Various pirate-related myths are tested, including the efficacy of rum as a laundry detergent and the use of an eye patch to preserve night vision. (Find the results here, if ye dare.)
    10. The Pirates! A series of short novels by Gideon Defoe. (The Pirates! in an Adventure with Scientists, The Pirates! in an Adventure with Whaling/Ahab, The Pirates! in an Adventure with Communists, and The Pirates! in an Adventure with Napoleon.) They are supposed to be quite funny, but I haven’t had a chance to read them for meself.
    11. Pirate’s Booty. A tasty cheesy-puffy snack food by Robert’s Gourmet.
    12. For more cheesy piratical goodness, check out The Skwib’s tale of curdaneer’s and exploding cheese on the high seas.
    13. My favorite pirate joke. (Adapted from this version.)

      A sailor meets a pirate in a bar, and they take turns telling about their adventures on the seas. The sailor notes that the pirate has a peg-leg, a hook and an eye patch.

      The sailor asks “So, how did you end up with the peg-leg?”

      The pirate replies: “We were in a storm at sea, and I were swept overboard into a school of sharrks. Just as me men were pullin; me out, a shark bit me leg off.”

      “Wow!” said the sailor. “What about the hook?”

      “We were boarding an enemy ship and were battling the other sailors with swords. One of the enemy cut me hand off.”

      “Incredible!” said the sailor. “And how did you get the eye patch?”

      “Arr. That were from a seagull-dropping fell into my eye,” replied the pirate.

      “You lost your eye to a seagull-dropping?” the sailor asked incredulously.

      “Aye,” said the pirate,”it was me first day with the hook…”

    heroine addicts

    It’s been my goal for quite a few years to put together a website featuring information about and ratings for movies and other media featuring women who kick ass. One of my goals in starting this blog was to work towards that end, and I made some progress with various posts that have been part of my kick-ass women project.

    In the course of my “work” on this project, I’ve come across a few other sites and resources on this topic. One great such website is Heroine Content, described on their about page as follows:

    Heroine Content is a feminist and anti-racist blog about women kicking ass. More specifically, we write about women kicking ass in action films, with a side order of television and video game commentary as things catch our eye.

    Just last week, Skye and Grace (the authors) celebrated 2 years of Heroine Content. In their celebratory post, they mention that they have reviews almost 100 movies, and even give a nice, handy list of those reviews.

    If you haven’t visited over there before, and if you have an interest in seeing women kick some ass in the movies, definitely drop by. They have reviews handily organized along the following rating scheme: