You put your right foot in,
You put your right foot out;
You put your right foot in,
And you shake it all about.
You do the Hokey-Pokey,

And you turn yourself around.
That's what it's all about!

You put your left foot in,
You put your left foot out;
You put your left foot in,
And you shake it all about.
You do the Hokey-Pokey,

And you turn yourself around.
That's what it's all about!

You put your right hand in,
You put your right hand out;
You put your right hand in,
And you shake it all about.
You do the Hokey-Pokey,

And you turn yourself around.
That's what it's all about!

You put your left hand in,
You put your left hand out;
You put your left hand in,
And you shake it all about.
You do the Hokey-Pokey,

And you turn yourself around.
That's what it's all about!

You put your right side in,
You put your right side out;
You put your right side in,
And you shake it all about.
You do the Hokey-Pokey,

And you turn yourself around.
That's what it's all about!

You put your left side in,
You put your left side out;
You put your left side in,
And you shake it all about.
You do the Hokey-Pokey,

And you turn yourself around.
That's what it's all about!

You put your nose in,
You put your nose out;
You put your nose in,
And you shake it all about.
You do the Hokey-Pokey,

And you turn yourself around.
That's what it's all about!

You put your tail in,
You put your tail out;
You put your tail in,
And you shake it all about.
You do the Hokey-Pokey,

And you turn yourself around.
That's what it's all about!

You put your head in,
You put your head out;
You put your head in,
And you shake it all about.
You do the Hokey-Pokey,

And you turn yourself around.
That's what it's all about!

You put your whole self in,
You put your whole self out;
You put your whole self in,
And you shake it all about.
You do the Hokey-Pokey,
And you turn yourself around.

That was painfully long. And that part about putting your tail in.. uhm. And you're putting all of this where, anyways? Insanity.

nursery rhyme

hokey pokey is also type of confectionary made with golden syrup and baking soda. There is a commercial hokey pokey (covered in chocolate) bar made in New Zealand. It is also a flavour of ice cream in New Zealand that has reached the status of a cultural icon. See Kiwiana.

Hokey Pokey ice cream is basically vanilla, but with small chunks of toffee through it. Not real hokey pokey though, because that dissolves in the ice cream and goes really yuck (personal experience after trying to make 'home made' hokey pokey ice cream). Watch out if you have fillings in your teeth! This ice cream can mean expensive dentist's bills.

The Hokey Pokey dance originated in England where it was (and still is) called the Hokey Cokey.

Possibly it originated from the 17th Century as a mimicry of the Roman Catholic mass. With the priest lifting his arm (putting it in) and lowering it (taking it out) and then turning around and offering the the consecrated bread to the mass.

The term Hokey Cokey is a corruption (perhaps due to the fact that the non-latin speaking mass had no idea what what he was talking about) of Hoc est corpus: 'This is my body'. (which is what it's all about)

"knees bent" is a mimicry of genuflection,"arm stretch" is a mimicry of the priests outstretched and open arms, and "ra-ra-ra", is the priest warbling on in some unknown language

When it travelled to America, Cokey was replaced with Pokey possibly due to the popular "Hocus Pocus", which infered fooling around and trickery (in the 19th century).

From what I have been told. That is what it is all about.

Hokey Pokey is a New Zealand confectionery, very crunchy and brittle, a bit like edible golden pumice.

How to make hokey pokey:

We used to do this in science class all the time, to teach us about bicarbonate + acid reactions.

NaHCO3 + H+ ⇒ Na+ + CO2 + H2O

That was the reaction we were to learn about. It was basically a thing we'd do last period on Friday when the teacher's in a good mood and too lazy to organise anything else.

Some recipes contain vinegar, but this one doesn't. It's taken straight out of my Year 9 science book. From past experience, I recommend checking the pans for left over oddments from past experiments before using them. Year 9 students are not usually adept at cleaning science equipment.

Keep in mind that the OSH department of New Zealand bans the consumption of food in science classrooms, in case harmful chemicals enter the body too.

Never stopped Mr Schuster, I can tell you that.

Ingredients:
  • 4 tablespoons sugar (C6H12O6)
  • 2 tablespoons Chelsea Golden Syrup (more C6H12O6, in liquid form; and H+)
  • 1 teaspoon Bicarbonate of soda (NaHCO3)
  • Bring the sugar and golden syrup to boil in a pot over a bunsen burner, constantly stirring.

    Boil for 7 minutes, stirring occasionally.

    Remove from heat and add the baking soda.

    Stir in quickly until it froths, and pour at once onto tin foil.

    Break up and eat when cold.

    It should change colour and puff up quite dramatically when you add the baking soda. If it doesn't, you end up with a yellow, toffee residue, perfectly edible, but not good for much except throwing at people.

    You will be suprised by how much it puffs up. We've made and consumed vast quantities of this stuff in the past, not realising just how much this recipe makes. And eating that much sugar makes your tongue hurt, I can tell you that for sure.


    Thanks go to vuo for correcting the chemical equations.

    The Hokey Pokey Deconstructed


    The Hokey Pokey makes an apparently playful claim in the refrain that closes each verse. But suppose we take this line at face value. What if the Hokey Pokey is what it's all about? Should we not examine its rhymes more closely then, since the meaning of existence itself lies within them?

    When viewed in this light, the opening verse can be seen as dealing with the issue of commitment in a profound sense. Note that the "You" is clearly us, and we are tentative at best in our involvement with life's deep mystery.

    You put your right foot in
    You put your right foot out
    You put your right foot in

    Why the hesitation? Why the reversal of action? It is a fear that if we participate we will, in a sense, be owned? Are we Daphne, fleeing from the Apollo of life's responsibilities?

