30+ years of quirky sayings

I’ve been collecting snappy colloquialisms for over thirty years now. Some are funny, some downright vulgar or insulting. Some you’ll probably remember from your childhood, very common in our culture and language. Some people have a knack for making them up on the spot and dead-on appropriate to the situation at hand. These always catch me off guard, and I have to scramble to write them down before I forget. I’ll start posting some of them on a semi-irregular schedule.  Here are several relating to intelligence -

• She’s such an airhead; if you blew in her ear, she’d thank you for the refill.
• If brains were dynamite, he wouldn’t have enough to blow his nose.
• He’s about as sharp as a sack of wet mice.
• He’s about as bright as a small appliance bulb.
• He’s dumber than catshit.
• About as smart as a box of hair.
• She couldn’t teach clay to dry in the sun.
• He ain’t the sharpest knife in the drawer.
• He’s a few sandwiches short of a picnic.
• He’s kind of a dimbulb.
• He’s too dumb to pour piss out of a boot with instructions on the heel.
• She wouldn’t know a fancy dress from a sassafras patch.

gilmark

Photoshop and the Simpsons

When I am tired of severe multi-tasking (working on the house, cleaning, cutting the grass, etc.), I like to search the web for images of the Simpsons that will work with various backgrounds. Then I size, cut and paste, clean, move, and flatten them so they can be used for screensavers and/or wallpaper.

I thought I’d share a few that I’ve done over the last 2-3 years. I particularly like to tweak the Microsoft images that come with your operating system. You’ll know which ones. Enjoy.

collector of stuff

greetings.

I’ve been busy working on my house. It’s a labor of love, a money pit, a place called home, a large sculpture, a nemesis and a reluctant friend. Frankly, it’s the reason I haven’t written anything in months. . .

Last weekend I was reading the NY Times book review section in the Sunday paper. I found a review of “Collections of Nothing” by William Davies King (book review). Great stuff. I’d like to meet this person. I was so fired up, partly because you don’t see too many articles with words and phrases such as collecting, ephemeral detritus, curator, accumulate, possessions, inveterate pack rat, preservation, etc. I have always thought of myself and my stuff in these terms.

“King has over the years collected some 18,000 food labels, 500 bottle caps and 800 distinct envelope linings . . . ” and it goes on and on. I can surely relate to this man. I’d like to meet him, shake his hand, and tell him what a wonderful job he’s doing. It all makes perfect sense to me.

If you are so afflicted, you’ll understand that EVERYTHING has some value. Everything doesn’t have ANY value to everyone; only those of us with this gift, and some would call it a problem.

In the history of my life, I’ve collected Mad Magazines, Star Wars toys, pencils, patches, photos of gas stations, javajackets, Melmac dishes, oil cans, New Yorker magazine covers, comic books, bread tabs, pennies, misspellings of my name mailed to me, dried bugs, matchcovers, formica samples, pictures of old trucks, plastic dimestore toys of the 40s and 50s, wooden preschool puzzles, clipart from the 40s through the 60s, HotWheels, vintage advertisements, cowboy drinking glasses, flatware with black plastic handles, pieces of plastic, sticks with bark removed, Lego, unusual tools, Sillisculpts, weird bike and other wrenches, postcards, record albums, books, early Simpson toys, handmade wooden cartoon carvings, earring holders from the 70s, Gary Larson coffee mugs, strange country witticisms, Tomy robots, bowling stuff, St. Louis Cardinals trinkets, debt, Nosco animals by Don Manning, clementine crates, paint stir sticks, McDonald’s Richard Scarry toy cars, Mattel Tuff Stuff blocks, and more that I can’t remember right now. A lot of it I still collect, although I’ll keep that to myself and my closest friends.

I’ll speculate that, aside from Andy Warhol and Elton John, both of whom enjoyed vast wealth and, therefore, healthy collecting habits, most of us have beer money and champagne taste; we have to be happy with food wrappers and bread tabs.

gilmark