Category: randomness

gobble, gobble, gobble

turkey_6.pngToday is Thanksgiving, a holiday here in the US traditionally (or at least moderately traditionally) celebrated by a day of feasting with family and by expressing thanks. It’s also a day when most Americans eat turkey, a large bird that is native to North America.¹ This has lead to many people calling Thanksgiving “Turkey Day.” So what better Themed Things list to bring you for this Turkey Day than a list of turkeys. (However, these are turkeys you won’t likely see at the dinner table.²)

Ten Turkey Things for Turkey Day

  1. Turkey in the Straw: an American folk song, often fiddled. (Listen to it, if you like.)
  2. hand turkey: a picture made by tracing one’s hand to make the approximate shape of a turkey. The thumb represents the head and neck, and the fingers the tail feathers. Usually, the drawing is adorned with a beak, an eye, wings and a wattle.
  3. a turkey: a movie that got bad reviews, or that otherwise was poorly received.
  4. a turkey: a bowling term meaning 3 consecutive strikes.
  5. talk turkey. An expression meaning “to speak frankly.” Has some debatable origins.
  6. jive turkey: one who acts as if they know what they are talking about, but really doesn’t.
  7. Wild Turkey. A brand of bourbon. My grandmother liked bourbon. Not sure if she had a preferred brand.
  8. cold turkey. The act of quitting abrubtly, without tapering off. As in “quit drinking cold turkey.” (Which may also involve quitting drinking Wild Turkey.)
  9. Turkey: a nation. (I wonder how often people not native to the US expect that there will be some sort of Turkish cultural event on Turkey day?)
  10. Twas the Night before Thanksgiving, by Dav Pilkey. A somewhat controversial picturebook about some kids who “liberate” some turkeys from a farm and have them over for dinner (but don’t have them for dinner). (I found the full text online listed as an “anonymously” written animal rights poem, but I think Pilkey was the orginal author.)

—-

¹ Some Americans will instead eat a tofurkey, such as a Tofurky, a tofu-based turkey substitute.

² Well, except maybe the bourbon, in some households.

how do I plead?

Erika of the fabulously-titled mmmm, brains has tagged me with a meme that intrigued me. (As usual, though, it’s taken me over a week to get to it.) The meme in question is on the topic of “guilty pleasures,” and was abbreviated from a longer assignment. The full thing, which I won’t indulge in, was as follows:

  • Name six guilty pleasures you wish you had the courage to indulge.
  • Name six pleasures you once considered guilty but have now either abandoned or made peace with.
  • Name six guilty pleasures no one would suspect you of having.

Erika just did the last one I listed. So I thought I could do that one. The trick is, who is this “no one?” I think most of my guilty pleasures are pretty public. So I’ll modify the task a bit further and name 6 pleasures that I feel guilty (or embarrassed) about, and that have been known to surprise people.

  1. I have a weakness for certain types of junk food. I like to eat healthily, and to eat good quality fresh food. But I have rarely turned down Nacho cheese Doritos, Reeses Peanut Butter Cups or donuts.
  2. Action movies. This is not a surprise to anyone who reads this blog, seeing as I have a whole project related to these. But I am a peace-loving academic who studies language. Why do I enjoy watching a good fight scene?
  3. Tuna. I stopped eating red meat and poultry over 18 years ago, but I can’t quite manage to give up all seafood. Most seafood and fish I could take or leave. Mostly leave, actually. Canned tuna doesn’t excite me. But a seared tuna? Or tuna sushi? I realize that it’s wrong on many counts. Over-fishing and all. To some extent I have the same guilt liking for salmon, especially smoked salmon.
  4. I like some music that I feel somewhat embarrassed about. Specifically some 80s music with boppy synthesized beats: Nik Kershaw, Howard Jones, early Depeche Mode. What can I say? I was a teenager in the 80s.
  5. Checking my blog stats. It’s a sickness, really. It’s not so much the numbers as seeing what people look at and where they came from. Since most of my traffic is due to search engine hits by people who probably barely stop to look, I like it when I see signs that someone looked around, such as visits to my “about” page or some of my favorite posts. (Comments are, of course, the best. Those get emailed to me. Not too surprisingly, I always check my email eagerly, too.)
  6. I like memes. I know I should be scornful of them. But I think they are fun. And I find it fascinating to see what different people do with them.

It looks like this memage involves tagging 6 people. This is the part of meming that I find the trickiest. Some people tolerate memes. Others loudly protest them. Others welcome them. I once had a good experience tagging a couple of random people: one I found through the WordPress “pants” tag, and one who I found using the WordPress “next” button. I had no luck getting Kevin Smith to participate. (Kevin, if you read this, you’re tagged, dammit. Or for that matter, I suppose I could tag this other Kevin Smith.)

