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Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton & uhs . . .

28 May

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,

This evening I am privileged to introduce the president of the United States, Barack Obama and our Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. However, before I introduce them, this gentleman and this lady that loom larger than life in national and international politics, I would like to point out serious flaws in both the president and his Secretary of State.

Both have multiple flaws, just as everyone else has, but their major flaws lie in their public speaking expertise, or lack therof. The president is continuously described as the most powerful man in the world, and he also is lauded by many to be the most powerful speaker on earth—our esteemed Secretary of State runs him a close second, both in position responsibilities and in public speaking expertise.

I imagine most of you are familiar with the Toastmaster’s Clubs that exist across our nation. Those clubs are dedicated to improving people’s performances in public speaking, particularly in extemporaneous presentations, speeches made off-the-cuff as opposed to reading a speech or utilizing a teleprompter.

Many years ago, while I was still gainfully employed as a military service member, my immediate supervisor was an Air Force major who was a member of a local Toastmaster’s Club. The members met each week for five weeks and each member presented to the others an extemporaneous speech.

Each speaker was graded by the positive and negative comments of the other members, and each week the person that voiced the most uhs in speaking was given a large pink plastic piggybank. That person was required to keep the pink pig on his work desk in the coming week and return it to the next meeting to be awarded to the next speaker that uttered the most uhs. The uhs were viewed as piggy oinks.

That pig sat on the major’s desk for five consecutive weeks. Each week he lugged it to the meeting and returned an hour later and put it back on his desk. At a later date he joined the Club for another five weeks, and the pink piggybank sat on his desk for that five weeks also. I transferred out soon after that, and I have no knowledge of his activities since then. Uh, however, I can, uh, assure you that he, uh, is still lugging that, uh, that pink, uh, pig back and forth, uh, each week.

If you, the reader, have not guessed my reason for this posting, please allow me to explain. My point is this: If Uhbama and Hilluhry joined a Toastmaster’s Club, the club would need two pink piggybanks, one of which each week would sit on Hillary Clinton’s desk at the Department of State, and the other on the president’s desk in the Oval Office. Incidentally, that desk was dubbed the Offal Office during Bill Clinton’s presidency—okay, maybe not—maybe I was the only one that gave it that title, but it should have been given that label—he earned it.

But I digress. Has anyone counted, or even noticed, the frequency with which Hilluhry and Barack Uhbama say uh when they have no teleprompter? And how many times Uhbama stretches the word and to a count of five seconds and then adds the word so stretched out for another three of four seconds. He is desperately trying to formulate his next words and uses the uh, and, so trio to give him time to think. He also frequently uses the three words in sequence and sometimes adds and then, also stretched out to gain more time.

In virtually all his public speeches, beginning with the speech at the national democratic convention in 2008 and continuing in his speeches during the presidential campaign he used a teleprompter—without it he would not be the president of the United States today.

One can sum it up by saying that the president has never met a teleprompter he didn’t like.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Postscript: I learned while watching Fox News today that the White House has created an office that has been tasked to screen various media including books, newspapers, television shows and talk radio stations for criticisms of the present administration, and then develop and apply tactics to counteract such criticisms. Yep, that’s our tax dollars at work.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

 
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Posted by on May 28, 2011 in Uncategorized

 

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Revisit: The day I lost my marbles . . .

10 May

I originally posted this story in July of 2010. I came across it while browsing today and enjoyed it so much that I decided to share it with the multitudes of people that overlooked it. I know they overlooked it because it garnered only one comment and that was from a lovely lady that lives in Montgomery, and she probably felt compelled to comment because she is my niece and I am the only surviving uncle from her mother’s side of the family. Actually, if I were a female I would be the only surviving aunt from her mother’s family—yep, of the original seven children I am the last one standing, and yes, I’m a bit lonely!

This is an intriguing—albeit rather sad—tale of one small boy’s attempt to establish and cement friendship and perhaps help to promote cordiality between races in the deep South at a time long before the marches between Selma and Montgomery, Alabama and long before civil rights legislation was passed by Congress. Well, alright, I confess that I was also trying to add to my collection of marbles and because of my politically incorrect older sister I failed miserably, and instead found my collection reduced by a significant number, including some of my favorite pieces. Bummer!

The day I lost my marbles

Many years ago in Columbus, Mississippi on the corner of Fourth Street South and Ninth Avenue South there was a large colonial style two-story house with stately columns and a balcony, a house converted into apartments during World War II to accommodate the influx of military personnel from Columbus Air Force Base, a pilot training center. I haven’t been in that section of town for many years—it may still be standing, or it may have been razed and a modern brick structure erected on that lot.

