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:
The novel contains “adult” language.
The book uses colorful descriptive language, and I mean beyond describing a room as having been painted “belligerently pink.”
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.
The book has sex in it.
The book has sex and monkeys in it.
My mother-in-law would be fairly scandalized by something that induced me to compose a sentence including both the words “sex” and “monkeys.”
My mother-in-law has probably never spent any significant amount of time contemplating what it would be like to grow a tail.
It is extremely unlikely that the phrase “Release the monkeys!” would make her giggle.
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.”
Especially one that has been called “deeply, unsettlingly weird.”
She certainly would not take well to the suggestion that she get in touch with her “inner monkey.”
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.)
“Thinking again?” the Duchess asked, with another dig of her sharp little chin.
“I’ve a right to think,” said Alice sharply, for she was beginning to feel a little worried.
“Just about as much right,” said the Duchess, “as pigs have to fly….”
— Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter 9.
Everyone knows that pigs can’t fly.
Except, of course, when they do. And fly they do, in all sorts of lore and literature, song and show, and even in a few airborne vessels. This ThThTh list is hog-wild for the swine of the skies.
A list of flying pigs
when pigs fly: an expression by which a speaker can convey the opinion that a given event will never happen. As in “this blog will be awarded a Pulitzer when pigs fly.”
when pigs grow wings: an expression that means “when pigs fly”
Pigs Have Wings, by P.G. Wodehouse. A book by the author of the Jeeves and Wooster series.
The first recorded pig flight took place in England in 1909. (source)
The first historically recorded flight of a pig took place on British soil, at Leysdown in Kent in 1909. The pig was carried aloft by J.T.C. Moore-Brabazon, later the First Lord Brabazon of Tara, in his personal French-built Voisin aero plane.
The pig was placed into a wicker basket, which was in turn strapped to a wing strut of the aero plane. A hand-lettered sign attached to the basket read: ‘I am the first pig to fly.’ Brabazon purposefully carried the pig aloft, thereby disproving the long help opinion that ‘pigs can not fly.’
Pigs in Space: these pigs from the Muppet Show have mastered not just flight, but space flight.
ad astra per alia porci: Steinbeck’s motto “To the stars on the wings of a pig” (found via the blog On Pig’s Wings, taking its name “from Steinbeck, whose motto, described his status as a ‘lumbering soul but trying to fly.’” )
Can’t get enough flying pigs? Lots more about them can be found at Porkopolis, a website devoted to all things porcine. Be sure to check posts in the category “flight,” and the informative post A Brief History of Pigs and Flight. Flying pigs have their own Wiki page, too.
I just can’t get enough of those socks. I figure you can’t either. So, I’ve rifled through my sock drawer to share with you this sock-themed ThThTh list.
knock your socks off: an idiom meaning “impress” or “surprise in a good way,” as in The excitement of this sock list will knock your socks off.
put a sock in it: “be quiet.” (Differs somewhat from “put it in a sock.”
bobby-soxer: a 1940s term for a teenage girl, especially fans of Sinatra
sock hop: a dance popular in the US in the 1950s in which participants took off their shoes and danced in their socks
Christmas stockings: socks hung by the fireplace as part of a Christmas tradition. They are then filled with eggs by the Easter Bunny. (Do I have that right?)
New socks.
Two socks.
Whose socks?
Sue’s socks.
Who sews whose socks?
Sue sews Sue’s socks.
Who sees who sew whose new socks, sir?
You see Sue sew Sue’s new socks, sir.
Pippi Longstocking: A character from a series of children’s books by Astrid Lindgenwho wore socks that were not only long (long stockings) but noteworthy for being mismatched
Diddle Diddle Dumpling: a Mother Goose rhyme featuring (at least in some versions) stockings:
Diddle diddle dumpling
My son John
Went to bed with his stockings on
One shoe off and one shoe on.
The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theater: a sock puppet duo of YouTube fame
The Bureau of Missing Socks: “the first organization solely devoted to solving the question of what happens to missing single socks. It explores all aspects of the phenomena including the occult, conspiracy theories, and extraterrestrial.”
For last week’s ThThTh list, I set the table with forks and spoons. I said I’d be back later with the knives.
like a hot knife through butter: an expression meaning that something was or can be cut easily
not the sharpest knife in the drawer: an expression meaning “not very smart,” playing of the use of the word sharp as a synonym of intelligent.
The Subtle Knife: A novel by Philip Pullman, second in the trilogy His Dark Materials. (It’s the sequel to The Golden Compass.)
“3 Blind Mice”: a nursery rhyme and song in which a carving knife is used. Possibly is about Bloody Mary.
