CarpeBanana

It is time for a new blogpoll here.

That means all voting on who would win in a fight between the Incredible Hulk and King Kong is over. The results (and I might add, voters had strongly held opinions on this one) were: 13 for Kong and 6 for the Hulk. It seems Kong is considered the likely winner due to greater bulk. Thank you for your participation in this poll. You may be asked to vote again when Mr Music’s world expands to a knowledge of Godzilla.

Now for the new.

Miss Language and I have strongly held opinions about the proper spelling of the name of the color this font is in. Please vote in the sidebar here, and feel free to leave comments in support of your position.

Kitchen windowsills are so handy. The Bananalets come through, while I am washing dishes or skinning chicken, with little odds and ends that I have no idea what to do with and they get stashed there, up and “out of the way.”

Here is the current collection, and let me say, it is minimal. There usually are a few random “parts” - things like washers or screws from unknown objects. Apparently those have all been pitched in a moment of cleaning-up-ness.

The ever-present timer. This is necessary for piano practice, Calculadder pages, assigned chores, and even the occasional baking job.

The small but growing collection of bracelets removed for, but not replaced after,  dishwashing. Note that I am in 4th of July prep mode. The fact that red is my favorite color may also be a factor. The one with the Swarovski crystals is such a favorite it even has a mental name (beyond the red crystal bracelet) and I call it Fire and Ice.

Coins. A 2002 Lincoln cent. A 1987 Canadian dollar, quite worn (a looney? or is it loonie?).  And, from a trip of Grandma Millie’s, two Icelandic coins, one says eitt hundrad kronur and the other tiu kronur. Now, I would think that the Icelandic people spell like Mr Music and that eitt hundrad means eight hundred but the digits show 100 kr. And, similarly, it appears tiu does not mean two, but 10. So much for my natural ability to translate Icelandic to English.

A random rhinestone sparkle kind of thing. I guess in case we figure out what it’s gone missing from and are inclined to glue it back. Though the odds of my remembering it was on the windowsill were incalculable.

A small whale ring-holder thing given to me a couple years ago by Miss Language. It holds what it held when it was given to me, a small scrap of paper, saying, “Beware of grape with wooden mallet” Just that. Not even a period at the end.

*note* I am beginning to form a corollary to the HitchHiker’s Guide thing about a towel being the most massively useful object in the universe, something like, A windowsill is the most massively random object in the universe.

And, finally, part of a tag from a shirt Miss Dog Lover has had for about a year. It has the cryptic writing BOUGAINVILLEA DITSY. I just love the way that sounds. I considered starting a new blog and calling it BOUGAINVILLEA DITSY. But when I thought about what sort of thing I’d post on a blog with a name like that, random quirkiness came to mind. Hmmm. Kinda like CarpeBanana.

My 4th of July celebration this year just is not going to satisfy me. And it’s all Wal*Mart’s fault for bringing out my covetous nature.

The current Wal*Mart flyer is brightly displayed on our refrigerator. Not because of their motto: Save money. Live better. which strikes me as rather ironic given the fact they are encouraging us to spend money, but because of the pictures.

The front cover shows a juicy cheeseburger complete with all the toppings (even swiss cheese and a nice slice of hopefully salmonella free tomato). But the best part? This burger itself measures seven and 5/8 inches across and is almost 2 inches thick. I could really sink my teeth into that. In fact, the whole family could eat pretty well from that.

Then inside they go on with all the perfect picnic sidedishes. Hot dogs, steak, ribs, fried chicken, potato salad, baked beans, grilled corn with those parallel grilling lines that are a mystery to me and all too much butter which amazingly just sits on top of the corn, wedges of juicy cantaloupe. The picture of grilling being done by an anonymous male, all we can see of him is his hand, just enough to know that he is young and a tidy griller, with three children joyfully playing in the sprinkler and no one pulling anyone’s hair or screaming for Mo-o-o-o-o-o-o-om. The ice cubes in the drinks sparkle. The napkins do not blow away. There are no insects to be seen.

