Category: randomness

allow me to bore you

YTSL of Webs of Significance tagged me (ages ago) for this “unimportant things” meme, the task of which is to list six unimportant items about myself. Seeing as I talk about myself all the freakin’ time, it’s become harder to come up with lists of things about myself that I haven’t revealed in a post. (cf. 6 weird things about me, 7 little known things about me, and 6 guilty pleasures I indulge in.) Whereas it would greatly amuse me to make things up, and maybe I’ll do that one of these days, I have decided to dredge up more insignificant factoids.

  1. I sneeze when I eat dark chocolate. As in the really dark, 70% cacao or above, kind. Strong mints have the same effect. If I eat white Tic-Tacs, I will sneeze exactly once per Tic-Tac that I eat, within a few seconds of putting it in my mouth.
  2. I don’t like bell peppers. I particularly don’t like green bell peppers. I find it irritating that a lot of vegetarian food has lots of peppers in it.
  3. I have crooked teeth. Not hugely crooked, but enough that you will rarely see me smile with my teeth visible in photos.
  4. My body doesn’t self-regulate its temperature very well. My hands and feet tend to get very cold in the winter. In the summer, I often overheat, since I tend to sweat very little.
  5. I have very dry skin. This, along with the previous item, makes me feel somewhat reptilian. (Well, not really.)
  6. But, speaking of reptiles, I like lizards. (I’ve never had one as a pet, though. They felt a bit like pets in Hawaii, though, the way the ran around on the walls. This may be the source of my appreciation for lizards.) I have somewhat of a collection of things with a lizard motif, but am glad they are somewhat subtle in our home. Some of my friends and relatives have given and/or made me some really cool lizard things over the years.

This meme comes along with some rules, which you can see at YTSL’s if you like. (Ha! I’m breaking a rule just by not posting them. I am a rebel!) But I’ll mention the tagging bit: “Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.”

I’ve decided to have a bit of fun with the idea of “six random people.” I have (more arbitrarily than randomly) chosen the last 6 people to use the tag “randomness” on WordPress.com at the time that I checked. I tag, and offer to you, this list of six lovely semi-randomly chosen lovers of randomness (along with their last posts of randomness).

  1. ladyhustler of Simple Complexities (how to write a Haiku)
  2. maddie of alive & amplified (This distance)
  3. theblossoms of Blossom-ing (schizophrenic)
  4. Carrie of in the process of living (Looking forward.)
  5. blandable of Bland Musings (Poetry Saga part Deux)
  6. Olivia of Olivia’s Total Randomness (Things I Love)

ribbit

Here it is, February 28th. What is typically the last day of February. However, this year, as I’m sure you are aware, is a leap year. So we get another day this month, making this year 366 days long.¹ Anyhow, this leaping business of leap year has inspired me to think about frogs.² And thus you get a froggy ThThTh list.
florida_tree_frog.jpgflorida_tree_frog.jpgflorida_tree_frog.jpgflorida_tree_frog.jpgflorida_tree_frog.jpg

A Few Frogs

  1. leap frog: A game you play by leaping over crouched people. (I can’t really describe it. Go see what Wikipedia says.)
  2. Frogger. A classic 80s arcade game. The goal is to get a frog to hop safely across a road and a river without getting squashed or dunked. You can play online.
  3. Kaeru: This Japanese word means both frog and return, leading to frog charms being carried for luck by travellers.
  4. The Frog Prince. A fairy tale about a princess prince-turned-frog-turned prince. It has some variations I’m less familiar with:

    Although in modern versions the transformation is invariably triggered by the princess kissing the frog, in the original Grimm version of the story, the frog’s spell was broken when the princess threw it against a wall in disgust.[1] In other early versions it was sufficient for the frog to spend the night on the princess’s pillow.

  5. The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher, a book by Beatrix Potter. Mr. Fisher is a frog who goes fishing for his meal, but after some mishaps, opts to dine on grasshopper.
  6. Frog and Toad. Characters from the series of books (including Frog and Toad are Friends) by Arnold Lobel. They are a frog and a toad. Who are friends.

    7. crane_frog4.jpg     beatrix_potter_jeremy_fisher_cover.jpg     frog_and_toad.jpg

  7. Kermit the Frog. The beloved Muppet, created by Jim Henson. The orginal version was made from a discarded coat and ping pong balls.
  8. Michigan J. Frog. The singing frog from the classic Warner Brother’s cartoon.
  9. Keroppi Hasunoue. A Sanrio character. (It’s not actually clear to me what he is a character of, beyond toys and other merchandising.)

