Humor

Grown-up tattling

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My husband grew up in the Midwest, Land of a Thousand Kindnesses, and came from a family who speak kindly of one another. The first time I met his parents and five siblings, I was shocked. They reminded me of The Waltons, the popular TV family of the 1970s. At family gatherings when my husband’s family told stories about one another, everyone minded everyone else’s feelings, so at the end of their stories, you expected everyone to stand up for a group hug and one more family photo.

 

My family grew up in Texas, sometimes, but we moved now and then just to see if growing up somewhere else would make us any different. It didn’t. We were the people from Peyton Place no matter where we lived. The soap opera known as Peyton Place first aired in the mid-1960s, shocking some and entertaining others with its stories of divorce, infidelity, imprisonment, and revenge. Just like my family, except that our show ran every day, while Peyton Place only ran two or three episodes a week. At our family gatherings when we told stories, no one worried about anyone’s feelings, we told the most embarrassing stories about each other that we could remember and ended up rolling on the floor hooting and hollering, and sometimes snorting through our noses because none of us could believe the dumb things the others were capable of.

 

In my family teasing has always been a sign of affection, and our favorite way of teasing is to tell on one another. When you are a child, telling on someone means you are tattling: trying to win the favor of whoever is in charge, either to look good or avoid punishment. Our grown-up tattling is after the fact and has no other purpose than to point out the obvious: we be dumb now and again. And the more we tell the stories on one another, the kindlier we feel toward one another.

 

So when my husband met my family, he was shocked. It didn’t dissuade him from marrying me, however, because I made sure we were already married before he met them. (Note to reader: Contrary to what my family says, I’m not as dumb as I look and sound.)

 

If, in the telling of a story about a sibling, we see signs of embarrassment or hear attempts to explain or justify, that story will become a signature story, one we will tell again and again, every chance we get. Because that’s what love does.

 

My mother never took part in any of this teasing. Of the four siblings I grew up with, only two of us shared the same father. The other two had their own fathers, yet we all share the same sense of humor. Maybe mother was merely the carrier of the slightly off-kilter humor that manifested itself in her children.

 

Of course everything I have written up until now is just an excuse to tell on the two siblings that I know are still alive. One of these posts I will explain more about my known and unknown siblings. But until then, here’s me showing some love to my brother and sister.

My brother in a littler time

Brother story

Until my brother came along ten years after me, I was the baby of the family. Mother indulged him not only because he was the youngest, but also because he was a boy, something I had been expected to be, but failed. When he was five years old, we lived in military housing in Fort Wainwright, Alaska. One day when he was shopping with mother at the commissary, he asked for some strawberry preserves. Mother tried to talk him out of it and told him he wouldn’t like it because it had chunks of fruit inside, but he insisted. The next day she put the preserves on his peanut butter sandwich, and after one bite, he knew mother was right: he didn’t like preserves. Mother insisted that he eat the sandwich, and then left him alone in the kitchen. He pulled the two pieces of bread apart, thinking he might be able to salvage the peanut butter side. It, too, was ruined. I’m sure that we had a garbage can in the kitchen, and I know that my brother had seen people throw things in the garbage, so it wasn’t as if he didn’t know how to dispose of the bread. He must have feared that mother would see the uneaten sandwich languishing in the trash, so he did what any reasonable person would do. He picked up the rug in front of the kitchen sink, placed one slice of the bread on the floor, and carefully covered it with the rug so that it was hidden. Then he took the other piece, opened the basement door, and flung it down the stairs. After all, who would think to look there? He doesn’t remember if mother found the first slice before or after she stepped on the rug; he can’t remember any consequences at all. Since he was the youngest, there probably weren’t consequences.

