Picture: Beans

Thursday Lyrics: I Want A Hippopotamus for Christmas

The Little Anachronism was watching a video purporting to teach some math and economics. I was mostly ignoring it, but I couldn't help overhearing something about having a thousand dollars, and the possibility of buying a pet hippo with that money. That struck me as a bit unrealistic: wouldn't a hippo cost more than that? Being a nerd, I decided to see if I could figure out quickly (i.e. with some google work) what a hippo would cost. I couldn't find much, honestly, but in the discussion thread for this song, I did find the claim that you could buy a hippo in 1953 for $3000. Based on purchasing power parity measurements, that's roughly the equivalent of $24,000 today. I still don't know how much a hippo actually costs now, but it's enough for now.

Apparently my spouse encountered this song at camp. I never did, but it's cute, and in honor of the question, here it is.

I WANT A HIPPOPOTAMUS FOR CHRISTMAS
Words and music by John Rox
performed by Gayla Peevey (1953)

I want a hippopotamus for Christmas
Only a hippopotamus will do
Don't want a doll, no dinky Tinker Toy
I want a hippopotamus to play with and enjoy

I want a hippopotamus for Christmas
I don't think Santa Claus will mind, do you?
He won't have to use our dirty chimney flue
Just bring him through the front door,
that's the easy thing to do

I can see me now on Christmas morning,
creeping down the stairs
Oh what joy and what surprise
when I open up my eyes
to see a hippo hero standing there

I want a hippopotamus for Christmas
Only a hippopotamus will do
No crocodiles, no rhinoceroses
I only like hippopotamuses
And hippopotamuses like me too

Mom says the hippo would eat me up, but then
Teacher says a hippo is a vegeterian

There's lots of room for him in our two-car garage
I'd feed him there and wash him there and give him his massage

I can see me now on Christmas morning,
creeping down the stairs
Oh what joy and what surprise
when I open up my eyes
to see a hippo hero standing there

I want a hippopotamus for Christmas
Only a hippopotamus will do
No crocodiles or rhinoceroseses
I only like hippopotamuseses
And hippopotamuses like me too!

Picture: Ceiling Spectrum

Comments Elsewhere: Iran

It won't be coherent, but you can follow the links and it'll make more sense.

In response to an open Iran thread, I wrote:

All protests are terrorism and therefore what’s happening in Iran is an insurgency.

I'm being facetious, of course, but follow the link and prepare to be mind-boggled.

In response to a very personal response to the Iran situation, I wrote:

When this happened twenty years ago in China, I made the mistake of assuring a friend that the protesters were protected from violent group reprisal by international attention. I was stupid then, naive, and I’ve seen plenty more cases in the two decades since I learned my lesson about predicting the future with certitude.
...
I can also say this: the Myanmar junta is not safe and secure because of their massacre; the Chinese government has been paying a slow but real price for Tiananmen (and Zhao Ziyang’s memoirs just came out, which really stung), and trying to assuage the Chinese people with prosperity (which isn’t a bad thing, mostly). Just because they survive in the short term doesn’t mean that they were unscathed; just because our lives go on doesn’t mean we forget or forgive; just because the protest ends doesn’t mean the discontent is gone.

I was also in this discussion about rhetoric and counterfactual history, but my comments don't really stand alone all that well. I did get a nice reply from one of the other commenters, though:

Gosh, you're smart but snotty as hell. Though I suppose that is part of your charm.

I have snotty charm!

Picture: Pine Bud

Comment Elsewhere: Twitter Tracks

Thinking about the remarkable use of twitter we've seen in Iran, I said

It really is remarkable, but there are a lot of other forms of communication still working, too: phones (including land lines!), copy machines (seriously underappreciated for their role in breaking down Soviet thought control), personal communication.

Twitter, though, is visible to the rest of the world, and much harder to filter quickly than blogs. Still, I’m actually concerned, a bit, about this: it leaves a record, one that’s very difficult to erase, and if the regime regains control, there will be a vicious backlash against identifiable twitterers.

Update: Apparently I'm not wrong.

Comment Elsewhere: Strategic Silence

SEK made a point that I've seen elsewhere: expressed US support for the pro-democracy protesters in Iran would hurt their cause by associating them with foreign power. I responded:

In theory, then, the Obama administration ought to announce immediately and loudly that it accepts the results of the election as announced, and is looking forward to working with Ahmedinijad on critical regional and bilateral issues.

This would result in the implosion of any number of crania, probably to the good.

Actually, it probably should be "cranii."

For more detail on the uprising in Iran, see Andrew Sullivan. But be forewarned: he has a policy of showing violent and disturbing images, if they're real and relevant.

Picture: Wasp on Glass

Quoted: Obama in Cairo

I thought of this today:

Around the world, the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries, and anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust. Tomorrow, I will visit Buchenwald, which was part of a network of camps where Jews were enslaved, tortured, shot and gassed to death by the Third Reich. Six million Jews were killed — more than the entire Jewish population of Israel today. Denying that fact is baseless, it is ignorant, and it is hateful.

Nothing else I'm thinking is printable.

Comment Elsewhere: Judeo-Calvinism?

here:

on Winchester: “Judeo-Calvinist dreariness”?????

It’s bad enough we get folded in with Christendom, but you’d think the culture that produced the Song of Songs would get an exemption from accusations of Calvinst Victorianism.

[Yes, I know "Calvinist Victorianism" is a linguistic and historical atrocity. That's my point.]