Category: randomness

if the shoe fits

Shoes and boots and slippers. (Oh my.) This week’s Themed Things Thursday is all about footwear. Try these on for size.

  1. The old woman who lived in a shoe
    A nursery rhyme. I hadn’t remembered the abusive turn:

    There was an old woman who lived in a shoe,
She had so many children, she didn’t know what to do;
She gave them some broth without any bread,
She whipped them all soundly, and put them to bed.

    (Someone’s written up a less harsh version, too.)

  2. to walk in someone else’s shoes
    walk in my shoes
    walk a mile in another’s shoes
    walk a mile in another man’s mocassins
    walk a kilometer in another kid’s bunny slippers     (or maybe not)

    bunnyslippers.jpg
These expressions suggest that we should not pass judgment on another’s actions without having lived through the same experiences. Among other things, the Depeche Mode song “Walking in my shoes” is inspired by this. (video)

  3. Blue Suede Shoes
    Don’t step on them. Walked in and passed down by many different singers, including Elvis.
  4. The Quick-Quick Slow Death
    This episode of the Avengers features a cobbler who makes shoes for a dance school, and who really wants to make a pair of shoes for Emma Peel’s perfect feet.
  5. The Twelve Dancing Princesses
    A fairytale about 12 princesses who would sneak out of their locked sleeping chamber at night, and wear down their slippers every night dancing.
  6. The Red Shoes
    A fairy tale by Hans Christian Anderson. A cautionary tale with some red shoes that won’t let the wearer stop dancing.
  7. The Man with One Red Shoe (1985)
    A movie about a man (Tom Hanks) whose single red shoe drew the attention of the FBI.
  8. Cinderella
    Many versions of this tale feature a special slipper which was used to identify the woman (who left in a hurry with only one shoe) after charming the prince at his ball. Often a glass slipper, potentially based on the version by Perrault, it was sometimes also described as a golden slipper. (It is not generally described as a bunny slipper.)

    9. rubyslippers1.jpg

  9. The Wizard of Oz
The movie features Dorothy’s iconic ruby slippers, taken from the feet of the witch squished by Dorothy’s house. The original book by L. Frank Baum featured silver slippers. Wicked, Gregory Maguire’s take on the tale, compromised between the two by having the slippers be of an indeterminate shiny color.
  10. These boots are made for walkin’, by Nancy Sinatra.

    These boots are made for walking,
    and that’s just what they’ll do
    One of these days these boots
    are gonna walk all over you

  11. Seven-league boots
    Magic boots that are featured in various fairy and folk tales that allow the wearer to travel great distances with each step. (Those boots were made for some serious walking.)
  12. Kinky Boots
    A movie about a shoe factory owner who tries to find a new niche by making shoes and boots for transvestites. His inspiration, a singer named Lola, is played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, known to me better as the relentless agent from Serenity.
  13. They Died With Their Boots On (1941)
    A movie about Custer’s last stand. Haven’t seen it. Probably doesn’t actually feature a lot about boots.
  14. Imelda Marcos
    The former first lady of the Philippines was well known for her extravagantly large collection of shoes. Over a thousand pairs. Imelda’s shoes can apparently now be seen in a shoe museum.
  15. In these shoes, by Kirsty MacColl intheseshoes.jpg

    I once met a man
    with a sense of adventure
    He was dressed to thrill
    wherever he went
    He said “Let’s make love
    on a mountain top
    Under the stars
    on a big hard rock”
    I said “In these shoes?
    I don’t think so”
    I said “Honey,
    let’s do it here.”

learn to dance in 3 easy steps

Okay, so maybe these videos won’t teach you to dance. But they are lots of fun to watch:

  1. The Jan Pehechan-Ho dance scene from Gumnaam (1966) (and featured in the movie Ghost World )
  2. Christopher Walken dances to Fatboy Slim’s “Weapon of Choice”
  3. OK Go, their famous treadmill dance to “Here it goes again”. (Hat-tip to jeanerz, who thought she was the last person on earth to have seen this, but who was the first who showed it to me.)

all roads don’t lead to Ikea

We had grand plans for the day: to go to Ikea and buy a kitchen table and an itty-bitty table for Phoebe. It’s a bit of a trek to get there, so that was pretty much the agenda for the day.

