vegetables are kicking my ass

I’m running a bit behind in the vegetable preparation and consumption. The fridge is loaded to the brim with lettuce, greens, beets, scallions and such. (There’s lots of lettuce again, but due to a ninja woodchuck who did in the lettuce seedlings a while back, there won’t be lettuce again for a bit. I swear I didn’t pay him to do it.) We got to pick our own peas (snow peas and snap peas) this week and last, which was fun.

Tonight I cooked up 3 heads of bok choi, and made a ginger cashew sauce to go with it. The sauce came out moderately well, in spite of my scorching many of the cashews in an attempt to multitask. (Did you know that cooking involves lots of swearing and shouting? It’s long been the case with me. I love cooking, but you wouldn’t know it to hear me at work. If I had a cooking show, it would either be rated R or would have lots of bleeping. Bok fucking choi. Bleep bleep cashews.)

One reason I’m behind in my veggies is that things have been hectic the past week or so. One major thing that’s been eating up extra time is planning this trip. We are definitely going. We bought air tickets. (The prices are outrageous, and shot up hundreds of dollars over the course of days. Effectively ending the debate over whether to get Phoebe her own seat on the plane. A lap baby she will be. Which, by the way, still costs over $300.) I’ve registered for the conference in Saarbrucken, Germany. My mother will be meeting us in Paris. Phoebe now has her passport. (Hurray!) Still to do is to square away lodgings for both Paris (we’re planning to rent an apartment) and Saarbrucken (we’ll do a hotel room). Also train reservations.

I continue to be wiped out, sleep-deprived, and behind in many things besides the vegetables. (Commenting, for example. I have not had much chance to comment on other people’s blogs. If you’ve noticed my absence, please know that I’m still reading, though!)

I find myself resenting the 4th of July, as it means that Phoebe will not be in daycare. (She goes there 3 days a week, and I commute 2 days a week. Wednesdays are my non-commute work-at-home day.) But with Phoebe at home, I won’t be able to get any work or much of anything else done until she’s in bed. If I am lucky, she will have a long nap, and I will have a couple of hours to either sleep or be productive. (Does sleep count as being productive?) I feel like perhaps we should do some sort of fun family thing for the 4th, and forget that I have lots of work to do. And just enjoy the extra day together. I’ll work on it, but I’m too tired to figure out something to do just now. Perhaps we will have a fun and festive Independence Day salad toss. Or maybe beet bowling. Anyone know of a craft project using kale and baby onions?

the weekly pants

After my most recent post of seriousness, and being too tired/sleep-deprived just now to put together coherent thoughts, I feel compelled to return to our regularly scheduled silliness. And what could be sillier than pants?

I also feel that while this blog boasts more posts on pants that the average blog, I can do better. I’m sure I can bring you more pants. With that goal in mind, I’ll try to post on a pants topic once a week. I won’t commit to a day. I’ll just surprise you with pants some day each week, out of the blue. Pants! And besides, every day of the week should be pants day.

To get the pants rolling (can pants roll?), I’ll share a tidbit from a lovely book called Unfortunate English: The Gloomy Truth Behind the Words You Use, by Bill Brohaugh. This book, given to me by the friend who was recently brave enough to be one of our house guests, contains some very entertaining etymological goods. According to Unfortunate English, pants are “a garment that has its origins in buffoonery and farce:”

The word traces back to commedia dell’ arte, an old Italian theatre form (beginning in the 1500s) combining improvisation and standard bits actors could weave in at appropriate moments. One of the stock characters in this theatre form was Pantalone, a mean, miserly merchant and a bit of a dirty old man.[…]

The Pantalone character wore tight-fitting trousers or leggings. Trousers like those worn by Pantalone were called pantaloons in the 1600s, and by the 1700s the word was applied to trousers (as opposed to knee breeches) in general. By the mid-1830s, the word had been shortened to pants… (p. 75)

Another point made by the author is that because of the associations with the dirty old man Pantalone character, a comic figure, the term pantaloons has roots in “making light of old folk:”

…by the 1600s the word pantaloon meant “old codger.” (p. 76)

It’s interesting to see how pantaloon’s descendent pants has matured, having now lost this meaning of mockery of the matured.

throwing blame

As I headed out from an appointment on Wednesday, I walked passed a recently delivered newspaper on the ground outside the office building. It was folded up inside a clear plastic bag. The following headline jumped out at me:

ICE¹ sweep nets 5 local immigrants
Officials say those who commit crimes deserve ticket out of town

I bent over to get a better look, and to read the portion of the article² that was visible through the plastic. I was disturbed. The headline and the article seemed to suggest that immigrants are criminals.

A closer reading of the article revealed that in fact the individuals who had been arrested were charged with various crimes, some of them more serious than others, and in addition were immigrants. (Well, actually, they were tracked down because they were immigrants who had committed these crimes.)