So, I’m going to go all random again. I will tag the folks at these 6 blogs I found totally randomly through the NaBloPoMo randomizer. (Okay, it wasn’t totally, totally randomly. I did skip a few blogs where music played automatically, and a couple of very topic-specific blogs, like a birding blog and a chocolate blog.)

If anyone else out there would like to indulge in this meme, please consider yourself tagged.

throwing together a themed list (even though it’s not Thursday)

125_125_banner_a.jpgI came across¹, a site that I think is pretty fun. It’s got a bit of a running vocabulary quiz. At the same time, the site is set up such that for each word you get right, 10 grains of rice get donated through the United Nations. (The rice is paid for by advertisers.)

It’s kinda cool to see the running totals they have posted, too. The site only started on October 7th of this year. Yesterday, 198,342,51 grains of rice were donated, whereas 6,645,520 were donated 1 month ago.

Anyhow, that’s getting to be a decent amount of rice. And it’s inspired me to throw together a bit of a list of rice things. Even though it’s not Thursday. It’s a short list, anyhow.

A Few Grains of Rice

  1. One Grain Of Rice: A Mathematical Folktale A picture book by Demi.

    It’s the story of Rani, a clever girl who outsmarts a very selfish raja and saves her village. When offered a reward for a good deed, she asks only for one grain of rice, doubled each day for 30 days. Remember your math? That’s lots of rice: enough to feed a village for a good long time–and to teach a greedy raja a lesson.

  2. On a Bed of Rice: An Asian American Erotic Feast, edited by Geraldine Kudaka. An erotic anthology. I like the name, what with the mixed meanings of food and sex. And if there are two things I like (aside from pants), they’re food and sex. (I also just found myself thinking that a somewhat similar phrase would make for an interesting book title, too. “On a Bed of Noodles.” Perhaps it could be an erotic humor anthology.)
  3. “Rice, rice baby,” by Weird Al. I think you can guess which song it parodies.
  4. 米国 beikoku, a Japanese term for the US, which means “rice country”

——

Aside from the bit about donating rice, I find it fun to test my word knowledge and learn new words. So far, my favorite new word that I’ve learned is, without doubt, omphaloskepsis. It means navel-gazing. And then I thought to myself, “now that would be a fine blog name.” Indeed, it is.

Other words I have encountered which make me happy include the following:

    eructate=belch
    anserine=gooselike
    bumbershoot = umbrella
    edentulous=toothless
    demulcent = soothing

Anyone want to go play for a bit and bring me back some tasty word morsels?

—–

¹ I came across links to this site at least 3 times, though I can only track down one, which wasn’t even the first place I saw it. Anyone else reading this post about it?

slow and steady

Slow and steady about sums up a lot of the work I do. Well, slow at least. Slow like a turtle.

Here’s a list of turtles for this week’s Themed Things Thursday. We’ve got turtles and tortoises, and possibly even some terrapins (though I haven’t identified any as such).

A Stack of Turtle Things

  • Yertle the Turtle, Dr. Seuss. As Lisa Simpson says, “this is quite possibly the best book ever written on the subject of turtle stacking.”
  • What Newt Could do for Turtle, Jonathan London.
    A picturebook of friendship between 2 friends, a newt and a turtle, who live in the swamp.

    • yertle.jpg       what_newt_could_do.jpg

  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Comic book characters, of the mutant turtle persuasion. And presumably adolescent. And possibly also Ninjas. Have branched out to TV, movies, and of course, merchandising.

    • bert2.png

  • Bert the Turtle, from the “Duck and Cover” film on preparing for a nuclear attack. (You can watch it on YouTube, and learn how even covering yourself with a newspaper can help protect you from a nuclear blast.)
    Bert has a catchy song:

    there was a turtle by the name of Bert
    and Bert the turtle was very alert
    when danger threatened him he never got hurt
    he knew just what to do
    he’d duck…and cover
    duck…and cover…

    • the_tortoise_and_the_hare_-_project_gutenberg_etext_19994.jpg

  • The Tortoise and the Hare: A fable attributed to Aesop. A fast hare has a race with a tortoise, but loses since he figures he has time for a nap. The tortoise wins since he kept moving. “Slow and steady wins the race.”
  • The Great A’Tuin: The Giant Star turtle in the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett. The world (which is disc-shaped) is supported by 4 elephants standing on the back of this giant turtle. This is most likely based on…
  • Chukwa, from Hindu mythology. A giant turtle who supports the earth, sometimes also with an elephant on its back. (The turtle may also be standing on more turtles, such that there are turtles all the way down.)
  • chocolate turtle: Not really a turtle at all. Or at least not the reptilian kind. A confection of nuts (usually pecans) covered in caramel and chocolate, typically forming a dome shape that resembles a turtle.
  • turtle trap: When I was little, maybe 4 or 5 years old, I thought that people had called this one Sausalito shopping center a turtle trap. I’m not sure at what point it became clear to me that people had called it a “tourist trap.” Not being clear on the concept of tourists, I assume I’d interpreted the word I’d heard as “tortoise,” then remembered it as “turtle.” To this day, I still think of that place as the Turtle Trap. Especially since I can’t remember its “real” name.
  • “Turtles are quiet.” A page from Leslie Patricelli‘s most excellent book Quiet LOUD. The book is full of quiet things, and loud things. But somehow this is the one we remember when trying to encourage Phoebe to be quiet: “Quiet like a turtle.”
  • “I like turtles” I just saw this in a post on riddlebiddle, but it has apparently been making the rounds for months. And kicked off a lot of video responses. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, have a look at this video on YouTube (It’s only about 17 seconds long.)

