Category: silliness

Easy as pie

pi pie
My 2010 Pi Pie

Happy Pi Day! In celebration of Pi Day¹, and its auspicious landing on a Thursday, I offer to you this very large helping of pie-themed things. Mmmm, pie.

  • Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie: a line from the nursery rhyme Sing of song of sixpence²:

    Sing a song of sixpence
    a pocket full of rye
    four and twenty blackbirds
    baked in a pie

  • Little Jack Horner: Another nursery rhyme with pie.

    Little Jack Horner
    Sat in the corner,
    Eating a Christmas pie;
    He put in his thumb,
    And pulled out a plum,
    And said ‘What a good boy am I!

    • little jack horner wsatterlee 1882 king with pie 012

  • Can she make a cherry pie?: A line from the folk song Billy Boy.
  • pie in the sky: used to describe plans or hopes considered unrealistic and overly optimistic
  • “high apple pie in the sky hopes”: a line from the song High Hopes, a song sung by Frank Sinatra
  • as easy as pie: an expression meaning “very easy.” In my experience, pie is not the easiest thing in the world to make. It involves crust, an oven, preparation of ingredients.³
  • “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe,” a quote by Carl Sagan
  • As American as apple pie: an expression meant to describe something quintessentially American. Of course, many cultures have versions of apple pies.⁴ Apple pie has nevertheless achieved a place in American culture:

    Although apple pies have been eaten since long before the European colonisation of the Americas, “as American as apple pie” is a saying in the United States, meaning “typically American”.[14] In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, apple pie became a symbol of American prosperity and national pride. A newspaper article published in 1902 declared that “No pie-eating people can be permanently vanquished.”[15] The dish was also commemorated in the phrase “for Mom and apple pie” – supposedly the stock answer of American soldiers in World War II, whenever journalists asked why they were going to war.[16]

    (From the Apple Pie Wiki Page⁵.)

  • American Pie: Don McLean’s signature song, first released in 1971. Bye-bye Miss American Pie… (I’m quite fond of this large-scale lip dub video version of the song produced by the city of Grand Rapids Michigan.)
  • American Pie (1999): a movie that includes various analogies of sex and pie.
  • pie-eyed: drunk
  • piebald: having patches of black and white (or other colors), especially describing the coat of an animal.
  • pie chart: a type of graph in which proportions of a whole (such as a whole data set) are depicted as wedges of a circle
    pie-pie-chart
  • piece of the pie: an expression meaning a share in something, such as a reward or credit.
  • mud pie: a pattie-shaped blob of mud, commonly made when playing in the mud
  • sweetie pie: a common term of endearment
  • cow pie: Not actually a pie made of cow (that would would be a beef pot pie), but a lump of cow manure. (Definitely not a term of endearment)
  • pie in the face: a bit of slapstick comedy, usually involving a whipped cream pie. Just like it sounds, it involves someone getting a pie in the face.
  • 10 banana cream pies: Sesame Street once featured a rather clumsy baker who would stand at the top of a flight of stairs, and announce the number of some sort of dessert he was holding, before falling and spilling all of them. He may not actually have used banana cream pies for 10, but the phrase seems to have stuck. (cf. the use on the show The Family Guy.)

Have more pies to bring to the table? Throw ’em in the comments.

¹ So-called, as the date (at least as it is written here in the US) is 3-14, is reminiscent of the number Pi’s initial 3 digits: 3.14. My past celebrations of Pi Day have included easy as pi, my personal gallery of Pi Pies, and a Pi-themed list.
²I was surprised to learn that this nursery rhyme was actual used by pirates to convey messages. This is the sort of thing that would usually send me to Snopes to check, but in this case Snopes is where I found it.
³ Toast is much easier to make.
⁴ I love tarte aux pommes as made in France. You know what was hard to get in France when I lived there, though? Doritos.
⁵Really. Apple pie has a Wiki page. So do pumpkin pie, pecan pie and cherry pie.
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Images: Little Jack Horner and the king with the pie are both from Project Gutenberg.

photos of exclamation points

I happened to look at the search terms people used to find my blog today, and saw that someone had come seeking “exclamation point photos.” I found this rather surprising. Perplexing, even. For one thing, I haven’t posted (or hadn’t yet posted), to my knowledge, any actual photographs of exclamation points. (I did once compose and post a rather nice graphic of an exclamation point made of punctuation marks, but it’s not a photo.)

For another thing, I was surprised that someone out there would actually be looking for “exclamation point photos.” That is, someone out there who is not me. As it happens, I have found myself noticing exclamation points in the wild for the past several years. They are elusive and rare creatures, but happily, once spotted, they tend not to run away. Many of them will even consent to having their photos taken.

