Those of you who know me well, realize that i truly love the english language. we in america have been truly blessed with a wonderfully versatile language formed from so many cultures, that provides a wonderfully nuanced and shaded way to describe outr world.
what truly baffles me at times is the sheer ability to actually mangle or outright destroy such a beautiful tool of description.
case in point: Rengrish (english as realtors use it)
i have been in the market to buy a home for the past few months, and have finally realized that while the words and sentences look and sound like common english, they are in fact speaking a completely different language. i might go as far as to suggest that they are more "creative" in their definitions (if your definition of creative is "smashed outta yer gourd on absinthe")
here are a few of the gems i have encountered, and their common english translations, and my take on what they SHOULD have said to be accurate.
"might have a slight leak in the roof"
trans: when it rains you'll be a lot less wet if you just sleep outside
suggestion for ad: "brand new open air skylight and mini swimming pool.... in the master bedroom"
"lower level apartment needs total renovation, and property has wildlife on it"
trans: apartment needs to be condemmned, and the wildlife is currently living IN the apartment.
suggestion for ad. "demolition by nuclear weapon suggested, bring shotgun to fight off the rats"
handyman's special that needs tlc, and would look good with new hardwood floors
trans: watch your step when opening the door, would be nice if it actually had a floor to begin with!
suggestion for ad. "please buy this, and i'll throw in a free trip to scenic afganistan, heck the house there might give you upgrade ideas.... like maybe mud walls"
investment opportunity for a handyman needs some plumbing and electrical updating!
trans: the winos have ripped out and stolen EVERY SCRAP of copper in the place, including the electric meter.
suggestion for ad. "wheee.... wino pee, and bare frame..... "
charming cottage ready for renovation in a up and coming neighborhood
trans: built by drunken blind monkeys, caution neighbors WILL eat your dog
suggestion for ad. "no really... its just a kool aid stain, and please ignore the crime scene tape"
peace
-dawg
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Sunday, July 20, 2008
one of my favorite poems.
read it aloud to someone you love
Belinda lived in a little white house,
With a little black kitten and a little gray mouse,
And a little yellow dog and a little red wagon,
And a realio, trulio, little pet dragon.
Now the name of the little black kitten was Ink,
And the little gray mouse, she called hum Blink,
And the little yellow dog was sharp as Mustard,
But the dragon was a coward, and she called him Custard.
Custard the dragon had big sharp teeth,
And spikes on top of him and scales underneath,
Mouth like a fireplace, chimney for a nose,
And realio, trulio daggers on his toes.
Belinda was as brave as a barrel full of bears,
And Ink and Blink chased lions down the stairs,
Mustard was as brave as a tiger in a rage,
But Custard cried for a nice safe cage.
Belinda tickled him, she tickled him unmerciful,
Ink, Blink and Mustard, they rudely called him Percival,
They all sat laughing in the little red wagonAt the realio, trulio, cowardly dragon.
Belinda giggled till she shook the house,
and Blink said Weeck! which is giggling for a mouse,
Ink and Mustard rudely asked his age,
When Custard cried for a nice safe cage.
Suddenly, suddenly they heard a nasty sound,
Mustard growled, and they all looked around.
Meowch! cried Ink, and Ooh! cried Belinda,
For there was a pirate, climbing in the winda.
Pistol in his left hand, pistol in his right,
And he held in his teeth a cutlass bright,
His beard was black, one leg was wood;
It was clear that the pirate meant no good.
Belinda paled, and she cried Help! Help!
But Mustard fled with a terrified yelp,
Ink trickled down to the bottom of the household
,And little mouse Blink strategically mouseholed.
But up jumped Custard snorting like an engine,
Clashed his tail like irons in a dungeon,
With a clatter and a clank and a jangling squirm,
He went at the pirate like a robin at a worm.
The pirate gaped at Belinda's pet dragon,
And gulped some grog from his pocket flagon,
He fired two bullets, but they didn't hit,
And Custard gobbled him, every bit.
