Somehow I woke up this morning with a song stuck in my head that I haven’t heard since I was maybe nine (though, I will say, I have thought about it pretty frequently). The conceit of the song is…I suppose it’s explaining, amusingly, animal mating and where baby animals  come from. Sample lyrics:

There’s two kinds of wombats

Dad-bats

And Mom-bats

Dad-bats love Mom-bats

And that’s why

There’s wombats

He (Tom Chapin, that is, and yes, Harry Chapin’s brother) goes on to sing about Him-ulls and Her-ulls, and him-ulls being “nuts about” her-ulls giving us squirrels, he-gulls and she-gulls giving us seagulls, and so forth, eventually winding up with “He-ples” and “She-ples.”

Every time I think about the song I remember that as a child I thought that Dad-bats and Mom-bats was the best, most precise portmanteau (if that’s the right word) of all of them, but that “Dad-bats love Mom-bats” wasn’t as good as the more species-specific choices like squirrels being “nuts about” each other.

And then I’d sit around trying to think of animal puns he hadn’t gotten around to.

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• Guy walking down the street complaining to his friend: “Now she’s got some Eggos divorced guy with kids”

Well, don’t blame him; his ex-wife got the waffle iron.

• Spam comment I received: “Crossants can make my small dog sick he vomit two times”

I think “cross ants” are actually more likely to make a small dog sick than croissants are, so points for accuracy.

• Note I accidentally typed in my July budget tracking document: $7 – coffee and scorn

Very possibly it was.

• Woman walking down the street, talking into her phone: “So now I’m just stuck sitting here so I just wanted to give you a heads up”

Lies! Vicious lies!

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Watching Wimbledon makes me wonder why British English refers to “sport” versus American English’s “sports,” but the UK studies “maths” rather than “math.” Technically, there are multiple maths, but also multiple sports; on the other hand, “sport” and “math” both work as categories. It’s just curious that British English and American English evolved to have one of each.

I was in a yoga class the other day and the teacher had a very interesting way of speaking–as far as I could tell she was a native English speaker, but some of her phrasing was unusual. She said, “Now release the leg down to your floor,” when I would have said “Release your leg down to the floor,” (but I do like the idea of everyone having one communal leg and individual patches of floor…), and instead of saying, “Do one more on each leg,” she said, “Do one more on either leg,” though she did mean do the right leg one more time and the left one more time, not to choose your favorite leg and do one more on it.

One of the first words I learned in Russian was “apple,” яблоко, approximately pronounced “yabloko.” Last night as I was reading a (nonfiction) book taking place in part in Russia, I came across a scientist named Mr. Yablokov, which made me happy.

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Sometimes when I visit my parents they indulge me by joining me in watching gymnastics on TV. And by sometimes, I mean the Venn Diagram intersection of “when I visit my parents” and “when gymnastics is on TV.”

During the men’s Olympic Trials (parents will remain anonymous so they have only a 50% chance of bashfulness):

On the men’s outfits: “Are those like footed pajamas?

On the men’s arm muscles, and social media:

Parent A: “It looks like a sausage that’s been tied off at two ends!”

Parent B: “You should twitter that.”

Parent A: “I wouldn’t say that in a tweet. Sausage could be taken the wrong way.”

Parent A: …If I had a twitter, I would never tweet anything cruel. Unless it was anonymous.”

On the gymnast who has “London 2012” tattooed on his arm as a cruel reminder that he was the alternate for that Olympics: “But he didn’t actually make the team? He should have only gotten half a tattoo then.”

***

Me, to teenaged student: “This should read ‘we went out to dinner and drank sodas,’ not ‘we went out to dinner and drank a soda’–unless you really did go out to dinner with five of your friends and drink out of one coke with five straws, which would be sort of charming.”

Student: “Hmm.”

Student: “I’ve heard of marriages that involve more than two people?”

Me: —

Me: “Okay, or that!”

***

Man on the street to his companion: “If you eat like a horse, that must mean you’re a sandtard!”

Companion: “Sandtard?”

Man: “You know. One of those half horse, half human things.”

Companion: —

Man: “Center? Saunter?”

Companion: —

Man: —

Companion: “Centaur?”

Man passing me on the street, to his friend: “Redhead.”

That man has a future in ornithology or some branch of identification and classification, I’m sure.

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Many moons ago I had the opportunity to read a number of essays written for a general music appreciation class. Because this class fulfilled a requirement and was geared toward non-musicians (or even to people with very little musical experience at all), and because the particular group of students seemed somewhat disinterested…the essays sometimes contained very interesting observations.

On musical structure (like…A B A form…):

“This piece is a ba ba ba. It is a beautiful pea.”

On Chopin and his many nocturnes:

“Chapping Nocture is one of many noctures. It was not played by a large scup.”

On live music:

“Mr. Brian was whaling away on his trumpet.”

“The cello is a string. It is a family of four strings. Mr. Enzo was playing with his fingers, which looked difficult and hard. He was playing Pitsy Cato.”

“One of the older students composed his own songs, presumably from scratch.”

“At one point the teacher got up to give a speech and I think she said I hate to give the pitch, but I thought she said I hate to be the bitch, and I hope so because that would be funny.”

