Words and all that

Thou currish rude-growing coxcomb! Insult your friends with Shakespearean wit.

Now that I think about it, have you every heard of anybody who was illegally blind?

You're probably so far out of the mainstream that you don't have the intrinsic aptitude to appreciate this post. But, trust me, you'll have a thought shower in a day or two, allowing me deferred success.

Remember, there is no such thing as a stupid question. There are, however, plenty of stupid people who ask questions.

If you love words, check out this site, at which people submit their favorite words and the reasons they like them. I'd have trouble submitting just one, but a favorite that came to mind right away was lagniappe. Words that are pronouced so differently (lan YAP) from the way they are spelled are good ones to know because they let you show off, and this one has the bonus (or lagniappe, if you will) of just being fun to say as well.

Can you imagine how much better our lives would have been if we got to use the Five Times Rule instead of always having to toe the line?

Hunter Thompson was one of a kind. Where is he now that we need him to cover an absurd memorial service with the snarling cynicism it deserves?

"Kicking the can down the road" is becoming tiresome as the metaphor of choice for pontificating blowhards who want to sound deeper than they would just by saying "putting off difficult decisions until another day." The roundtable members on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday used it about five times when talking about Iraq; or was it Iran or North Korea? Doesn't matter. Kicking the can, etc., is one of those all-purpose phrases. I'd like to kick people who say kicking the can in the can so hard they end up in next Tuesday.

I wrote earlier about how composing haiku could help people polish their short-blog-posting skills. Now, here's another exercise,  the 50-word-fiction-writing site. Write your very, very short stories, post them and see them on the blog almost immediately.

Some of the stories don't seem all that compelling to me. So here's my effort.

It took 20 years for me to appreciate my father's advice. By then it was too late.

"Did it have to come to this?" Brenda asked.

If you love language, check out this for a debunking of some popular myths. Eskimos DO NOT have 200 words for snow. People in Appalachia DO NOT still talk like Shakespeare. The Chinese character for crisis DOES NOT combine "danger" and "opportunity." Lots of interesting stuff in the comments, too, including a thorough discussion of the origin of the QWERTY typewriter keyboard.