One of the few days the world left my sister's hair alone

Sister story

As a young girl and teenager, my sister suffered from Tourette’s of the Hair. Most nights she lathered her hair in Dippity-do, wrapped the strands in pink pokey, plastic rollers; large, bristly, netted curlers; or soft, spongy snap-ons in the belief that she could make her hair bend to her will. More often than not, it didn’t. Some nights the hair wriggled out of the curlers; other nights the curlers twisted the wrong way. When she commanded it to flip up, it flipped down. Or if she ordered it to swoosh that way, it drooped the other way. This made bad words come of her mouth. She developed two theories based on her hair. First, she believed the world had an interest in how her hair turned out each morning. Nice hair displeased the world; it was completely and utterly against her quest to be the best tressed at school, and, in fact, wanted her to go to school with failed hair. Second, she convinced herself that the answer to obedient hair resided in the bathroom counter. She hypothesized that by striking the counter hard enough and often enough with a comb, brush, or curling iron, her hair would suddenly flip or swoosh the right way. It took a number of years and a pile of broken hair appliances before she accepted the fact that the counter was merely an innocent bystander. She told me later with some regret that she passed this problem onto her daughter. She is still working on the problem of the world being against her.

In the interest of fairness, I should include a story about myself. Unfortunately, I have run out of space. Really. If I write any more I will bump into those little icons under this sentence.

Love in the time of garlic

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The picture of Saint Valentine, patron of lovers, depicts him with birds at his feet and roses at his side. Geoffrey Chaucer is responsible for the birds. People in the Middle Ages believed that birds chose their mates in the middle of February. In his Parliament of Foules, Chaucer wrote: “For this was on seynt Valentynes day/ Whan every foul cometh ther to chese his make” (309/310). The spelling looks remarkably like that found in modern text messages and e-mails. To comfort myself at night, I tell myself that young people are not bad spellers, they are merely returning to Middle English, the language of Chaucer.

 

We can hold the Greeks and Romans responsible for the roses at Saint Valentine’s side because like Chaucer they are not here to defend themselves. Many of their stories about the god of love, Eros to the Greeks, Cupid to the Romans, included roses.

 

If I could embellish the saint’s picture, I would have him hold a box of dark chocolates in his right hand and next to the roses plant some stinking roses, an affectionate name for garlic. For me, love isn’t love if it doesn’t smell of garlic.

 

Part of the attraction between my husband and me is the love of garlic. For our anniversary a few years ago, we bought one another garlic presses. He was traveling and had to spend several months living on his own. How could I send him out into the world without a garlic press? The one we had at the time was old, so we went to a kitchen specialty store and shopped together. He looked over the presses and chose a conventional one that crushes the garlic, while I dithered over the deluxe model that could crush or slice, even at the same time! In spite of the high cost, he bought it for me. If that isn’t love, I don’t know what is.

No matter how you slice it, this garlic press proves my husband has a crush on me.

Over the years we have met people who do not or cannot eat garlic. We understand those who cannot eat garlic, but not those who choose not to. We will still love you if you don’t eat garlic, but we will probably talk about you behind your back.

 

“Gert is coming over for dinner, honey, so we can’t use any garlic.”

 

Look of consternation. “Does she have a doctor’s note?”

 

Look of surprise. “You know I forgot to ask. She looks so honest, and she said it upsets her stomach.”

 

Later that day on the phone. “Hi, Gert. About your allergy to garlic. My husband and I were wondering, do you have any kind of documentation? It’s not necessary, of course, but if you have some, we would really like you to bring it with you tonight when you come over for dinner.”

 

Tonight, in honor of St. Valentine and his name, which comes from the Latin valens meaning strong, powerful, and healthy, I plan to make something strong, powerful, and healthy: Death by Garlic pasta. You can find a number of recipes online, but go here to find a simple one that uses 10 cloves of garlic. If that sounds too wimpy, or you have a fear of vampires, or you are feeling particularly romantic, you can double the amount of garlic and fall in love twice as hard. Otherwise, just cut a clove of garlic and rub it behind your ears and on your pulse points. If your husband is anything like mine, he will do anything you say.

 

If you are still wondering what to buy your loved one for this special day, remember that while flowers and chocolates are always welcome, nothing says Valentine’s Day like the fine bouquet of the stinking rose.