And on the back cover, a sweet little girl with no spills on herself smiling demurely while holding her ice cream cone. No “how come I only get one scoop” or “can’t we have Klondikes instead?” or “why didn’t you make the cake with a flag on the top made of blueberries and strawberries?” And next to her, the picture of perfectly toasted S’mores. Yes. Golden marshmallows, graham crackers that broke right on the score lines, and Hershey bar looking gooey yet not melted and dripping all over the place. Not to mention, each S’more measures four and 3/4 inches on a side and two inches thick.

Ah, yes, bring on the picnic foods. I will be closing my eyes and pretending they look just like the ones in this ad. At least I can console myself that my food will be much tastier than the newsprint flyer inspiring me.

Light is amazing stuff.

A couple things especially stand out to me. They strike me. Good thing being hit by light doesn’t hurt (unless of course you’re in a situation like Saul on the road to Damascus. Then all bets are off.)

#1 The silence of light. You can flip on a light switch in another room and no one hears a thing. Dawn comes silently. And as the Christmas carol says,

How silently, how silently, the wondrous Gift is giv’n;
So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of His Heav’n.

#2 The non-fillingness of light (or the lightness of light ). In the winter, I always feel I ought to leave the light on in a room when I will be gone a short while, just as the heat stays on, so that the room will be full of light when I return. I actually picture light filling the room from bottom to top, just like the room were a large aquarium and filling with luminous water and taking a little while to fill the room. I picture the light spilling a little out the windows and through doorways into other rooms, but not filling them, it just kind of glops out like a really think glaze on a cake. But light is not like that. It is just there so quickly it seems immediate to us.

I posted awhile back about my desire to invent a new color. I want to add to that idea a further embellishment. We are created in God’s image, “the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” Maybe as part of reflecting His glory, we shine in our own color. And maybe, just maybe, that is why I desire a new color ~ because there are so many and I am one.

Miss Language and I had some shopping to do. We came across a purple tote bag with the motto, “Green is the new black.” Something about this being printed on a purple bag appealed to me so I filed the quote away. We got home and I queried Devastatingly Handsome as to what he thought it meant ~~ his reply as not the top fashion expert in the galaxy was ~~ “I dunno, something about aliens are green and they are a minority so now African Americans are not the minority anymore.”

Right-ho.