Belinda embraced him, Mustard licked him,
No one mourned for his pirate victim.
Ink and Blink in glee did gyrate
Around the dragon that ate the pirate.
Belinda still lives in her little white house,
With her little black kitten and her little gray mouse,
And her little yellow dog and her little red wagon,
And her realio, trulio little pet dragon.
Belinda is as brave as a barrel full of bears,
And Ink and Blink chase lions down the stairs,
Mustard is as brave as a tiger in a rage,
But Custard keeps crying for a nice safe cage.
The Tale of Custard the Dragon by Ogden Nash
Belinda lived in a little white house,
With a little black kitten and a little gray mouse,
And a little yellow dog and a little red wagon,
And a realio, trulio, little pet dragon.
Now the name of the little black kitten was Ink,
And the little gray mouse, she called hum Blink,
And the little yellow dog was sharp as Mustard,
But the dragon was a coward, and she called him Custard.
Custard the dragon had big sharp teeth,
And spikes on top of him and scales underneath,
Mouth like a fireplace, chimney for a nose,
And realio, trulio daggers on his toes.
Belinda was as brave as a barrel full of bears,
And Ink and Blink chased lions down the stairs,
Mustard was as brave as a tiger in a rage,
But Custard cried for a nice safe cage.
Belinda tickled him, she tickled him unmerciful,
Ink, Blink and Mustard, they rudely called him Percival,
They all sat laughing in the little red wagonAt the realio, trulio, cowardly dragon.
Belinda giggled till she shook the house,
and Blink said Weeck! which is giggling for a mouse,
Ink and Mustard rudely asked his age,
When Custard cried for a nice safe cage.
Suddenly, suddenly they heard a nasty sound,
Mustard growled, and they all looked around.
Meowch! cried Ink, and Ooh! cried Belinda,
For there was a pirate, climbing in the winda.
Pistol in his left hand, pistol in his right,
And he held in his teeth a cutlass bright,
His beard was black, one leg was wood;
It was clear that the pirate meant no good.
Belinda paled, and she cried Help! Help!
But Mustard fled with a terrified yelp,
Ink trickled down to the bottom of the household
,And little mouse Blink strategically mouseholed.
But up jumped Custard snorting like an engine,
Clashed his tail like irons in a dungeon,
With a clatter and a clank and a jangling squirm,
He went at the pirate like a robin at a worm.
The pirate gaped at Belinda's pet dragon,
And gulped some grog from his pocket flagon,
He fired two bullets, but they didn't hit,
And Custard gobbled him, every bit.
Belinda embraced him, Mustard licked him,
No one mourned for his pirate victim.
Ink and Blink in glee did gyrate
Around the dragon that ate the pirate.
Belinda still lives in her little white house,
With her little black kitten and her little gray mouse,
And her little yellow dog and her little red wagon,
And her realio, trulio little pet dragon.
Belinda is as brave as a barrel full of bears,
And Ink and Blink chase lions down the stairs,
Mustard is as brave as a tiger in a rage,
But Custard keeps crying for a nice safe cage.
Monday, July 14, 2008
Now for something totally different (mom speaks)
oh Hai!
No, not the Dawg, and anyone thinking to themselves with a smirk what a female dawg is called, well... all I can say is, YEP! (teehee).
I'm the missus, aka Hound's wife, and the bearer of the unique and startlingly accurate title of MommymommymommymommymommycanIhazcheezschlammich?
I was asked to put some thoughts on here, and in an effort to craft the wittiest, most comically satisfying, humorous post without being cliched, I've put it off for a week or two... ok, MAYbe three. In that time, I've decided to go ahead and post as my ability to make people laugh tends to strike at odd moments, and I may never catch that elusive mood in writing.
So you're stuck with this. :P Neener neener.
"Has it been four years already?"
This refrain has bounced around through my head and frequently comes out via the oral orifice lately. As in, since late June, lately.
