Coffee Klatch

One benefit of having a wireless laptop again is that I can meta-watch movies. That means finding out more information about the movie or the actors while watching the movie. Tonight I was watching Hook and poking around the Internet Movie Database and I found that Glenn Close had a small part in the movie. If you’ve seen the movie, you know the pirate that she played. The one that got put in the “boo box.” Check out the pictures below and visit the site I got them from.

http://www.themakeupgallery.info/character/male/hookgc.htm

Currently watching: Hook

Even better than caller ID for screening phone calls is a FOUR-YEAR-OLD! Eve has been using Camber, our almost-five-year-old, to screen calls lately, and I just got a first-hand glimpse of Camber in action.

He answers the phone: “Pfitzingers.” [pause] “This is the Pfitzingers.” [pause] I think he said that one more time. Then “What’s your name?” He had to ask that twice also. I guess that’s his version of “May I ask who’s calling?” Then he asked: “Want to know the names of my family?” I think that’s where they hung up. When he meets new people, he often introduces the whole family, so it’s not like it’s something weird. For him it was perfectly normal. But even so, we all were sitting here trying not to laugh too loud as we listened to all this. What a riot!!

Ask Yahoo! has answered the question of how the phrase “three sheets to the wind” came to mean “drunk.”

Drink up, me hearties, yo ho! The sailing life gave us the intoxicating phrase “three sheets to the wind,” although “three sheets in the wind” came first.

Among nautical folks, a “sheet” refers to the rope used to secure a ship’s sail. On the square-rigged ships of yore, three sheets were needed to tie up the sails. So, if all three of the ship’s sheets were loose in the wind, the sail would flop about and the ship would go off course — rather like a drunken sailor staggering around on shore.

“Three sheets in the wind” was first recorded in 1821 by Pierce Egan in his work “Real Life in London.” In those days, sailors had a rating system for their inebriation. “One sheet” was merely tipsy, and it went up to “four sheets,” meaning unconscious. Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum, indeed.

Check out this and more interesting questions answered by Ask Yahoo! on their website.

I‘m not sure how the map terms were found, but apparently someone has used Google to create a map that shows what people in various countries are “most known for.” My guess is that they searched Google for stereotypes of people in different countries. For example, Norwegians are known for “thriftiness, openness and humour, and a love of fish,” Mongolians are known for “singing, a wicked sense of humor, and patience,” and Americans are known for “strength, dislike of walking, geniality and hospitality, and guarding their rights.” Pretty interesting.

Visit http://blog.outer-court.com/prejudice to see the whole map.