 

Leitwortstil

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Let’s be honest, leitwortstil looks like something you order at the deli. “I’d like a pound of the best wurst you have, two pounds of un-holey Swiss cheese, and half a pound of leitwortstil.”

 

Now, for the sake of fairness, since we have been honest, let’s be dishonest. Or rather, let’s be imaginative and fictional and say you make this order at a word deli. Afterwards, you go home and write a story in which you make the protagonist eat “best wurst” and “un-holey Swiss cheese” meal after meal because that’s what leitwortstil does to you.

 

When Germans try to say “leading-word style” in English, it comes out sounding like leitwortstil, so we must learn to deal with that. This is a good reminder to English speakers to make sure to be the first ones to say new words; otherwise, we will be stuck with words that are hard to pronounce, like Schadenfreude and Fahrvergnügen. Leitwortstil, which should technically be capitalized since it is a German Noun, is the repetition of certain words or phrases in a story or body of work that the writer uses to develop a motif or theme. In layman’s terms, think of it as the “Are we there yet?” refrain that a child repeats over and over on a cross-country car trip, which helps establish the theme of your family vacation and ultimately your life: madness.

 

Although I am only a typist, it occurred to me that perhaps I have unwittingly or possibly half-wittingly employed leitwortstil on this blog. This led me to VocabGrabber, a website that allows you to enter a text and sort the words by relevance, occurrence, and familiarity. In addition, words are marked in seven categories: geography, people, social studies, arts and literature, math, science, and the puzzling category called vocabulary. You can imagine how helpful a website like this if you need to waste several hours of your life.

In a desperate search for my leitwortstil, I began copying and pasting my posts into VocabGrabber and made three important discoveries. First, the two words I repeatedly repeat are “are” and “have.” My literary style of typing brings truth and light into the world by explicating and complicating the two basic human needs: existence and possessions. As Descartes might say if he were still alive and we were both yearstricken: we are, therefore we have.

 

The second important discovery came when I entered the text for my blog about joining the pantheon of the blog gods. Overcome with whimsy, I clicked on the relevance button, which VocabGrabber declares are the words “most significant for the average reader.”  In that post. the most relevant word to you, dear reader, is earwax, a word lodged in your mind and ears in a strikingly relevant way. And right after earwax, I discover that eructation is important to you, followed by narcissist, key word, epitomize, and flatulence.

 

For research purposes and because I have wasted so much time at VocabGrabber what is another ten minutes, I typed in all of the above paragraphs. You still find earwax the most relevant, followed by holey, eructation, Swiss cheese, explicate, and narcissist. You people surprise me. I had no idea these things meant so much to you. I did notice that you are not having as much trouble with your flatulence today. I’m happy to hear that, or not hear that if you know what I mean, and I’m sure the people around you are too.

 

My third discovery daunted me. VocabGrabber reveals more about word usage than leitwortstil, so I must continue my quest. And it reveals more about you than you may have wanted me to know. I will try to use this knowledge wisely. Your secrets are safe with me.

The key to increasing your readership

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Yesterday morning was a dark and stormy night that found me in a twist of strange fate. On the way to untwisting it, I discovered the key to increased readership! Yes, it’s true; I have another secret to reveal to the world. And once again, I am providing it free of charge. Second because I care about you. First because I tried selling you Dog and a Half word kits and you ignored me. How sad is that? Sad enough that I couldn’t even put it first.

 

My morning routine seldom varies: up at 4:30 a.m. for first dose of medicine (p.o., Latin for “per os” meaning “by mouth”); ingest ½ cup of granola, followed by reading/internet time; second dose of medicine, as needed; and finally, morning typing time.

 

The dark and stormy night started with the typing. The more I pushed on the keys, the more I felt like I was pushing on bruises in my heart. I tried typing softly, but it kept hurting. Certain keys produced  tear drops, which as you know can mess up your computer. So, I stopped and felt better and saved my laptop. It’s what I do.