The answer, of course is, no. There have been random wormholes that my son has either created or cleverly mapped and is time-jumping his way through infancy, and now toddlerhood. How else could it be explained? Just yesterday I was coming to from the anesthetic fog to see my honey all in blue cradling something making the most wonderful wailing sound I'd ever heard. You wouldn't think that an angry, squalling red face would make a perfectly sensible (stop laughing) woman get all blubbery, now would you?
No, wait... just yesterday a four year old was holding up arms sticky with appley-scented liquid saying, "I just want to love on you, Mommy!" in response to that age-old question, "Were you finger-painting my table with your apple juice?"
Errrr... or was yesterday the all-nighter worrying and holding and rocking a pitifully whimpering sickling while the fever hit 102 and finally broke?
um.
One sec, I'm sure there's a calendar around... here... somewhere.
OK, the secret is out. I don't know what day it is, I rarely know the time, and if you ask me when a birthday or anniversary is, I need at least 5 minutes to look it up.
But one thing is sure, I wouldn't trade my title for nothing in the world.
-Mommy
No, not the Dawg, and anyone thinking to themselves with a smirk what a female dawg is called, well... all I can say is, YEP! (teehee).
I'm the missus, aka Hound's wife, and the bearer of the unique and startlingly accurate title of MommymommymommymommymommycanIhazcheezschlammich?
I was asked to put some thoughts on here, and in an effort to craft the wittiest, most comically satisfying, humorous post without being cliched, I've put it off for a week or two... ok, MAYbe three. In that time, I've decided to go ahead and post as my ability to make people laugh tends to strike at odd moments, and I may never catch that elusive mood in writing.
So you're stuck with this. :P Neener neener.
"Has it been four years already?"
This refrain has bounced around through my head and frequently comes out via the oral orifice lately. As in, since late June, lately.
The answer, of course is, no. There have been random wormholes that my son has either created or cleverly mapped and is time-jumping his way through infancy, and now toddlerhood. How else could it be explained? Just yesterday I was coming to from the anesthetic fog to see my honey all in blue cradling something making the most wonderful wailing sound I'd ever heard. You wouldn't think that an angry, squalling red face would make a perfectly sensible (stop laughing) woman get all blubbery, now would you?
No, wait... just yesterday a four year old was holding up arms sticky with appley-scented liquid saying, "I just want to love on you, Mommy!" in response to that age-old question, "Were you finger-painting my table with your apple juice?"
Errrr... or was yesterday the all-nighter worrying and holding and rocking a pitifully whimpering sickling while the fever hit 102 and finally broke?
um.
One sec, I'm sure there's a calendar around... here... somewhere.
OK, the secret is out. I don't know what day it is, I rarely know the time, and if you ask me when a birthday or anniversary is, I need at least 5 minutes to look it up.
But one thing is sure, I wouldn't trade my title for nothing in the world.
-Mommy
And the birthday winner is!
Transformers, movies, petit fours, and legos. and the winner is ........ a balloon.
@#$$&!!@#!!#!@ a couple of hundred bucks worth of stuff that i woulda given my right nut for as a kid.... and he chooses a damn balloon?????
oh well, cest la vie.
with this latest "favorite" toy choice i have come to a conclusion about the criteria that the mutant uses in his selection process.
CRITERION:
1. must be noisy ( if ya think a balloon cant be noisy, just imagine it being bounced againsta a wall 90,000 times a minute for an hour straight..... no jury would convict me)
2. must be physically "non-permanantely damaging" (scars and gouges do not bode well for the retention of the aforementioned toy)
3. shoud be easy to conceal, or conceal ones self in ( this one sometimes gets ignored in favor of criterion 4)
4. should have "modification" potential (specifically can it be altered to make MORE noise?)
