Question of the day

[smg01]

Do other people often find themselves silently sing the "Alphabet Song" when filing or otherwise putting things in alphabetical order?

Comments

[rgreeneyes.livejournal.com]

hand goes up sheepisly. ;)

[moppety.livejournal.com]

Silently? Nooo. Quietly? Yesssss.

[aurora-novarum.livejournal.com]

What moppety said.

Oh, and my Canadian school teacher cousin told me that a lot of her fourth graders pronounced "z" the American way. The corruptive influence of Sesame Street.

[insert evil Ernie laugh]

[raithen.livejournal.com]

*thwupt*

do we need to break out the Canada Goose of Proper Spelling and Pronunciation??? HUH?!

(http://photobucket.com/)

Mr. Dress Up spoke CORRECTLY you know. It is ZED. Screw the rhyming. ;).

[suzannemarie.livejournal.com]

That's a very patriotic goose. :)

[raithen.livejournal.com]

FEAR the days when Raithen's have not enough work and silly ideas and photoshop access ;) (This was a few months ago. But still ;).

[moppety.livejournal.com]

Heeee! Who is Mr. Dress Up?

[raithen.livejournal.com]

Ernie Coombs (RIP, Ernie.) The WAY VERY COOL Canadian Answer to Mr. Rogers. He had Casey and Finnegan and the Tickle Trunk and oh my it was just a part of Canadian childhood.



Casey is the little boy puppet, Finnegan is the dog, Mr. Dress Up is, well, obvious ;)

This is from a puppeteer blog (http://puppeteersunite.blogspot.com/2006_07_01_puppeteersunite_archive.html):

Mr. Dressup cancelled
The end of an era in Canadian children's programming is at hand. After 11 years of daily reruns, the CBC is cancelling Mr. Dressup, says a Toronto news report.
In July, the show will be bumped to a Sunday morning slot and by September will forever disappear from the CBC lineup. The network's management has been reworking its children's lineup over the past several years and decided it was time for the friendly, bespectacled Mr. Dressup and his "Tickle Trunk" to go. In his prime, Mr.Dressup would draw 500,000 preschoolers every day, but ratings have been in steady decline. Ernie Coombs, the man who was Mr. Dressup, died of a stroke at 73 in 2001. Coombs came to Canada in 1963 with Fred Rogers to launch the original Mister Rogers Neighborhood. Rogers took his show to U.S. public television a year later, leaving Coombs to create Mr. Dressup on Butternut Square in 1964. The series became Mr. Dressup in 1967 and remained in production until Valentine's Day, 1996. In all, Coombs logged 32 years and 4,000 shows as the the fun-loving character with his puppet friends Casey and Finnegan.

Did you know, I had NO idea he was American first. He was to me, quintessentially Canadian. And he said Zed (see, it CAN rhyme ;).

You can listen to the theme song and see the new-fangled animated intro sequence (this was well after my time -- Casey and Finnegan retired, you see, and they needed new puppets) on you tube, here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zRo0eDnFTM&search=dressup

[aurora-novarum.livejournal.com]

He's essentially a Canadian version of a cross between Captain Kangaroo and Mr. Rogers.

[aurora-novarum.livejournal.com]

LOL! I remember Mr. Dress Up! I used to watch him and the Friendly Giant when visiting my grandmother up there.

My American roots still proclaim Zee though. I know, I know, damn Yanks.

Bought my mother a t-shirt while up there recently. Can't remember everything it said but it went along the lines of "I am Canadian. I live in the second largest country in the world. No, I do not live in an igloo. Yes, winter is only one season. No, I do not know your second cousin John in Saskatoon. A loonie is a dollar, not a relative [though that one could be both, eh?]. We have the best hockey players in the world."

[raithen.livejournal.com]

that T-shirt is, believe it or not, the text from the Joe Canadian ad which made such a splash for Molson Canadian Beer (which is now partially owned by Coors. Irony, you are my friend ;).

here it is on you tube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTcZ3lMXVhI And you Must. All. Watch it. Because of this thread. In fact, I may need to cross post to my journal now...