 

Are you a Freud of psychoanalysis? (Image courtesy of Wikipedia.)

During my time at work, my fate remained hideous kinky, which, if you know anything about the movie of that title, has Freudian connections, much like my life. When I left school late yesterday afternoon, I barely got home before night fell. Thankfully I got there first, and watched through the picture window as the darkness crashed down.  Safely ensconced in my recliner, I opened my laptop, only to be gobsmacked. Yes, smacked right on the gob!

 

Fast backward. A few weeks ago, my blog was in an accident. WordPress reported it on their front page, so a lot of people came over to see it. Most, of course, took one look, felt disappointed, and left. Over the next few days, some came back, but eventually the onlookers tapered off. The graph below tells the sad, sordid story.

 

Fast forward. Things returned to normal, I produced wreck after wreck, but not very gawk-worthy.

 

Pause. Sorry, this is a gratuitous use of language. Somehow I got stuck in this tape recorder image.

 

Play. We left off at the gobsmacking. When I checked my stats last night, I had almost as many views as the previous day. The only difference was that I hadn’t posted anything. This morning I see that the day I didn’t post, I got more views than in the previous five days when I did post. You need a magnifying glass to see the difference, but trust me, the orange arrow non-posting day has more views.

 

Can you imagine my excitement? I have discovered the key to increased readership: Do Not Post! It seems counterintuitive, but all new discoveries appear that way at first.

 

Oddly, I must post today in order to share this information with you. However, because I am posting it, you probably will not read it. I am like Hamlet, or since I am female, Hamlette, pondering whether to post, or not to post.

 

I hope this helps you. I have more to say, but it will have to wait for a day I don’t post. I certainly hope you come back then.

 

 

Wealth by toothpaste

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Would you like to become fabulously wealthy just by using toothpaste correctly? If you’re like most people, you answered yes. Now, would you like to know the secret behind wealth by toothpaste? You know you would. Finally, would you like to get the secret at no extra cost to you? Friends, your answer to this last question disappoints me. You want me to reveal my secret for nothing. How do you expect me to become fabulously wealthy if I give this secret away?

 

But don’t worry about me, friends. I’ve grown use to the taste of dry oatmeal three meals a day. So today, you are the lucky beneficiary of my largesse. Hold onto your dentures because I am going reveal the fluoride way to lots of money. With pictures!

 

First, I can’t emphasize enough the need to squeeze that tube of toothpaste. Never squeeze in the middle of the tube. From day one, you must apply pressure from the bottom of the tube, gripping each side with thumbs and forefingers, pushing upward. Done properly, your tube will look like the one below.

Frontal view of so-called empty tube of toothpaste

Some people are easily fooled into thinking it's empty.

Sadly, many people see a tube like that and think all of the toothpaste is gone! I know better, and soon you will, too. How, you ask. Well, the answer is probably lurking in your junk drawer: a simple pair of scissors. Why don’t more people think of this? I believe it’s because “scissors” is a defective noun (Latin, plurale tantum), one of those words that has only a plural form. It’s one thing to find a scissor in your junk drawer; it’s another thing altogether to find a pair.

Hand-held defective noun.

Use your hand to operate the scissors, then cut quickly and sharply, leaving 1.6” at the top. Use a ruler if necessary.

Both toothpaste tubes and defective nouns require squeezing. Weird, isn't it?

At this point, you should look inside and marvel at the amount of toothpaste that you almost threw away! Some people see little dollar signs the first time they look inside a cut tube. If this happens to you, don’t be alarmed, just don’t tell anyone else.

Yes, that much was inside that tube!

Some people say they see dollar signs in this. I don't,but some do.

To prevent the exposed toothpaste from drying out, you need to place the tube in a container.

It's almost like a piggy bank.

If you are not squeamish and don’t share your toothpaste with anyone else, you can just dip your dry toothbrush in the opening to use up the toothpaste. If you share the tube, be sure not to tell the other person you are doing this. Tell them you are using the next method.