5. absolutely MUST annoy dad to the point of speechlessness in under a minute (for mom a 5 minute time limit on speechlessness is acceptable)
6. must NOT be interesting to the dog (except in a cringing oh god pleasepleaseplease dont hit me with that again, kind of way)
7. MUST have a protective "cute factor" (i.e. can be held in one hand, enhacing the cute factor while saying "i LOOOOVE you daddy)
soooo getting hit in the head by a balloon doesn't hurt??? BULLCRAP!!! i got to witness criteria 7 in action last night.
i am blissfully engrossed in a combination of heavy duty gameplay and good music (headphones on to shut out the "real" world.... mistake #1)
i am only peripherally aware of jr playing in the living room with his balloon (mistake#2 NEVER NEVER forget where the boy is)
i have forgotten to tel mom that i am in a raid (BIGGEST mistake, as she usually runs intererference during raid time)
all of a sudden out of the corner i "sense" more than see a large green object zipping towards my head..
result: i WHIP my head down and left to avoid the oncoming object and rocket my right hand up to block said object which at this time is no more than an inch from being in the space formerly occupied by my head. (ok folks just so as you know, i have very fast reflexes.. "pick a fly outta the air" type reflexes)
i actually blocked the balloon and about the same time that my fingers relayed the info "hey this is just a balloon) to my brain, my neck started relaying a completely different and quite disturbing message.... "OWowOWowFUCKowowowwo"
so how the hell do i explain to the dr that REALLY i got whiplash from a BALOON???
peace
-dawg
@#$$&!!@#!!#!@ a couple of hundred bucks worth of stuff that i woulda given my right nut for as a kid.... and he chooses a damn balloon?????
oh well, cest la vie.
with this latest "favorite" toy choice i have come to a conclusion about the criteria that the mutant uses in his selection process.
CRITERION:
1. must be noisy ( if ya think a balloon cant be noisy, just imagine it being bounced againsta a wall 90,000 times a minute for an hour straight..... no jury would convict me)
2. must be physically "non-permanantely damaging" (scars and gouges do not bode well for the retention of the aforementioned toy)
3. shoud be easy to conceal, or conceal ones self in ( this one sometimes gets ignored in favor of criterion 4)
4. should have "modification" potential (specifically can it be altered to make MORE noise?)
5. absolutely MUST annoy dad to the point of speechlessness in under a minute (for mom a 5 minute time limit on speechlessness is acceptable)
6. must NOT be interesting to the dog (except in a cringing oh god pleasepleaseplease dont hit me with that again, kind of way)
7. MUST have a protective "cute factor" (i.e. can be held in one hand, enhacing the cute factor while saying "i LOOOOVE you daddy)
soooo getting hit in the head by a balloon doesn't hurt??? BULLCRAP!!! i got to witness criteria 7 in action last night.
i am blissfully engrossed in a combination of heavy duty gameplay and good music (headphones on to shut out the "real" world.... mistake #1)
i am only peripherally aware of jr playing in the living room with his balloon (mistake#2 NEVER NEVER forget where the boy is)
i have forgotten to tel mom that i am in a raid (BIGGEST mistake, as she usually runs intererference during raid time)
all of a sudden out of the corner i "sense" more than see a large green object zipping towards my head..
result: i WHIP my head down and left to avoid the oncoming object and rocket my right hand up to block said object which at this time is no more than an inch from being in the space formerly occupied by my head. (ok folks just so as you know, i have very fast reflexes.. "pick a fly outta the air" type reflexes)
i actually blocked the balloon and about the same time that my fingers relayed the info "hey this is just a balloon) to my brain, my neck started relaying a completely different and quite disturbing message.... "OWowOWowFUCKowowowwo"
so how the hell do i explain to the dr that REALLY i got whiplash from a BALOON???
peace
-dawg
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Fun on the 4th: tennessee style
As i was sitting on the front porch smoking a ciggarette a little while ago, i got to think about the fourth of july and all the rituals that go with this all american holiday. (FIREWORKS ROCK)!
this sentimental flashback (or senile if you will) was prompted by what sounde like the fighting in beiruit int he 80's must have been like.
somewhere in the late 90s in or around my 7th year of sobriety and about a year after leving the militiary, myself, my ex wife and "uncle" daryl were invited to participate in a "bottle rocket war". (hmmmm lighting flying explosive devices and firing them directly TOWARDS other people..... FUUUUN!!)