    10. kermit28.gif     mjfrog3.gif      keroppi.jpg

  10. Froggy, a character in various books by Jonathan London, such as Froggy Gets Dressed.³

    11. magnolia.jpg

  11. The frog scene from the movie Magnolia (1999). It rains frogs. Really big frogs. It gets messy.
  12. Frog Went A-Courting. An English folk song.
  13. Five Little Speckled Frogs. A children’s count-down song:

    Five little speckled frogs,
    Sitting on a hollow log,
    Eating some most delicious bugs,
    Yum, Yum.
    One 1 frog jumped in the pool,
    Where it was nice and cool,
    Now there are four 4 speckled frogs,
    Glub, glub.

  14. A frog in one’s throat: an expression describing the gurgling and croaking⁴ that people sometimes get when talking with phlegm in the throat.
  15. Crunchy Frog: a Monty Python sketch about a chocolate confection with a dead frog center.

    We use only the finest baby frogs, dew-picked and flown from Iraq, cleansed in finest-quality spring water, lightly killed, and then sealed in a succulent Swiss quintuple smooth treble cream milk chocolate envelope and lovingly frosted with glucose.

———————–

¹ Has anyone else noticed that this is perhaps an unfortunate year to choose for the inaugural year of Blog 365, where people commit to blogging daily for the whole year? But I see they have a planned day off for tomorrow.

² Because they leap.

³ We recently got a different Froggy book for Phoebe from a Scholastic catalog, namely Froggy Eats Out, and were a bit dismayed by the message of this particular one. In it, Froggy behaves like a brat and embarrasses his parents so badly at a nice restaurant that they must leave. They then reward him by going out to a burger joint, like Froggy had originally wanted.

⁴ Or irregular phonation. Which sounds less frog-like than croaking and gurgling.

sunshine on a cloudy day?

Here is a little screen shot of the weather widget on my Mac. The top weather summary is for Boston, and the bottom is for our town. Please look closely at the two summaries, especially for the Wednesday column. Notice any differences between the two forecasts?

sunsnow.png

Hello?

We live 45 miles from Boston. Admittedly we live in a different county, and in many ways our little semi-rural, one-stoplight town is worlds apart from the hustle and bustle of the cosmopolitain urban center. But dammit, I thought we were generally in the same climate.

Okay, since we are inland, and Boston is on the water, we typically see some differences in amount of precipitation and temperature. I’m used to that. However, it would appear that for tomorrow, as I’ll go into Boston for a meeting after I drop off Phoebe at daycare, I need to dress for snow and cold, and also for balmy sunshine. Maybe I should mail home a postcard from sunny Boston.

Update: Aha! It would appear that Boston is not going to have the Mediterranean temperatures that my widget told me. Well, not Boston, Massachusetts, at least. At some point in the last few days, perhaps sensing that I’m looking forward to Spring, my widget decided on its own that I would like to see what the weather is like in Boston, Georgia. I guess this looks more like what I should expect:

picture-8.png

heart in my hands

figure12.png Happy Valentine’s Day. Or what’s left of it.¹ Well, today is a day most strongly associated with one symbol: the heart. Whether it’s heart-shaped boxes of cheap-ass waxy chocolate, chalky-tasting little candy hearts with messages, or the good old-fashioned construction paper heart cut-out, Valentine’s Day is an affair of the heart. Or at least the heart shape. Because let’s face it, the actual organ itself gets the short shrift. So this ThThTh list is for you, you hard-working, blood-pumping bundle-o-muscles.

A list for the Heart

  • “The Tell-Tale Heart,” by Edgar Allen Poe. The sound of his victim’s beating heart haunts a murderer. (There’s a Simpsons episode that features a diarama of “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Someone out there has also made a Tell-Tale Heart scene Legos.)
  • Angel Heart (1987). This movie has a bit about someone eating a human heart.
  • The episode “Hush,” from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This is the one where everyone loses their voice. The villains in this one steal people’s voices in order that they may accomplish their goal of collecting 7 human hearts without the inconvenience of screaming victims.
  • There’s also the famous scene from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) in which a man rips the still-beating heart out of another man’s chest as part of a sacrificial ritual.
  • Aztec sacrifices: check out the Wiki bit (and do note the “[citation needed]” bit. I really have know idea whether this is true.)

