CLEVERISMS, OBSERVATIONS, APHORISMS, AND AMERICANS TALKING NONSENSE

 

 CLEVERISMS, OBSERVATIONS, APHORISMS, AND AMERICANS TALKING NONSENSE

 

My wife and I like to hang out at home, so I call us “Esther and Lester Nestor”

 

Usain Bolt was “speedier than a fasting bullet.”

 

“I will try to do that” is correct, but we say, “I will try and do that” – it is easier to say “and” than to say “to.” The ease of expression and/or laziness and/or lack of awareness, being deliberate are the main causes of the devolution of all languages, but most especially by far, this applies to the English language. Pay close attention as you speak and notice how it is easier to say latter than the former as written above.

 

Why isn’t increment the opposite of excrement?   

 

Why isn’t within the opposite of without? Which reminds me “Go within or go without” (in other word[s]: meditate! – the exclamation point is mainly meant for me).

 

God is not on their side; God is not on our side; God is on the Inside! Therein lies our true battle, our mission.  Seek Spirit, not enemies; that’s the true battle, but one we avoid yet must be fought or all of us will surely perish by killing enemies that we ourselves make. It’s the enemy within not without that we must conquer.

 

Comedian Red Skelton once closed his TV show by saying “I don’t hate my enemies, after all I made them.”

 

I wonder, will I miss myself when I’m gone?

A day well spent makes for a happy sleep.

A life well spent makes for a happy death.

 

Kindness is our only task; that’s why we are called “mankind.” That is the only reason we are here; ‘Love’ is its other name: “Love your enemies” and “I give you a greater commandment: Love God with all your mind, heart and soul and your neighbor as yourself.” “Love is the fulfillment of the law.”  To love our neighbor, we must love ourselves which happens via facing our inner demons, introspection, the examined life, the only one worth living, and by this become able to love and forgive (all others as well) without exception.

 

A million and a half people are a million people and half of a person,

But one and a half million people are one point five million people, but we almost invariably say the former!

 

Unseasonally warm is warm out of season, but unseasonably warm is ‘unably’ to be seasoned warm. The weather people talk nonsense, as the vast majority of Americans do. It’s easier to say “unseasonably” than “unseasonally”. Try this and notice for yourself.  Lazy, careless thinking is the major cause of the devolution of languages.  Sanskrit was a language with amazing discipline and precision. It’s believed that all modern languages have devolved from Sanskrit, which in itself came from Proto-Sinaic, a reconstructed language by reverse engineering to preceding languages. 

 

English is the only language that needs to have spelling bees (instead of knowing a word’s spelling by pronouncing it (and the opposite is also true: if you see it written out you would know how to pronounce it as in most languages), and English is also the only language that has a need for a thesaurus ─ English is such a mess. 

 

As in all languages, that we know of, every letter of the alphabet has several, mostly metaphorical meanings and every letter has a spiritual meaning.  All vowels were originally chants and had only one sound each, so people, as they spoke and wrote, were moved into a spiritual state.  A is pronounced ah, e is pronounced a, I is pronounced e, o is pronounced o and u is pronounced oo.  These pronunciations still dominate the vast majority of modern languages including transliterated Chinese, Japanese and other Oriental languages.  But English is a cacophony of chaos; pronunciations in English has virtually have no rhyme nor reason.

 

Sportcasters are the worst offenders.  Hubie Brown, an excellent basketball analyst,  started the phrase “scoring the ball”.  This is absurd.  You don’t score hockey pucks or baseballs or footballs; you score baskets. I recently was watching the NBA finals, and the announcer said, “ The Suns have a one point lead, but it’s pretty slim. “ Punters are called punners, penalties are slurred, and into pennalies.   After the Atlanta Olympics I heard an interview of a CEO of a large corporation refer to them as the Uhlanna Uhlympics.  English is such a mess.

There’s no “uh” in the letter e.  There’s no “uh” in the letter o, or in the letter I.   For example, we hear uhimagination, Uhlympics and uhvent. In the interest of saving space, I won’t belabor you with more examples, but they are everywhere; just notice.  We are attempting to reduce all vowel sounds to uh. 

 

“Me and my friends are going to the mall” should be “my friends and I are going to the mall.” “He did the same to Audrey and I” should be “he did the same to Audrey and me.” We use the nominative case where we should use the objective case and vice versa.

 

Life is the leading cause of death (actually it’s the only cause).  Everything else just prolongs or shortens it.  Doctors don’t save lives. They prolong them – When they do, And medical intervention is the third leading cause of death in the U.S., and that doesn’t include the numbers of altered ‘Cause of Death’ medical records patients.  Ask your doctor, “what caused this?” If this is not answered, you are in the wrong kind of physician’s office. Run like crazy until you find one who will assist you in the quest to find out what caused it and will work with you to reverse the condition and heal your whole body and not just drug or cut a symptom out of you that is almost certain to return again in the same or in another part of you.

 

SCANDANAVIAN HUG – is a stiff-arm to the chest.

 

Even eating makes me hungry.

 

May the angels of joy tap dance on your dreams.

 

I call my never resting brother “Perpetual Martin.” I call my ex-neighbor, Yale Doctor of Theology, Methodist minister and dear friend “John the Methodist.” I also had two neighbors in the same block as John who are named Rich, they lived directly across from each other, separated by the ally. I call them Rich of the East and Rich of the West. I am five feet, six inches tall and have a friend that often refers to me as “little buddy.” I respond, “mid-size buddy.”  I used to make custom designed furniture from exotic woods.  (Thalas is my real first name.)  I had a good friend who called me Thalas in Lumber Land.