I lived there for several months with my mother, my youngest sister Dot—short for Doris—and my stepfather. Jessie, my oldest sister, also lived there in a one-room apartment that shared a bathroom with another tenant. That house holds many memories for me, several of which I have posted on my blog—some of those memories are pleasant and some are not so pleasant. Click here to read about The tomato tempest, a story that includes a visit to Alabama, a sharecropper family, a suicide, an Army-issue Colt .45 caliber automatic pistol, a recalcitrant young girl and a stepfather with a vicious temper.

The house was only two or three blocks from a section of the city that was called by many names, mostly names that are not used in polite society today. In these modern times of political correctness, certain words are voiced only by their first letter and the word word added, as in the N-word or the F-word or the R–word—the R stands for Republican, a word that some are reluctant to use in fear that they will looked upon as such.

I suppose that in today’s parlance, the neighborhood just beyond where I lived as a boy would be referred to as N-town, an area primarily comprised of black families—the term African-American was unknown then, unknown at least in the circles in which I moved. I’ve never understood the rationale for expressing something like that—if it is true that the thought is as bad as the deed, then saying the N-word instead of the actual word in nothing more than an attempt to cover up the real word, and it’s not covered up—try it—just say the N-word to yourself and check the mental image it creates, both in the speaker and the listener. Let’s face it—it’s a cop out—if you’re going to think it, you might as well say it.

I knew only one person that lived in N-town, a black lady that came to the house every weekday to care for my niece, Jessie’s young daughter, then just a toddler. Millie also cleaned, cooked and ironed for Jessie over a period of many years at several different locations in the city. I never knew Millie’s last name—we simply called her Millie, possibly the diminutive form of Millicent. An unmarried lady, she lived with her family just a short walk from our house. I vividly remember numerous Saturday nights when Dot and I walked with Jessie and our mother to Millie’s house. Jessie and our mother, along with Millie and her mother formed a quartet and sang church hymns, A Capella, all the old favorites and they sometimes belted out fast-paced tunes that contrasted sharply with the well-known songs—I suppose they were songs popular at the time—pop tunes, so to speak.

The group stayed in the house in inclement weather and neighbors came and sat and listened, and in fair weather they formed on the front porch and neighbors came and sat and listened. My sister and I stayed outside, both in inclement and fair weather, playing all the games children play in the evening—Kick the Can, Pussy in the Corner, Tag, Hide and Seek and others, and sometimes we sat on the porch and told stories, mostly ghost tales—and I’m here to say that those kids could spin some very scary stories!

Now that I’ve laid the scene, I’ll progress to the when, where, why and how I lost my marbles. I arrived home from school and Millie and my niece, Millie’s charge, were the only ones there. Left to my own devices, I swept an area of the front yard clean, drew a circle and began playing marbles. Soon after I began one of the kids from Millie’s neighborhood came by, watched my shooting for a few minutes and asked if he could play. I said yes, and the battle was joined—we played for keeps, meaning that when a shooter knocked one of the other shooter’s marbles out of the ring, that marble changed ownership—it now belonged to the one that caused it to go outside the ring. At first I seemed to be in control, but as the game progressed I realized that I had agreed to a play-for-keeps game with a kid that was a much better shooter than I.

So did I call off the game? Not on your life! I had a reputation to support and I worked very hard to reclaim some of my marbles that now resided in the black kid’s pockets. I was almost marbleless when Jessie came home from work. She briefly watched us at play and then entered the house, and a short time later Millie came out and headed for home. Then Jessie returned to the front yard—Jessie, my oldest sister and the sister that often gave orders that I was required to obey. She ordered me into the house, and I told my new friend—my adversary—that I had to go in, and he headed for home also, his pockets bulging with marbles that earlier had been in my pockets.

Jessie told me later that it was not seemly for me to be seen playing with a N-word child, that it would look odd to our neighbors. I pointed out to her that I had lost most of my marbles, and that I appeared to be on a winning streak at the time she stopped the game. Her response to that? You shouldn’t have been playing for keeps—that’s gambling, and gambling’s a sin. I didn’t bother to argue that I played with the black kids on Saturday evenings. I knew that the difference was the difference between day and night, between light and dark. I was in full view during daylight hours, subject to the stares of disapproving blacks as well as whites, and in the darkness of the evening I was not subjected to such stares.

