A Modest Proposal

Hey!

I'm attempting to put together a future post about Top 5 Lists.* Many of you are hounding me for the promised post, but I'm having some difficulty limiting my lists to 100 or less.

For those of my vast readership unaware of this topic, here's the deal:

Ever been asked what your favorite movie, book, food, song, whatever, is? I can't answer that. Can you?

Very few people can. I've found out, through diligent research, that hardly anyone can limit it to 10! So I'm proposing to throw out the old concept of the Top 10 list which limits you to something like, say, 10 entries. Whoa! This causes you to have to make all of these phony classifications, like Top 10 Marty Robbins Songs that Refer to Gunshot Wounds. Or, Top 10 Favorite Desserts that can be Licked off Short Hair. (Of course, maybe you really want to know?)

But in general, let's simplify this! Let's Keep It Real! Let's just say your Top 10 lists can have 100 or fewer entries! That makes room for all of the variables that enter the equation. You know, like what mood you're in, 'n stuff. Let's take it down another notch, and call them Top 5's! Why Not?

Anyway, keep your eyes peeled for the Top 5 List Post that may or may not be coming your way.

*Be sure to see the film, "High Fidelity" for a treatise on the subtleties of list making. It's in my Top 5 Best Movies list.

Respek Mah A-thor-i-tah!

It has become apparent that I must address a very important topic. I feel it is my duty to correct some possibly well-meaning but certainly misguided and misinformed people. I burn with shame for them when they expose their ignorance, and must try to help them to Stop the Madness.

Read on. If the following applies to you, for god's sake don't expose yourself to public ridicule and possible ostracization by disagreeing. It will only expose your shame, ignorance, and recalcitrance.*

It is not necessary, and is, in fact, totally uncool to say, "He peed in his pants." The correct, contemporary, and "hip" usage is, "He peed his pants." This usage applies to several other verbs in constant use, such as "crap".

As the English language evolves, certain outmoded, arbitrary, and unnecessary "rules" are discarded by common consensus through common usage.** This handy, self-regulating method of lingual evolution keeps the English language vital. The old, outmoded, and no longer relevant rules are expunged and are replaced by usages we, The English Speaking People, feel like making up. It also serves to make us feel superior, because learning English, which is already inexplicable, becomes even more difficult.

Get used to it! And try to keep up.

*Jeezuz, that's good. I'm going to start using this for all of my arguments.

**"South Park" influences this decade's lingual evolution heavily. Many changes are wrought by mass repetition of Cartman's dialog from the newest episode.

Dweebert's Two Cents

Hey! Here’s a post that my kid brother Dweebert posted to his non-existent blog! So I put it in mine without his permission, which is what I often do. I’m sure you’ll all find his perspective hella interesting. I know I did!*

Vance,

Since I don't have a public blog I'll write mine to you alone. I'll keep it short so's I don't distract you too much from your own blog.

THE JOYS OF DECONSTRUCTION

My brother Vance and I own a cabin known as Highland Estates or, more commonly, The Cabin. Rather than my describing it to you, just imagine a little shack up in the Gold Country of California with a toothless old prospectin' geezer sitting on a tumbledown porch in an old rocking chair with a rifle across his lap, chawing on a wad o' tabakky, saying things like "Dag Nabbit!" and "You jes' git!"

Now imagine that this tempting property becomes available, is purchased by an industrious young geezer (TOR) who drinks too much and decides to fix it up and add on a living room with a loft over it. Also imagine that the young geezer thinks that black electrical tape was sent down from heaven just for him.

Finally, imagine that many years have gone by and the young geezer got old and died and left the tempting property to his boys.

Being one of those boys, and being fluent in "crowbar", I know the first steps necessary to turn a hovel into a home. I know that the first thing you do is remove any vestige of the original ambiance (rocking chair, moldy couch with springs exposed, broken tin breadbox, fridge that had it's broken latch ingeniously replaced with a truck gearshift arm, sixty two mattresses with most of the stuffing removed by rats, and the numerous pieces of furniture renovated with bailing wire and duct tape) and replace them with a new, clean, moldless ambiance.

I also know that the empty spaces behind the old sheetrock do NOT make good insulation (as TOR once told me**). Empty Space makes good rat homes. Insulation makes good insulation. So, crowbar in hand, the sheetrock came down. This, of course, exposed TOR's unique concept of wiring employing globs of solder, vast amounts of black electrical tape. Some of the connections resembled the hub of a wagon wheel with cables radiating out like spokes. Vance, the home wiring whiz kid of the family (he has a book), removed all of these wagon wheels and replaced them with new ATC (almost-to-code) (even better than code, Ed.) wiring.

