Tag Archives: words

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TILWROT VIII

I used to sing of Saints – but when I became an adult, I put away childish things – until I decided to do some research.

In Grade 7, I was reluctantly, shyly, protestingly, put in the school choir.  (I later realized that was why.)  Among others, we sang a song about Santa Lucia.  Recent childhood reminiscing brought it back to mind.  Other than the refrain about Santa Lucia, I don’t remember singing in Italian.  I decided to do some research.

I went to Bing, and just plugged in “Santa Lucia.”  I guess if your Tourist Board spends a couple of million dollars in promotion, the algorithm moves you to the top of the pile.  There was no mention of an Italian saint, or a cute song.  The entire first page was about Saint (not Santa) Lucia, an island near the Bahamas.

(Saint) Lucia’s father tried to sell her into sexual servitude through marriage, because it was standard procedure at the time.  She strongly protested, and insisted on remaining virginal, unwed, and a drain on her family – not because she objected to having some dirty old man stick it to her, but because he was a non-Christian pagan.

The surprise in my research about the song was when I found out that it wasn’t about Santa Lucia.  It was about the Santa Lucia cove section of Naples Bay.  It is a barcarole, a song sung by gondoliers, to entice potential customers to rent their boats.

Gondolas at Naples??!  We all know about them at Venice, where the shallow, deeply indented bay and canal system suppresses storm waves, and makes these oversize canoes reasonably safe – but in an open bay??

So, this little song was never about a purported saint.  It was just an advertising jingle.  I might as well have been singing about “Two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun.” only, those hadn’t been invented when I was a kid.

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Exercising Humor

I do sit-ups every morning.  That may not sound like much, but there are only so many times you can hit the snooze button.

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Given the success of McRib, McDonalds is considering a new sandwich made entirely of beef lips.  They plan on calling it the McJagger.

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My father always complains about the cost of food. “$4 for coffee is ridiculous!” “$6 for a turkey sandwich is outrageous!” That’s the last time I invite him to stay over at my house….

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Track coach: Now run like the wind.
Dude from Oklahoma: *spins*

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A husband and wife are out shopping, looking at home décor items. The wife sees a rug that she likes and points it out to her husband, “What about a rug? I like this one here.”

The husband takes a look at the rug, then lovingly responds to his wife. “Honey, no rugs. If you’re going to fly, it’s going to be with a broom, like your mom.”

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I am giving up drinking alcohol for the month of January.
Oops. Sorry. Autocorrect did that wrong.
I am giving up. Drinking alcohol for the month of January.

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A crew is flying a plane.  The captain gets up and says to the young co-pilot: “Alright kid, I’m going to use the toilet. While I’m gone, think about this — will the total weight of the plane go down while I’m in the bathroom?”

The rookie’s sitting there all serious, thinking it through:

“Hmmm… the toilet’s a closed system, so technically the poop stays on board. Therefore, the weight shouldn’t change.”

The captain comes back, and the kid proudly gives his answer.

The captain just shakes his head and goes, “You idiot! Of course the plane got lighter — it’s been burning fuel while I was gone! You’re over here thinking about crap instead of aviation!”

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Fibbing Friday #318

Pensitivity101 had a mixed bag of daftness last week. Your input on these please.  My output on these, thanx!

1. What is a tandem?

That’s how/when I disappoint two women in the same bed

2. What is a periwinkle?

Rip van Winkle’s metrosexual grandson

3. What’s the difference between a pitcher and a ewer?

A pitcher is a guy who throws the ball in an American game, so I assume that a ewer is a ball-hurler in the British sport.  Their games take so much longer because spectators need more time to figure out just exactly what a Silly-Mid-On is.

4. Who was Penelope Pitstop?

She was/is the female Transformer – Optimus Prime’s girlfriend.  A guy needs a lube-job and a refueling, after saving the planet.

5. What is pigeon toed?

It’s why they have to land and walk around on the ground, instead of lighting on power, or telephone lines.

6. What is a toupee?

It’s an alien creature from the planet DuPont, which came to Earth, landed on Donald Trump’s head, and is psychically controlling him.

7. What is carrion?

It’s a small tote bag, containing all your important personal items, that you try to cram into the airplane’s overhead compartment.

8. What is a milkshake?

A cow with the shivers

9. What is a cockle?

A guy who lives down around Beau’s belles

10. What is a chouz bun?

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s the new haircut/style that the Chavs are sporting.

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’26 A To Z Challenge – D

Here’s another English word that, like most of the others, is not English.

