along came some spiders

Halloween’s around the corner. One thing this means is that people break out the creepy crawly decorations to get festively creepy. It’s harder to get much creepier or crawlier than spiders. So I offer you a whole mess of festively creepy crawly eight-legged critters for this week’s Themed Things Thursday. Enjoy. (Or shield your eyes, depending on your feelings towards spiders.)

A Few Spiders

Charlotte’s Web, by E. B. White. A novel featuring a very smart spider who could weave a remarkable web. One of my favorite books of childhood.
Little Miss Muffet
A nursery rhyme about a little girl who was frightened off her tuffet by a spider.

“The Spider and the Fly”, a poem by Mary Howitt. A poem best known for a first line that doesn’t actually appear in the poem: “Step into my parlour, said the spider to the fly”. Here’s how the text actually begins. (You can read the full text here.)

Will you walk into my parlour?” said the Spider to the Fly,
‘Tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy;
The way into my parlour is up a winding stair,
And I’ve a many curious things to shew when you are there.”
Oh no, no,” said the little Fly, “to ask me is in vain,
For who goes up your winding stair can ne’er come down again.”
Seven Spiders Spinning, a kid’s novel by Gregory Maguire, an author best known for writing Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West.
Anansi: A spider who is a trickster character in many West African folktales.

Spider-Man. (Or Spiderman.) The superhero of comics, cartoons, and the more recent live action movies. A man was bitten by a spider and got spider-themed superpowers. Such as a spider sense. Which tingled. (When I’ve been bitten by a spider I’ve gotten a red welt. I guess you could say it tingled. But I wouldn’t.)
“Spider-Man,” the song. The theme song from a cartoon version of Spider-Man. Since performed by a variety of artists, including Moxy Fruvous and the Ramones.

Spiderman, Spiderman,
Does whatever a spider can
Spins a web, any size,
Catches thieves just like flies
Look Out!
Here comes the Spiderman.
“The Itsy Bitsy Spider” A children’s folk song. About a small spider, itsy bitsy even, who went up a spout. Then down, then back up.
“Spiders,” a song by Joydrop

When love was fresh like a web we’d mesh
Nothing felt better than your flesh against my flesh
One fatal slip one rip a tear
Touch me now and every single hair on my body stands on end
So don’t touch me anymore
‘Cause it feels like spiders
Like spiders all over me
Like spiders
Like spiders all over me
It: a book by Steven King and miniseries based on the same. Involves a big evil spider. (And a clown.)

Shelob: A giant, nasty spider from the Lord of the Rings
Aragog: A giant, nasty spider from the Harry Potter books and movies
Kingdom of the Spiders (1977)
A TV movie with William Shatner, about evil, venemous spiders that infest a town.
Arachnophobia (1990)
A movie about evil, venemous spiders that infest a town.
A few other random spiders include: spider(a type of pan, basically a frying pan with legs), web spider, Alfa Romeo Spider, Spider (2002), and spider veins.

turning into a pumpkin

I mentioned briefly that I’m going to be a bridesmaid in a wedding coming up soon. Well, that “soon” has now become “this Sunday.” Which is, technically, very soon. As is the standing tradition, in U.S. weddings at least, I will be wearing a dress chosen by the bride. As it will be an October wedding in New England, the bride has chosen fall colors. My dress is in burnt orange, a very pretty color, though a somewhat unusual one in my wardrobe. And is also often the case for such occasions, I am to have shoes that match my dress. This means that I have needed to get some dyed. I picked up my shoes yesterday afternoon. And I have to admit that I was quite startled to see them. You see, they are orange. I now have shiny orange shoes. I don’t think you can ever be fully prepared to see orange shoes.

Anyhow, this weekend I will be donning the orange, and perhaps as such, feeling a bit like a pumpkin. Hopefully an elegant pumpkin, mind you, but a pumpkin nonetheless. But seeing as it’s October, pumpkins are all the orange rage right now. And in honor of their orange pumpkiness, I bring you a pumpkin-based Themed Things Thursday.

pumpkin
A vegetable. Or a fruit. Depending on your choice of taxonomy. Generally eaten cooked. Used in lots of baked goods, like pumpkin pie.

Pumpkin (2002)
A movie starring Christina Ricci.