On Tchaikovsky’s “The Seasons”:

“Then on to winter, the season of the freezin…and spring, when I could picture the happy pheasants dancing in the square.”

Some pieces went over better than others:

“At the end it sounded like one of them was going to be gnashed with a sword. I didn’t really like it. It seemed to gruesome.”

“I listened to this piece while sitting on my bed with my little tweety bunny aside of me.”

Composers are very prolific:

“At the age of 75, Beethoven became death and started composing music.”

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This is what I was thinking about the other day:

The pharmacy:

the city-acy

the phlegacy

the pharma-sky

The pharmacist:

the pharma-boil

…that was pretty much it.

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I try to clean out my purse every so often because it’s generally full of garbage, but today I cleaned it out because I discovered, en route to work, that my metrocard was missing.

Though I know that the staple women’s-magazine feature “What’s in YOUR purse?” is likely about as true to life as YM Magazine’s “Say Anything” column–which is to say, partially true and heavily edited–I always snicker/grimace when I think about what my response would be if someone posed the question to me.

What’s in my purse (a sampling):

7 straw wrappers (yes, 7. I buy iced coffee and a bagel across the street all the time and I unwrap the straw there (so as to more quickly transmit the coffee into my veins)…there’s no garbage can at the counter, so instead of hanging onto the wrapper and throwing it in the trash on my way out, I shove it in my purse. Frequently, it seems.

Ear plugs in various states of newness. For concerts.

Graphing calculator that I took for tutoring and then forgot to take out.

Hunting the 1918 Flu.

Pink and green earbuds that I got for free, with one of the little green earbud-softener things missing.

Packet of sugar.

Sad, scraggly hair ties.

A bra that I left in my purse after I did yoga and didn’t change out of my yoga clothes, and then forgot to remove.

A silver dog tag that says “Superhero,” which I found smashed into the gravel at a campsite.

A lifesaver. Bonus!

What is not in my purse: My metrocard.

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Overheard

On the street:

One guy to another: “It’s a lot of work, man–to pick an avocado.”

Elderly woman to her elderly friend: “I share my birthday with Father’s Day this year…THAT SUCKS.”

Someone catcalling me…I think: “Damn, red hair like Jesus!” Okay.

In a high school:

One student chasing another, shouting accusatorially: “They could have been twins! They could have been twins!”

One student to another: “Oh? Incest? What?”

Student to her friend: “I’m afraid to go on a cruise!”

At a campsite:

“This soap smells like spit and gum.”

“We don’t have plans. That’s how we get lost.”

9-year-old, singing: “A deer peed on your tent–oh no! A deer peed on your tent–oh no! A deer peed on your tent–oh no! <stops singing> This is reality. Deal with it, people!”

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This weekend I’m camping in Pennsylvania. Russian Duolingo, accordingly, has been giving me the practice sentences “The forest is really close” and “I like sleeping on the floor.” (Other frequently recurring sentences are “My girlfriend doesn’t cook, but she can eat a lot,” “I like jumping!” and “Big Brother is watching,” so clearly it knows me well.)

I spent a large percentage of my life believing that I hated camping, before sort out the data and realizing that all of the camping I did between the ages of 16 and 22 either:

a) took place when it was freezing; I guess I can’t claim that November is “winter,” but I did spend most of  that camping trip counting all of the pebbles that were digging into my back through my sleeping bag, feeling more like ice cubes. The rest of the time I spent with my feet in my friend’s armpits, because they were cold enough to have turned numb and white and someone told us that was a way to save them. I gave her two quarters that I found in my jacket as means of payment.

b) involved carrying 35% of my body weight on my back for the first part of the trip, and again sleeping on a bed of twigs and other pokey things. I could barely put on the pack without overturning like a turtle.

When I was traveling in my early twenties I often stayed in hostels/guest houses/various forms of shelter that had no lights, water, fans, or other amenities. The thing they had in common, however, was a FLOOR. And, almost always, a mattress of some sort. The walls could be full of holes and mosquito netting a bonus, but as long as I had something between me and the ground I could go to sleep at ease.

In conclusion? Go camping in the spring or summer. And take a sleeping pad.

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In my house:

“But I’m not a craftsman, you know? I’m not a maker of fine wearables. So I put the wings in a bag.”

On the train:

One woman to another: “The thing about time travel…”

Other woman: ?

First woman: “Is that even if you could go back and change something, you don’t have to go back and change something. You know?”

Other woman: —

From a middle-school student:

Me: “Autotrophs create their own biomass, so they don’t need to consume other living things in order to make energy. Above them, you have the heterotrophs, starting with the herbivores and continuing to the omnivores and carnivores. Heterotrophs are consumers, because they primarily consume rather than feed other animals. Like humans–”

Student: “Humans do feed other animals.”

Me: <thinks about cannibals, zombies, kuru>

Student: “Their children. With breast milk (pats self on back). Good job, good job. That was a great point.”

Me: “Okay, yes. Good observation. And then humans are at the top of the energy pyramid because we aren’t natural prey for–”

Student: “And then dingoes eat babies.”

Me: <can’t argue the truth of that>

In a dream (but not the same dream that I had about vertical realness):

“Height is a combination of your inches and your posture score.”

Regarding that post, I have since been informed that the dragon was not named Noam Chomsky but Noam CHOMPsky. How could I not hear that?

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