 

She asked me “How old are you, Teak?” I replied spontaneously, “I am 78.” She responded, “No, I would never have guessed you were that old.” And out of my head poured the words, “I’ve always looked young for my age. When I was born, I looked minus two.”

 

Dalbradordoberherd ─ this is the name I gave the four breeds of my sister-in-law’s pet dog, or she thought were the four breeds. Here, I will make it easier for you: Dal-bra-dor-dober-herd, so can you name the breeds?  

Cockapoomaranian ─ the three breeds of two pet dogs we had. This time I’m not helping.   

 

I am a perspicacious philologist,

a pantagruelian phllalethist,

a perjinkety philobiblist,                                 **

I am not a peripatetic pismire,     

or a peristrephic perwitsky.       

– “Look that up in your Funk and Wagnalls” (a semi-popular dictionary of the 50’s and 60’s, and this quote was featured on Laugh In, a very funny comedy show of the time). The above alliterative challenge is a prompt that I brought to our writers’ group. I suggested they write about it whether they understood or not. One person actually knew three of the words.   The responses were mainly quite humorous.

 

We inaccurately pronounce accurate  as “acarit” and imprecisely pronounce precise as “percise”.   You would think we could be accurate and precise regarding words that mean accurate and precise, wouldn’t you?

 

We pronounce any word beginning with pre-, pro-, pru-, as per as in predict (perdict), Prudential (Perdential), provide (pervide), etc., etc.

 

Pronounce one as you pronounce one in the words bone, stone, cone, phone, lone, throne, clone, ad infinitum. “Only” is pronounced as in bone, stone, etc.  and only is an adverbal form of the noun one.

  

If Paul Wellstone had married Paula Poundstone (comedienne), they would have been Paul and Paula Poundstone-Wellstone.

 

You often hear such as ten thousand dollars is or twenty million dollars is. How many dollars does it take to make a plural? Even two dollars are, not dollars is.

 

There’s four ways of doing that or there’s bunches of coleslaw left over.  We don’t recognize that there’s is a singular reference to some nouns that are obviously plural and should be addressed as there’re or there are.  There’s has become an epidemic that continues to spread. 

 

Tenth                           fifth                             How did we come up with “first, second and third”? 

Ninth                           fourth                          Hint: these three are Germanic. 

Eighth                          threeth

Seventh                       twoth

Sixth                            oneth

   

I am a wordsmith and an amateur etymologist. One day I was at a workshop for personal growth, and, being done early with our project, I went to my friend Ursula’s group, and she looked up at me with this huge grin. I said, “what are you grinning at?” She said, “I can hardly wait to see what you are going to do next.”  Later after the workshop, we were walking out while hugging each other, and after some comments I made, she laughed and said, “Boy, are you weird.” Realizing I was just being willing to be myself, I said, “You know, Ursula, I think being weird is just the art of being yourself.”  I had some books at home on etymology, and said, “You know, I’m going to look up weird when I get home.” Sure enough, the principle original meaning of the word weird is being yourself, so, be as weird as you can for by doing so, you are being true to yourself. Society wants us all to be similar and predictable. Take a risk, be yourself.  You can’t see the edge unless you live on the edge. 

 

Evolution better be true because if man is as good as it gets, woe to the universe.

 

All writers are observers of their bewilderment, and grasp at the conclusion without confusion.

 

Squeeze me, that was a Seuredian flip.   

 

I want to do verse by the side of the road and shave the face of man – Burma Shave.  There used to be Burma Shave ads on signs alongside the two lane highways we used to travel in the 40’s and 50’s. 

 

Go not outside but go inside or thyself beside.

 

Love you till death, not to death.

 

Moreso than with your computer: garbage in, garbage out.

 

Adversity is the costume of opportunity.

  

If this is my bottom, whose feet are these?

 

Life is a death march.  

 

We don’t eat free, we eat for free.  Scores in sports are not 110, 95; they are 110-95 (or 110 to 95).  We are dropping prepositions from the language like flies, another example of lazy speech.  English is such a mess.

 

We can’t speed into serenity.  Most growth comes in calm spaces. 

 

I have met about 50 famous people and never asked for an autograph.  My most fun story is when I was building sets in the film business, on the movie Lepke, Tony Curtis came out of his trailer, and we took a break to commiserate he was very friendly, very approachable but in those days was using drugs and alcohol which explains some of the following.  I said, “Tony do you know the Bernie Schwarz joke?” and he said, “There’s a Bernie Schwarz joke?!” (Bernie Schwarz is Tony’s real name) I said “yes” and told him the joke.  It’s very complimentary to Bernie Schwarz and he loved the joke.  Two decades later he came to Minneapolis to do book signings at Barnes and Noble.

 

I was working in downtown Minneapolis selling Saturn cars I tried to get off early to go to the book signing but I couldn’t get off work.  I called Barnes and Noble when I got off work and asked if he was still there; they said, “no, he left about a half hour ago”.  I asked them if they knew what hotel he was staying in, they said, “yes” and gave me the name of the St. Paul hotel (they are not supposed to give out this information).  I gave him time to get to the hotel while I was driving home.  When I got home, I called the St. Paul hotel and said that I knew Tony Curtis and I would like to have them connect me to his room which they are not supposed to do but did. 

 

The phone rang and he sounded like I just wakened him.  I apologized and announced my name and told him I had worked with him on the Lepke movie set and asked if he remembered me, he said, “no I’m sorry, I don’t”.  I said, “I’m the guy that told you the Bernie Schwarz joke”.  He said, “There’s a Bernie Schwarz joke?!” Again I told him the joke and again he loved it.  He thanked me and left an autograph copy of his book at the front desk for me.  He had become sober, so this time I think the joke stuck and he’s probably told many people the joke.  I would tell you the joke but it’s an epic and I’m tired and we will have to leave it for another day.