Three blind mice, three blind mice,
See how they run, see how they run,
They all ran after the farmer’s wife,
Who cut off their tails with a carving knife,
Did you ever see such a thing in your life,
As three blind mice?
going under the knife: an expression meaning “having surgery”
“I always eat my peas with honey”: A poem of largely unknown origins. I first ever heard it while visiting my in-laws last week (and eating peas), and then encountered it a second time the next day when Magpie left it as a comment on my utensil list. Kind of eerie.
I always eat my peas with honey;
I’ve done it all my life.
They do taste kind of funny but
It keeps them on my knife.
“Mack the Knife“: a song from the Threepenny opera. Has been performed by many, From Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, and Louis Armstrong to Sting, The Doors and The Psychedlic Furs.
“Cuts Like a Knife”: the title track from the 1983 Bryan Adams album (YouTube)
Slash with a Knife, a book of works by artist Yoshitomo Nara with many paintings of angry and threatening-looking but cute litte kids.
Knives can be used for slashing, stabbing, and throwing (as well as slicing, dicing and julienning), so they appear pretty frequently in movies as weapons. You might see them such in fight scenes (eg. West Side Story) or murder mysteries (eg. Gosford Park).
The knife is one of the possible murder weapons in the boardgame Clue.
“That’s not a knife. This is a knife.” A line from Crocodile Dundee. (See the scene on YouTube.)
“Chefs do that”: A line from the movie The Long Kiss Goodnight. Geena Davis plays an amnesiac with no memory of her past life as an assassin. When she discovers her skill with knives, she briefly thinks she must have been a chef. Then she throws a knife and skewers a tomato against the wall, saying “chefs do that.” (You can see at least part of the scene in the trailer on YouTube.)
knife throwing: a sport involving throwing knives at a target. (The goal is to hit the target with the point of the knife, not, for instance, the handle.)
knife throwing act: involves a performer throwing knives around a person, with the goal of not impaling the person. Somewhat ironically considered an “impalement art.” Here’s an example of a mother throwing knives at her little kids in the 50s:
knifehand strike: a martial arts strike using the “blade” of the hand (not the palm or a fist), and sometimes called a “karate chop.”
“In Japan, the hand can be used like a knife.” A famous line from a 1970s commercial for the Ginsu knife.
Once upon a time, in the kingdom of a Giant Bookstore, an events Calendar would grace the cash registers and bulletin boards of the store each month, listing book signings and readings and happy occasions.
One day, a hapless customer stumbled across something startling in the upcoming events: a signing scheduled with one of the authors who contributed to an anthology of Inspirational Writings for the Children of the Kingdom. The book was lauded in the Calendar Scroll as a “copulation of stories for children…”
For it so happened that the writer of this Events Calendar had been caught unawares by the perils of the Spell Check. Under this evil Spell, an innocent Typo was turned into something much more sinister and inappropriate. Having likely typed copilation in place of compilation, the Spell was recast, transforming the innocent word into copulation.
This caused great embarrassment in the land, and caused many a tree to be felled for the Improprer Calendars to be re-scribed.
—-
The difference of a character or two in the title of story can mightily change the character of the story. In that spirit, I offer you this copulation of children’s stories and rhymes. Many of which may not be suitable for children.
A Copulation of Children’s Stories and Rhymes
Table of Contents
I. Poplar Stories:
Goodnight Moron
The Very Hung Caterpillar
Bicurious George
The Runway Bunny
Frog and Toad are Fiends
Charlotte’s Weed
Hairy, the Dirty Dong
Mike Mulligan and his Steamy Shover
The Cat in the Heat
Mary’s Poppin’
Clifford the Big Rude Dog
The Wine in the Willows
Lite Women
Where the Reefer Grows
Harpy Pooter
The Wonderful Wizard of Ooze
II. Nunnery Rhymes:
Marty Had a Little Lamp
Hickory Dickory Dick
Humpy Dumpy
Little Ho Peep
Little Miss Muff
Poop Goes the Weasel
The Farmer in the Deli
Do You Know the Muff Man?
Wee Willy’s Winkie
Little Jack Horny
Peter Peter Pumpin’ Beater
III. Classic Fairy Tails:
Snot White and Roe Red
The Little Math Girl
Goldilocks on the Three Bears
The Princess and the Pee
Jack and the Beatstalk
Puss in Boobs
The Twelve Panting Princesses
Little Red Riding Ho
Snow White and the Shaven Dwarfs
Beauty and the Breast
The Three Little Prigs
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This week’s Monday Mission was to write a post in the form of a children’s story or poem. (Yes, I realize it’s Tuesday today. This is hardly the only thing I’m running late for.)
This typo really did happen back when I worked in the bookstore, and it still makes me giggle these many years later. (I can do that, because I wasn’t among those who wrote or proofread the calendar in question.) I’d been wanting to share this list and story for a while, so this seemed a good occasion to do so.
Phoebe got a real bed a couple of weeks ago, inspiring me to think about beds for a ThThTh list¹.
