Category: things

ants in my pants

Yesterday was the 4th of July. A rather straightforward statement to make on the 5th of July. But, as you likely know, the Fourth of July is also the way most people refer to the US holiday officially called ant_bunch_sm.jpgIndependence Day. This holiday is often celebrated with parades, fireworks, barbecues and picnics. In fact, yesterday we managed to pull of a picnic of sorts at a nearby park. And in the great tradition of outdoor eating, we did get visited by some ants.

In honor of picnics, I bring you some ants.ant_sm11.jpg

    them02.jpg

  1. A Bug’s Life (1998)
    The Pixar animated movie about bugs. A sort of retelling of the Seven Samurai, but with bugs. (Also a bit like ¡Three Amigos!, but with bugs.) ant_sm2.jpgThe main character is an ant, voiced by Dave Foley, who seeks help to save his ant colony from bullying grasshoppers.
  2. Antz (1998)
    1998 was clearly the year for animated ant features. This Dreamworks one was more adult-oriented and had the voice of Woody Allen.
  3. Them (1954)
    A movie featuring giant mutant ants.
  4. The Ants Go Marching, a children’s counting song, to the tune of “When Johnny Comes Marching Home”

    The ants go marching one by one, hurrah, hurrah
    The ants go marching one by one, hurrah, hurrah
    The ants go marching one by one,
    The little one stops to suck his thumb
    And they all go marching down to the ground
    To get out of the rain
    boom, boom, boom

    5. ant_sm3.jpg

  5. The ant from “High Hopes,” sung by Frank Sinatra:

    Just what makes that little old ant
    Think he’ll move that rubber tree plant
    Anyone knows an ant can’t
    Move a rubber tree plant

    But he’s got high hopes, he’s got high hopes
    He’s got high apple pie in the sky hopes

    6. ants_in_line_sm1.jpg

  6. Dance Ants
    A video that someone put together to Fall Out Boy’s “Dance, Dance”. It’s pretty random, but I found it funny. Especially the textual re-interpretation of the original lyrics, like “these are the gloves you’d love to eat”. And yes, the video does have some ants. That dance.
  7. ants in your pants
    An expression. Someone with ants in their pants is so wound up they can’t keep still. A popular reference in songs, like in “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” by Rodgers and Hart, a song sung by many, including the amazing Ella Fitzgerald:

    Romance, finis. your chance, finis.
    Those ants that invaded my pants, finis.
    Bewitched, bothered and bewildered – no more

    Or “I got ants in my pants,” by James Brown (hear it here)

    ‘Cause I can’t dance,
    I can’t dance,
    I got ants in my pants,
    Got ants in my pants,
    Now, I can’t dance, ant_2sm1.jpg
    I can’t dance,
    Got ants in my pants!
    Got ants in my pants!

  8. Want to see some real ants? You can see lots of them in time-lapsed videos through the wonder of YouTube. Like ants eating ant poison, or 7 minutes of ants eating a dropped piece of food, or a variety of ants in action in ant farms.

ants_in_line_sm2.jpg

iPhone: good features, but falls short of design expectations

As some of you know, we are very much a pro-Mac household. Also, John is more than a bit of a technophile. So it shouldn’t come as much surprise that John wanted to get one of the new Apple iPhones as soon as possible. John camped out for most of the afternoon today outside a nearby phone store, and we were lucky enough to get our hands on one of the coveted, ultra-cool, ultra-sleek iPhones.

The iPhone has been awaited with great anticipation for years, long before it was officially announced by Apple. But since Apple released details and images of the iPhone, with its large high-res LCD and touch-pad with multi-touch operating, and versatile phone + camera + video player + music player + internet ready identities, it has been creating quite the buzz.

We were, naturally, quite eager to see whether the iPhone could live up to the hype. Since some of you may not have had a chance to see the iPhone in action yet, aside from in the commercials, we thought we’d share our own experiences and impressions.

When we got ours home, John opened up the box.

in_box_sm1.jpg

As advertised, all he needed to do was plug it into the computer, and go through iTunes in order to activate it.

