Category: nursery rhymes

all my eggs in one basket

whole_egg_simple.pngWith Easter around the corner, and with nesting on my brain, it seems like a good time to break out the eggs. While there are loads full of eggs out there, to help moderate our cholesterol intake, I’ll restrict this ThThTh list to a dozen egg things.

A Dozen Eggs

  1. Easter eggs. Eggs that have been dyed and/or decorated as part of Easter traditions. Linked by some to the concept of rebirth. Linked by others to an anthropomorphic bunny.
  2. Easter egg: a hidden message or bonus in video game, DVD, or other (ususally digital) media. (Can you find my Easter egg?) They can also be found in print or other media, scuh as maps, as a means to protect from copyright infringement.
  3. Fabergé eggs. Elaborate jewelled eggs made by Russian jeweler Peter Carl Fabergé, many of which were commissioned by the Russian imperial family. They often had surprises hidden inside.
  4. Chocolate eggs. Not actually eggs flavored with chocolate, which probably comes as a relief to many, but egg-shaped chocolates. I’m partial to Kinder eggs. A type of chocolate egg containing a plastic yolk with a surprise inside. When I was little, the toys were much cooler than the prizes you could find in, for example, Cracker Jacks. Cadbury Creme Eggs are pretty tasty, too, but the yolk contained within is messier to play with.

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  5. “the egg scene” from Angel Heart (1987) (clip on YouTube) “You know, some religions think that the egg is the symbol of the soul,” says Robert Deniro during the scene where he malevolently peels and eats a hard-boiled egg.
  6. Humpty Dumpty. A nursery rhyme about an egg.

    Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
    Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
    All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
    Couldn’t put Humpty together again.

    It has quite a bit of lore associated with it. (Did you know it was a riddle in earlier forms, with the eggness of Humpty being the answer?)

  7. Palestinian egg story: A Palistinian folktale about an egg trying to discover its identity. I was exposed to it during a field methods class, where we worked with a speaker of Palestinian Arabic. I particularly remember the line [ʔɪnti mɪʃ Хudra], or “You are not a vegetable.”
  8. Eggbert, the Slightly Cracked Egg, a picturebook by Tom Ross, illustrated by Rex Barron. A story of an egg who is an individual. And a slightly cracked one.

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  9. Horton Hatches the Egg, by Dr. Seuss. A story of an elephant who is talked into sitting on a nest.
  10. Look – (Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One) But There Were These Two Fellers (1968). An Avengers episode with an archive of clown faces painted on eggshells. (This was actually a Tara King episode, but one of the better ones.)
  11. “She was a bad egg.” An expression meaning “she was a bad person,” and a quote from the movie Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971) by Gene Wilder when Veruca Salt was dumped down the chute after being identified as faulty by the egg-dicator.
  12. “Egg Baby” Parenting an exercise or assignment sometimes used to teach teenagers about parenting and responsibility. Kids are given an egg to “care for” for a set amount of time. Featured in “First the Egg” (1985), an After School Special starring Justine Bateman. Also in the Buffy episode “Bad Eggs.” Of course, in this case, the eggs turn out to be evil demon spawn.

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images (edited 2/7/2010, since people were wondering): The white egg is a public domain image from wpclipart.com, and the single colored egg images are ones that I made based using that image. The photo at bottom is mine.

stripey

Lions and tigers and bears! (Oh, my!)

Last week we covered lions. Not too long ago we covered bears. It seems about time I should get to the tigers. So here they are, populationg a ThThTh list in all their stripey goodness.

  1. Year of the Tiger. The tiger is one of the 12 animals of the Chinese Zodiac. The next Year of the Tiger is 2010, which is not all that far off.
  2. “The Tyger,” a poem by William Blake:

    Tyger! Tyger! burning bright,
    In the forests of the night,
    What immortal hand or eye
    Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

