Monday, January 25, 2010

It runs in the family

I was at my sister's wedding last Monday. (It was super awesome, but don't ask for details now. It's after my bedtime.) We were lining up to take a picture of the kallah and her siblings. "What order should we be in?" someone asked. Size order, age order and gender segregation were all quickly rejected by the assembled. "How about alphabetical order?" I* suggested. We lined up in alphabetical order (e, Me, Mi, Ne, Ye, Yo) and were duly depicted. My father noted that we followed the English alphabet, but we went from right to left (e on the far right, Yo on the far left). N'nu. We goofed. Perhaps the photographer can flip the image around.

* I'm not a 100% sure it was I who suggested alphabetical order. If anyone who was there is reading this (j.k., you listening?) and thinks I'm misremembering, please speak up.

21 comments:

  1. Well yes, but that's part of his charm.

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  2. Must run in the family

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  3. But not necessarily in such concentrated form.

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  4. I don't know what your family looks like, but somehow I imagine that alphabetical order doesn't lend well to aesthetic appeal.

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  5. Awm: we prefer "analyst."

    trs: thanks for sticking up for me.

    ca: I'm gezhe, but not that gezhe.

    Nemo: Surprisingly it worked out pretty much all right.

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  6. Re: e; re: Nemo

    Well, considering the circumstance, alphabetical order had some other factor that caused this.

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  7. Arguing - what the hell are you saying?

    E - pics?

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  8. E - if you want to go all Charedi on us, you can block out the faces... and the bodies... Oh wait, aesthetic appeal!

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  9. forget hareidi. I'm talking confidentiality.

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  10. Cute.
    By the way, would you mind elaborating on the tippling/toppling business?

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  11. be glad i didn't make you feel stupid by putting in a link to lmgtfy.comJanuary 26, 2010 at 12:50 AM

    http://www.google.com/#hl=en&source=hp&q=%22He+repeats%3A+I+shouldn%27t+be+tippling%2C+I+shouldn%27t+be+toppling+here!%22&aq=f&aql=&aqi=&oq=&fp=371f8ac0c29333b5

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  12. Re: Nemo

    In layman's:
    His family are probably of the type to have arranged their children to be named alphabetically in birth order or some other determinant factor.

    This was meant to be a moderately amusing joke in context.

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  13. e:

    Better mnemonic:
    He repeats, I shouldn't be tipsy, I shouldn't be topless here.

    not bad on fourth place there

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  14. A better mnemonic is to write 2.7, then the year of Leo Tolstoy’s birth twice, then the angles of right isosceles triangle. Or you can do the same thing with Andrew Jackson (elected two times, 7th president, year of his first election twice, etc.).

    Or you can write one that rhymes: Мы порхали и блистали, но застряли в перевале; не признали наши крали авторалли.

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  15. Well in that case,
    "In showing a painting to probably a critical or venomous lady, anger dominates. O take guard, or she raves and shouts."

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  16. Arguing - I didn't know that there was an entire class of families out there who inexplicably name their children in alphabetical order.

    Just wondering how this all works ... let's say E's family names someone 'Zushe' -- not an unlikely possibility -- does that mean they can't have more children?

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  17. Obviously, they start over and name their child Avraham Yitzchok or something. Or Sender.

    On Old Olympus Towering Top, A Finn And German Saw A Giant.

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  18. Some Say Marry Money, But My Brother Says Big Brains Matter More.

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  19. Awm: the order in which the names in my family were given actually depended on when various grandparents died. And they didn't die in alphabetical order.

    Awm: You can be tipsy and topless. I prefer to tipple and topple. And tipsy has the wrong amount of letters, so it's a fairly useless mnemonic.

    CA: I like your first one. All these mnemonics that make you count letters are stupid. I could derive e from the series sigma(1/x!) quicker than I could count those letters.

    Nemo: "al taam v'rei'ach ein l'hisvakei'ach" applies to jokes too.

    Sarabonne: now you know what mathematicians do all day.

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Forth shall ye all hold.