Pumpkin
A song by Tricky off Maxinquaye (YouTube video)

Cinderella’s carriage
In many versions of this fairy tale, Cinderella’s fairy godmother turns a pumpkin into a carriage to carry Cinderella to the ball. Cinderella must leave the ball before her ride turns back into a pumpkin. Leading to the expression turn into a pumpkin, meaning depart, go to bed or otherwise turn in for the night.

The Headless Horseman
A ghostly character from Washington Irving’s story “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow“, who carries around a pumpkin head.

Jack Pumpkinhead
A character from the Oz books by L. Frank Baum. Later had his own book, Jack Pumpkinhead of Oz, though it wasn’t by Baum.

Pumpkinhead (1989)
A horror movie involving a demon dug up from a pumpkin patch.

The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead
a song by XTC. (YouTube video) Later covered by Crash Test Dummies.

Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater
A nursery rhyme. Also a song you can play on the piano using only the black keys.¹

Peter Peter pumpkin eater
Had a wife and couldn’t keep her
He put her in a pumpkin shell
And there he kept her very well

The Great Pumpkin
A mythical holiday character that never appears in the animated Peanuts special It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966)

Jack, the Pumpkin King
A character from Tim Burton’s animated movie The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993).

jack-o-lanterns
It’s a Halloween tradition to carve a face into a pumpkin. These are then typically set outside, with a candle inside. It’s also a Halloween tradition for mischievous kids to steal other people’s pumpkins, and smash them.

Smashing Pumpkins.
A band. Performs songs such as “Tonight, tonight” and “Tarantula” (YouTube videos)

punkin
An endearment or nickname based on the word pumpkin, which is sometimes pronounced without the word-medial [p]. Gives us [pʰʌŋkɪn] (Where the nasal has then assimilated to the place of articulation of the following consonant, a velar. Not that you asked.)

¹ I admit that I’m recycling this particular item from my vegetable ThThTh list. But recycling is good, right? Or should I be composting, since it’s vegetables we’re talking about?

squawk

Here it is, the day after International Talk Like a Pirate Day, and I’ve still got pirates on the brain. But rather than bringing you a list of pirates for this week’s Themed Things Thursday, I’ll bring you a list of the frequent pirate’s companion: the parrot.

A Flock of Parrots

Parrots are frequently to be seen on the shoulders of pirates¹, specifically of fictional pirates. Captain Flint was a pirate’s parrot in Treasure Island, the pirate novel by Robert Louis Stevenson. More recently, we’ve seen the pirate in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.
Parrots, especially African Grey Parrots, are well known as birds who can imitate human speech.
This is no doubt the source of the use of the word parrot as a verb (transitive), meaning repeat without really understanding. As in “They parroted my parrot jokes, but none of them laughed.”
You can find a variety of parrot jokes out there. (These even a site with pirate and parrot jokes.) This is probably my favorite parrot joke.
Polly want a cracker? The stereotypical parrot sentence, whether said to a parrot, or by a parrot. Possibly popularized in Robert Lewis Stevenson’s Treasure Island.
Poll or Polly has been a common parrot name for centuries, with an early documented use from 1611.
Also in the nursery rhyme:

Little Poll Parrot
Sat in his garret
Eating toast and tea;
A little brown mouse
Jumped into the house,
And stole it all away.
Then there’s the song “Polly,” by Nirvana

Polly wants a cracker
I think I should get off her first
I think she wants some water
To put out the blow torch
Or Paulie (1998), a movie about a parrot.
Parrots have been featured in various folktales from around the world, like 2 Buddhist folktales from India “The Brave Little Parrot.” (who puts out a forest fire²) and “The Steadfast Parrot” (who is faithful to a tree) and an
Italian folktale (involving a prince who has himself turned into a parrot).
Other moderately famous parrots include Waldo the Parrot, from Twin Peaks (who seems to have been present, and biting, the night of Laura Palmer’s death) and Parrot, the parrot with biting sarcasm from the Terry Pratchett novel ~~Faust~~ Eric
Parrot Heads are the nickname given to fans of the musician Jimmy Buffett
And to round things off, I bring you Python’s parrot. The ex-parrot. He is decidedly not pining for the fjords.

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¹ Or about the arms and head, especially of those posing as pirates.

