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

saving energy and language abuse

I was trolling through eBay looking for some household stuff and ran across a listing for some Farberware with this description -

The skillet is stainless steel with an aluminum bottom that helps to spread heat quickly and evenly. What this mean is the bottom is completely aluminuim clad which causes the pan to heat up quickly and evenly so you can turn down the knob and SAVE ENERGY.

This seller needs to learn how to save words, which will save energy.  What this means is that if the seller chose his/her words more carefully, it wouldn’t have taken as much energy, and he or she could have concentrated on learning how to write, which would have saved energy. After all, writing more efficiently would save words, and energy.

Remember, skiing in Nebraska is redundant.

gilmark

looking forward to some original language abuse

Ok, here’s a great example of abusing the language -

I was searching for pictures of a 1965 Vespa GL on Google, and this was part of the text accompanying the first pictures I found -

My Vespa GL is an original owner bike that has never been owned by anyone other than the original buyer.

and another -

Around 1999 or 2000, I was living in Baltimore and listening to a radio interview with Gary Williams, the coach of the University of Maryland men’s basketball team. Here’s a gem from that interview -

“We’re really looking forward to the future.”

Well, I guess we all are, in some sense, it just sounds strange to actually say it.

I couldn’t write this stuff if I tried.

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

The naming of babies

Actually, more on traveling through Chicago Midway. . .

I was looking for an empty seat at the gate I was supposed to depart from, and the only seat I found was in the middle of a group of disconnected people, or so I thought. They were all minding their own business, so I was able to pull out a book and start reading. Turns out they were all leaving Chicago for home after a two day business conference and a bit tired.

Then the boss showed up, and the conversation became animated and the group started interacting, and, quite frankly, became annoying. I tried to continue reading, but it just wasn’t going to happen. I glanced around for another empty seat, and didn’t see anything promising, so I stayed put. You just can’t get any privacy at an airport unless you want to hide in the handicap stall in the men’s room, but then you are in danger of being bothered by a member of Congress or the Senate.

One of the women of this group had one of those 4″ thick paperbacks, weighing in at 7 pounds 6 ounces and 10 inches long, of BABY NAMES.

She was a jolly mother-to-be, and started reciting name after name after name from this book and asking all in her party for comments and suggestions. I was getting glossy-eyed until the conversation turned . . .

“I like the name Nevaeh (na-vay-ah). I never heard it until about six months ago, now I hear it all over the place. It’s Heaven backwards.”

There was a collective, silent groan by those who overheard this, except for the enabler in the group, who told her that Nevaeh was beautiful. Then the enabler said “I also like the names Lunesta and Allegra.” Several members of this group made comments about those names being beautiful as well. None made mention of the fact that they were names of pharmaceuticals! At this point I determined that these were just really, really polite people with no interest in a debate or argument.

I’m now looking at the Lunesta and Allegra websites; right below the welcome blurb, there’s a long list of side effects, which I won’t go into. I’m sure you’ve all heard the comedy routines about side effects. But at the end of the Lunesta safety information, there’s this disclaimer:

Remember that no medicine is for everyone.

And neither is naming babies.

gilmark