A bed list²
make one’s bed and lie in it: an expression meaning that one must accept the consequences of one’s actions. The wording of the expression is somewhat variable, with various subjects (and agreeing possessives) possible, some variation in tense/aspect of the verb make, and variability in the the following clause. eg. You’ve made your bed, and now you must lie in it. or He made is bed, so now he’ll have to lie in it.
The Princess and the Pea: a classic fairy tale in which a pea is hidden under mattresses to test whether a girl can feel the lump under the bedding
“Someone’s been sleeping in my bed.” Something the bears say in the fairy tale Goldilocks.
flower bed: an area, such as in a garden, that has been planted with flowers
bed of roses: an expression meaning an easy or luxurious situtation. More often heard with a negative, such as “it was no bed of roses.”
fortune cookies: If you add “in bed” to the end of the fortune when you read it, hilarity will ensue (in bed).
hotbed: an environment conducive to rapid growth
Beds Are Burning, a song by Midnight Oil. (youtube video)
“5 little monkeys jumping on the bed:” a children’s song/rhyme of the “counting down” variety:
Five little monkeys jumping on the bed
One fell off and bumped his head
Mama called the doctor and the doctor said
“No more monkeys jumping on the bed!”
Subsequent verses are sung with one fewer monkeys jumping, until one reaches the final “no more monkeys” state. There’s a book based on the rhyme, too.
“10 in the bed:” another kids’ song of the countdown type.
Ten in the bed and the little one said “roll over! roll over”
So they all rolled over and one fell out…
in bed with the enemy: an expression meaning “consorting with the opposition”
strange bedfellows: an expression used to describe a situation where unlikely individuals cooperate, having been brought together to by unusual circumstances. Taken from a line from Shakespeare’s The Tempest: “Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.”
“In Bed with Madonna:” The title of the 1991 Madonna movie (“Truth or Dare“) as it was released in various countries. I saw it in Brazil as “Na Cama com Madonna.”
“My Bed is a Boat:” a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson from A Child’s Garden of Verses
My bed is like a little boat;
Nurse helps me in when I embark;
She girds me in my sailor’s coat
And starts me in the dark.
“To bed! To bed!”
Says Sleepy-head;
“Tarry awhile,” says Slow;
“Put on the pan,”
Says Greedy Nan;
“We’ll sup before we go.”
bed head: hair that has been messed up during sleep, or that at least appears that way
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¹Also at times inspiring me to miss the cage-like qualities of the crib. Is duct tape really so wrong?
²You know, I pretty much never make my bed. But I’m clearly not opposed to making a bed list.³
³You know, I really need to get to bed.
It’s Thursday again, and that means I’m due for a ThThTh list. What with my having the upcoming election on the brain, it seemed a good time to bring out the donkeys.
Some donkeys
The Democratic donkey: the donkey is an unofficial symbol of the U.S. Democratic Party. The jackass was first associated with Andrew Jackson in his 1828 campaign, according to the official Democratic Party’s website page on the history of the democratic donkey.
Pin the tail on the donkey: A party game in which blindfolded participants attempt to attach a representation of a tail to a drawing of a donkey. The one who gets the tail closest to the tail end of the donkey wins.
Donkey pronoun: a term in linguistics for a certain type of pronoun in which the syntax does not map straightforwardly to the semantics. Named after this example, in which “it” is the donkey pronoun:
Every farmer who owns a donkey beats it. — Peter Geach, Reference and Generality
Hee Haw: a country-themed (in the sense of “rural” and “Western”) sketch comedy show with a donkey mascot. It was mostly on in the 70s. (The show’s title is the English onomatopoeic word for the sound of a donkey’s bray. For the record, my post titile makes reference to the sound, not the show. I find the show, or the memory of watching the show as a child, somewhat painful.)
It was recently pointed out to me that October is Breast Awareness month. Our society is far too oblivious to the existence of breasts. Every day, millions of women around the world have breasts. In spite of this, breasts go largely unnoticed by men, women, and advertisers alike.
Pink has become the color associated with breast cancer awareness, originating in the use of the pink ribbon symbol in the early 90s. So this month seems a good time to bring out the pink things. In the spirit of my Themed Things lists of green, red and blue folks and critters, I give you a list of pink animals, characters and other creatures.
Before the pink fur starts flying, let me direct your attention to the button to the right. If you click on that, you’ll be directed to a site that funds free mammograms to women in need. All you need to do is click a button. So…you know…click on it.
Ok, once more into the pink.
Some Pink Creatures
The Pink Panther. A cartoon character originally appearing in the credit sequences of the (live action) Peter Sellers movie The Pink Panther (1963), but who later got his own TV show.
Barbapapa. A shape-shifting pink blob character who appeared in kids’ books and short animated shows. I have vague but fond memories of the cartoons from when I was little. I also had at least one of the books.