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Also as advertised, the iPhone not only shows images, but it can also function as a music player:

music1.jpg

The iPhone is easy to navigate, with handy built-in scrolling features:

scrolling_sm1.jpg

While much of the functionality has been very cool, the design of the phone itself is surprisingly clunky: with big plastic buttons, and a screen that’s a bit smaller than we’d hoped. The sound quality of the music is a bit tinny, and somewhat annoying with various boingy and chirping sounds jumping in unexpectedly, and the selection of songs you can listen to is quite limited. While I do like the way the brightly colored lights flash when I push the buttons, I haven’t yet figured out how to dial the phone, as there are only buttons for 1 through 4. Most distressingly, we have already encountered at least three bugs with the iPhone, which are obvious in the image below.¹

in_hand_noted1.jpg

Has Apple fallen down in its standards?

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¹ And not just bugs: a frog, a bird and a duck, too.

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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.”

peachy keen

peach1web.jpg
This week’s edition of Themed Things Thursday is as peachy as can be, with a hand-picked selection of juicy bits of peach. Just in time for Summer.¹

  1. Do I dare to eat a peach?

    The line from T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock“:

    Shall I part my hair behind?
    Do I dare to eat a peach?
    I shall wear white flannel trousers,
    and walk upon the beach.
    I have heard the mermaids singing,
    each to each.

  2. The peach story of Zhang Daoling, founder of a sect of Taoism. Followers had to prove their faith by leaping an improbable distance to pick peaches. (Did they dare to pick a peach?)
  3. James and the Giant Peach
    The book by Roald Dahl, and animated movie (1996) based on the book. Involves a boy and a journey in a…giant peach.
  4. momotaro The old Japanese folk tale about the “peach boy.” An old woman finds a giant peach floating down the river, which turns out to contain a boy. She and her husband adopt the boy and name him James. No, wait. Taro.

    Another, possibly older version of the momotaro tale involved the older couple eating an unusual peach they found, being rejuvenated by said peach, and then…gasp…having sex, leading to the birth of the peach boy.

  5. Peaches have often been associated with sex, and their cleft shape has been likened to buttocks. Apparently in several cultures, such as in Japan. There’s also A Pathan song (which I read mentioned in M. M. Kaye’s The Far Pavilions) is said to contain the following lines:
    giantpeach.gif

    There is a boy, across the river
    With a bottom like a peach
    But alas, I can’t swim.

  6. There’s a South Carolina roadside attraction that is a water tower shaped and painted like a giant peach. It’s said to look like a big orange butt.
  7. Peaches, by the Presidents of the United States. (Hear the song, and see the video. But I warn you, this is a song that can get stuck in your head. It was once stuck in my head for days. Insidious, I tell you.)

    moving to the country
    gonna eat a lot of peaches
    I’m moving to the country
    I’m gonna eat me a lot of peaches
    …
    peaches come from a can
    they were put there by a man
    in a factory downtown
    if I had my little way
    I’d eat peaches every day

  8. Peaches (2004). A movie featuring a peach cannery, and a young woman who works there.
  9. The Ripest Peach, a poem by James Whitcomb Riley. Likens a woman to a peach (that’s out of reach):

    The ripest peach is highest on the tree —
    And so her love, beyond the reach of me,
    Is dearest in my sight. Sweet breezes, bow
    Her heart down to me where I worship now!

  10. There’s the expression “be a peach.” As in “you’re a peach,” “he’s a peach,” or “she’s a peach.” Means more-or-less “be nice.” There was a Bloom County comic strip once about Reagan, where one character argues for his impeachment, and another talks about what a nice guy he seemed, leading to the line “impeach the peach!”

red_peaches.jpg
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¹ It’s Summer now, for those of us who live in the Northern Hemisphere. In fact, just today is the Summer Solstice, starting off the official Summer season by some calendars.

enough about me

Okay, I lied. It’s really still about me.