needless to say what the "opposing team" and what we had in mind were two completely different things.. apparently the opposition had gone out and (rather deviously) cobbled together some "bazookas" (wrapping paper tubes with a stick taped to it) that they gloatingly showed to us before we staged each team one either side of a railroad bridge straddling a fair sized creek.
at that point it was getting kind of dark and daryl had not yet arrived with the "heavy artillery".
right about the time it went pitch dark daryl arrived with thegoodies we had put together. the engagement was initiated by various members of each team lighting up their smokes and starting to toss out a few "screamers" at each other.
eeeeeeeeeeeeee....... swwoooosh..... POP.... goldangitowthat hurt..... daryl screamed as a well aimed shot from an enemy bazooka hits him in the leg...
hey look.. dude... they are trying to cross the bridge..... GET EM..
daryl and i looked at each other with a kind of maniac glee, and unlimbered OUR bazookas!
see, where the other guys had stuck to wrapping paper tubes and whistlink bottlerockets (about 1/4 inch diameter and about 3 inches long, glued to a paper stick... daryl and i had created weapons of mass destruction.. we had taken various odds and ends like 4inch diameter carpet tubes, lexan sheeting, toy gun handles and radiator clamps to create monsters that could shoot the 9 inch long finned rockets (ya know those suckers you can almost take a jet down with).
turns out that if you pulled the little plastic finned assembly off of one of the rockets and glued it to the front of another one, that the resulting projectile was devastatingly accurate.
SWOOOOOSH.......ssssshhhhhhhhh........FWUUMMP! AHHHHHHHH... ..... .....SPlaSH!
holy crap, i think i just blew somebody off of the bridge...... ahhhh maybe we oughta bail... that can't be good.....
see thats what happens when ya give maniacs fireworks... ain't it great
peace
-dawg
this sentimental flashback (or senile if you will) was prompted by what sounde like the fighting in beiruit int he 80's must have been like.
somewhere in the late 90s in or around my 7th year of sobriety and about a year after leving the militiary, myself, my ex wife and "uncle" daryl were invited to participate in a "bottle rocket war". (hmmmm lighting flying explosive devices and firing them directly TOWARDS other people..... FUUUUN!!)
needless to say what the "opposing team" and what we had in mind were two completely different things.. apparently the opposition had gone out and (rather deviously) cobbled together some "bazookas" (wrapping paper tubes with a stick taped to it) that they gloatingly showed to us before we staged each team one either side of a railroad bridge straddling a fair sized creek.
at that point it was getting kind of dark and daryl had not yet arrived with the "heavy artillery".
right about the time it went pitch dark daryl arrived with thegoodies we had put together. the engagement was initiated by various members of each team lighting up their smokes and starting to toss out a few "screamers" at each other.
eeeeeeeeeeeeee....... swwoooosh..... POP.... goldangitowthat hurt..... daryl screamed as a well aimed shot from an enemy bazooka hits him in the leg...
hey look.. dude... they are trying to cross the bridge..... GET EM..
daryl and i looked at each other with a kind of maniac glee, and unlimbered OUR bazookas!
see, where the other guys had stuck to wrapping paper tubes and whistlink bottlerockets (about 1/4 inch diameter and about 3 inches long, glued to a paper stick... daryl and i had created weapons of mass destruction.. we had taken various odds and ends like 4inch diameter carpet tubes, lexan sheeting, toy gun handles and radiator clamps to create monsters that could shoot the 9 inch long finned rockets (ya know those suckers you can almost take a jet down with).
turns out that if you pulled the little plastic finned assembly off of one of the rockets and glued it to the front of another one, that the resulting projectile was devastatingly accurate.
SWOOOOOSH.......ssssshhhhhhhhh........FWUUMMP! AHHHHHHHH... ..... .....SPlaSH!
holy crap, i think i just blew somebody off of the bridge...... ahhhh maybe we oughta bail... that can't be good.....
see thats what happens when ya give maniacs fireworks... ain't it great
peace
-dawg
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