turtle.jpg
A turtle at our local zoo. Or a tortoise at our local zoo, if you want to be particular. Or if you want to be British about it.

11 11 bits for 11/11

It’s now 11:00. And today is 11/11. So it seems only fitting that I should bring you some 11-related content.

    1111.jpg

  1. 11:11 My favorite time to see on a digital clock. Whenever John or I notice it, we always say “eleven eleven.” (I suppose unless we are in some sort of situation where that might be inappropriate. [Insert inappropriate situation here.] )
  2. I came across this little poem when I was little. (Before I was 11, even.) Each digit should be pronounced by name. (So for any “1” say “one.”)

    11 was a racehorse
    22 was 12
    1111 race 1 day
    22112

  3. 11 is 3 in binary
  4. musical eleventh:

    In music or music theory an eleventh is the note eleven scale degrees from the root of a chord and also the interval between the root and the eleventh.

  5. Apollo 11: landed on the moon in 1969. With people in it.
  6. The movie “Ocean’s Eleven” (1960) and the (2001) remake.
  7. The Armistice ending WWI went into effect on the 11th day of the 11th month. At the 11th hour, no less.
  8. The eleventh hour: the last minute before a deadline. As in “I’m usually scrambling to get my work done up to the eleventh hour.”
  9. The eleven o-clock news: a common time, and label, for late-night TV news.
  10. Elevenses. A light, late-morning snack traditional in the UK. Now seen as a bit old-fashioned. (As if snacking could ever go out of style.)
  11. “These go up to 11.” Nigel Tufnel of Spinal Tap is proud of his amplifiers, whose volume control dials have numbers that go all the way up to 11. Not 10 like other amps. So it must be better. And this list goes up to 11, too, you know. Lists that go up to 11 are better than lists that only go up to 10.

make like a tree

I’m quite fond of trees. You might even say that I identify with them. To celebrate their arborial grandness, and to follow up on the squirreliness of last week’s list, I bring you a Themed Thing list of Trees.

  • The Lorax, by Dr. Seuss. This beloved book features Truffula trees, and is a parable (?) about the impact of excessive deforestation, industrialization and consumerism. The Lorax is a little creature who voices the warnings. “I speak for the trees.”
  • The Giving Tree, Shel Silverstein. A book about a boy, who takes serious advantage of a generous tree. The tree gives, and the boy/man takes and takes. And takes. Till all that’s left of the tree is a stump. And this is supposed to be a moving tale of generosity. An environmentalist friend of mine from college once said of it, “I think it’s misguided.”

    • the_lorax.jpgthe_giving_tree.jpg

  • A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, a coming of age novel by Betty Smith.
  • The Tree of Man, a novel by Australian Author (and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature), Patrick White.
  • tree-hugger: A term used to refer to environmentalists, especially those who look to protect forests. Sometimes used pejoratively, but embraced by others.
  • Arbor Day A holiday for planting and caring for trees. And maybe for hugging them. In the US, it’s celebrated in April. (The next one is April 25th, 2008. Only 168 shopping days left.)
  • Christmas Tree A possibly Pagan-derived holiday tradition of decorating a tree with ornaments and lights and such. Usually a pine tree.

    • lost_pants_tree.jpg

  • syntactic trees (tree structures) Diagrams representing hierarchical structure are often described as trees. People studying syntax spend a fair amount of time drawing tree diagrams of sentences.
  • family tree The tree is used as a metaphor to describe relationships within a family, especially when drawing a diagram of relatedness.
  • Trees are prominent in mythologies and foklore from many cultures, including many variations on a mystic Tree of Life.