A little over a week ago, YTSL lobbed a request over that I should participate in this meme activity by which I list 7 little known things (or random facts or habits, if I trace it back further.) about myself.¹ I like things. I like lists. And apparently I like to write stuff about myself.²

7 things about me that I didn’t list in that other post with 6 things about me

  1. I used to be able to get into the yoga “lotus” position without using my hands. Oh, wait. I guess I still can. It hurts a bit more than I remember, though…
  2. I once had a collection of dimes. I was maybe 8 years old. They were just dimes. I found them aesthetically pleasing. Their size, their shape, the feel of them. I brought my collection to “show and tell” once, and the teacher asked what was special about the dimes. I was a bit perplexed by the question.
  3. I often have dreams that I can fly.
  4. I have a bit of a fear of moths. They give me the eebie jeebies.
  5. I like heights. I get kind of a rush from being up high. Kind of an anti-vertigo. (Funny. There was a Mel Brooks movie made in the 70s called High Anxiety that was a parody of Hitchcock’s Vertigo. At least one scene was filmed the Hyatt Regency Hotel in San Francisco, which had glass elevators that went up quite high. I loved that building, and those elevators.)
  6. I don’t watch TV. For someone who has written 26 posts to date with the tag “TV,” this seems odd. I watched a lot as a kid, but have little idea what’s even on these days. I watch things on TV, but only DVDs. Mostly movies. Some old TV series. The only current shows I’ve watched in the last couple of years have been available as iTunes downloads.
  7. I am fidgety. I have trouble sitting still. You’ll often find me twiddling a pen, shredding a paper napkin, twisting a straw…or doodling. I’ve got some crazy-ass elaborate doodles. Doodles, dood.

This is one of those things where I’m supposed to tag others. I’ve considered tagging people I don’t know at all, like, say, Kevin Smith or someone else who’s used the tag pants. Or a blog I hit by using the “next blog” function on WordPress, that gives you random blog after random blog. (And hey, if any of you, Kevin, pants person, or even more randomly selected person would like to play along, please consider yourselves tagged!) Or I can play by the self-selection, tag-free rules, as exemplified by the extraordinary KC. Anyhow, if you are reading this, consider yourself tagged. Like a polar bear or sea turtle that scientists are tracking. (Don’t worry. The tranquilizer will wear off soon.)

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¹ I also owe another meme to her. Plus I got tagged by NotSoSage for a different meme the same day. Woohoo. Meme me, baby. (I’ll get to that one at some point, too, Sage.)

² As we all know, writing about oneself is the prime motivation for 98.725% of bloggers.³

³ I made up that statistic. But anyone want to prove me wrong?⁴

⁴ Huh? Huh?

I yam what I yam

It’s time for another helping of Themed Things Thursdays. It being vegetable week here, in honor of my first pick-up of my CSA veggies, this Thursday Theme for Things is vegetables. Okay, the list is a bit heavy on the onion bits (with apologies to those who don’t like onions), but you can pick them out.

some vegetables

  • beans
    Jack and the beanstalk, a fairy tale featuring magic beans that grow a towering beanstalk.
  • corn
    Children of the Corn (1984) A movie based on a Stephen King story. Horror in the corn fields.

  • spinach
    The cartoon character Popeye (The Sailor Man) gets super-duper strong when he eats a can of spinach. Even has a little song he sings when he gets all juiced up: I’m strong to the finish, ’cause I eats me spinach…
  • broccoli
    Powerpuff Girls episode 17 “Beat Your Greens“. Alien broccoli attacks.
  • cabbage
    The Kids in the Hall offers Cabbage Head, a man with cabbage for hair. (There are also the Cabbage Patch Kids, scrunched-up looking dolls that were all the rage in the 80’s, and that now have their own urban legend.)
  • pumpkin
    Peter Peter pumkin eater. A nursery rhyme. Also a song you can play on the piano using only the black keys.

    Peter Peter pumpkin eater
    Had a wife and couldn’t keep her
    He put her in a pumpkin shell
    And there he kept her very well

  • peppers
    Peter Piper A nursery rhyme and tongue twister: “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers”
  • carrots
    Bugs Bunny is known for his trademark carrot-munching. But did you know that his carrot-munching was a Clark Gable immitation?

    bugs

    Bugs Bunny’s nonchalant carrot-chewing stance, as explained many years later by Chuck Jones, and again by Friz Freleng, comes from the movie, It Happened One Night, from a scene where the Clark Gable character is leaning against a fence eating carrots more quickly than he is swallowing, giving instructions with his mouth full to the Claudette Colbert character, during the hitch-hiking sequence.