We planned to leave home by 10:00 a.m., and were happy to make it out of the house around noon.

Before leaving, I checked the directions online, and they looked pretty straightforward. We’d been there twice before, after all, so I didn’t bother to write them down. As you can guess, things were not as straightforward as I remembered. We didn’t get “lost,” exactly. We just had some difficulty finding what we expected to find. At one point, we drove down a street that looked vaguely familiar and I ever-so-briefly saw the Ikea sign poking its head up above a large building. But the end of the street came, with no sign of Ikea (or sign of the sign, for that matter). So we looped. We explored. We meandered and roamed for a bit. We marvelled at how so large a thing as an Ikea store could be so very thoroughly hidden in a rather small Massachusetts town.

Eventually, I realized that we had a road atlas in the car, and as I attempted to get us back to the main drag, we passed a street sign (an unusual thing to see in many parts of Massachusetts) that said “Ikea Way.” We took this to be a very good sign.

Soon after, we found our hidden prize. It was as if we found that Easter egg, albeit one the size of several city blocks. Our cheaply manufactured blue and yellow pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. This felt like accomplishment. It was as if we had completed a quest. I ask you, can one feel such a sense of accomplishment by merely following directions? Pshaw.

(Oh, and we did get a kitchen table. And a table and 2 chairs for Phoebe that are really frickin’ cute, and that John’s already taken over for his laptop. Plus a kitchen clock. And a basket for the laundry room. Oh, and some tongs. And a huge stuffed orca, 2 rats, 4 bats, a crab, a turtle, some finger puppets, a wooden gear toy and really, we did try to show some restraint. We could at least fit all our purchases in the car at the end of the trip. Without even resorting to strapping Phoebe’s car seat to the roof of the car.)

extra cheese

You know what really cheeses me off? When I finish a list and realize I’ve forgotten something.

It’s like going to the grocery store to buy bread, eggs and milk, and then remembering I need cheese too as I’m driving on my way there, but I figure I’ll wait to add it to my list, since it would be hazardous to write while driving, even if it is only one word, and then when I get there, going into this trance as I wander the aisles with my shopping cart, and wondering what it means that supermarkets now play music that was actually popular when I was in high school, and feeling up the melons and squeezing the toilet paper, then browsing the cereal aisle and feeling nostalgic for the days of my youth when lucky charms were an exotic unattainable bowl of cereal at the end of the rainbow because my mother insisted on having us eat healthy cereals like wheat chex and when I finally tried them, they really weren’t that thrilling, and resisting the urge to buy cookies and redi-whip and donuts, and before you know it, I’ve filled up the cart and then I head home with my bags of groceries, and after I put away my bread and my milk and my pint of organic blackberry sorbet, which seemed like a healthier choice than the chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream, but screw it, I bought that too, and bananas and maple syrup and zucchini and oatmeal and frozen peas, and then find a crumpled up paper in my pocket, and it’s my grocery list with its three measly items (bread, eggs and milk) scribbled on it, and realize that I’ve forgotten the eggs, and (crap!) I also forgot to get more cheese.

You know what I’m saying?

Anyhow, I realized that I left off some key pieces of cheese from yesterday’s cheeseful bounty. Such as:

  1. Richard Cheese, a musician who, along with his band Lounge Against the Machine, provides cheesy lounge music reinterpretations of so many your favorite contemporary songs. Also in the music category is the band The String Cheese Incident. Then there’s the apparently sadly now-defunct Cheese Patrol, a

    yearly homage to all the songs that people vociferously hate but secretly know all the words to. These are the songs we grew up with; overorchestrated. overwrought, oversynthed, over the top.

