Today, I’m starting a new tradition. Each week, I’m going to share my favorite quote and expression I ran across during the previous seven days. These won’t necessarily be items first uttered that week; only words I ran across that week. Sometimes they’ll have made a smile creep up the side of my face, sometimes they’ll have made me slap my knee. Hopefully, few will have made me think. (If you learn much from any of them, I’m probably doing something wrong–so please forgive me ahead of time.) First up is a quote from Groucho Marx: “Those are my principles. If you don’t like them, I’ve got others.” Making nonsense make sense is a high calling. God bless Groucho, all these years later. As for the expression, I’m going with “slipperier than a Mississippi eel.” I like it for its pure cornball nature and also as an example of how physical writing can be. Who, after all, has handled a Mississippi eel? I’ve never been in Mississippi, much less the river, and I’ve certainly never been grabbing for eel in its depths. But, still, I can feel it, slip out of my hands and swim off, undulating back down into those depths…all from the words, corny as they are. Of course, I probably would have felt the same thing from the phrase: “slipperier than Groucho’s grease mustache,” but I didn’t run across that one. At least, not this week. Stay tuned.
Archive for the ‘Words’ Category
Groucho and the Eel: Week’s Favorite Quote and Expression
Sunday, July 26th, 2009Snow Job
Sunday, July 26th, 2009I am a huddled mass of a man, trying to ward of the New York humidity, which I’ve been sadly re-introduced to after leaving Maine. It’s incredible how you won’t mind any weather you are used to, but that same weather will turn your existence frail if you are not. Left without air conditioners (I hadn’t put them in before leaving for vacation, as New York had been so mellow then, and need a friend to arrive now so I don’t go out a window grasping my 10,000 BTU baby the size of a Buick) I have the energy for only one thing. Here I am, huddled, conjuring up chilly phrases: billows of snow, snow job…
Metaphor Search
Sunday, July 26th, 2009Far be it for me to ever disparage my three children or gassy dog, but riding the dozen hours home from them in the car from Maine is little bit akin to–well, it’s here that metaphors fail me. The kids and dog take me just short of the point of madness but, in the end, I’m left happy they stayed on the straight and narrow long enough to allow us to get home without driving out of distraction (or purposefully, for that matter) into a roadside ditch. Is there a metaphor out there for such complex feelings over an annual auto-family-canine gas experience? Do tell.
Dumb=Best
Saturday, July 18th, 2009I am in Deer Isle, Maine, and after getting a tick in a meadow, decided to rename it Deer Tick Isle. It’s the first tick I’ve gotten in a lifetime of coming here, so the play on words does not seem based in fact. But why is it that the dumber and more juvenile the word play, the more pleasure it gives us? Or, at least, me?
Oronyms Too
Saturday, July 18th, 2009OK, come to think of it: oronyms too. As best as I can tell, they are a close cousin to the homophone, only it’s a group of words that sounds the same, but has different meaning. Truly, they are an underrated verbal curiosity. Problem is, possibly because of that same salt air and clam piles, I can only come up with one: stuff he knows/stuffy nose. Anyone?
A Verbal Triple Play
Saturday, July 18th, 2009Maybe it’s the salt air or the obscene amount of clams I’ve been eating, but I have a sudden obsession. We all know what homophones are, right? Words that are pronounced the same, but have different meaning. There are plenty of classics like pear/pair or my personal favorite leek/leak. But how about homophone triple plays? It’s my own term, I think, but the meaning seems clear: three words that are pronounced the same, but have a different meaning. Only problem is, I can only think of two triple plays. I’m wracking my brain right here, but can only come up with too/to/two, which seems too obvious to even mention, and route/root/rout. Can you help an obsessed man out here? Send me a triple play or three.
Road to Nowhere
Friday, July 10th, 2009The phrase “driving holiday” seems to be mocking me right about now. That’s because I’m about to take off on a 12 hour trip to Maine with three deranged children and a gassy dog. Want to trade places? Problem is, I’d call trade-backs once we you got there, but even the video screens we bought to anesthetize the kids for this trip, which we are dumb enough to make every year, work against us. Kids who want to see the end of a movie never sleep. Well, happy trails–another mocking phrase.
Dead Man Eating
Thursday, July 9th, 2009Don’t have the words for this one, but for any foodies out there, this is the web site for you. Check that: for any foodies out there with a macabre bent, this, my friends, is the website for you: http://www.deadmaneating.com/index.htm. The site, Dead Man Eating, catalogues the final meals of the condemned. Inquiring minds, I suppose, need to know. Of course, it’s hard for me to be pious about the site, when I couldn’t stop reading it. To wit: is there some correlation between high fat eating and crime, or when you only have hours to live do you concern yourself a bit less with cholesterol?
Monetize This!
Tuesday, July 7th, 2009
Jargon sticks between my teeth like a raspberry seed. It’s lazy man’s speak–the hollow comfort of the familiar, or a way of clouding meaning or speaking falsely without actively lying. Sometimes both. And so it is with the word “monetize.” It means, as best as I can tell, making money off of an enterprise that hasn’t before. It’s commonly used in relation to profitless Internet companies, who manage to get viewers or “eyeballs,” as they are indelicately termed, in the hope that one fine day a way to make money off of those viewers (or eyeballs) will magically reveal itself. There’s gold in that thar’ river! Anyhow, the jargon, general as it is, currently creates a special amount of confusion when considering companies like Twitter. To say they hope to “monetize” their popularity implies, I guess, to make a profit. Since, though, there is no distinction in the jargon between “sales,” which are easier to come by and “profits,” which, with discipline, eventually might come from the sales, the distinction is blurred. It is esential to understand that Twitter currently makes neither of either. No sales. No profits. To really understand their predicament (one faced by many Internet firms that have gone soft white underbelly up) you need to be clear that sales, step one, don’t exist. The phrase “monetize,” like all jargon, is too broad a measuring stick.
Saturday, July 4th, 2009
In the history of English language word combination, I’m not certain the word “art” has ever preceded “barge.” But it does–at least in Amagansett, New York, where a World War I barge was tugged to Napeague Harbor a half century ago and dubbed “The Art Barge,” docked ever since to offer exhibits and classes. It’s a strange combination: a munitions transporter meets stretched canvas meets barnacles. The setting, though, inspires and for visitors, it’s always been a haven from pricey stores and consumer culture in the area–though it does have a gift shop. Even if you can pass up a 20 buck Art Barge t-shirt, anyone in the area today should stop by for a “fun raiser,” as they term it, to benefit children’s art education there. The Art Barge sits, slightly cockeyed, four miles east of downtown Amagansett. Going toward Montauk on Route 27, make a left on Napeague Meadow Road, then cross the railroad tracks. That’s right: even in the swanky Hamptons, there is another side of the tracks, only this is probably the right side.