  • potato
    Everybody’s favorite spud has got to be the ever-dignified, interchangeably featured Mr. Potatohead (Apparently, there are many new Potatohead varieties that have sprouted, including the venerable Star Wars Darth Tater
  • sweet potato
    “Sweet Potato,” by Cracker. (Off the album “Kerosene Hat”) A rockin’ romp of a song. Be my sweet potato, I’ll be your honey lamb

  • yams
    Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe. Yams play a central role in the Nigerian community depicted in this novel. (See? I can get all literary, too.) (By the way, these yams aren’t the same as sweet potatoes, which are often called yams in the US)
  • turnip
    You can’t get blood from a turnip, or “You can’t squeeze blood out of a turnip” (You can also find more garden-variety cliches) An expression meaning that it’s not possible to extract something from a source that doesn’t contain that thing.
  • onion
    1. The Onion (“America’s finest news source”) My own favorite Onion article? This eerily prescient one from January, 2001.
    2. Shrek (2001) An animated movie featuring an ogre who likens himself to an onion:

      Shrek: Ogres are like onions.
      Donkey: They both smell?
      Shrek: NO! They have LAYERS. There’s more to us underneath. So, ogres are like onions.
      Donkey: Yeah, but nobody LIKES onions!

    3. The End: Book the Thirteenth, the final installation of A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket begins with the following layery, teary-eyed, oniony sentence:

      If you have ever peeled an onion, then you know that the first thin, papery layer reveals another thin, papery layer, and that layer reveals another, and another, and before you know it you have hundreds of layers all over the kitchen table and thousands of tears in your eyes, sorry that you ever started peeling in the first place and wishing that you had left the onion alone to wither away on the shelf of the pantry while you went on with your life, even if that meant never again enjoying the complicated and overwhelming taste of this strange and bitter vegetable.

  • bok choi
    Bok Choi Boy, the story of a young lad raised by vegetables to become a legendary leafy-green fighter for truth, justice and better nutrition. (Okay, I made this one up.)
  • a whole bunch o’ different oversized veggies
    June 29, 1999 written and illustrated by Caldecott award-winnder David Wiesner. A picturebook featuring gigantic vegetables raining down from the skies. A beatifully illustrated, beautifully absurd book:

    Cucumbers circle Kalamazoo. Lima beans loom over Levittown. Artichokes advance on Anchorage.

    Check out some of the illustrations on the publisher’s webpage for the book.

    • site statistics

    seeing red

    It’s Thursday once more. Which means it’s time for some Themed Things. This week’s Thursday theme is red folks, to follow up on those blue folks. Red-furred, red-skinned, red-shelled, or red cardboard, this post is red all over.

    1. The Devil. The big bad red dude. Frequently portrayed pitch fork-wielding, with pointy horns, and a long pointy tail. And also very red.

      devil_pd.jpg cute_devil.png

    2. Hellboy (2004) A movie starring Ron Perlman about a big, strong guy. Red. Looks like a demon but files down his horns. Based on a comic book character.

      3. hellboy.jpg     frylock.jpg zoidberg.jpg

    3. Frylock, from Aqua Teen Hunger Force. The guy, or technically, the animate red-faced box of fries, with the brains and know-how.
    4. Dr. Zoidberg. The lobster-like alien doctor (from the planet Decapod 10) on Futurama. Fun to quote (note that Fry is a human male):

      Dr. Zoidberg: Now open your mouth and lets have a look at that brain.
      Dr. Zoidberg: No, no, not that mouth.
      Fry: I only have one.
      Dr. Zoidberg: Really?
      Fry: Uh… is there a human doctor around?
      Dr. Zoidberg: Young lady, I am an expert on humans. Now pick a mouth, open it and say “brglgrglgrrr”!

    5. Clifford, the Big Red Dog. A dog. Who is both big and red. A favorite book character from my childhood. Now a franchise with oodles and oodles of Clifford books and merchandise. And a TV show, apparently.

      6. bk_clifford_deluxe.jpg elmo.jpgwilt.png

    6. Wilt, from Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends. Tall, skinny, and red.
    7. Elmo. The fuzzy annoyingly squeaky-voiced Sesame Street character. (Here’s an Elmo link to click at your own risk.)