That’s it—that’s how I lost my marbles, a loss that I was never to recoup. I never saw that kid again—sometimes I think that he may have been a ringer, a professional sent in from another area to pick up some easy loot in the form of marbles, similar to what Paul Newman did in his movie, The Hustler—bummer!

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!

 
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Posted by on May 10, 2011 in Childhood, civil war, Family, Humor, Military, politics, race

 

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What’s in a name? The N-word by any other name would mean the same

08 Mar

The following comment was made by a fellow blogger somewhere in the British isles. Click here to read the post that prompted his comment.

Submitted on 2011/03/06 at 9:06 pm
helpforyourenglish.wordpress.com
john-dough@live.co.uk

Who wrote the “rules’ of grammar? Grammarians. How did they decide what to write in their grammar” books? By observing what people said and wrote – usage. Then they came to their own ‘theories’ of what English grammar is (or might be) based on those observations and usage. Grammarians did not invent English. As such, grammar is descriptive and should not be prescriptive. From my experience, using was in your example rather than were is much more common. Trying to prescribe that people should use the subjunctive mood’ in that situation makes it sound like the English language is stuck in some Latin time warp. It’s not really worth getting worked up about.

This is my reply to the British grammarian’s comment:

Thanks for the visit, and thanks for the comment. In far too many instances, comments by viewers are content with saying Nice blog, or I agree or Your blog sucks, etc., but your comment is well written, to the point and welcomed. My first reaction was to respond at some length, but I realized that the subject is worthy of a separate posting on my blog. Stay tuned if you like—with my lack of typing skills it will take some time to create and publish.

And this is the separate posting I promised the British—an assumption on my part—blogger.

Dear John,

As I promised in my initial response to your comment, I have expanded my response into an essay that concentrates on current language restrictions in the United States. You cannot possibly know how pleased I was to receive a real comment rather than the usual one or two phrases given by others, comments such as nice blog, keep up the good work, you suck, etc. Comments such as yours are rare, to be treasured and responded to in kind.

Your comment has inspired me to reply in detail, perhaps more detail than you expected or wanted, and has given me far more than enough fodder for yet another lengthy essay on the use of the English language. I will cheerfully give you credit for stimulating me in that effort.

It probably won’t surprise you to learn that you have touched a nerve with your comment’s statement that It’s not really worth getting worked up about. I submit to you that every teacher of English or for that matter every teacher of anything, regardless of the subject, should get worked up about the misuse of established English language mores when people with ivy league educations, some with multiple diplomas—attorneys, authors, doctors, high-ranking business leaders, presidents, millionaires and billionaires in industry and in entertainment venues—continuously violate the most simple rules—yes, rules—of everyday English.

I expect it from rappers, but not from the rest of our society—not from our president and not from the poorest children existing in the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia or in the Okeefenoke Swamp area in south Georgia. As for ebonics, I abhor the term and refuse to discuss it, capitalize it or use it in a sentence—in fact, I will not even mention it in this essay—not even once.

The errors in everyday English that I discuss on Word Press are the little things in our society as regards proper English. My sainted mother, in 83 years of living, loving and learning accumulated hordes of homilies, parts of speech defined as inspirational sayings or platitudes. One of her favorites and also one of mine is the saying that admonishes us to take care of the little things and the big things will take care of themselves. Following established rules is one of the little things, and effective communication is one of the big things.

The fact that the use of was rather than were is more common is not justification to continue using it. If that were true—note the if and the were—many, perhaps most of us, particularly in certain geographic regions, would still be spelling out and enunciating the word nigger instead of crouching behind the N-word wall.

It is an immutable fact that when we voice that alternative word as the N-word, our listeners know full well that the psuedo word has been substituted for the real word, the one that resides in the speaker’s thoughts, and thus immediately is projected and comes to rest in the listener’s thoughts, and the speaker, the user of the non-word N-word, put it there, and the listener can place a suitable target—I mean label—on the speaker by charging racism. The very fact of not voicing the pejorative term raises the shade on the speaker’s thoughts and shines the bright light of reality on the term, one that was, and still is, common in many countries, including yours.

There is a host of words on which we place no restrictions on their spelling in our writings or in our conversations—we may decry their use, but that use is common in literature and in everyday speech. That includes such words as honky, whitey, jew, kike, redneck, abie, chink, jap, greaser, frog, goy, kraut, polack, guido, limey (those of the British persuasion should take special note of that one), paddy, nazi, slant-eye, slopehead, nip, squaw, uncle tom and zipperhead. The list goes on forever, yet our society and its preoccupation with political correctness does not mandate us to prefix any of those words with a capital letter and substitute a made-up term for the pejorative term—J-word for jews and japs, for example, or K-word for kike and kraut, S-word for slant-eye, slope-head and squaw and L-word for limey—go figure!