  3. “Tiger, Tiger,” a song by Duran Duran off their album “Seven and the Ragged Tiger”
  4. Tiger. The nickname for Mac OS v10.4. I still haven’t upgraded.
  5. “The Lady, or the Tiger?.” A short story by Frank R. Stockton with a surprise ending. It has also become “an expression, meaning an unsolvable problem.”
  6. “Eye of the Tiger.” A song by Survivor. From the Rocky III soundtrack.
  7. Tiger’s eye: a chatoyant gemstone. Sort of stripey and brown.
  8. Tony the Tiger. The mascot for Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes cereal, featured in commercials. Says of the flakes: “They’re grreat!”
  9. A variety of tiger folktales can be unearthed, such as How Tiger Got His Stripes, a Folktale from Vietnam, the Cambodian “The Origin of the Tiger,” and “The Tiger’s Whisker,” a Korean folktale.
  10. The Story of the Little Black Sambo, by Helen Banneman.
    A story about a boy who meets (and outwits) a bunch of tigers in the jungle. In the end, the tigers turn into a big puddle of melted butter, which the boy’s family uses to make pancakes for dinner. Originally written by a British woman in India, the story has a complicated story of its own, due to the controversy about racism and racial stereotyping in the character names and original illustrations. (The name of the protagonist, contained in the book title itself, is considered to be a racial slur.) Recent updated versions have kept the tigers, but lost (at least in many people’s eyes) the racist overtones. (To see how people respond to this book today, it’s interesting to read the reviews on Amazon of the original, as well as the updated books The Story of Little Babaji and Sam and the Tigers. You can also read the full text, without illustrations.)
  11. Eeny, Meeny, miny mo: A children’s chant, used to select (or rule) out people as part of a game. (To pick who is “it.) Also somewhat tainted by racial controversy, though I’d never heard of the offensive variants till I was an adult.

    Eeny, meeny, miny, mo
    Catch a tiger by the toe
    If he hollers, let him go
    My mother says to
    pick the very best one
    and you are not it.

  12. Life of Pi, by Yan Martel. The main character gets to know a tiger when both are shipwrecked.
  13. Shere Khan. Mowgli’s nemesis (a tiger) in Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book stories.
  14. Leo the Late Bloomer, by Robert Krauss, Jose Aruego. A picture book about a tiger cub who takes his time growing up.
  15. Hobbes. Calvin’s tiger companion. Looks like a stuffed toy when other people are around.
  16. Tigger. The beloved and very bouncy tiger from A. A. Milne’s Hundred Acre Woods. Close friend to Winnie the Pooh.
  17. “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.” (2000). A movie directed by Ang Lee, and one of my favorite movies. (It’s a movie with kick-ass women, to boot.) It doesn’t really have any tigers in it, aside from in the title.

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roar

lion2.pngHere’s my first ThThTh list of March. In like a lion, as they say. Or in with a list of lions, which they don’t really say. But I’ll say it. Or I just did. Here are some lions for you.

  1. Leo. The astrological sign of the lion. Based on the constellation.
  2. The Cowardly Lion from L. F. Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. (Also in the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz.) A lion who wants to get courage.
  3. Aslan. The lion in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and the other six books in the Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis.
  4. The Lion King (1994) . An animated Disney movie, and a broadway play based on the same.
  5. The MGM Lion. This lion mascot (actually several different lions since 1924) appears roaring in the MGM logo as part of the (much parodied) opening sequence of Metro Goldwyn Mayer film productions.
  6. “The Lion Sleeps Tonight“. A famous song with a more complicated history than I’d realized.. The original version “Mbube” was recorded in South Africa in 1939. Many versions, some also going by the name “Wimoweh,” have since been recorded around the world. Best known perhaps is the version by The Tokens. (Hear it on YouTube in a video with a singing hippo and dancing dog.)
  7. The lion’s share. An expression meaning “the biggest portion.”
  8. “The Lion’s Share“. A song off 10,000 Maniacs’ album Blind Man’s Zoo.
  9. Fed to the lions or Thrown to the lions. Expressions meaning that a person has been placed in a metaphorical position of danger or a situation for which they are not well prepared. (Ancient Romans threw people to the lions as a spectator sport, and in a less figurative way.)
  10. “The Slave and the Lion.” An Aesop’s fable about an escaped slave who removes a thorn from a lion’s paw, and thus gains the lion’s loyalty. And avoids getting eaten when he is thrown to the lions.
  11. “The Lady and the Lion.” A fairy tale told by the Brothers Grimm about a young woman who is held captive by a lion, who turns out to be a cursed prince. The story has much in common with versions of the “Beauty and the Beast” fairy tale. A retelling of the story is available as a picturebook.
  12. The Lion and the Unicorn. Symbols of the United Kingdom. The lion gets to wear the crown on the UK Royal Coat of Arms. There’s also the related nursery rhyme:

    The lion and the unicorn were fighting for the crown
    The lion beat the unicorn all around the town.
    Some gave them white bread, and some gave them brown;
    Some gave them plum cake and drummed them out of town.