Dip into tube for toothpaste. Don' t forget to brush any gold crowns you have lying around that were once on your mother's charm bracelet.

If you are squeamish or the person you share the tube with is in the bathroom at the same time, go ahead and use a Q-tip. Dip it in the toothpaste and wipe it on your brush. Then place the Q-tip in a plastic bag. You can use the other end tomorrow. Do not throw the Q-tip away even after the two uses!

Q-tip method for the squeamish or if you share the toothpaste with someone else and they are watching you.

Once the tube is empty (check the little opening that the toothpaste comes out of!), you can throw it away. I’ve heard reports of people licking the inside and then licking their toothbrush, but who in the world would do a thing like that?

 

Now you are left with the Q-tips and the plastic bag. Depending on the amount of toothpaste on each Q-tip, you can probably polish at least your large front teeth. Then turn the plastic bag inside out and polish your lower teeth. If necessary, open another tube of toothpaste and squeeze a little on your toothbrush to finish the job.

If you are squeamish, you will have more toothpaste on the plastic bag. I lost my squeams a long time ago and prefer dipping.

Be sure to wash out the plastic bag and use it again! (I shouldn’t have to tell you that.)

 

For those who are serious about wealth building, you can run the Q-tips under water to remove the cotton. Finding new cotton to wrap around the tip shouldn’t be too hard. A lot of free cotton comes in medicine jars. Dryer lint is also a possibility. I can’t help you with how to attach the cotton or lint. If you are really planning to do that, you need a special kind of help. Make an appointment today.

Warm water removes the used cotton. After that, you're on your own. Even I can't help you.

Now, do the math. Do you see what I mean about saving lots of money? And toothpaste is only the beginning. You can do this with other things that come in tubes: lotions, hemorrhoid cream, and glue. Don’t forget to label the tubes carefully. I’ve heard reports that hemorrhoid cream used on the teeth reduces swelling in gums, but it causes food to slide down your throat before your can chew properly.

 

If this has been helpful, and I know it has, please take a moment to consider all of the good advice you have received from this blog. As you know, it takes a lot of chocolate to run a blog that is full of so much, shall we say, helpful information. I rely on the generous gifts of dark chocolate from family, friends, and perfect strangers to keep going. Send your chocolate today. Thank you.

 

In the interest of fairness and the limitations expressly stated on yearstricken’s poetic license, you must be at least ten years old or younger, be responsible for buying your own toothpaste, brush your teeth at least three times a day, and use a lot of toothpaste in order to potentially move into the realm of what yearstricken claims is “lots of money.” Most users of this method can expect to save dozens of dollars over the course of their few remaining years and teeth.

Have you thanked your word surgeon today?

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I just found out from my imagination that today is national Thank a Word Surgeon Day! So I am very excited because as you know, or will know after you finish this sentence, I am a word surgeon. So, thank you, me.

Without word surgeons, no lips would whisper melodies out of flutes, no hand would wield the wild épée, slicing and dicing the villains of the world, and machines would never have the chance to learn to hum. Every flute deserves a kiss from lips, every épée needs to slash out now and then, and all machines deserve to experience the electric thrill of on-ness.

 

Ever vigilant word surgeons roam the earth searching for nouns, rummaging through old dictionaries, discovering new inventions, reading people’s e-mails, and writing blogs. They are ordinary people who look just like you and me, although I’m pretty sure your mom could tell the difference.

 

Most of them are kind-hearted people, working late into the night, affixing words that will benefit humankind. One of their favorite suffixes is “-ist.” On discovering the flute, one of them delicately removed the “e,” added the “-ist,” and voilà, the flutist was born. Flutist should not  be confused with flautist, which came later, and was formed by an amateur flaunting his knowledge of Italian. This is where we get the word “flauntist,” which means one who flaunts. Still another professional took the time to add “-ist” to an épée  and Errol Flynn was born, one of the greatest pretend épéeists in the world, who swashbuckled his way into the hearts of millions of moviegoers in the 1930s and 1940s. And finally, I must mention the word surgeon who set the gears of the Industrial Revolution in motion, creating millions of jobs, by having the foresight to drop the “e” and attach “-ist” to a machine.