First, my earliest wild exclamation point sighting. This little guy was seen at the Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park in March of 2009.

It seemed to be made out of green tea, which is common for wild punctuation marks in the area. Sadly, shortly after this photo was taken, the little exclamation point was squished and smeared across the table by the fingers of a curious nearby preschooler.

This rather startled looking specimen was seen on the ceiling tiles in a lab at MIT. I think it was trying to run away. (Spotted March, 2011.)

This cute little guy was on some steps of the Great Wall of China, near Mutianyu. It posed for me in May, 2012.

And most recently, this timid creature was seen at a zoo in Massachusetts in August, 2012. It was trying to hide under a few leaves, possibly out of concern that it would be stomped on. (And it may have had some reason for concern, as I believe that the feet in the photo belong to the same individual who smushed the green tea exclamation point of the first 2 photos back in 2009.)

As you can see, my blog will now be THE go-to place for photos of exclamation points. Perhaps one day I will write a guide book on the subject.

The Oscars

Tonight, much of the world is tuning in to watch The Oscars. As for me, I’m not sure which of these Oscars has the Best Picture. I think it’s a tough call between Oscar Wilde and Oscar the Grouch.


image credits: Oscar from the Odd Couple, Oscar the Grouch, Oscar Mayer, Oscar Wilde

(I almost didn’t this post, as in the search for an Oscar Madison picture, I found this other post along the same lines. But I decided to go ahead, anyhow.)

a post in a thousand

Here is a list of a thousand things:

I know, I know. This list is not 1000 things long. But they are thousand things. Because this is my one thousandth post on this blog. (Also, the word “thousandth” is really hard to say.)




image credits: millefiori bead from Fire Mountain Gems, mille-feuille by okki, paper cranes by James..g, the M in stone photo is my own, taken in Barcelona. The thousand dollar bill is not mine, nor did I take it.

digging out

As you may have heard, the US East Coast was hit by a blizzard over the past couple of days. We weathered the storm without any incident (happily, we didn’t lose power), and by mid-morning today the skies had cleared and the sun came out. All told, it looks like we got somewhere between 18 inches and 2 feet of snow. (It was crazy-windy last night, so there was much drifting.)

John had shovelled several times during the night, so the driveway only had about 8 inches when the snow stopped. He had, however, left the car untouched. Come 3 in the afternoon, pretty much all of the other necessary shovelling was done. It was time to deal with this:


Dude, where’s my car?

Theo, who often enjoys brushing the snow off the car with our long-handled snow brush, decided that he would take on the job.


2:54:28 p.m. Trying the side of the car first, but having trouble reaching the car.


2:54:46 p.m. Around to the back, and looking determined.


2:55:09 p.m.


2:55:16 p.m.


2:55:59 p.m. “You can get the rest, Mommy.”

So it was up to me.


4:09 Close enough? I think this is kind of a good look for the car. And we didn’t have to go anywhere.


What do you see? (Please participate in the snow Rorschach test.)

12 twelve things for 12/12/12

Today is December 12th, 2012: The 12th day of the 12th month of the year 2012. Or 12/12/12. How could I resist making a list for such an auspicious day?¹ Here are 12 things featuring 12:⁴

  1. A dozen eggs: the standard number of eggs as they are sold, at least in the US and Great Britain. A standard egg cartons fit 12 eggs. (But they also come in other sizes.)
  2. A dozen roses: probably since they hatch out of eggs, roses are often also sold by the dozen. Rather than being sold in the egg carton packaging, which doesn’t hold up well to the egg sprouting, they are instead sold in bunches, and placed in vases.

  3. Cheaper by the Dozen: A biographical book by Frank Gilbreth about a family with 12 children, and subsequent adaptation to a 1950 movie of the same name. (The 2003 movie of the same name with Steve Martin is not based on that book, but also features a family with 12 children.)
  4. a dime a dozen: an idiom meaning “very commonplace.” As in: Those are nothing special. You can get them a dime a dozen. (Note that eggs, roses, and children all cost much more than a dime.)
  5. 12: the number of jurors on a US trial jury. 12 Angry Men (1957) is a movie about the jury on a murder trial. (Also remade in 1997.)
  6. Twelve Monkeys (1997): A movie directed by Terry Gilliam, and one of my personal favorites. It is not about 12 monkeys serving as jurors on a murder trial. That movie is called Twelve Angry Monkeys, and hasn’t been made. Yet.
  7. 12 days of Christmas: a period of festivities celebrated in many European Christian traditions that begins on December 25th. They are sometimes wrapped up by festivities on the 12th night, also known as Epiphany Eve.
  8. Twelfth Night: a comedy play by William Shakespeare.
  9. 12 step program: a program for addiction recovery.