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grrrr

Bear with me. Or, bears with me. Well, not really with me. But on the list. Yes, Themed Things Thursday¹ is coming out of hibernation, as I come crawling out of my work-induced cave of fatigue and grumpitude. And what better way to come out of a cave than being pursued by a whole lot of bears?

Some Bears ²

  • Winnie-the-Pooh: Pooh has to top any list of bears in my book. The bear from the books by A. A. Milne. (I prefer not to think about the Disneyfied version.)
  • Grizzly Adams: A TVshow about a man and bear.
  • Gentle Ben: A lesser-known show about a boy and a bear.
  • Grizzly Man A movie about a man who decided to go and live with bears. Eventually, the bears tired of him. From what I understand, he met a…um…grizzly…end.
  • Yogi Bear: A cartoon about a bear, smarter than the average bear, so he says. Stole pic-a-nic baskets. Yogi Bear was always allegedly “in the ranger’s hair.” But I don’t believe he ever actually ate the ranger. (I watched this show as a kid, but I’m not sure I liked it. I feel like I felt some empathy for Boo-boo Bear, the side-kick.)

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  • Goldilocks and the 3 bears:
    The classic fairy tale of breaking and entering. While a family of bears is out for a walk while their porridge cools, a little girl heads into their house where she steals their food and breaks some furniture.
  • Bears are also prominent in several other fairy tales, like Snow White and Rose Red.
  • Bear Snores On: A kids’ book (by Karma Wilson and Jane Chapman) about a bear who snoozes through a party in his cave, when various other animals sneak in to get out of the winter storm.
  • There are a whole bunch of other bear books for kids, several of which are berry-oriented, like Blueberries for Sal, Jamberry, The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry and the Big Hungry Bear.
  • bear hug: A hug characterized by a real squeezing of the arms, rather than just a symbolic arm-wrapping. As one might imagine it would be like if hugged by a bear. Though without the mauling.
  • “B is for Basil, assaulted by bears:” A page from The Gashleycrumb Tinies, Edward Gorey’s alphabetic masterpiece.
  • Fozzie Bear: a muppet who likes to tell bad jokes. (Wocka, wocka, wocka.)
  • fuzzy wuzzy, a children’s rhyme:

    Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear
    Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair
    Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn’t very Fuzzy, was he.

  • “Bears Discover Fire:” A Hugo Award-winning short story by Terry Bisson in which bears…discover fire.
  • Bears are fairly popular mascots for sporting teams, especially brown bears, or Bruins (cf. the Brown University Bruins, UCLA Bruins, the Boston Bruins, or the Chicago Bears. And cf. also “da Bears” sketch from SNL)
  • teddy bear: A popular type of stuffed animal, named for Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt
  • Gummy Bears: fruit-flavored, brightly-colored, gelatin-based candies shaped like little bears.

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    ¹ Yes, I realize it is now no longer Thursday. But I ran out of time, and I’ve had this draft going for over a week.

    ² This list is about bears, not bears…

    candles at both ends

    As the nights get longer up here in the Northern hemisphere, we look forward to having a bit more light. When you’re not in the mood for a lightbulb, you might consider lighting a candle.

    Candles are used for a wide range of purposes: religious, decorative, symbolic, and as a light source for when the electricity goes out. Here’s a list of a few candle things and candle traditions to light up your evening on this Themed Thing Thursday.