  2. Somehow I also managed to leave off the appearance of the cheese guy in the Buffy episode “Restless“, as well as a few other cheesy references. And in my research I came across this brilliant essay “An Analysis of Cheese as Metaphor in Buffy the Vampire Slayer”. Apparently, the layers of cheese in the Buffy series run far deeper than I’d realized.
  3. For more on cheese philosophy, you can check out this essay “on the non-existence of cheese.” Is there proof of the existence of cheese in the universe? Perhaps not.
  4. Then there’s the Cheese Burglar. But I’m not really a big fan of the cult of which he is a member. So instead I offer this cartoon mouse classic, The Cheese Burglar (1946). (You can even see it on YouTube. Though I admit to not having watched anything close to the whole 7 minutes.)
  5. I actually like the animation of this (shorter) shortThe Cheese Trap better, which features a cg version of the board game Mouse Trap, one of my childhood favorites.
  6. Do you hanker for a hunka cheese? Do you remember this rather creepy cartoon psa from the 70s? You might also be interested in the hunk-hankerers guest appearance on the Family Guy.
  7. Yesterday’s cheese did not include much in the way of cheese activities for those of you with too much time and not enough cheese on your hands. Options include: a quiz to let you know what kind of cheese you are. (There’s also a similar-veined one-step cheese “comparator,” but the reviews are not stellar.)
  8. There’s even an experiment with cheese that you can perform at home on your own. (However, the author does recommend exercising caution if you are lactose tolerant.) (And no, my dear seester, this is not the same cheese experiment you tried with me that one time when we were little. I’ll write about that later.)
  9. Most thrillingly, you can actually watch cheese *live* online. That’s right, you can watch watch cheddar cheese aging. Not only is it just as exciting as it sounds, it is also apparently the cool thing to do. (If you don’t have the months to spare to see the change in progress, you can also check out this time-lapse video encapsulating 3 months of the cheese-aging process.)
  10. And even though I offered it up yesterday, no cheese list would be complete without The Cheese Shop sketch. This time, I serve it up in its youtubiful glory:

used

Last night I signed up for YouTube, and posted a video there for the first time ever. (Can you blame me?) When I went to sign up, and selected my user name, I got a message saying that the user name was already taken. My first thought was that I must have already signed up for YouTube, and just forgotten about it. So I tried my various passwords. No go. So maybe I used a different password that I’ve forgotten about. So I hit the button for “forgot password,” and got the message that an email with my password would be sent to my email address. So I waited. For my email. No email. NO EMAIL!

Do you realize what this means? Somebody out there signed up for a YouTube account with my name. MY NAME! Mine! For the first time ever, and I mean ever, I was faced with having to make a second choice. It was a bit of a shock. I ended up choosing alejna99. In part because I’m amused by the idea of having 99 alejnas signing up before me.

so blue

Feeling a bit blue, folks? Well I’ve got blue folks for you. A whole list of blue folks. Some serious, some silly. Blue-skinned, blue-furred or just blue in the face. Some people, some people-like creatures. One sort of blob. Plus one god.

A List of Blue Folks

  1. Smurfs. (By the way, I’m actually very disturbed by the Unicef Smurf commercial. Which is I guess the message they were going for.)

    smurf.jpggrouchy.jpg-ette.jpg

  2. Sesame Street offers Cookie Monster and Grover.

    3. tv_sesame_street_cookie_monster_interested.jpggrover.jpgbloo.png

  3. Then there’s the more contemporary Bloo from the cartoon Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends.
  4. Blue Man Group. A group of men who are blue. Well, who paint themselves blue to perform some sort of performance. In the show Arrested Development, the character Tobias, a blue man who has aspirations to be a Blue Man, spends several episodes painted blue.

    5. bmg12_tn.jpgthe_tick.jpg

  5. The Tick. Mighty blue justice. A big blue superhero from the animated and live action TV shows.
  6. Various X-Men characters. The movies add one new blue mutant with each sequel. The first had Mystique, the second added Nightcrawler, and the third added Beast.

    m.jpgn.jpgb.jpg

  7. The Wee Free Men and other books by Terry Pratchett featuring the Nac Mac Feegle. Little blue people based loosely on the Picts of Scotland, who would paint their skin blue before battle. (See also Braveheart, which depicted blue face-painting that may or may not have been historically appropriate.)
  8. The Blue Fugates. An Appalachian family prone to methemoglobinemia, a medical condition causing the appearance of a bluish tinge to the skin. You can read more about them and other historical and mythical blue figures, like
  9. Blue Moovians. Ancient blue humanoids. Who knew?
  10. The Tuareg, a Berber ethnic group. Not actually blue, but

    The Tuareg are sometimes called the “Blue People” because the indigo pigment in the cloth of their traditional robes and turbans stained the wearer’s skin dark blue.

