Sometimes it’s hard to tell if boxes, etc., sitting around the office are supposed to go out with the trash. In Southern California, you’ll often see BASURA written on these things because the probability that a Spanish-speaking person will be taking out the trash is high.
We couldn’t seem to get this box removed by writing BASURA on it, so one of our tech support people came up with this sign . . .
Last weekend, we had dinner at a Chinese place with some of my in-laws. As usual, my son and I were left at one end of the table to entertain ourselves while the rest of the group chatted with each other in Thai.
Near the end of the meal, the boy started reading through the fortune cookies and ad libbing the messages: “‘If you’re reading this, you’re most likely Asian, which means your mom will yell at you a lot.’ ‘This fortune cookie is stale. You’re not going to like it.’ ‘You will fulminate in 10 seconds.’”
“Fulminate?!” I said.
“It was one of my vocabulary words.”
When the government says ‘Islamic militants,’ it sends a message to the public that Islam and militancy are synonymous.
No, that’s not correct. What law school did you go to?
If Islam and militancy were synonymous, then you could just say “Islamic” or “militants” and “Islamic militants” would be redundant, like “past history” or “unexpected surprise.”
So actually, when the government says “Islamic militants,” it sends a message that Islam and militancy are not synonymous, although you can’t help noticing that most terrorists are in fact Islamic . . .
My son’s junior high school is having a co-ed pickleball tournament at lunch. The results are posted on the school web site. The funny thing is that if a team name contains any sort of cultural reference, the P.E. teacher in charge of the tournament either can’t or won’t put the name on the web site without a deliberate misspelling.
For example, 3 White Guys and a Hindu becomes 3 Wite Gus and a Hidu, because identifying someone as white, male or Hindu is unacceptable.
Curiously enough, the team name 3 Blondes and a Brunette comes through unscathed. Why are people allowed to self-identify as blondes, but not as white guys or Hindus? It seems like the same thing to me.
The weirdest one to me is 4 Asians and an Idiot, which comes out as 4 Ans and an Idiot.
I ask my son, “Who’s the idiot?”
“Some white guy,” he says.
“Why is it okay to call someone an idiot but not an Asian?”
“It’s not racial.”
My wife, a non-native English speaker, asks, “What does ‘ambidextrous’ mean?”
My son says, “It means you’re just as comfortable with one side as the other.”
“So it means gay,” she says.
My son picks up a pair of my pants that I’ve tossed on the bed, puts them on, and pulls out the front of the waistband. Because he weighs 60 pounds less than I do, there’s a lot of extra room there.
“I lost 60 pounds by eating at Subway,” he announces. Then in a gangsta voice he adds, “You fat. You ain’t got the abdo-min-als like I got.”
“The word is pronounced ab-dom-inals,” I say.
“That’s in the real dictionary,” he says, still with the gangsta voice. “But what does Merriam Webster know? He a playa hater.”
My wife sells insurance products to businesses, which sometimes requires in-person “cold calls.”
She stopped in to a business today and asked the woman at the desk if she might speak with the manager.
“Didn’t you see the sign?” the woman asked.
“No. What did it say?”
“‘No Solicitators.’”
Did I mention that at least one of the people in this conversation is not a native English speaker?
“I’m not a solicitator,” my wife said. “I’m here to help your business.”
Happy ending: She did get an appointment to speak with the manager, but she was still unhappy about one thing.
“Oh my god, I can’t believe she called me a solicitator . . .”
My wife, a non-native English speaker, is explaining her philosophy to me . . .
“Life is a journal,” she says.
“It is?”
“You take a trip,” she says.
“I pity the fool who talks calumny about me,” my son informs me.
I question his pronunciation of the word “calumny.”
“I pronounced it right,” he says, “but I’m down wid it either way. I’m apathetic about it.”
OK . . . call me Kreskin, but I’m predicting that a new list of vocabulary words just came out at school.
Dopeler effect n : The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
The Globe and Mail reports that a “small but determined group of computer geeks [is] trying to translate open-source software into African languages, in an effort to reach the continent most isolated by the digital divide.”
tediocrity (Te`di*oc”ri*ty)
n. pl. tediocrities
- The state or quality of doing tedious things that are of mediocre value.
- Ability to do, achieve, or perform in a tedious, mediocre manner.
Reading an excerpt from the tray liner at KFC:
We plate your food while it’s still hot, and serve it at the peak of flavor perfection.
“Tell me something I don’t know,” my son says.
“Pride goeth before a fall,” my son says, as he stuffs a slice of pizza into his mouth.
“Really?” I ask. “What does that mean?”
This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing. As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems to be able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed; prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated henhouse.
I am so glad to hear that, because I try to read political commentary every now and then, and I can very rarely figure out what if anything is being said.
I thought it was just me.
You can’t beat that with a sharp stick!
Why does the stick have to be sharp if you’re just going to beat something with it?
His attorneys sought clemency on the grounds that he had been a “model prisoner.”
I think if that’s the best thing you can say about someone, it’s time to go ahead and kill him.
Footnote: That’s a terrible headline. Did he kill a woman who had a knife? Was he executed with a knife? Some people might argue that that’s cruel and unusual, although I wouldn’t oppose it personally . . .
The Guardian sends writers to bookstores to test the staffs’ literary knowledge:
I point to the word ‘jawbo’ on page 330 [of Joyce's Ulysses]. ‘That’s not a word,’ I say. ‘Mmmm,’ he says. ‘It’s rare that publishers make a mistake like that.’
sang-froid, also sangfroid \sang-FRWAH\, noun:
Freedom from agitation or excitement of mind; coolness in trying circumstances; calmness.
Sang-froid is from the French; it literally means “cold blood” (sang, “blood” + froid, “cold”).