I just want to say, while on the subject, that this whole greenness thing is a bit ho-hum when you are as frugal as we Bananas. You can’t get much greener than buying clothes at the Goodwill, walking to the mall, using a reel lawn mower, not using disposable products. I think this is just a clever ploy to make frugality cool.

~~~

And in unrelated news, we are still hanging in the Sudden Death position as regards Little League, after a forfeit game on Saturday and then an amazing win tonight concluding with a game winning grand slam by a team-mate of Mr Music. Pretty exciting stuff.

Our church uses the Trinity Hymnal and the Psalter. The Bananas here love singing. But, unfortunately (I think) we also love our occasional dose of The Pirates of Penzance. The problem for me comes when the two mix. That has happened due to a hymn we learned this year.

It’s Come, Ye Faithful, Raise the Strain written in the 8th century by John of Damascus. So far, so good. But then, who had to go write the tune we use for it? Sir Arthur Sullivan. Now, I just cannot hear any of his tunes without starting to picture bands of pirates and the Major General Stanley lurking about, ready to sing about how incredible classical education is, and sometimes I even branch out (my Mum taught me more Gilbert and Sullivan than I’ve passed on) to polishing up the handle so carefully or being called Sweet Buttercup. That is bad enough. But then to make this particular hymn even harder for me to get out of my head, the translation had to use Gilbert-like language. My favorite line (ALWAYS sung in my head by a chorus in sailor suits and dresses) is “led them with unmoistened foot through the Red Sea waters.”

Unmoistened foot. LOL.

Almost every year we cover some sort of health unit about the human body and learn about a wide variety of things spanning the limits of neat and gross, awe-inspiring and disgusting, unforgettable and things we hope to forget before the next meal.

And yet how on the surface all this is.

How can we ever slip into a dichotomy that our bodies are “merely” physical? There is nothing “mere” about them. The human body is such a huge bundle of mysteries it seems to me inconceivable that it can even exist.  This entry will list some otherwise unrelated things about the human body not covered in any of our school texts.

~ It has long been a favorite rant of mine that Colossians 1: 17 ”And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together” just conceivably may mean that Christ is the stuff holding together the parts of atoms… all that empty space with forces in between. And then a friend sends me a link to this youtube on a related body subject — laminin. Cool. Not conclusive in any way, but cool.

~ and if you feel like a longish and somewhat philosophical read, you can look at this Tin Can Theory of Man which circulated way back… still worth reading.

~ and then there’s the wholly strange. This article from the off-beat Dr Mercola about “tribes of bacteria” living “in your inner elbow” is about enough to weird me out, and make me wonder: will our resurrection bodies have these sort of symbiotic relationships going, too?

How do you balance this:

I Corinthians 2:2 ~ For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

with this:

II Corinthians 10: 5 ~ We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ

especially when you are walking around singing this:

Don’t know much about history
Don’t know much biology
Don’t know much about a science book
Don’t know much about the French I took
But I do know that I love you
And I know that if you love me, too
What a wonderful world this would beDon’t know much about geography
Don’t know much trigonometry
Don’t know much about algebra
don’t know what this slide rule is for
But I do know one and one is two
And if this one could be with youWhat a wonderful world this would be What a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, worldNow I don’t claim to be an “A” student
But I’m trying to be
‘Cause maybe by being an “A” student, baby, baby
I could win your love for me

At least, ours is.

I have the explorer browser going. Every now and then I hit the wrong key and bing! it pops open a new tab, labelled in large letters: YOU’VE OPENED A NEW TAB! I always read this as if it said it aloud in the same tone Fezzik uses when he says, “You just wiggled your finger! That’s wonderful!” I like to think I have bigger accomplishments during the day.

And then Thursday the old printer bit the dust. Devastatingly set to work immediately on replacing it with some fancy contraption with 36 buttons (as compared to 2 on the old one) and the whole thing is intimidating looking. I think he told me the instruction manual (which, in a clever move to sell more printer ink, you have to print out yourself) runs to 286 pages. No chance in this life of me bothering with those instructions. I will just take what my brother calls The Intuitive Approach.

So, DH was trying to Conquer the Learning Curve on this new toy of his by scanning things ranging from dollar bills to postage stamps to a photo of Miss Language she gave him back when she was 4 and looking at them under mega-pixel magnification. But he walked away and left something up. I Xd off (does everyone use that word or just the Bananas? anyhow, I closed) the window that was up for the Big Printer and it indignantly popped up one of these boxes computers do when they feel you do not recognize the seriousness of the work they are trying to do: YOU TRIED TO CLOSE THE PROGRAM. EVENTS HAVE OCCURRED. DO YOU WISH TO VIEW THEM?

Events have occurred, my foot. You’re a printer. Just close when I tell you to.

Danger seems to be my theme of the day. Here is Churchill’s inspiration:

“we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”

(apply this to fractions/decimals/percentages, the current war raging here)

“Never give in, never give in, never; never; never; never…”

(this is more about planning the coming school year)

“Danger - if you meet it promptly and without flinching - you will reduct the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!”

and here we find that the folks at Engrish.com had a timely reminder:

I know that one of the temptations I deal with is wanting to be too safe, and in particular, wanting my children to be too safe. I am reminded of Daniel’s faithfulness and Stonewall Jackson’s

Captain, my religious belief teaches me to feel as safe in battle as in bed. God has fixed the time for my death. I do not concern myself about that, but to be always ready, no matter when it may overtake me.” He added, after a pause, looking me full in the face: “That is the way all men should live, and then all would be equally brave“

Ending with this from Sinclair Ferguson:

The fear of the Lord tends to take away all other fears. …This is the secret of Christian courage and boldness.