some things about ThThTh

Some of you may have noticed that I like to put together lists. In fact, at this point, I have now tagged 96 posts as “lists.” That’s a lotta lists. I have also, for the past half year or so, started making a regular weekly list. A list of things. Things that have some sort of theme in common. And these themed things, I bring them out on Thursday. Occasionally I get asked what this is all about. Often people are just confused by my lists. And I’m okay with that. But I have been meaning to write some sort of ThThTh about page for a bit. And seeing as I’m a bit burnt out from the excessive blogging of NaBloPoMo reading and writing, rather than bring you a new list, I’m going to regurgitate a list of old lists. A nice, big mega-list of a meta-list. And maybe a wee bit of explanation.

What the hell is ThThTh?

ThThTh is a tag I use when I put together a list of things on a theme on Thursday. What these lists have in common is that they are lists of things that have one thing in common.

Why do you do this craziness?

Putting together these lists helps satisfy my desire…to put together lists. I like to categorize like things, and have been doing this in my mind for years. I have a tendency to collect things, as in the physical objects, but this new outlet for collecting collects a lot less dust.

What sorts of things are they?

I like to pick from among the universe of things, and not be limited to a medium or category. So my lists will include things like movies, books, folktales and myths, songs, cliches and other sayings. The lists may include toys, products, names, and other totally random things. (I also will more than occasionally put together lists of just one type of things, such as books, movies or songs. But I consider those a separate type of list.)

What sorts of themes are they?

I often pick themes that are somehow loosely related to something that is going on in my life, or something seasonal. Or sometimes based on nothing much at all.

My inaugural ThThTh post was on teeth, to pay tribute to the usefulness of teeth in producing the voiceless interdental fricative that we represent as “th” in the words theme, things and Thursday. I have now posted 24 ThThTh lists, on top of those themed lists I threw together before I’d settled on having Thursday be my special list day.

At this time, you can find lists on topics such as turkeys, turtles, trees, squirrels, birds, parrots, pigeons, pigs, and pigtails. There have been spiders, ants, bats, balls, shoes, and black clothing. There were blue, green and red dudes, vegetables, peaches, berries, pumpkins, apples, tomatoes, chocolate and cheese.

I even made one list of things I did not expect to make lists about.

support

Even though I had some things in mind, I’m really too tired to post much of anything creative. I’ve been staying up too late again, and perhaps pushing myself a bit hard. And I have some more work I’ve committed to doing tonight, if I can manage to keep my eyes open.

But I’ve been wanting to say some thank yous.

I really appreciate all the comments that people have left recently, especially on the posts where I have been writing about my grief. People have offered wise advice and shoulders to cry on, and I have been very touched by the sympathy and empathy. I have wanted to respond to each comment, but I have been feeling emotionally drained. I may yet manage to reply, but if I don’t, please know that I have read and valued those comments.

And for others of you who have read and thought sympathetic thoughts, I thank you, too.

I have also been very fortunate to have support from other friends and my family. I’m someone who likes to feel like I’m there to help others in times of need, and it’s been very heartwarming to know that people are there for me, too. I sometimes stubbornly like to think of myself as self-sufficient, but I know that my strength comes in large part from the support of those who care about me.

As you might expect, I am still working through my grief. But it has been very comforting to me to know that I don’t need to work through this alone.

Dude? Dude!

Wanna know something kinda funny? I had occasion to mention a beer commercial during a work/research meeting this afternoon.

We were talking about an experiment we will be running, which will involve getting people to judge whether two similar-sounding spoken utterances of the same text are being produced with the same intonation contour (or the same meaningful “tune”). Because, as you probably realize, you can say the same words a whole bunch of different ways. Or the same single word, even.

(Thanks to tabba for sharing the video, which I hadn’t seen before. Dude.)

Now with more Polysyllabic Nonsense

I think most of you have seen this item making its way around the bloggy world: the blog reading level score. I’ve seen it a bunch of places:

You wanna know what I got?

elementary_school.jpg

(Note that my blog shares this honor with Sassy of eye heart internet, who can even blog at the elementary school level bilingually.)

Actually, the first time I tried this, a few weeks ago maybe, I got junior high level. But apparently my writing skills are deteriorating.

What I find funniest, though, is that I also tried my other blog: The Minsitry of Silly Blogs. This is a blog I threw together on a whim to go along with a NaBloPoMo group I started. See what it scored?

genius.jpg The Ministry of Silly Blogs

It would seem that when I am making efforts to sound Officious and Pretentious, as well as Silly and Pompous, my writing appears more erudite. Even if what I am writing is Utter Nonsense. (Which is not to say that I believe that all those whose blogs scored higher than elementary school write Officiously and Pompously. But perhaps you all write Utter Nonsense?)