² Kind of like a friend of mine did recently, except he used a plastic bag to put out the fire.

throwing some tomatoes

It shouldn’t come as much surprise that I have tomatoes on the brain. After getting 10 pounds of tomatoes from the CSA this week, on top of the several pounds I left from last week’s 10 pound haul, I have tomatoes in lots of places. I’ve been making lots of things with tomatoes: tomato salad with mozzarella and basil, tomato sandwiches, roasted tomatoes with garlic…It seems only fitting that I should also make me a tomato list. So, this week’s Themed Things Thursday is all about tomatoes.

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, by Fannie Flagg. A novel featuring a restaurant that serves fried green tomatoes. (I expect they served other things, too. But the title doesn’t include the full menu.)
Fried Green Tomatoes (1991) A movie based on the Fannie Flagg novel.
The Tomato Collection. An album by Nina Simone. It actually seems to have nothing to do with tomatoes beyond the title, but I love Nina.
The campfire song “Lord Jim”

I know an old bloke and his name is Lord Jim,
And he had a wife who threw tomatoes at him,
Now tomatoes are juicy, don’t injure the skin,
But these ones they did, they was inside a tin.
“Let’s call the whole thing off.” The song written by George and Ira Gershwin. Sometimes known as “the tomato song,” due to this bit:

You like potato and I like potahto,
You like tomato and I like tomahto;
Potato, potahto, tomato, tomahto!
Let’s call the whole thing off!

Tomato, tomahto…or, as the Wikipedia tomato entry has, with somewhat dubious IPA:¹

You like /təˈmeɪtoʊ/ and I like /təˈmɑːtəʊ/
Don’t like tomatoes? Perhaps this website is for you: tomatoes are evil. You can purchase anti-tomato propaganda and play anti-tomato games.
Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! (1978). The cult classic movie. A comedy sci-fi horror thriller romance. Oh, wait. Probably not the romance. Spawned (or sowed?) several tomato–based sequels, including one called Killer Tomatoes Eat France!² The second movie, or the first sequel, starred, of all people, George Clooney.
Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. (1990) A short-lived cartoon TV show featuring the voice of John Astin. (John Astin was also in all 3 movie sequels.)
I think the best way to end this list is to give you this: the theme song to Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!

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¹ I’d be inclined to use square bracket here, rather than slanty ones, for a start, as the slanty ones suggest a phonemic (rather than narrow phonetic) transcription., and the 2 variants of /o/ (əʊ and oʊ) are not phonemic. At the same time, the onset of that last syllabe is transcribed with a t, which seems unlikely in American English. I’d go for a flap. And I produce strong aspiration on the first /t/.
You know, you say /təˈmeɪtoʊ/, I say [tʰəˈmeɪɾəʊ].

²By the way, that exclamation point is part of the title. As someone who rations out my exclamation points, I feel compelled to insert this disclaimer.

pigeon post

On our recent trip, we saw many exciting things in France and Germany: monuments, museums, landscapes, rivers, you name it. For Phoebe, however, the highlight of the trip was getting to see so many pigeons. She saw pigeons all over the place! (See her chase a pigeon in the short, short movie I posted earlier this week.)

Loved by some, hated by many, pigeons are a ubiquitous in cities the world all over. Some folks have been known to call them “rats with wings,” while others happily share their breadcrumbs with them. After its trip away, Themed Things Thursday flies home this week with a list of pigeons.

Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, by Mo Willems. A picturebook about a mischievous pigeon who would like to drive a bus. (There’s a sequel, too, The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog, in which the pigeon, and I hope I’m not giving too much away here, finds a hot dog.)
Wringer, by Jerry Spinelli. This Newbury Honor book is about a forbidden boy-pigeon friendship in a town that hosts an annual pigeon shoot.

Ewan McGregor’s character in Little Voice (1998) kept pigeons as pets.
Valiant (2005) was a movie about a heroic World War II homing pigeon (voiced by Ewan McGregor…am I sensing a pattern here?).
Poisoning Pigeons in the Park, by Tom Lehrer. A song:

When they see us coming,
the birdies all try and hide
but they still go for peanuts
when coated with cyanide
Rapper Pigeon John is not really a pigeon, at least as far as I know.
Some may remember Sesame Street’s Bert dancing a pigeon-like dance to “doin’ the pigeon,” a clip of which is available on YouTube. (You can also see actual pigeons dancing, if you want to compare.)
There was an 80’s kids’ TV show called Pigeon Street. (The intro is also up on YouTube.)

