Category: silliness

talking tomatoes

We’re in the kitchen eating breakfast. Phoebe gets up to use the bathroom.

Phoebe: Don’t eat all the pear while I’m gone!
Me: I won’t. What if I eat all the oatmeal?
Phoebe: Don’t eat all the oatmeal! I want some.
Me: What if I eat all the sassafrass?
Phoebe: I don’t think we have any sassafrass.
Me: What if I eat all the… tomatillos?
Phoebe: I don’t think he would like that.
Me: [?] Tomatillo is a kind of tomato.
Phoebe: …that they eat in Spain?
Me: Does it sound like a Spanish word to you?
Phoebe: Yes.
Me: You’re right. It is a Spanish word.
Phoebe: Then they must be in Spain!
Me: I’m not actually sure. You know, there are other places in the world where they speak Spanish.
Phoebe: Tomatoes don’t speak!


Phoebe enjoys her breakfast with pears, oatmeal and reference-resolution adventures.

setting the machinery in motion

So, yeah. About that “deadline” we set for March 1st…didn’t quite make it.

Holly and I are still working out the kinks in the machinery of readying our 2009 Just Posts finalists for voting. The process is fairly laborious and complex. We’re sorting posts into categories, and fine-tuning our rankings based on reviewer scores and comments, plus our own scores and comments. We are then passing this data through a bayesian algorithm to map the data onto a multidimensional target, which we are modelling out of styrofoam, aluminum foil and chewing gum. Our elaborate system of gears, levers, pulleys and springs will then lob sporks and chopsticks at the target. We will analyze the configuration of utensils to determine the optimal set of posts. Unfortunately, we’ve run into a bit of a roadblock due to some disagreement over how best to use the trained gerbils.¹

So, it will be…a few more days.

While you wait, please study the following instructional video:


(It’s OKGO and their new video for This Too Shall Pass.)

¹ I’ll also be pretty busy with a few other things. My mother is arriving tonight for a week-long visit, for one thing.²

² I’m hoping that she can help carve some of the styrofoam and chew some of the gum. Or at least help us tally the sporks. (I’m afraid she won’t be much help as a gerbil handler.)

Borrowed Pants: Selected Texts from the Pants Archives

From my place in the seat of the Pants Institute, I am on occasion privileged to receive interesting pockets of Pants Knowledge from fellow Pants Scholars from the wider Pants World.

PoetTraveler of Reaching for my pen… recently left the following gem of Pants Lore in the comments of my about page, an article which surely deserves your clothes attention.¹

The quest for perfect Pants is a longstanding one. Many have searched for the ideal symbol of this emblematic icon. There has been much coverage on the subject. Some academics argue that perfection is impossible. Others say not so, it’s all down to genes.

Indeed, the great pants-philosopher, Levy of Denim, produced a schematic that took Plato’s theory of Forms further . For Levy, Pants was all about form. His addendum to Plato’s idea was not a re-butt-al, figuratively speaking. He postulated that Form clings to genes and to this day one of most widely used expressions in the field contains both a noun and an adjective incorporated in the effusive expression “I’m panting for more”.

– Excerpt from “Pantalonia – The Path of Bottomless Knowledge” –

After a brief discussion of the Text, he also shared the following:

Some dissidents – notably Diogenes of Sinope were critical of Levy of Denim’s association with Plato’s ideas. He accused Levy of being inelastic in his coverage, of dressing part of the Form concept in such a way so that it became an inelastic pro-position. Levy of Denim was noted for labeling his ideas carefully and when Diogene’s criticisms reached him he was said to have sighed and murmured “That Diogenes is not exactly a barrel of laughs” The ancient greek translation is inaccurate because of ambiguity in this context and another meaning could be “He’s not getting me over a barrel”, but there is no collective agreement on this possible alternative meaning and in any case Denim of Levy was, at that time, apparently happily married to Levytica, a seamstressed lady from Syracuse.

I expect you will agree that briefs of this fashion are a tight fit for the body of Pants Knowledge assembled in the Pants Institute, and should be stored in the venerable drawers of the Pants Bureau Archives.

This message was approved by the Ministry of Pants.

———
¹This pun was also borrowed from PoetTraveler.²
²Even more Pants material can be sewn, or um, seen here, as well as more of our off the cuff³ exchange.
³…or on the fly, as it were.