    • family_tree.jpg yggdrasil.jpg dryad11.jpg
    A German woodcut of a family tree, the Yggdrasil, and The Dryad by Evelyn De Morgan

  • Dryads, tree nymphs (or wood nymphs) from Greek mythology. They are among the magical creatures to be found in the Chronicals of Narnia. See also “The Dryad”, a story be Hans Christian Anderson
  • In Greek Mythology, Daphne is turned into a laurel tree while trying to escape the clutches of an amourous Apollo.
  • The Ents, from the Lord of the Rings trilogy by J. R. R. Tolkien. Big tree people.
  • “Shaking the Tree”, an album by Peter Gabriel. Also a song with Youssou N’dour. [YouTube]
  • “barking up the wrong tree” An idiom alluding to a dog chasing a cat up a tree, but mistaking the location of said cat. It means “acting based on some mistaken impression”
  • “can’t see the forest for the trees”An expression to describe when someone is too caught up in the details to understand the larger context.
  • Then there’s the playground chant:

    X & Y sitting in a tree
    K-I-S-S-I-N-G

    • How do you like them apples?

    Fall has fallen here in the northern hemisphere, and in my neck of the woods, this means it’s apple-picking season.¹ Which seems like as good a reason as any to pick apples for this week’s Themed Things Thursday.

    1. Apple of my eye. An expression meaning one who is most dear to the speaker.

      2. cortland_apple.jpg

    2. The Big Apple. A nickname for New York City. One source identifies its origins from usage by African-American stablehands at a New Orleans racetrack in the 1920s. (Wikipedia says it was first used by touring jazz musicians in the 1930s.)
    3. Snow White. A fairytale in which a girl falls asleep after eating a poisoned apple.
    4. An apple a day keeps the doctor away. A saying suggesting that eating apples is good for the health. I found a bit on origins of the saying:

      From “Random House Dictionary of Popular Proverbs and Sayings” by Gregory Y. Titelman (1996): “An apple a day keeps the doctor away. Eating fruit regularly keeps one healthy. First found as a Welsh folk proverb (1866)” ‘Eat an apple on going to bed,/ And you’ll keep the doctor from earning his bread.’ First attested in the United States in 1913…”

    5. Adam’s apple. A bump on the front of the neck, tending to me more prominent in adult males, from the “forward protrusion of the thyroid cartilage.” Likely nicknamed based on the Biblical story of Eve giving an apple to Adam.

      6. archibald_apple_tree.jpg

    6. Newton’s apple. A falling apple (which may or not have bonked him on the head) may or may not have contributed to Newton’s theory of universal gravitation.
    7. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. An expression meaning that the offspring will often turn out like the parent(s).
    8. Johnny Appleseed. An American folk hero famed for planting lots of apple trees.
    9. Apple Inc.² A company. Makes computers. One line of which is named after a type of apple, the macintosh. Has a logo shaped like an apple_rainbow.jpgapple_clear.jpg
      apple with a bite out of it. Has a variety of iProducts: iMac, iPod, iPhone, iCup…
    10. An apple for the teacher. An apple is known in the US as traditional gift to give to a teacher. (The fruit, not the computers. But I bet most teachers would appreciate getting an Apple.) Has (probably) led to apples showing up on greeting cards and coffee mugs as symbols of the teaching profession (along with rulers, blackboards and squid). (No wait, scratch that last one. I was just checking to see if you were still reading this.)

    ——–

    ¹ We live in an area with many apple orchards, and Phoebe even got to go apple picking with her daycare last week. I hope we’ll get to go together some time this year. Late October last year, we went to a nearby orchard that grows over 50 varieties of apples. Pick-your-own season was past, so our experience was less about apple picking than apple choosing. But it was still fun. And the apples were yummy.

    ² I read that Apple Inc. officially dropped “Computers” from its name earlier this year. I hadn’t even noticed.

    apples_triangle.jpg

    squawk

    pirateparrot.jpgHere 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

    1. 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.
    2. Parrots, especially African Grey Parrots, are well known as birds who can imitate human speech.
    3. 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.”
    4. 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.
    5. 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.
    6. Poll or Polly has been a common parrot name for centuries, with an early documented use from 1611.
    7. 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.

    8. 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

    9. Or Paulie (1998), a movie about a parrot.
    10. 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).
    11. 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
    12. Parrot Heads are the nickname given to fans of the musician Jimmy Buffett
    13. And to round things off, I bring you Python’s parrot. The ex-parrot. He is decidedly not pining for the fjords.

    ————————–

    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.

    Avast!

    pirate_jack_rackham.jpg As Bloody Captain Rayner of the Fearsome Frigate Skwib informs, this week brings Talk Like a Pirate Day, an annual event that is marked by talking like pirates.

    As we ramp up towards this venerable day, there are many piratical preparations to be made.

    For a start, here’s a little quiz that helps you find your own pirate name. Don’t maraud on the high seas without one.

    My pirate name is:
    Black Anne Cash

    Like anyone confronted with the harshness of robbery on the high seas, you can be pessimistic at times. You’re musical, and you’ve got a certain style if not flair. You’ll do just fine. Arr!

    Get your own pirate name from piratequiz.com.
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