All in all, I find myself terribly curious about the means by which a reading level score is achieved. Is it sentence length? Average word length? Does anyone know?

sulking

I’m just feeling down today.

The memorial service for Elizabeth was last night. We drove up from New York so that we could be back in time to make it there. It made for a long day, and a lot of time in the car. Poor Phoebe was not happy to have to get back in the car after only an hour back home, following close to 5 hours in the car. John ended up needing to take Phoebe out to the vestibule before the service began, as we were heading into a meltdown.

It was a nice service, if long. It was the first time I’ve been in a temple, as far as I can remember. I haven’t been to many religious ceremonies at all, and felt a bit like a visiting anthropologist. (I feel much the same way when I’ve been in a church.) I appreciated the ritual and the music. Though I did find myself craving to hear more about my friend. There was a 3-page paper of thoughts about Elizabeth from her family, but I found I couldn’t read it there without risk of excessive blubbering. The service included some words from a college friend of Elizabeth’s, and a poem written and read by her aunt. I found the poem particulary moving, as it spoke of the Elizabeth I knew. Her wit, her quirks and her complexity.

Some of my other friends who also used to work with Elizabeth also went, and I was glad to see them, and to be able to sit with them during the service. A couple more friends couldn’t make it, due to travelling for Thanksgiving.

There were a lot of people there, overall. It was moving in some ways. But in other ways it made me feel small and insignificant. I felt an outsider. I was glad to meet some friends of Elizabeth’s whose names I had heard, but had never met. I saw her parents, met a sister-in-law. But mostly there was a crowd of strangers.

The friend who spoke said that Elizabeth made everyone she knew feel like they were her best friend. And for some reason, this made me feel sadder. I wonder how often people feel this way at memorial services. Peripheral. One of many. It made me feel a bit like I wanted to stake out my claim in the grief. Declare that I had known her for 12 years. Proclaim that I had shared in the pain of witnessing her illness. Announce that I felt her loss deeply.

At the same time, I feel like I didn’t do enough. Or maybe that I really was a bit of an outsider.

I feel bad that I didn’t visit her more often. I didn’t know about her other hospital stays till after the fact. But maybe I should have known. Maybe I should have called more. When I’d call she’d often be too tired to talk, or on her way out the door. So I didn’t call much. I took her to her chemo treatments twice, and would gladly have gone with her more. Maybe I should have offered more.

And I feel bad that I hadn’t told some friends about her illness. And I feel bad that I still haven’t contacted a couple of other friends I’ve lost track of.

Mostly I just feel bad today. And I find myself missing my friend all the more.

Is sulking a stage of grief? What about crabbiness?

for whoever

In case you don’t know the Beautiful South, allow me to introduce them to you. (Whoever you are.) Here is their song, “Song for Whoever.”

Oh Shirley, oh Deborah, oh Julie, oh Jane
I wrote so many songs about you
I forget your name (I forget your name)
Jennifer, Allison, Phillipa, Sue, Deborah, Annabel, too
Jennifer, Allison, Phillipa, Sue, Deborah, Annabel, too
I forget your name

What have you been up to, little girl?

upside-down.jpg

I’m terribly behind in updating the Phoebe Blog, where I try to document some of my daughter’s activities and accomplishments. That was my foray into blogging, and I still use the same software (iWeb) I started with. It’s somewhat cool in that I can compose everything on my computer and in that it links up automatically with my media files, but it has this irritating feature that doesn’t let you keep some drafts unpublished while you publish others. Since I now have about 10 drafts in various stages of completion, I’m pretty much stuck not publishing any of them till they’re all done. So the family doesn’t get to see what Phoebe’s up to.

Unless, of course, there’s an event like Phoebe’s run-in with the law yesterday morning. Then the whole family somehow learns. (Oh, right, now you want to know. Well, you know how some phones have an emergency number programmed into the speed dial? Did you know some phones have a big, pretty red button that is hooked up to such a number? Did you know that toddlers like to push buttons?)

We’re down at John’s parents for the holiday, by the way. We came down Tuesday night, to avoid the craziness of traffic that happens the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. We’ve driven up to visit John’s dad in the sub-acute care facility each day after Phoebe’s nap. There have been a lot of late nights, too. And yesterday there was a lot of cooking. (We packed up the feast to take up to John’s dad’s.) I made mashed potatoes, delicata squash (which is much safer to cut than KC’s Death Squash), and my famous stuffed pan. (I like stuffing, but not the things that tend to be stuffed with it. So I just make the stuffing.)

Also, at the moment, my feed reader folders are stuffed full of 272 unread messages. (158 of these can be blamed on people I just started reading with NaBloPoMo. Curse you, NaBloPoMoPeople. Curse yooooouuu! Oh, right. I’m guilty of this madness, too. Curse me! Curse meeeeee!) I’m not quite sure when I’ll be able to catch up. Make that “if.”

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.)

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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.