Today’s forecast

Hour-by-hour forecast for Thursday, January 21

2:00 a.m. 95% chance of baby wakefulness
3:00 a.m. continued baby wakefulness with intermittent parental snoozes
4:00 a.m. continued baby wakefulness with intermittent parental outbursts
5:00 a.m. 85% chance of fitful slumber, punctuated by dreams of wakefulness
6:00 a.m. 99% chance of beeping alarm clock, chance of snooze button 100%
7:00 a.m. Blustery tempers and high-speed chases, chance of toddler eye precipitation 98%
8:00 a.m. Frosty windshield combined with hot tempers lead to isolated storms
9:00 a.m. 80% chance of showers skipped
10:00 a.m. 75% chance of feeling snowed over

Mood likely will continue to be partly cloudy throughout the day, with scattered thoughts and intermittent storms of crankiness.

Image from wpclipart.

The 00s: The Decade of the Butt Crack

After my last post, in which I declare that I barely noticed an entire decade, I’ve spent some time reflecting on the decade. Because I’m pretty sure I was there.

One thing that stands out in my memory is that I had to change my underwear.

And by that, I mean that I found that styles of underwear that I had been wearing previously no longer worked with new styles of pants.

You know what I’m talking about.

Low rise.

In the early years of the last decade, more and more people were dropping their pants. As the decade progressed, waistlines kept moving lower and lower, such that many feared what depths might be exposed before the trend reached its bottom. Hanging low on the waist, the jeans of this brave new world exposed a large swath of midriff in the front.

And from behind, they showed a lot more behind.

Before you knew it, you couldn’t walk down a city street without seeing hip young things showing off their coin slots.

This was a new dawn rising in the fashion world. Or perhaps a new moon. This was the dawning of the age of butt cleavage.

(Who knew that plumbers would start a fashion trend?)

We may not have seen much progress in many social trends in the last decade. We may not have seen great strides in the arts. What we did see was a lot more ass.

The 50s presented the poodle skirt. The 80s offered legwarmers.

The 00s had the butt crack.

bumper stickers for word nerds

This week’s Monday Mission was to compose a license plate or a bumper sticker. I felt like doing several. Because I’m like that. (I’m also late getting this posted. Because I’m like that.)

For more license plates and bumper stickers, drive over to Painted Maypole’s and honk.

Let it mold.

Oh the veggies in there are frightful,
And takeout’s so delightful
And since the leftover soup’s too old
Let it mold, let it mold, let it mold.

Since the fridge door last was closing
The food’s been decomposing.
That old tuna salad’s growing bold
Let it mold, let it mold, let it mold.

When we finally face the blight
How I’ll try very hard not to gag
But if we hold our noses night
We can load up a hazmat bag.

The eggs have all gone rotten
And the tofu’s best forgotten
But as long takeout’s still sold
Let it mold, let it mold, let it mold.

This was a Monday Mission, which called for re-written holiday songs. For potentially less toxic songs, pay a visit to Painted Maypole.

12 reasons why I won’t be giving Mark Rayner’s new novel to my mother-in-law for Christmas

The cover of a book I will not be giving to my mother-in-law.
Mark Rayner’s new novel, Marvellous Hairy, has gotten some great reviews, and some marvellously entertaining press. It’s been published just in time for the major gift-giving holidays. The paperback comes in an attractive compact format, and it also comes in an economical ebook version. You would think this would make it an excellent gift.

In spite of this, I will most definitely NOT be giving a copy of this book to my mother-in-law. Here are the main reasons why:

The 12 Main Reasons I won’t be giving Marvellous Hairy to my mother-in-law:

  1. The novel contains “adult” language.
  2. The book uses colorful descriptive language, and I mean beyond describing a room as having been painted “belligerently pink.”
  3. I’m talking about sentences like the following:

    He had long greasy black hair that clung to his head like an octopus humping his skull, and then fell onto his his shoulders in oily post-coital exhaustion.

  4. The book has sex in it.
  5. The book has sex and monkeys in it.
  6. My mother-in-law would be fairly scandalized by something that induced me to compose a sentence including both the words “sex” and “monkeys.”
  7. My mother-in-law has probably never spent any significant amount of time contemplating what it would be like to grow a tail.
  8. It is extremely unlikely that the phrase “Release the monkeys!” would make her giggle.
  9. She wouldn’t know what to make of a playful romp of a novel that is described as “part literary fun-ride, part fabulist satire, and part slapstick comedy.”
  10. Especially one that has been called “deeply, unsettlingly weird.”
  11. She certainly would not take well to the suggestion that she get in touch with her “inner monkey.”
  12. She would probably much prefer some lavender-scented hand soap.


Disclosure: Since I’m a big fan of The Skwib, Mark Rayner’s humor blog, I was all set to buy a copy of this book. (Though not for my mother-in-law.) It was already in my Amazon shopping cart and everything. But then Mark offered to send me a copy. (For FREE! Sucker!) How could I resist? (The monkeys made me do it.)


(Monkey images from wpclipart.)