    The Aztec civilization used the heart as a sacrificial token during the sacrifice of a human being. The priest used a stone knife to cut into the thoracic cavity and remove the heart, upon which it would be placed on a stone altar as an offering to the gods. The greatest sacrifice under the reign of Montezuma involved the removal of the hearts of over 12,000 enemy soldiers.[citation needed]

  • Las Dos Fridas (The Two Fridas): a painting by Friday Kahlo with two versions of the artist with heart exposed.(Go have a look.)
  • Looking for something to impress the cephalopodophile in your life? Consider one of the lovely tentacled-heart images of Ben Lawson. (ht to raincoaster and MasterCowfish.)
  • Still want to give your true love the semi-traditional gift of candy? Why not consider the gummy heart, or the one-pound solid milk chocolate human heart?

    • —————-

    ¹ Here it is, almost 11:00, and I’ve been meaning to toss up a list all day. My plan, you see, was to post something heart-related. John suggests that I should prioritize sleep over posting a list. Pah! I scoff at your well-reasoned suggestion. And anyhow, I’ve got most of the damn thing already outlined.

    image: The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Child’s Day, by Woods Hutchinson,

    I am not an accountant

    Sometimes I forget to tell myself that. I’ve never been an accountant. Nor have I ever planned to be one. (Not that there’s anything wrong with accounting. I can see the appeal of putting things in order.) But this lack of accountancy in my life is usually not at the forefront of my mind.

    Day after day I can go about my non-accounting-related business without once thinking, “hey, I’m not an accountant.”

    But just a few days ago, I became truly aware of this. “I’m not in accounting!” I loudly proclaimed. And I realized how true a statement that was. And I have Blogger to thank for this epiphany.

    You see, Blogger has made some changes to their comment forms. Now, instead of being able to type in my name and the URL for this blog when I leave a comment, I must choose between logging in with my Blogger ID, using a “nickname” (Should I have a nickname? What about Snake?), or being anonymous. So I’ve been using my Blogger ID more often lately. And on a whim, I decided to check out my minimalist Blogger profile. After all, someone might follow the link from a comment I leave here or there. (Well, not here. But there.) And imagine my surprise when I saw that my profile said I was in the field of accounting.

    I quickly went to edit my profile, and select “not specified” for my field, since, shockingly, “linguistics” was not listed on the drop-down menu. When viewing the profile next, I was relieved to see that I was no longer masquerading as a grad student of accounting. But then I thought to myself, “maybe I should say a bit more about myself.” So I added a bit of stuff. And saved my profile. And lo and behold, I was once more in accounting. I went back in, changed the field. Saved the profile. All was well. But, oh crap, there was a typo in my link. Fixed it. Saved. Dammit, there was the frickin’ “accounting” thing again.

    “I am not an accountant!” I cried. I felt I needed to affirm this. It’s been good to have this reminder.

    I have a lot of trouble defining my identity. When asked for a description, I tend to give a list: student, wife, mother, friend, blah, blah, blah. It varies how many items I put on that list. But I have never once in my life listed “accountant” as an identity.

    Of course, I have never listed “not an accountant,” either. And this opens up a whole realm of possible identities. I am also not a butcher, baker, candlestick maker, chiropractor, dancer, mime, mugger, jogger, juggler, or provost. The possibilities are staggering. But for now, at least, I can just remind myself that indeed, I am not an accountant.

    lightbulb jokes

    Yes, I admit it. I got a bit burnt out in the blogging business. 40 posts in 30 days is too, too much. And I have far too many blogs in my feedreader. And I’m busy with work. And busy with life. And I’m just really tired. I need to go to sleep.

    So, even though I have a bunch of posts in progress, and owe some stories based on that done/not done checklist, I’m just going to post a couple more jokes. Many of our last round of jokes featured the theme of “walking into a bar.” (Thank you for all those contributions, folks.) Here I give the other perennial favorite, the lightbulb joke.

    These two lightbulb jokes are my favorites, and I’ll give you a bonus story. I first heard them while on a boat going down the Amazon, sitting around on hammocks. On Thanksgiving day, no less. That would have been in 1991. There were other jokes, and plenty of other tales from that trip, but here are two jokes that I can share quickly. (And yes, I realize that they are pretty similar.):
    light_bulb_black_bg.png

      Q: How many mice does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
      A: Two, but they have to be pretty small mice.