Serendipity. A bright pink, aquatic, dragonlike creature from the book (of the same name) by Stephen Cosgrove. (One of the first books that I ever read.)
There are likewise various My Little Ponycharacters who are pink. (One called Pinkie Pie, for example.)
pink elephants Said to be seen by those who have had too much to drink. The expression seeing pink elephants is believed to have originated in a book by Jack London. Pink Elephants were featured in a scene in Dumbo (1941), along withe song “Pink Elephants on Parade.”
some Muppets are pink, such as one of the Martians, or “Yip-Yips.” (You can see the Yip-Yips discover a radio on this YouTube clip.)
the Energizer bunny. A mechanical drumming bunny toy with pink fur used in Energizer battery commercials.
flamingo. A bird with pink feathers, at least as an adult:
Young flamingos hatch with grey plumage, but adults range from light pink to bright red due to aqueous bacteria and beta carotene obtained from their food supply.
Amazon River Dolphins. There is a species of freshwater dolphin living in the Amazon. For real. I actually saw some when I was travelling in the Amazon in 1991. (Or I may have possibly seen tucuxi, which are apparently saltwater dolphins, but live in the Amazon and can be pink.)
pigs. While the actual pigs I’ve seen haven’t been, pigs are often shown as pink in cartoons, toys, etc. The Disney version of Piglet, for example is bright pink. Cincinnati’s flying pig mascot is pink, as is the Kids in the Hall Flying Pig.
It’s fall now up here in the Northern Hemisphere, and the squirrels are busy squirreling away their nuts for the winter. Meanwhile, I’ve been eating a lot of nuts, and going a little nuts. And reading about nuts¹. It’s almost as if nuts have been falling out of the trees and bonking me on the head². So, grab your nutcracker³, because I’ve gathered up a few nuts to share with you for this week’s list o’ Things.
a selection of mixed nuts
nuts. (adj.) An expression meaning “crazy.” As in “you are totally nuts.” There are also other nut-themed variations, such as the additional adjectives nutty and nutso, and nouns like nutjob and nutcase.
Nuts (1987) A movie starring Richard Dreyfuss and Barbra Streisand.
Nuts (2007) A short movie directed by Irvine Welsh. (You can actually watch it on IMDB.)
nut: a piece of hardware: “a type of hardware fastener with a threaded hole.” Typically used with a bolt.
wingnut: a kind of nut (the hardware kind) with the appearance of wings
wingnut: someone with extremely right-wing political views. As in “please don’t let us have a wingnut for vice president!”
nuts: a slang term for testicles.
Mr. Peanut. The mascot for Planter’s nuts. An anthropomorphic peanut wearing a tophat.
in a nutshell: an expression meaning “in summary” or “in brief,” evoking the compact size of a nutshell, and what can be stuffed in it.
The Nutshell Library: A box set collection of miniature books by Maurice Sendak. Not about technical topics.
“Death in a Nut“: A folktale (in various versions) about a boy who tries to save his mother from death by stuffing Death into a nut shell.
“Thumbelina“: a fairytale about a tiny girl. She had a cradle made of a walnut shell.
Kate Crackernuts: an English fairytale about a girl who frees her stepsister from a curse that hides her beauty. The nuts are somewhat peripheral to the story. Kate collects them while going about her tasks and eats them for breakfast.
Nutcracker: a device used to access nuts that are encased in a hard shell. Decorative ones sometimes are made to look like people.
Harlan Pepper, played by Christopher Guest in Best in Show, likes to name nuts:
I used to be able to name every nut that there was. And it used to drive my mother crazy, because she used to say, “Harlan Pepper, if you don’t stop naming nuts,” and the joke was that we lived in Pine Nut, and I think that’s what put it in my mind at that point. So she would hear me in the other room, and she’d just start yelling. I’d say, “Peanut. Hazelnut. Cashew nut. Macadamia nut.” That was the one that would send her into going crazy. She’d say, “Would you stop naming nuts!” And Hubert used to be able to make the sound, he couldn’t talk, but he’d go “rrrawr rrawr” and that sounded like Macadamia nut. Pine nut, which is a nut, but it’s also the name of a town. Pistachio nut. Red pistachio nut. Natural, all natural white pistachio nut.
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¹ Two of my favorite bloggers coincidentally (or perhaps both sparked by the start of school) wrote about how they are dealing with nut restrictions in their schools. Emily wrote Nutty, and Denguy wrote Aw, Nuts, two thoughtful posts that raise awareness about nut allergies. (I’d like to add that neither of them has a child with a nut allergy, and in fact have kids who love peanut butter. But they are both concerned and considerate.)
² That happened to me once with a chestnut. It hurt.
³ …or your epipen…
Thumbelina image from Hans Christian Andersen, Fairy Tales (Chicago: W. B. Conkey Company, ND).
For last week’s 