In spite of their bad reputation as a species, certain pigeons have received an especially elevated status for birds. Namely, bird of peace. In this context, the pigeon is referred to as a dove. A dove being a white pigeon.
Doves are featured in various myths and religious tales, such as the well-known story of Noah’s Ark. Land was found with the help of a dove, who flew back to the ark with an olive branch.
There is also a flock of pigeon-oriented idioms and terms such as:
pigeon hole, stool pigeon, pigeon-toed, pigeon-chested, setting the cat among the pigeons, and pigeon blood ruby.
Brian Pigeon: There is even a blog out there written by a London pigeon. Check it out for a pigeon’s eye view of the world.

Pigeons at Beaubourg.

black is the new black

While other colors may go in and out of fashion, black clothing never goes out of style. This Themed Thing Thursday is decked out in black from top to bottom.

This list is wearing black

Macy’s employees may know a thing or two about fashion, but not all of them appreciate the new company policy that store employees must dress in black.

“Dressed in Black,” Depeche Mode

Shes dressed in black again
And I’m falling down again
Down to the floor again
I’m begging for more again
But oh what can you do
When shes dressed in black

LBD: Little Black Dress: A black article of clothing so well-known, it has it’s own acronym. The concept of the little black dress is said to date back to the 1920s, with a design by Coco Chanel.

Men in Black (1997): a movie about a secret agency that deals with extra-terrestrials on Earth, and in which agents (who are sometimes actually women) wear black suits.

The Man in Black: A song by Johnny Cash, and also one of his nicknames due to his trademark wearing of black:

I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down,
Livin’ in the hopeless, hungry side of town,
I wear it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime,
But is there because he’s a victim of the times.

The Man in Black from The Princess Bride. Princess Buttercup and her kidnappers (Vizzini and Fezzik) are pursued by a mysterious man dressed all in blask, including a black mask.

Black is frequently the color of choice for those who wish to wear a mask to disguise themselves: eg. Black Mask with Jet Li, Zorro‘s mask, or the Lone Ranger‘s.

black hat. In old Westerns, the bad guys could often be identified by the black hats they wore. (Whereas the good guys tended to wear white hats.) The term black hat has been co-opted by those in computing, as a reflection of “bad guy” attitudes about compromising the security of computer systems.

In many cultures, especially European cultures, wearing black is associated with mourning. It is considered the color to wear for funerals. (Have you ever noticed that in movies and TV shows, funeral attendees almost exclusively wear black? But at real funerals I’ve been to, people wear a wider range of colors, though still somber ones.) Traditional widow‘s garb is black, and women in mourning were expected to wear black for an entire year after the death of a husband or relative in British (and American) upper-crust societies. (In Gone With the Wind, it was considered scandalous when recently widowed Scarlett wants to wear colorful clothing.)

Depictions of witches often show the witch dressed in black, especially the signature black pointy hat made famous by the Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz, and vampires are also frequently depicted dressed in black, especially in a black cape. The Grim Reaper, a personification of death, wears a black cloak.

Goth subculture: black is the most commonly worn color by those who consider themselves goth. Black is often worn in other subcultures, such as punk.

Ninjas are often depicted wearing all black, likely because of it’s shadowy quality. I’m not sure the same could be said for Catholic priests and nuns, whose formal garb is also often black.

black belts: both the item of black cloth worn around the waist that signifies an expert rank in martial arts, or the person who sports that belt.

Tuxedos are traditionally made of black cloth, and are often accompanied by a black bow tie, after which the term black tie, an event where formal dress is expected, is named.

berry me deep

Our 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.

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?)

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…)

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.

	marygother on holding up (more or less)
	Icon Lat on Vote well, USA, vote well…
	leaving where I pick… on Picking up where I left o…
	spanishwoods on Frosty fronds
	marygother on driving in the driving ra…
	driving in the drivi… on Rutabaga for days
	marygother on changing of the garlands
	marygother on if a blogger falls in the…
	marygother on Seeing the forest for the…

A Few Spiders

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A Flock of Parrots

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(I should have done laundry) yesterday

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This list is wearing black

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Bird Songs

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