    10. monklogo

  10. 12-hour clock: the convention of dividing the day into 2 12-hour chunks, a.m. and p.m. As such, 12 is the number of hours on a standard analog clock, and 12-hour digital clocks (as opposed to clocks set for 24 hours). 12:00 (12 o-clock) is noon or midnight.
  11. 12th grade: The final year of the American secondary school system, also called senior year. There are 12 numbered grades in the American school system, plus kindergarten, which isn’t numbered. (There are also 12 grades in many other countries’ school systems.)
  12. Little Twelvetoes: a song from Schoolhouse Rock about aliens with 6 fingers on their hands and 6 toes on their feet, and discussing the implications for counting (namely the use of base 12). The original song/cartooon was from 1973, but I quite like the cover version by Chavez from the 1996 tribute album Schoolhouse Rock! Rocks:

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¹ In the past, I made list for 7/7/7, 8/8/8, 9/9/9, and 10/10/10. I celebrated 11/11 on multiple occasions, including 11/11/11.²

² I didn’t celebrate 6/6/6 with a list, as I didn’t yet have this blog. Like wise for 5/5/5, 4/4/4, 3/3/3/, 2/2/2/, and 1/1/1.³

³ I have to say that this post is the last post that I am likely to post according to this pattern. While I may well choose to make a list of thirteen things, it will almost certainly not be on 13/13/13. Unless, of course, the calendar gets radically restructured next year such that we have a 13th month.

⁴ Really, more than 12, if you want to get picky. But 12 items on my list.⁵

⁵If I have 12 12 things, does that make this list a gross one?⁶

⁶ This footnote is here because I didn’t have room in my list for a foot, which has 12 inches.¹²

¹² And this one is here just to have a footnote 12.

image credits: eggs, roses, clock, 12 Monkeys

But this method doesn’t work with a tomato.

It was my second year of college, in ’90 or ’91, and I sat at a desk in a classroom with maybe a dozen other students of second-year Japanese. The first year, the class had been much bigger, with a good 30 or 40 students. But the workload was heavy, and the grading tough. The enrollment had been whittled down.

The teaching methods were pretty old-school, with textbooks that were probably from the 50s. We did a lot of in-class drills.

That particular day, we were learning the expression “to use something as something else.” (“X to shite Y o tsukaimasu.”) The instructor gave us some examples. He picked up two pencils, and held them as if they were chopsticks. Hashi to shite empitsu o tsukaimasu, he intoned in his booming fluent-but-American-accented Japanese. “I use pencils as chopsticks.” Then he asked for more examples from the class using the construction.

“Use a rope as a belt,” someone might have said. “I use a book as a tray,” someone else might have offered.

I really can’t remember what examples my classmates came up with. Because as I sat there, I needed all of my concentration to contain the urge to giggle. The one sentence that popped into my head was: Nihon de wa, naihu to shite te o tsukaimasu.¹

In Japan, the hand is used like a knife.²

I’m sad to say that I was not called upon to share my example. I was relieved at the time, as I had not yet released my inner goofball. Also, it’s hard to say how the very serious instructor would have taken my contribution. Especially had it been accompanied by uncontrollable fits of giggling.

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¹ Google translate helped me arrive at this:
日本 で は ナイフ として手を使います. There was once a time when I could have written this sentence without looking it up, but that day has long passed. Also, I only wrote Japanese by hand. I would have had no idea how to type any of it!
² The actual wording from the 1978 Ginsu commercial is: “In Japan, the hand can be used like a knife.”

vegetables of character

And now for something completely different. Well, not completely. It’s still produce. But kinda sorta different.

It’s not tomatoes.¹


I think this guy looks a bit like a cross between The Shmoo and Lou Costello. That is, If their union somehow resulted in a squash offspring. (This photo was from February of this year.)

I chose this photo to post in a hurry tonight, and it reminded me of the bizarre looking eggplant character I’d shared a while back. Upon digging up that post to link to it, I find that it was a year ago today that I shared that eggplant. And so, a tradition is born. From this day forward, I declare November 21st to be International Day of the Odd Vegetable.²

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¹ I have one last tomato post stewing, but don’t have time to wait for it to finish cooking. I have too much other produce to deal with for Thanksgivng.
² This name could use Some Work. Any recommendations? (Day of Peculiar Produce?)