Yes, the list goes on forever and we will forever continue to create new pejoratives to add to that list. Regardless of the list’s length, we can freely use any of those terms in writing, not as pejoratives in and of themselves but as support for whatever communication we are presenting to our reading audience—any of those terms except one—can you guess which one? I’ll give you three guesses, and the first two won’t count.

If the bromide that tells us that the thought is as bad as the deed is true, then every English speaker in the world is guilty, whether or not racially biased. When we voice the acceptable euphemism N-word, the banned word is in our thoughts, and it resounds just as loudly in our brain and in the listener’s  brain as when we actually pronounce the banned word.

Just one more thought and I’ll release you and my viewers from bondage. A bromide in the English language is defined as a figure of speech meaning a tranquilizing cliché. Our use of the term N-word is a bromide, a figure of speech meaning a tranquilizing cliché. A bromide is also defined as conventional wisdom overused as a calming phrase, a verbal sedative.

This bromide has been foisted upon us as a tranquilizer, a medication, a verbal sedative prescribed by a liberal society in order to render us placid, peaceful and pliant, to purposely place us in that somnolent state of glorious oblivion—asleep—and to keep us there.

I propose an amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America to allow us to call a spade a spade, a time-worn bromide that is now regarded as an epithet, a pejorative term, one that if used by a conservative member of Congress would probably bring Jackson, Sharpton, Braun, Powell, Conyers, Chisholm, Range, Jordan, Hastings, Jackson-Lee, Jackson Jr., Cummings and a host of others out of their respective congressional seats and on their respective congressional feet to simultaneously shout, Racist, racist, racist!, all wanting to order and exact the same penalty decreed by the Queen in the fairy tale Alice in Wonderland—Off with their heads!

For proposing that amendment my head would be on the chopping block, perhaps the first to tumble into the waiting handbasket, yet I am guilty of nothing more than wanting to bring a modicum of sanity to our nation. Our national ship of state is drifting aimlessly on a sea of insanity as regards the use of words considered to be pejorative. As a nation we can consider ourselves to be an asylum for the insane, with the patients giving the orders—again, as regards the use of pejorative words and phrases.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

 
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Posted by on March 8, 2011 in Uncategorized

 

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The day I lost my marbles . . .

08 Jul

Many years ago in Columbus, Mississippi, at the corner of Fourth Street South and Ninth Avenue South there was a large colonial style two-story house with stately columns and a balcony, a house converted into apartments during World War II to accommodate the influx of military personnel from Columbus Air Force Base, a pilot training center. I haven’t been in that section of town for many years—it may still be standing, or it may have been razed and a modern brick structure erected on that lot.

I lived there for several months with my mother, my youngest sister Dot—short for Doris—and my stepfather. Jessie, my oldest sister, also lived there in a one-room apartment that shared a bathroom with another tenant. That house holds many memories for me, several of which I have posted on my blog—some of those memories are pleasant and some are not so pleasant. Click here to read about The tomato tempest, a story that includes a visit to Alabama, a sharecropper family, a suicide, an Army-issue Colt .45 caliber automatic pistol, a recalcitrant young girl and a stepfather with a vicious temper.

The house was only two or three blocks from a section of the city that was called by many names, mostly names that are not used in polite society today. In these modern times of political correctness, certain words are voiced only by their first letter and the word word added, as in the N-word or the F-word or the R–word—the R stands for Republican, a word that some are reluctant to use in fear that they will looked upon as such.

I suppose that in today’s parlance, the neighborhood just beyond where I lived as a boy would be referred to as N-town, an area primarily comprised of black families—the term African-American was unknown then, unknown at least in the circles in which I moved. I’ve never understood the rationale for expressing something like that—if it is true that the thought is as bad as the deed, then saying the N-word instead of the actual word in nothing more than an attempt to cover up the real word, and it’s not covered up—try it—just say the N-word to yourself and check the mental image it creates, both in the speaker and the listener. Let’s face it—it’s a cop out—if you’re going to think it, you might as well say it.