    Or in more Jungian terms, are we startled by the Shadow--which is in one sense is the path not taken? If you put your right foot in, you are certainly putting your right foot out from someplace else. Do we fear that the choice we make leaves a better choice behind? Perhaps. So we give a half-hearted effort, as evidenced in the fourth line:

    And you shake it all about

    Yes, we have chosen to participate. But do we do so in a meaningful way? No. We take the foot and “shake it all about.” A hollow gesture. Our foot is, to borrow a line from Shakespeare, “Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” So we find that this participation for the sake of participation leaves us empty. What then do we do?

    You do the Hokey Pokey and you turn yourself around

    We do the Hokey Pokey. The words themselves are intentionally meaningless—in an almost Dadaistic way. The Hokey Pokey is beyond words. Like the Tao, the Hokey Pokey that can be named is not the true Hokey Pokey.

    The power to change ourselves—it would seem—cannot come from ourselves. Every man is exactly clever enough to fool himself. The defining mind is not the answer, reason will not be our savior. The song suggests that it is the transforming magic of the undefinable Hokey Pokey that lets us “turn ourselves around.”

    We could say this application of creative nonsense represents the abandonment of our old, self-limiting mental constructs. Logic, as Einstein once wrote, only shows us the connection from what we know to more of what we already know. It is the playful imagination that leads us higher.

    And so as the song progresses, the dance with commitment—with communion—continues on through the next several verses. In each successive verse, various extremities are tested, one at a time. In and out. First one, then another.

    But in the end, this is not the answer. What then, is the solution?

    You put your whole self in
    And you shake it all about

    Now we have made the full leap of faith, literally jumping in--as we must, since we are moving at last with our whole self. Nothing held back. Nothing left behind. A complete abandonment to whatever will be.

    And as we joyously shake our whole self, we find that we are both the shaker and the shaken, with no part of us anchored and stationary. We are vibrating now, sounding out a note in harmony with everything known and unknowable.

    You do the Hokey Pokey and you turn yourself around

    That’s what it’s all about.

    ah. I have always assumed the hokey pokey to be one of the last surviving rituals of the pagan sex rites of the ancient Celts. Perhaps it's not as brash as the maypole dance, with virginal girls adorning a mythic phallus, but the symbolism is blatant, isn't it?

    You put your ***** in
    You take your ***** out
    You put your ***** in
    and you shake it all about
    You do the hokey pokey
    and you turn yourself around
    that's what it's all about!

    Really now.

    In, out, in.

    The term "Hokey Pokey" itself can only be a lightly veiled euphemism for the act of coitus, peut il pas? Visualize it with me now: a giant circle drawn on the ground, with children singing a "nonsense" tune, thrusting various parts of their anatomy into it in chorus. Interesting; the mythic phallus has been replaced by the mythic yonus. Frazer would be all over this.

    "You turn yourself around"? Could that be an obscure Jungian reference to re-creating yourself in the form of offspring?

    The reader may argue that the writer is simply oversexed and reading too much into this. Maybe that's true. The writer is in no position to judge that, being on this side of that perception. What about that lollipop song from the fifties - it's amazing that it ever got past the censors in that day and age. If that's not a euphemism for fellatio then I'm the green manalishi with the two-pronged crown.

    That is what it's all about, is it not? Sit in your back yard and watch. In all of nature, rule number 1 is "the big fish eat the little fish" and rule number 2 is "go forth and multiply". Eat, Drink, Man, Woman.

    Maybe the characteristic which separates us from the lower animals is the ability to go against instinct, which, truly, no other animal is capable of. Many such theories about what separates us from animals have been proffered: Tool use was a very popular theoretical delineator in the past few decades, until it was observed that many lower animals use tools; thrushes, ants, beavers, monkeys, etc. etc. etc. I myself was a vociferous proponent of the idea that the prime delineator is the fact that we alone, among all the beasts in nature, create likenesses of ourselves, like those creepy porcelain dolls,  but I've since learned of two so-called "lower" animals that come close to doing so: namely, the bowerbird, which fashions glorious nests that mimic and advertise their physical assets and characteristics in order to lure a mate, and the Cyclosa Mulmeinensis, a spider which lives on Orchid Island off the southeast coast of Taiwan that makes decoys of itself in order to confuse predator wasps. It is interesting to note that the first propagates rule 2 (mating) and the second is related to rule 1 (the food chain).

    Indeed, even only a few humans are capable of denying instinct, apparently. Some amongst us have denied either rule number 1 and/or rule number 2 as a course of life. Vegans and vegetarians deny rule 1, alone amongst all the creatures of the earth. There is no other animal that regulates its diet for either moral or health reasons (I cannot even conceive that this is possible in lower animals), but only if instinct dictates such behavior in reaction to environmental necessities. Many humans also deny rule 2, and refuse to propagate. This latter is evident in two distinct forms; one in the form of a segment of the population who feel that they need not contribute to human overpopulation, and the other in the form of human homosexuality. Members both contingents sometimes refer to the rest of the species as "breeders". These are both denials of instinct which would seem bizarre to the casual outside observer. There is a portion of the species homo sapiens who do not feel compelled to disseminate their genetics and another who deny natural sustenance at the cost of some hardship to themselves.

    Perhaps both of these "denials of instinct" are actually compelled by collective instinct. Maybe the survival of the race as a whole depends on reducing overpopulation and altering our means of sustenance.

    I am reminded of the opening line from a song by an eighties musical group called "Love and Rockets"; You can never go against nature, because if you do, that's part of nature too....

    Hell. Maybe the prime delineator that separates us from the lower animals is the ability to rant and wonder.

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