At the same time, the article did contain various subtle and not-so-subtle suggestions that illegal immigrants are somehow menacing. Take this section about the reactions of a local police chief:

“I don’t have a problem with them going around and trying to round up these illegal immigrants,” said [town] Police Chief […]. “Illegal immigration just can’t be tolerated.”

With two convicted criminals from his town arrested, the chief said it’s high time the government start getting illegal aliens off the streets. The group has largely been overlooked in the past, “creating a problem on a couple of angles that people don’t want to look at,” he said.

[Town] Police are seeing some crimes increase with illegal immigration, particularly unlicensed automobile operation charges.

One overarching problem I have with the article is the way the discourse is framed. A careful reading of the article shows that the particular individuals arrested had been convicted of crimes. But let’s face it. Not everyone takes the time to read articles closely. It would be all too easy for a reader to be left with the impression that immigrants are more likely to commit crimes, and that illegal immigrants are particularly threatening. Consider this phrase, taken out of its context:

crimes increase with illegal immigration.

No discussion of the complexity of the issues and no contrary viewpoints were offered. The tone of the article is congratulatory towards the ICE. A casual reader would have the impression that the general public attitude towards this ICE sweep is of approval. That the issues are clearcut. Even that the arrest of these individuals is just the surface of the festering problem of “criminal aliens”.

The article, as well as many ostensibly neutral reportings of issues relating to immigration in the media, reflects a subtle undercurrent of anti-immigrant sentiment. (And don’t even get me started on the venomous hardcore anti-immigration set.)

This increased xenophobia quite honestly reminds me of other dark times in our world’s history. When things look dark, whether it’s because of plague or economic depression or threats of war, people look for someone to blame. When the issues are complex, it is hard to pinpoint the source of the problem. What it is easy to do is pick some group to shoulder the blame. Communists. Gypsies. Jews. Witches.

Our country is at war. Gas prices and living expense are rising. Homelessness and unemployment rates are high. Many people are finding it hard to make ends meet. People want answers. People want solutions. But because these are not quick or easy to achieve, people want to blame. It’s so much easier to blame the other, because blaming those that are too close to us seems not to accomplish anything. Lately, immigrants, especially those that have violated current immigration laws, have been offered up and targeted for blame.

The issue of immigration is one that I think about often, though I have not yet ventured to write on the topic. It’s been hard to work myself up it, even though I have many thoughts I’d like to write down. For the most part, though, I write about fairly lightweight topics on this blog. This is because I write primarily for my own amusement and for the potential entertainment of others. I like to write with humor, even when the topics touch on seriousness. But I just can’t find anything funny about the growing hate and intolerance evidenced in the discussion of immigration issues.

—————————————–

¹ US Immigration and Customs Enforcement

² Note: The online headline reads: Immigrants face deportation³

³ Note (added later): I forgot to mention that I stopped to buy my own copy of the paper on my way home, so that I could read the article more closely. Which is how I noticed the two different headlines.

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.

with_dock_sm1.jpg

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?

————-

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

visitor stats

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.”

a shocking excess of syllables

I stumbled across a couple of meme-like posts last night that sparked both my interest and my concern. First this one, which referenced this one. The task described on the blog icedmocha was to:

Answer all thirty-five questions using only one word. It’s harder than it looks. Give it a try on your blog.

An interesting challenge. A provocative proposition. The particpants I read (the first two I saw, plus this third one) had come up with some fantastic single-word responses.

The problem? The posts, and apparently the meme, are entitled “Monosyllabic.” In spite of this, I witnessed a large number of polysyllabic words. Shocking, shocking. As someone who spends portions of her professional time finding syllables, hunting them down and tracking them in the wild, I felt it my duty to round up some bonafide monosyllables of my own.

1. Where is your cell phone?     bag

2. Relationship?     yes

3. Your hair?     brown

4. Work?     sounds

5. Your sister?     cool

6. Your favorite thing?     sleep

7. Your dream last night?     strange

8. Your favorite drink?     ale

9. Your dream car?     Peel’s

10. The room you’re in?     den

11. Your shoes?     docs

12. Your fears?     war

13. What do you want to be in 10 years?     prof

14. Who did you hang out with this weekend?     Phoebs

15. What you’re not good at?     hate

16. Muffin?     please!

17. One of your wish list items?     trip

18. Where you grew up?     earth

19. The last thing you did?     work

20. What are you wearing?     pants

21. What aren’t you wearing?     socks

22. Your pet?     gone

23. Your computer?     mac

24. Your life?     whole

25. Your mood?     calm

26. Missing?     Red

27. What are you thinking about right now?     words

28. Your car?     gray

29. Your kitchen?     mess

30. Your summer?     short

31. Your favorite color?     blue

32. When is the last time you laughed?     noon

33. Last time you cried?     days

34. School?     grad

35. Love?     John

There we go. 35 monosyllables that are more-or-less true responses. Another challenging task would be to come up with monomorphemic responses to those same questions. Or to come up with 35 questions, the answers to which could all be pants.

monosyllabic1.jpg
A view of a production of the polysyllabic monosyllabic, displayed in Praat, with approximate syllabification into 5 syllables marked. (No commitment to the affiliation of potentially ambisyllabic consonants intended.)

pants1.jpg
A view of a production of the monosyllabic pants, displayed in Praat, with syllabification into 1 syllable marked.

the case of the 54 million dollar pants

This is a tale of a man who loved and lost. He had pants. He loved them. He cared for them. Then in a brutal act of dry cleaning, he lost his beloved pants. “Vengence will be mine!” he cried to the heavens. Setting himself up against the drycleaners who had so wronged him, he decided to sue the pants off them.