      8. a_akadouji-kasuga-shrine-1488ad.jpg

    8. akadouji

      Literally “Red Youth.” Also often called Kasuga Akadouji 春日赤童子. A mysterious human figure said to have appeared on a rock immediately in front of the Kasuga 春日 Shrine gate. He often is shown as a youth (Jp. = douji), colored red (Jp = aka), standing on a rock, and leaning on a staff.

      9. redlionjacket.gif

    9. The Red Lion: A Persian folktale and book based on the same by Diane Wolkstein. About a prince who must learn to face his fears and fight a lion. Who is red. (The flag of Iran used to have a red lion on it, too.)

    —

    So them’s the red folks. Want more color than just red? Feast your eyes on the latest Carnival of Colors.

    sinking my teeth in

    I’ve decided I need to organize my things. I have a tendency to make lists of things, willy-nilly, whenever the urge strikes. Any old day of the week. Whether it’s blue dudes on a Saturday, balls on a Friday, or pigs on a Sunday, or cheese on a Tuesday. Willy-freakin’-nilly, I tell you.

    So I was all like “hey, I should pick a day. Have a thing day. A themed thing day.”¹ So to go all out with the alliteration, I’m going with Thursdays. Thus creating the Themed Thing Thursday.

    So in honor of the onset consonant of the words theme, thing and Thursday, the voiceless inderdental fricative, my first official theme of things for this Themed Thing Thursday will be teeth. Because without teeth, it’s really hard to say things.

    teeth.jpg

    A few things toothy

    1. ϴ or theta.
      The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) symbol for the voiceless dental (or interdental) fricative. This sound is usually written “th” in English, though the sound is nothing like a t followed by an h. (Note also that not all instances of “th” are stand-ins for theta: there’s the evil twin ð, too. Sometimes called the “eth.” It’s the voiced dental fricative. You know, the one in the.)
    2. The Tooth Fairy
      A legendary individual who pays children for losing their teeth. In the version of the myth I grew up with, when you lose a tooth, you put it under your pillow when you go to bed. In the morning, you wake up to find a coin in place of the tooth. The explanation for this phenomenon is not that the tooth has metamorphosized, but that a strange woman, possibly with wings, sneaked into your room while you slept, and felt around under your very head for the tooth, grabbed and pocketed said tooth, and then left you a small payment. This was supposed to be a comforting tale.
    3. The Wikipedia Tooth Fairy page has a whole bunch of fun popular culture references to the tooth fairy by the way, such as the episode of the Simpsons where Bart loses his last baby tooth, or Darkness Falls (2003), horror movie about an evil tooth fairy.
    4. The movie Toothless (1997)
      I had actually never heard of this movie until some soul out there tried desperately to find quotes from the movie. I have no idea why. I’m assuming it was the same person, trying variations of “quotes from the movie toothless” and “toothless movie quotes.” And they kept getting my post on movie quotes where I quote the “tough and ruthless/rough and toothless” bit from Kentucky Fried Movie. Anyhow, the movie “Toothless” was a TV movie from 1997, and looks to have been pretty sucky. Kirstie Allie played a dentist turned tooth fairy.
    5. Speaking of dentists, there’s the movie Marathon Man (1976) (And also the novel by William Goldman, author of The Princess Bride.)
      The story features a famous (or infamous) torture scene involving an evil, sadistic dentist. (“Is it safe?”)
    6. Little Shop of Horrors. A 1960’s B movie that was later adapted to a Broadway musical which was later adapted to another movie. The main story is about an alien man-eating plant, but it also features a sadistic dentist. (Clearly, some people have issues with dentists.) Steve Martin plays the dentist in the 1986 movie.
    7. Just in case you fear that all pop culture portrayals of dentists are unfavorable, Monty Python offers this counter-example, featuring heroic feats performed by a member of the BDA. (“It’s a man’s life in the British Dental Association”):

    8. And speaking of Python, what list of teeth could be complete without those big pointy teeth from the Holy Grail. You may be happy (or dismayed) to learn that you can now purchase associated merchandise, such as slippers and hand-puppets featuring rabbits with big pointy teeth.

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    ¹ I’m also inpsired by some folks I admire who have their own weekly theme days, like KC’s Medical Advice Mondays and Sage’s Word Wise Wednesdays.