[suzannemarie.livejournal.com]

Ah, good old Sesame Street. Spreading it's influence far and wide. :)

[aurora-novarum.livejournal.com]

Sunny days. Sweeping the...clouds away.

(We have totally hijacked your lj. Sesame Street and a Canuck invasion! LOL)

[suzannemarie.livejournal.com]

Heh. Hijacking is part of the fun of LJ. :)

[pawswithclaws.livejournal.com]

Canadians pronounce the letter "z" as zed? Why on earth would they do that?

[aurora-novarum.livejournal.com]

Because Canada was a British colony until confederation, I suppose, and the Brits use "zed".

I think only Americans use "zee" (which makes more sense to me, but I'm American too). Maybe we dumped the "ed" along with the tea in Boston Harbor as a rebellion? [/tongue in cheek, no insults implied]

[aurora-novarum.livejournal.com]

Apparently raithen posted a youtube thingie explaining it on her lj here. I haven't watched it myself because I'm on stupid dialup.

[lostvoice.livejournal.com]

Oh deer lard, all the freaking time. Sometimes, out loud.

[moppety.livejournal.com]

Yes, but yours ends wrongly with no rhyme. Canadianlanders! *sheesh*

[raithen.livejournal.com]

*THBBTT*

[lostvoice.livejournal.com]

Vary rarely, if ever, do I actually get to zed.

Goober.

[suzannemarie.livejournal.com]

Or, as some of us like to call it, zee. :D

[lostvoice.livejournal.com]

:P

Instigator.

[suzannemarie.livejournal.com]

Sorry. It was just calling to me to be said. ;)

[moppety.livejournal.com]

zee zee zeeeeeeeeee

[jungleeyedgirl.livejournal.com]

yes, but if it's the end of the alphabet, I sing the Monsterpiece Theater theme. "QRSTU-RTSUV-STUV-W-X-Y-Z and A, B, CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC"

[aurora-novarum.livejournal.com]

I think I now have you to blame for singing "C is for cookie" all afternoon.

P.S. Aw, Rowlf!

[datawhorevoyeur.livejournal.com]

I blame her for telling me about overhearing the little girl singing the Mehna Mehna song outside her windown, which led my husband to searching for it online, and downloading it to his cell phone, and as his error message tone on his computer. And singing it randomly at me all the time now. It is extremely hysterical...

[lovelypoet.livejournal.com]

All the time. After a few hours when all the letters start to blend together in my head, it's the only way I can keep things straight.

[moonshayde.livejournal.com]

Gah, who told you? ;)

[rainbow.livejournal.com]

no but when i am crashed soemtimes i relize i am singing it to myself in my head over and over and over. it is veyr wierd!

[pawswithclaws.livejournal.com]

Um yeah, I'm one of those people. I can pick a letter and move forward with it, but not backwards. I take that back. I just got stuck on "K" in my head.

[adrililith.livejournal.com]

A geriatric doctor was describing a "mini-mental" exam which is used to try to determine whether someone is mentally incapacitated and to what extent (as it implies, there are much longer, more thorough tests for that but this is to just get a quick assessment). The test starts off with the examiner telling you three things, then you do other things like drawing the face of a clock, looking at a picture of a two dimensional object and trying to figure out what the 3-D version would look like, following simple instructions (pick up a pencil from the floor), then the examiner asks you to recall the three things they told you to remember in the beginning. One of the in-between-the-start-and-finish things were to repeat the alphabet backwards. I couldn't do it smoothly and without hesitation. I can count backwards, but dunno why the alphabet backwards is so hard.

[suzannemarie.livejournal.com]

I think it's hard to go backwards alphabetically too. I wonder why that is?

[datawhorevoyeur.livejournal.com]

Totally. :-D

[aizjanika.livejournal.com]

Yes! ;-)

[heanie.livejournal.com]

Absolutely