 

Word surgeons have taken simple nouns and given the world pianists, chemists, and typists. You should be thankful they are not afraid of big words or words that are hard to pronounce. We have them to thank for the otorhinolaryngologist, the feuilletonist, the chutist, and the vexillologist.

However, word surgery is not all fun and games, friends. Bad bananas happen. Sexists, agists, and racists came from somewhere. Don’t blame word surgeons. They don’t take responsibility for bad words, only good words. And if you judge them, they will make bad words about you. It’s what they do: make words.

 

Because of those bad bananas, “-ist” has been called The Intolerant Suffix by at least one word surgeon I know intimately. And although I fully recognize the dangers, I am going to illustrate how this works. The intolerant part, not the intimate part.  Please understand that the following words are for illustration only and should not be seen as an endorsement or encouragement toward intolerance.

  • Plaid makes you cry – you are a plaidist.
  • Being asked to play another game of Monopoly makes you gag – you are a monopolist.
  • Big hair makes you scream – you are a bouffantist.
  • People who act like donkeys or fools sicken you – you are an assist.
  • Hearing a woman called a “Ho” in a song makes you break things – you are a hoist.
  • Wearing strings instead of panties makes you uncomfortable – you are a thongist.
  • Hearing the f-word all day long makes you want to hit someone – you are a fist.
  • Irons and ironing boards are not allowed in your home – you are an ironist.

Some of you may be tempted to try this at home. I urge you to use caution. Remember, if anything bad comes of it, don’t blame me. However, if anything good comes from it, you can thank me because today is Thank a Word Surgeon Day!

When personal guilt is not enough

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When the thrill of carrying personal guilt wanes, life can grow dull, and you may begin to feel powerless, even depressed. You may look back with longing on your childhood when you first felt the thrill of knowing you were responsible for the feelings of other people. All those adults with their volatile emotions relied on you, a small child, to maintain their equilibrium. Heady days, indeed.

 

Just follow this road for the rest of your life. (Photo courtesy: http://thedisorderofthings.com/)

 

As you grew, did your responsibilities expand to include the feelings and well-being of your friends? If so, you are just the person I would like to talk to today: an adult with a strong sense of responsibility. Now, not only do you carry the blame for the moods and poor choices of your spouse and children, but you also have culpability if your relatives, co-workers, boss, or anyone you encounter in your daily life experiences negative emotions or engages in bad behavior. You stride through life with confidence, on tiptoes, blindfolded, across broken glass, barefoot, while walking backwards, and you do it with aplomb and lots and lots of band-aids.

 

You think life cannot get any better than this, but then something changes. The adrenaline rush of your power over people and that crazy, wild ride on the roller coaster of other people’s emotions starts to depress you. When you wake up in the morning, you are no longer energized by the idea of trying to make all of the people in your life happy and solve every single one of their problems. Wallowing in guilt over the bad choices other people make starts to feel like a duty instead of a pleasure. One day you wake up and think, “I am tired of carrying all of this guilt. It’s too much for me.”

 

Friend, I understand how you feel. However, giving up is never the answer. You may think you need less guilt when you actually need more guilt. You have grown accustomed to your personal guilt and are starting to find fault with it, to resent the way it nags you, or wakes you up in the middle of the night to talk.

 

Don’t get rid of your guilt until you hear my solution. I’m here today to help you re-energize your life, to infuse your life with new meaning. I know you’re thinking it is too good to be true, but believe it, friend, I can help you enjoy guilt again!

 

How, you ask? By assuming regional guilt. Yes, you heard me, you can assume responsibility for whichever region you live in! Fresh guilt is the answer.

 

Map of Wisconsin, my adopted homeland, where I gargle guilt for breakfast.