While Vance did wiring, I continued my own work punctuated occasionally with Vance's melodious inquiries of "What the HELL are you tearing down NOW!?" I put up with his naive caterwauls because I am aware that there are people (like Vance) who don't understand the value of deconstruction. (Oh, Vance understands the value, alright! Ed.) Observe children, the most fundamental of architects. They drop the glass of juice from a height to see the effects of distance, weight, and gravity on a known quantity. They don't pick up the pieces and try to put them together because they don't learn anything from it. Certainly there are flaws in this analogy, but I don't care. (Yadayadayada, Ed.) What counts is the fact that, without deconstruction, there can be no "renovation".

Vance is not only a wiring whiz, he is also a crackerjack plumber. I can't tell you how much I appreciate his abilities in these fields. He can wire and plumb in his sleep. This means I don't have to do it. The only problem comes from the fact that whenever there's fiberglass insulation to install, Vance always has plumbing to do. I say "Hey Vance, let's get that bedroom insulated!" and he says, "Can't. I gotta... uh... redo the plumbing in the laundry room." After a couple of hours of insulating the bedroom by myself, it occurs to me that there is no laundry room at the cabin. When I go to check on him, I find him sitting on the deck eating WheatThins and drinking whiskey. (And chortling. Ed.)

Tomorrow, I'm heading up to the cabin by myself for the weekend to get some work done. It's easier to get things done when I'm up there by myself. Alone, it takes me about ten minutes to rip down a wall. When Vance is there it takes me an hour, because he needs me to check his measurements, hand him the wire stripper, listen to his ideas for building a pole-log woodshed, make lunch, and mix his cocktails. Also, when I'm up there by myself, I can sing my favorite songs like "Dan, the Sheetrockin' Man"*** and "Danke Shoene" at the top of my lungs. I can fart, belch, and do Jimmy Stewart impressions. Why, I can even work nekkid if I want to! The sense of freedom is intoxicating!

PLEASE STAY TUNED FOR MY NEXT BLOG: "NEKKID DECONSTRUCTION"

* * * * * * * * * *

*I did a bit of necessary editing, basically just adding this niggly English-major type thingy we call “punctuation”. No changes to the text were made that altered the intended meaning, except in two particulars. The moron referred to my secret identity, so I had to insert the appropriate name. Also, changes were required to the sections where“Vance” was not portrayed fairly or in such a manner that expressed his true attributes, talents, and basic wonderfulness. In a couple of instances, statements made bordered on libel. “Vance” would never allow an unqualified person to mix his cocktails.

**The garbled syntax of this sentence would lead a reader to believe that TOR said airspace does NOT make good insulation. The sad truth is, TOR told him that airspace makes good insulation, and put this into practice.

***The perpetration of this “song” by performance, publication, or referring to it in any way (excepting this particular reference) should carry a mandatory prison sentence of no less than one year, with the additional punishment of having a hunk of fiberglass insulation wrapped around the perpetrator’s willy¹ for the duration of the sentence.

¹ No female would ever sing this excreble “song”. Suggestions are being solicited for post-operative transsexual offenders.

Not that there's Anything Wrong with It!

I like homographs. You know I’m a liberal sort of guy, but this has nothing to do with sexual orientation. It’s NOT gay writing!

A homograph is a pair of words with the same spelling, different pronunciation, and different roots. Different roots is the key. Words that are pronounced differently regionally or some such, like root or roof, are not, as we say in English-major jargon, homo’s.

Here’s a good example (and one of my faves):

entrance (way in), and entrance (to fascinate).

See if you can come up with any!

Here’s a partial list of ones I can think of off-hand.

entrance

moped (sulked) (motorized bike)

minute (time) (tiny)

bow (knot) (front of a ship)

sow (planting) (pig)

pussy (full of pus) (you know!)

wind (preload) (air movement)

windy (twisty) (lots of wind)

produce (vegetables) (to make)

I got lots more, I'm just too lazy to type them. If I didn't have to 'splain 'em.....

Fun, huh?

I thought I’d like eponyms when I heard about them, but there’s only a couple cool ones that I’ve heard so far. These are people’s names that have become words in common usage.

Here’s my faves:

sandwich (food named for the 4th Earl of Sandwich)

crap, crapper (Thomas Crapper, supposed inventor of the water closet)

Malapropism ( the Shakespearean character Mrs. Malaprop)

Some others are not so cool, like fahrenheit, curie, and pasteurize. Maybe my vast readership could come up with some good ones. Post ‘em in the comments!

I’d like to propose a few eponyms:

bush (ignoramus) Ex: “Jeez! What a bush!”

clinton (type of non-sexual oral gratification) Ex: “Oooh, ooh, you give fine clinton, baby.”

reagan (sleeping through important events) Ex. “Shoot! Did I reagan during sex again, honey?”

bush* (barfing on people) Ex: “Dang!! I just bushed on the chef at Beni-Hana!”

vance (first rate word-smithing) Ex: "You really vanced that post, dude!”

p’niss** (an habitual blog commenter) Ex: “That P’niss sure is a p’niss!”


*Context will keep these two from being confusing.

**Could be potentially confused with a similar sounding word. However, p’nisses are not often pianists.

Maybe we'll have fun with palindromes, sometime!