      Q: How many flies does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
      A: Two, but how do you get them in there?

    Please share your lightbulb jokes with me. Pretty please?

    have you ever?

    I made it through November with my 30 posts for 30 days. (40, if you want to add in those I did for the Ministry of Silly Blogs.) It wasn’t particularly hard for me to come up with topics for daily posts (though it was sometimes hard to work up the motiviation to post at all.) I didn’t manage to do too well on the list of my intended topics.¹

    Another thought I’d had was to do a meme I’d seen at Stretched to the Limit, which had a big old checklist of things done in one’s life. Many of the things I’ve done on the list have some sort of story behind them, and I thought I’d work my way through some of them. In fact, I still might do that. But probably not for last month.

    The instructions are to bold the “done” things. I’ve also gone and italicized things that I haven’t quite done, but where I have a story related to that thing. (It’s kind of a weird list of things, and it makes me curious about the origins. It reminds me a bit of the drinking game “I never,” or a related game where people state something they’ve always wanted to do but haven’t done.)

    01. Bought everyone in the bar a drink
    02. Swam with wild dolphins
    03. Climbed a mountain
    04. Taken a Ferrari for a test drive
    05. Been inside the Great Pyramid
    06. Held a tarantula
    07. Taken a candlelit bath with someone
    08. Said “I love you” and meant it
    09. Hugged a tree
    10. Bungee jumped
    11. Visited Paris
    12. Watched a lightning storm at sea
    13. Stayed up all night long and saw the sun rise
    14. Seen the Northern Lights
    15. Gone to a huge sports game
    16. Walked the stairs to the top of the leaning Tower of Pisa
    17. Grown and eaten your own vegetables
    18. Touched an iceberg [I’m assuming this doesn’t mean the lettuce]
    19. Slept under the stars
    20. Changed a baby’s diaper [duh]
    21. Taken a trip in a hot air balloon
    22. Watched a meteor shower
    23. Gotten drunk on champagne
    24. Given more than you can afford to charity [possibly]
    25. Looked up at the night sky through a telescope [probably]
    26. Had an uncontrollable giggling fit at the worst possible moment
    27. Had a food fight
    28. Bet on a winning horse
    29. Asked out a stranger
    30. Had a snowball fight
    31. Screamed as loudly as you possibly can
    32. Held a lamb
    33. Seen a total eclipse [maybe]
    34. Ridden a roller coaster
    35. Hit a home run
    36. Danced like a fool and didn’t care who was looking
    37. Adopted an accent for an entire day
    38. Actually felt happy about your life, even for just a moment
    39. Had two hard drives for your computer
    40. Visited all 50 states
    41. Taken care of someone who was drunk
    42. Had amazing friends
    43. Danced with a stranger in a foreign country
    44. Watched whales
    45. Stolen a sign
    46. Backpacked in Europe
    47. Taken a road-trip
    48. Gone rock climbing
    49. Midnight walk on the beach [may not have been actually midnight]
    50. Gone sky diving
    51. Visited Ireland
    52. Been heartbroken longer than you were actually in love
    53. In a restaurant, sat at a stranger’s table and had a meal with them
    54. Visited Japan
    55. Milked a cow
    56. Alphabetized your CDs
    57. Pretended to be a superhero
    58. Sung karaoke
    59. Lounged around in bed all day
    60. Played touch football
    61. Gone scuba diving
    62. Kissed in the rain [probably]
    63. Played in the mud
    64. Played in the rain
    65. Gone to a drive-in theater
    66. Visited the Great Wall of China
    67. Started a business
    68. Fallen in love and not had your heart broken
    69. Toured ancient sites
    70. Taken a martial arts class
    71. Played D&D for more than 6 hours straight
    72. Gotten married
    73. Been in a movie
    74. Crashed a party
    75. Gotten divorced
    76. Gone without food for 5 days
    77. Made cookies from scratch
    78. Won first prize in a costume contest
    79. Ridden a gondola in Venice
    80. Gotten a tattoo
    81. Rafted the Snake River
    82. Been on television news programs as an “expert”
    83. Gotten flowers for no reason
    84. Performed on stage
    85. Been to Las Vegas
    86. Recorded music
    87. Eaten shark
    88. Kissed on the first date
    89. Gone to Thailand
    90. Bought a house
    91. Been in a combat zone
    92. Buried one/both of your parents [not taking this literally]
    93. Been on a cruise ship
    94. Spoken more than one language fluently
    95. Performed in Rocky Horror
    96. Raised children [I don’t think quite yet]
    97. Followed your favorite band/singer on tour
    98. Passed out cold
    99. Taken an exotic bicycle tour in a foreign country
    100. Picked up and moved to another city to just start over
    101. Walked the Golden Gate Bridge
    102. Sang loudly in the car, and didn’t stop when you knew someone was looking
    103. Had plastic surgery
    104. Survived an accident that you shouldn’t have survived
    105. Wrote articles for a large publication
    106. Lost over 100 pounds
    107. Held someone while they were having a flashback
    108. Piloted an airplane
    109. Touched a stingray
    110. Broken someone’s heart
    111. Helped an animal give birth
    112. Won money on a T.V. game show
    113. Broken a bone
    114. Gone on an African photo safari
    115. Had a facial part pierced other than your ears
    116. Fired a rifle, shotgun, or pistol
    117. Eaten mushrooms that were gathered in the wild
    118. Ridden a horse
    119. Had major surgery
    120. Had a snake as a pet
    121. Hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon
    122. Slept for more than 30 hours over the course of 48 hours
    123. Visited more foreign countries than U.S. states
    124. Visited all 7 continents
    125. Taken a canoe trip that lasted more than 2 days
    126. Eaten kangaroo meat
    127. Eaten sushi
    128. Had your picture in the newspaper
    129. Changed someone’s mind about something you care deeply about
    130. Gone back to school
    131. Parasailed
    132. Touched a cockroach [possibly]
    133. Eaten fried green tomatoes
    134. Read The Iliad – and the Odyssey [just the Odyssey]
    135. Selected one “important” author who you missed in school, and read
    136. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
    137. Skipped all your school reunions
    138. Communicated with someone without sharing a common spoken language
    139. Been elected to public office
    140. Written your own computer language
    141. Thought to yourself that you’re living your dream
    142. Had to put someone you love into hospice care
    143. Built your own PC from parts
    144. Sold your own artwork to someone who didn’t know you
    145. Had a booth at a street fair
    146. Dyed your hair
    147. Been a DJ
    148. Shaved your head
    149. Caused a car accident
    150. Saved someone’s life