Let me illustrate. I live in Wisconsin. Normally we have a lot of snow in the winter; however, this winter we have had very little. Since I do not like the cold, I am enjoying this weather. To certain irresponsible people, that seems like a guilt-free pleasure, but that’s where they are wrong. States like Wisconsin are the freezers where other regions store water they will need in spring. We keep it here in the form of snow because ice cubes are hard to shovel. But what if this year, we don’t produce enough snow to melt and send  down the river to the thirsty people who are too busy sitting around in the sunshine to come up here and get it themselves? They will suffer, and the reason they will suffer is because I am selfish. I wanted a warm winter and I got it. Can I control the weather? No, of course, not, but what does that have to do with anything?  I secretly wished for mild weather, so I must take some responsibility for the drought that follows. Wishes have consequences, folks.

 

But, you say, what about next winter? Maybe next winter you will have record snowfall, and then where will your regional guilt be? Friend, I have this guilt problem under control. Lots of snow leads to flooding in the spring. Through my taxes, I help support a state that idly stands by letting snow melt and fill up rivers that overflow their banks. Do I do anything to stop it? No, I’m happy that the snow melts. Do you see how my selfishness has once again brought misery to the multitudes. Snow or no snow, it’s a win-win situation for me. Behold the beauty of the logic of guilt.

 

Today if you are ready to give up your personal guilt, stop and think about it first. Do you really want to give up that kind of power? Do you want to go back to being an ordinary person, responsible to manage only your own feelings and choices? Or, do you want to expand your power and responsibility and achieve world dominion through guilt?

 

If you have come to the place where personal guilt is not enough, please consider regional guilt. You are only limited by your imagination. Take control of your life today. Be a responsible adult and choose guilt.


Dear reader,

 

If this message has been meaningful to you in a negative way, please let me know. I count on my readers to be troubled and disappointed by the things I type. Could you take a minute and write to me, letting me know that I am responsible for how you feel today. And if you are planning to make a bad choice based on something you read on this blog or some comment I made on your blog, could you drop me a line. It would mean the world to me.

 

Culpably yours,

 Yearstricken

 

The heartbreak of affixation

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Pictures of kittens used merely for shock value.

WARNING: Due to some unfortunate and unforeseeable circumstances, today’s post, which was supposed to appear yesterday, is probably going to be tomorrow’s post. It is an elusive pack of words that I’ve been trying to corral all morning, but they’re out in the back forty, wandering around. Every time I get near them, they stampede. Thus, today’s words, which were intended for tomorrow, are here today, docile as kittens, but not house-trained. Please try not to step in anything.

 

Yesterday I talked about how untrained business people do bad things to nouns by attaching wings and trying to make them fly as verbs, merely fertilizing park benches and other nonliving objects. Some sent as carrier pigeons have messages stuffed in their beaks, but fly backwards, ending up in all the wrong places. Most drop the message and spent the rest of their lives flying overhead, making a lot of noise but not a lot of sense, and releasing something that looks like snow but isn’t.

 

People suited for business are not suited to affix words.

 

At night I weep for the wee little nouns that have been almost suffixed to death because someone thought it would fun to add “-ize” to them. The merry little bucket being carried up the hill by Jack and Jill is grabbed from the children’s chubby fingers and finds itself in a business meeting with men in suits making it say “bucketize” while “organize” is marginalized, and no one will make eye contact with it.  Later, in a different city, a young girl pours out her heart in her diary, dotting all the “i’s” with hearts, and then tucks it in a drawer. That night, some thug hired by a multinational business breaks into the house, steals the diary, and the next morning women in suits command their underlings to “diarize” the meeting. And where is “record”? Crying its eyes out in the bathroom, that’s where.

Don't let more cents be lost in board rooms.