    A list with candles at both ends (and in the middle)

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  • Hanukkah
    The 8-day Jewish holiday, also known as the Festival of Lights, is observed in part by the nightly lighting candles in the Hanukkah Menorah, or Hanukiah. Today was the second day of Hanukkah. (Hanukiyot photo by photo by Beth Brewer.)
  • Christmas
    Candles are also featured in many celebrations of the Christian holiday Christmas, such as with advent candles. Other traditions include using candles to decorate, such as using them on trees. Contemporary Christmas tree lights evolved from this tradition, as electricity became available, though in Denmark, people still decorate Christmas trees with real lighted candles. People will also place candles in windows, a practice said to have been popularized in Colonial Williamsburg.
  • Lucia’s Day
    In Sweden, as part of the traditional celebration of this holiday (December 13th), girls will wear a wreath on the head with lit candles to celebrate Saint Lucia.¹ “>Apparently people have also moved to battery-operated candles:

    In Sweden we do not wear candles anymore because before girls caught their hair on fire very often. Today we use modern candles with batteries in them.

  • Birthday cakes are often decorated with miniature candles. The candles often represent the age of the person having the birthday, whether by using number-shaped candles, candles arranged in the shape of a number, or most often, a candle for each year of age.
  • Sixteen Candles (1984) A John Hughes movie starring Molly Ringwald as a girl whose 16th birthday is overlooked.
  • Candle in the Wind A song by Elton John (lyrics by Bernie Taupin) written in honor of Marilyn Monroe in 1973, rededicated it to AIDS victim Ryan White in 1990, and rewritten and remade in honor of Princess Diana in 1997.
  • The Babylon candle: A magic candle appears in the movie Stardust (2007), allowing the user to travel great distances. I found a suggestion that the source of the name for this candle is the nursery rhyme:

    How many miles to Babylon?
    Three score miles and ten.
    Can I get there by candlelight?
    Yes, and back again.

  • hold a candle to: an expression meaning “measure up to.” Usually used with a negative, as in: X can’t hold a candle to Y, A could never hold a candle to B, the word trousers doesn’t hold a candle to pants.
  • light a candle for: People will light a candle to show remembrance of someone (such as Yahrtzeit in Judaism) or in support of some cause, such as “lighting a candle for peace.” The phrase has also been used more generally as an expression, often interpreted as “say a prayer for,” possibly based on the tradition of lighting a candle in a church to accompany a prayer. The expression is also sometimes interpreted in reference to leaving a lit candle in the window as a beacon for a loved one who is away.
  • not worth the candle: an expression meaning worthless, or not worth the expense
  • burn a candle from both ends: an expression meaning get little sleep due to being busy from early in the morning till late at night, or to generally work too hard and spend energy recklessly:

    Our current understanding of this phrase refers to a life that is lived frenetically and unsustainably – working or enjoying oneself late into the night only to begin again early the next day. It didn’t having that meaning when it was first coined in the 18th century. The both ends then weren’t the ends of the day but were a literal reference to both ends of a candle. Candles were useful and valuable (see not worth the candle) and the notion of waste suggested by lighting both ends at once implied reckless waste. This thought may well have been accentuated by the fact that candles may only be lit at both ends when held horizontally, which would cause them to drip and burn out quickly.

  • You can also see a short movie of someone actually burning a candle at both ends. (YouTube)

    • —————–

    ¹ My friend Gregory, who recently moved to Sweden mentioned recently that he would soon be sharing some information on this tradition:

    They put candles everywhere except the roof of their cars (they do wear them on their heads, as I will explain in a couple of weeks)…

    along came some spiders

    spiderweb1.pngHalloween’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

    1. 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.
    2. Little Miss Muffet
      A nursery rhyme about a little girl who was frightened off her tuffet by a spider.

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    3. “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.”

    4. 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.
    5. Anansi: A spider who is a trickster character in many West African folktales.

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    6. 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.)
    7. “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.

    8. “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.
    9. “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

    10. It: a book by Steven King and miniseries based on the same. Involves a big evil spider. (And a clown.)

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    11. Shelob: A giant, nasty spider from the Lord of the Rings
    12. Aragog: A giant, nasty spider from the Harry Potter books and movies
    13. Kingdom of the Spiders (1977)
      A TV movie with William Shatner, about evil, venemous spiders that infest a town.
    14. Arachnophobia (1990)
      A movie about evil, venemous spiders that infest a town.
    15. 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.