DYBBUK

When I first encountered it, I thought it might be a small, South African antelope, like a springbok, but the word turns out to be Hebrew – a language which has already contributed a number of words to the English language about superstitions, including Yahweh, and Messiah.

A dybbuk is an uneasy spirit.  It can be a demon, or the soul of a dead person, that enters the body of a living person and directs the person’s conduct.  It’s somewhere between a shade, and a poltergeist.  I’ve worked with a number of people who fit this description.

It may have been what happened to Donald Trump.  We need to have him either excised, or exorcized – but that’s for the next post.  CU then.

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Blog Theme Prompt – What Romance Means To Me

I envy those who marry for love – I really do, but despite the almost universal consensus of feel-good books and movies, I actually see it so seldom.  I only personally know of two couples who did it – and in one case, it was his fourth attempt, and her second – although, after more than ten years, it seems to be working.

My 35-year-old, divorced Mother returned to our home town.  Quite soon, friends and family introduced her to a 28-year-old bachelor from a nearby town – because they both needed to be married. There was some respect and admiration, but it was several years before they learned to live as a unit.  There were some sharp points that never got filed off.

Her younger, fail-to-launch brother lived at home until their parents both died, and he inherited the house.  Then, he needed someone to cook and clean.  The same group found him a war-widow from the same town as my Dad.  Their marriage lasted many years, but could best be described as an alcohol-soaked armed truce.

At least my 16-year-old sister waited until she married her hard-drinking, partier boyfriend, before she started popping out babies.  My brother quietly married his girlfriend shortly after they found that she was pregnant.  She waited till he went to work one Friday, and moved herself, their two high school-aged daughters, and almost all the furniture, out.

With my low-level autism/Aspergers, I didn’t (and don’t) catch social cues well.  In retrospect, I think there were a couple of females who made overtures, but I was not socially, emotionally, or financially ready for marriage.  If I’d got some girl pregnant, we’d have wound up living in a dead-end small town, with me working at a gas station, as my brother did for a while.

I absorbed as much education/training as I could, and got my first real, full-time job, before I married the first woman who seemed willing to put up with me.  This was the one who bragged to the neighbors that she married a smart man, because smart men made more money – enough to support her in the style that she wished to become accustomed to.  This was a socio-economic pact, similar to Middle Ages marriage contracts.  I do something for her, and our growing family, and she does something for me and the kids.

Her older siblings all seemed to have moved out and got married to escape an arrogant, overbearing, abusive, Catholic-crazy father.  Of the eight siblings, only one couple ever seemed to show true love and affection.  The rest were all the result of social expectation and financial support.  Romance did not seem to be in common supply.

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Fibbing Friday #317

Pensitivity101’s meeting last week was the inspiration for this list. Your thoughts on these please.

1. What is a board room?

The area of Home Despot where they sell lumber

2. Who usually has The Chair?

Donald Trumpet!  They say that a chair is where an ass sits – and he fits the description.

3. What are minutes?

They are incredibly long units of time, if you are standing outside the closed bathroom door with your legs crossed, while the wife is trying to recapture her beauty from a bottle, and says, “I’ll be out in just a minute.”

4. What is a projector used for?

It’s a dishonest debater/opponent who insists that you exhibit all the mistakes and weaknesses that they actually do.  They aren’t really useful for anything except comedy relief and irritation.

5. What is a CEO?

He/she is the head of the agricultural corporation that just purchased Old MacDonald’s farm – EIEIO.

6. What is a ‘stand alone?’

That’s the office co-worker who went to the suspect taco truck for lunch

7. What is a portfolio?

It’s a small cabinet with a concealed lock, where I store my wine for when the brother-in-law comes over.  In vino veritas  He could have been anything he wanted.  Too bad he chose drunken fool.  😮

8. What is an agenda?

Someone who is surgically/hormonally transitioning from male to female, or vice versa.

9. What is a ‘sea of faces’?

All of the people who are watching each SpaceX launch, hoping that this payload is MAGA hats, or the chief MAGAt himself.

10. To what does ‘any other business’ refer?

It’s where many Americans would prefer to see RFK Jr., instead of the Health Department, so that his Luddite Catholic conditioning would be less likely to kill people.

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Silence Is Golden

Silence is golden.

“The universe,” wrote astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson, “is under no obligation to make sense to you,” and, for the most part, it doesn’t, to anyone. Beyond the incomprehensibility of quantum mechanics—and our inability to reconcile the main branches of physics—we’ve only managed to discover, after 500 years of groping in the dark, a meager 5 percent of the observable universe. The other 95 percent, physicists tell us, is composed of imperceptible dark matter and dark energy, surmised to exist based only on its impact on the small sliver of reality that has managed to sift its way through our pitiable and corruptible senses.