Most heartbreaking of all are those pennies you fail to pick up because you don’t think they are worth anything. Friend, stoop down, humble yourself, that penny needs you. Don’t ask questions about how it got lost or how many hands it has allowed to hold it. Every penny deserves another chance. Corporations have people trolling the streets looking for lost pennies, promising them jobs in board rooms, and telling them they can hobnob with paper money. But, people, all of those cents picked up by these corporate criminals are affixed in ways that permanently disfigure them, forcing them to spend the rest of their lives as an “incent” or an “incentivize” or, worst of all, a “disincentivize.” That’s no way to live. People who do that to nouns should have their “-ize” removed.

 

Harsh? Yes, it’s harsh, but think what they are doing to those nouns.

 

Affixation should be left to professional wordmasters. I am currently meeting with my imagination to discuss the idea of licensing. We believe that skilled wordmasters should practice a kind of catch and release, in which words are temporarily affixed to use on blogs. Once the posting is over, the trained wordmaster carefully detaches any and all affixes and releases the word back into the wild.

 

Takeaway for the day:  Change up your life. If you see a penny on the street, don’t walk by; pick it up. It makes more sense to take it home than to leave it there.

 

If a word is not broken, why affix it?

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Why affix words? Words have dreams, just like people do. Once a noun, always a noun isn’t true. In the hands of a word surgeon, words can be affixed, even if they are not broken. Affixes can be the wings that turn a noun into a verb. Yes, some of these surgeries go bad; untrained business people take nouns and make verbs that are like pigeons in a park: they’re annoying and do little more than whiten the statues. However, sometimes affixing a noun can make it a better noun or transform it into a real, live person. Imagine a world without Bach, Mozart, Elvis, or Jerry Lee Lewis. Where would we be without word surgeons! (Full disclosure: I am a word surgeon.)

 

 

Back in the late 1600s, an Italian named Bartolomeo Cristofori had a lot of time on his hands, so he invented the piano. Although it was beautiful to look at, there was one problem: no one could play it because there wasn’t a word for a person like that. Don’t believe me? Look up the word “piano.” I hope you are convinced now. “Piano” means “quiet.” It sat there, strung out, silent, with its ivories untickled by human hands.

 

 

One day, an Italian word surgeon (much like myself except that I’m actually American), Mortadella Datsa Bologna, came over to visit Cristofori and asked about the large piece of furniture sitting in the middle of the room. Cristofori, tried to hide his flummoxity, and said it was supposed to be a musical instrument, but that there was no one to play it, so it remained as mute as a table top. Mute and quiet.

 

 

The word-maestro went home, worked through the night, surgically removing the “o” from “piano” and adding the suffix “-ist.” In this way, Bologna invented the pianist. The timing was perfect for Cristofori, his staff rejoiced, his income trebled, and he became a key player in the world of musical instruments. Interestingly, one of Bologna’s descendants, Liberace (Italian through his father’s side) was born in Wisconsin. I live in Wisconsin. I am a word-maestro and often refer to myself as an Italian word surgeon. Maybe I am related to Bologna, or as Wisconsinites say, Baloney.

 

(Note to reader: This is not the post I intended to type today. I think there is something wrong with my keyboard. Today’s post has not been posted but will appear tomorrow. Please consider this post as tomorrow’s post that has already been posted. Thank you for understanding.)

 

 

 

 

I got my poetic license!

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Long before I started blogging, I wanted a poetic license. But like so many of my dreams, I let go of it and tried to move on with my life. Blogging rekindled my desire and with the support and urging of my imagination, I decided to apply.

 

I had to submit all of my blog posts, and that was scary because I have a number of posts  that are about things that actually happened. I was afraid there would be too much truthy stuff on my blog, which would disqualify me.

 

The rules for getting a poetic license are strict, but thankfully only 70% of your writing (or in my case, typing) needs to comply. After several weeks of fact checking, the review board discovered that the majority of what I type is pure nonsense and includes only a modicum of truth. I can’t tell you how happy that makes me, to say nothing of my imagination, who suddenly feels vindicated.

 

I hope you all don’t mind me bragging a bit, but I’m happy this morning and feel like my efforts have finally paid off. I guess dreams do come true sometimes.