But the cruel fates and crueler legal system failed him:

A judge in the District of Columbia has dismissed a case against a dry cleaner who was sued for $54 million in damages over a pair of missing pants.

Roy L. Pearson, an administrative law judge, originally sought $67 million from the Chung family, owners of Custom Cleaners. He claimed they lost a favorite pair of his suit trousers and later tried to give him a pair that were not his.

Man, he must really have loved those pants.

When the drycleaners tried to pull up some other man’s pants, and pass those phony pants off as his own, he was not swayed. When they tried to offer him payment for replacement pants, he was not mollified.

Over the course of the litigation, the Chungs said they made three settlement offers — $3,000, then $4,600, then $12,000 — all rejected.

He demanded satisfaction. The satisfaction that the drycleaners so boldly guaranteed on their front sign. He refused to drop his pants suit.

What price freedom? What price pants?

Thanks for sharing this, jenny. You have become a remarkable source of pants. And thanks, John, for sending me this other article.

all you need is “dude”

Late last week, jen of one plus two wrote an in-depth discussion of an important and versatile word of our times: dude. In that post, she suggested that if I were writing that post, I would include a list of song titles with the word dude. I took this as a challenge.¹ But being really, really freakin’ tired, it’s taken me a few days to get up off my metaphorical butt and figuratively rise to the challenge.

When I read her suggestion, the first song that popped into my head was the Beatles’ classic “hey, dude”. Following along with this, I bring to you a selection of dude songs from those fab four dudes.

  1. hey, dude
  2. baby you’re a rich dude
  3. love me dude
  4. I wanna be your dude
  5. dizzy dude Lizzy
  6. nowhere dude
  7. Norwegian dude
  8. with a little help from my dudes
  9. Martha my dude
  10. can’t buy me dude
  11. you’ve got to hide your dude away
  12. a hard dude’s night
  13. the dude on the hill
  14. why don’t we dude it in the road
  15. ob-la-di, ob-la-dude
  16. eight dudes a week

—-
¹ jen also offered a more direct challenge: for commenters to use the word dude in a haiku. My own dude haiku, which featured somewhat traditional references to nature, made me laugh. But it was late at night.

have toddler, will travel

We’ve headed down to the in-laws again for a few days. John’s Dad is doing pretty well, and has been in a rehabilitation place for the past few weeks. We managed to arrive there at mid-afternoon yesterday, a remarkable accomplishment. Our plan was to leave home at 10:00 a.m. (It always drives me crazy when I end a sentence with “a.m.” or “p.m.” What do I do with the punctuation? “a.m..”?). Our plan was to leave at 10 in the morning. And we were out the door by 10:59 sharp!

I’ve been wiped out the past couple of days. Can’t stay awake at night. (And no, I’m not pregnant. Just tired.) I think my schedule and ongoing lack of sleep are catching up with me. I had several days this week that were scheduled up the wazoo. And I spent most of Wednesday (my unscheduled day) doing research, not school or job research, but research about a trip to Europe this summer. I’m planning/hoping to go to a conference in Germany at the beginning of August to present a poster that I’ve co-authored with a couple of professors I work with. John and Phoebe would go with me, but probably not help with the poster presentation. (Though Phoebe is good at pointing, and could perhaps Vanna for me.) It turns out that the venue is in a city that is not terribly close to any major international airports, so we will need to plan on a train trip as well as the flight. And it turns out that it’s just as quick to get there from Paris by a newly opened TGV line than it is to get there from Frankfurt. So, we’re thinking a holiday in Paris would be great.

But.

The idea of travelling with a toddler is Daunting™. (Funny how I feel too tired to deal with footnotes, and yet I just felt compelled to hunt down that ™ symbol.) I did find somebody’s post on travelling with small children that looks helpful. Though things look no less daunting. (cf. other tales of toddler travel.)

We have to decide about whether or not to take the car seat, for one. We will be taking public transportation, so we will need to lug everything around with us onto subways and trains, and possibly busses. We need to figure out sleeping arrangements. We’ll probably need a crib in our hotel room. We may rent an apartment in Paris.

We need to decide all of this very soon. We did apply for Phoebe’s passport, but actually getting her passport may lead to more stress, as I’ve heard that things take much, much longer these days. (There are new regulations requiring passports for travel to Canada and Mexico, leading to many, many more people needing them. Passports, that is. I’m not sure that people need Canada and Mexico in greater rates than previously.)