    So it looks like I’ve done 56 things on the list. How many have you done?

    I’d love to take requests for stories or details on any of the above listed items. You could just pick a number, or several. At random, even. And I may even treat you to the tale of how I once ate sushi when I had dyed hair.

    ——–

    ¹ I guess this is my NaBloPoMo Post Mortem. My NaBloPoMoPoMo, if you will. It’s probably not post modern enough to be a PoMoNaBloPoMoPoMo, though.

    Dude? Dude!

    Wanna know something kinda funny? I had occasion to mention a beer commercial during a work/research meeting this afternoon.

    We were talking about an experiment we will be running, which will involve getting people to judge whether two similar-sounding spoken utterances of the same text are being produced with the same intonation contour (or the same meaningful “tune”). Because, as you probably realize, you can say the same words a whole bunch of different ways. Or the same single word, even.

    (Thanks to tabba for sharing the video, which I hadn’t seen before. Dude.)

    Now with more Polysyllabic Nonsense

    I think most of you have seen this item making its way around the bloggy world: the blog reading level score. I’ve seen it a bunch of places:

    You wanna know what I got?

    elementary_school.jpg

    (Note that my blog shares this honor with Sassy of eye heart internet, who can even blog at the elementary school level bilingually.)

    Actually, the first time I tried this, a few weeks ago maybe, I got junior high level. But apparently my writing skills are deteriorating.

    What I find funniest, though, is that I also tried my other blog: The Minsitry of Silly Blogs. This is a blog I threw together on a whim to go along with a NaBloPoMo group I started. See what it scored?

    genius.jpg The Ministry of Silly Blogs

    It would seem that when I am making efforts to sound Officious and Pretentious, as well as Silly and Pompous, my writing appears more erudite. Even if what I am writing is Utter Nonsense. (Which is not to say that I believe that all those whose blogs scored higher than elementary school write Officiously and Pompously. But perhaps you all write Utter Nonsense?)

    All in all, I find myself terribly curious about the means by which a reading level score is achieved. Is it sentence length? Average word length? Does anyone know?