Basing grand proclamations about the ultimate nature of the universe—including the existence or nonexistence of God—on this shaky and incomplete foundation is unjustifiable and, frankly, utterly foolish. Isn’t it clear, that we’re all, for want of a better phrase, just making shit up?

As long as your belief system allows my belief system to live, we can be friends.  However, if your belief system makes my belief system wrong or evil, I fear we will never walk this earth together in peace and harmony. 

The moment we step past what is immediately given and begin speculating about the “ultimate nature” of things, we invite agitation, disagreement, and distress. Better, then, to withhold judgment altogether.

 

I’ve got nothing else to say.

Do you have anything to say?

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Human One-Liners

Instant Human….
….just add coffee.

You can’t stop progress….
….but you can unplug a lot of it.

I don’t have a welcome mat….
….because I’m not a liar.

I have an inner child….
….but I don’t think it’s mine.

I’m a quiet drunk….
….Some people say passed out.

I finally got a car with a TV in the dash….
….All it ever shows is someone backing over my garbage cans.

The Amish Powerball Lottery….
….is up to four dozen eggs.

Library….
….because not everything on the internet is true.

I have a meat-cutter joke….
….but I’d probably butcher it.

Evangelical Christianity is just….
….radical Islam with pork and beer.

My kite puns….
….just go over most people’s heads

Do you know why birds sing in the morning?….
….They don’t have to go to work.

A buffet is like a time machine….
….You can go back for seconds.

I put the ‘Pro’….
….in procrastinate.

I’ve reached the age where I don’t know if I sustained an injury….
….or if that’s just how I am now.

I’m at the age where, if I drop something….
….I don’t need it anymore.

What do you call a pig with laryngitis?….
….Disgruntled

I lost the wife’s audio book….
….Now I’ll never hear the end of it.

I just got up from the couch and….
….my Fitbit notified me that it detected unusual activity.

You can be a good person with a kind heart….
….and still tell people to fuck off when required.

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Fibbing Friday #317

Similar fibs from Pensitivity101 as the previous week’s theme. How would you define these words?

1. Biblioklept

The guy who police are after, because he hasn’t returned 57 library books

2. Acnestis

An acute case of teenage facial skin problem that is so bad that it needs to be cured with skin-smoothing sand-blasting – or a girlfriend

3. Wrest pin

A victory in the carefully-choreographed (but totally real) redneck sport of Professional Wrestling.  Strike a chord??

4. Agelast

A British expression.  In North America they are known as senior citizens.

5. Peristeronic

That’s the name of the wave-like muscular contractions that move shit out of people’s anuses.  If only we could discover a control for the ones that move shit out of politicians’ mouths.

6.  Limerence:

King Chuckles the Threeth’s favourite citrus pudding

7.  Sonder:

Wonder is when you’re not sure of something.
Sonder is when you are absolutely certain.

OR

Sonder is what the Great-Grandson calls the noise in the sky during rainstorms.  His slightly-younger sister calls the clear liquid that we sprinkle on French fries/chips, ‘gimmicker.’

8.  Vellichor:

That’s the rip-off (If you’ll excuse the expression) imitation of the VELCRO ©™ brand of sealer strip.  It only works about three times, and then it’s not Rrriiipp anymore.  It’s more like R.I.P.  😮

9.  Petrichor:

A giant British fuel company which is trying to establish a national monopoly

10. Lugubrious:

The automobile oil-change chain that’s operated by Petrichor

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’26 A To Z Challenge – C

STAT!
ASAP!
RFN!
QUIT LOLLYGAGGING!
GET A MOVE ON!

I needed an inspiration for a featured word for the letter C, for the ’26 A To Z Challenge, and I needed it

TOOT DUH SWEET

so I decided to go ahead without you, and I chose the word

CELERITY

This is not the crisp, green, hollow, vegetable sticks that you fill with Cheez-Whiz or peanut butter, and try to convince yourself or others that you’re eating healthy. This is the word that is related to accelerate, and means speed, swiftness, alacrity, haste, hurry, or hustle.

Like Speedy Gonzales said to his girlfriend, “This’ll be quick – wasn’t it?”  No sooner spread than done.  I’m gonna hurry on ahead, and get another killer Fibbing Friday ready for you.  Follow at your own pace. 😀