  11. The Hindu deity Krishna.* You can also learn more about why Krishna is colored blue.

    12. krishna.jpg

*(Note: I hesitated to include Krishna in my list, even though he is so very blue, seeing as he is an actual god and all. I don’t want to be disrespectful. However, upon remembering that he is often depicted as a playful god, I hope that his inclusion in my playful list will not offend. (cf. This line from a story in Shri Shyam Katha: “Then the playful Lord Krishna said. ‘First you promise me and then I will ask for a boon'” (Note: I must share that the preceding quotation made me giggle, as my most recent encounter of the word boon was about something else.)))

5 5th things

Here’s a list of 5 things of the 5th persuasion. Want to know more than that? I take the fifth.

Five fifths

    5. Fifth Business, a novel by Canadian author Robertson Davies. Part of the Deptford Trilogy.

    5. The Fifth Dimension. An American band from the 60s known for songs such as “One Less Bell to Answer” and “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In”. (Also amathematical abstraction.)

    5. a fifth interval. A musical abstraction. A difference between two notes in (Western) music theory. A perfect fifth is 7 semitones.

    5. The Fifth Element. A movie by director Luc Besson.

    5. The Fifth Elephant. A book by Terry Pratchett.

(Note: I was going to submit this as part of the //engtech 5 things contest, but noticed that I missed the deadline. I have trouble with deadlines. But what the hell, I’ll post away anyhow. I like lists, I like things, and 5 is as good a number as any. And way better a number than 4.)

I’ve got a lot of balls

I’ve got balls. Bouncy balls. A whole lot of ’em.

Here’s a list of some bouncing balls I’ve encountered. A list of 5 things of the bouncy ball persuasion. And a whole lot more balls than that. On with the bouncing!

  1. The Sony Bravia commercial. My sister sent me a link to this ad, which I hadn’t seen before. It features a whole lot of bouncing balls, bouncing down a street in San Francisco. And through the wonder of YouTube, I can bounce it to you here.

    The making of video is fun to watch, too. You can also read more about it, and see some cool photos. And want to get some balls of your own? Get a bunch of downloads.

  2. Want to know more about the bouncing of balls? Learn about the physics of bouncy balls, or about bouncing ball simulations.
  3. Here’s another bouncing ball commercial, this time for a museum in Mexico. Features a pair of balls.
  4. “Follow the bouncing ball.” Old-time TV (and movie?) sing-alongs used to feature a bouncing ball that would bounce along the words displayed on the screen. It’s a bit hard to find examples of this, though I came across a version someone random made and put up on YouTube. Or if you don’t mind being forced to watch an irritating ad, you can sing along with some old TV show themes songs with the help of a bouncing ball.
  5. My favorite balls of all are from the Futurama episode “War is the H-word“. (By the way, this is also the episode where Leela dresses up as a man, and where Fry buys his ham-flavored gum. For “breath as fresh as a spring ham.”) This episode features a planet of bouncing balls. And these fabulous ball-bouncing quotes, from the treaty negotiations with the head of the balls:

    We demand bouncing, followed by rolling, followed by rolling of the third type.

    and

    We cannot condone bouncing of the seventh variety.

    and

    The Elders tell of a young ball much like you. He bounced three meters in the air. Then he bounced 1.8 meters in the air. Then he bounced four meters in the air. Do I make myself clear?

    and let’s not forget when Leela says:

    We’re here. I followed the bouncing balls.

bouncy_balls.jpg

This post is being submitted to the //engtech 5 things contest, which strongly advocates bouncing of the 5th variety.

Choose an identity

“Choose an identity”choose_identity.jpg

Those are the words you get when you’re going to leave a comment on a Blogger blog. And for some reason they struck me tonight. So much of what we do is about choosing an identity, defining an identity, constructing an identity…

If only it were always as easy as checking a box, clicking a button.

I keep meaning to write my “about” page. But I keep hesitating. It’s so hard to choose just a few terms to define myself. What parts of me do I want to present? What roles? What truths? What culturally-defined fictions? What list of quirks? And what pants will I be wearing?

Who the hell do I think I am?

Who the hell do I want you to think I am?

Maybe I’ll just reuse this identity. At least she sees a lot of action.