I knew only one person that lived in N-town, a black lady that came to the house every weekday to care for my niece, Jessie’s young daughter, then just a toddler. Millie also cleaned, cooked and ironed for Jessie over a period of many years at several different locations in the city. I never knew Millie’s last name—we simply called her Millie, possibly the diminutive form of Millicent. An unmarried lady, she lived with her family just a short walk from our house. I vividly remember numerous Saturday nights when Dot and I walked with Jessie and our mother to Millie’s house. Jessie and our mother, along with Millie and her mother formed a quartet and sang church hymns, A Capella, all the old favorites and they sometimes belted out fast-paced tunes that contrasted sharply with the well-known songs—I suppose they were songs popular at the time—pop tunes, so to speak.

The group stayed in the house in inclement weather and neighbors came and sat and listened, and in fair weather they formed on the front porch and neighbors came and sat and listened. My sister and I stayed outside, both in inclement and fair weather, playing all the games children play in the evening—Kick the Can, Pussy in the Corner, Tag, Hide and Seek and others, and sometimes we sat on the porch and told stories, mostly ghost tales—and I’m here to say that those kids could spin some very scary stories!

Now that I’ve laid the scene, I’ll progress to the when, where, why and how I lost my marbles. I arrived home from school and Millie and my niece, Millie’s charge, were the only ones there. Left to my own devices, I swept an area of the front yard clean, drew a circle and began playing marbles. Soon after I began one of the kids from Millie’s neighborhood came by, watched my shooting for a few minutes and asked if he could play. I said yes, and the battle was joined—we played for keeps, meaning that when a shooter knocked one of the other shooter’s marble out of the ring, that marble changed ownership—it now belonged to the one that caused it to go outside the ring. At first I seemed to be in control, but as the game progressed I realized that I had agreed to a play-for-keeps game with a kid that was a much better shooter than I.

So did I call off the game? Not on your life! I had a reputation to support and I worked very hard to reclaim some of my marbles that now resided in the black kid’s pockets. I was almost marbleless when Jessie came home from work. She briefly watched us at play and then entered the house, and a short time later Millie came out and headed for home. Then Jessie returned to the front yard—Jessie, my oldest sister and the sister that often gave orders that I was required to obey. She ordered me into the house, and I told my new friend—my adversary—that I had to go in, and he headed for home also, his pockets bulging with marbles that earlier had been in my pockets.

Jessie told me later that it was not seemly for me to be seen playing with a N-word child, that it would look odd to our neighbors. I pointed out to her that I had lost most of my marbles, and that I appeared to be on a winning streak at the time she stopped the game. Her response to that? You shouldn’t have been playing for keeps—that’s gambling, and gambling’s a sin. I didn’t bother to argue that I played with the black kids on Saturday evenings. I knew that the difference was the difference between day and night, between light and dark. I was in full view during daylight hours, subject to the stares of disapproving blacks as well as whites, and in the darkness of the evening I was not subjected to such stares.

That’s it—that’s how I lost my marbles, a loss that I was never to recoup. I never saw that kid again—sometimes I think that he may have been a ringer, a professional sent in from another area to pick up some easy loot in the form of marbles, similar to what Paul Newman did in his movie, The Hustler—bummer!

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!

 
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Posted by on July 8, 2010 in Uncategorized

 

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A salute to drive-in theaters . . .

21 Jun

I was away from the United States for two years on a mission to the Far East, beginning early in 1950. I left the United States as a teenager of 17 years, and returned as a 19-year old still almost two years short of voting age—back then the minimum age for voting was 21, not 18. I left because I was called on—commanded—to assist the US Army in its occupation of Japan, an occupation by our armed forces still in place five years after Japan’s surrender.

Shortly after arriving in Japan I was given the opportunity to assist our armed forces in the Korean War. I unwisely volunteered and spent fifteen months there at the height of the war, returning to the US early in 1952. On my return I found many changes—life in Mississippi moved much slower than in other sections of the country, perhaps because repercussions of the War Between the States—that’s our U. S. Civil War—still echoed in that area and era, and recovery through reconstruction was slow in coming.

Columbus was slow to accept change and was far behind the times in many ways. The most fascinating change for me was the addition of a drive-in theater, a place where couples, young and not-so-young, could legally park at night, to watch the movie, of course, without fear of those dreaded red lights and sirens operated by local law-enforcement personnel. I was challenged by many changes on my return to the city, but I have vivid memories of successfully adapting, with the assistance of a schoolmate’s sister, to the challenges posed by the drive-in theater—the ins and outs of the process, so to speak.

I quickly mastered actions such as moving the speaker from its post to the car’s interior and keeping my foot off the brake pedal. I learned the latter from the cacophony of horns blowing behind me because the red brake lights were obscuring the screen for others. In later years—much later—I accidentally—honest, it was an accident—drove away with the speaker still in the car. Fearing that I would be prosecuted, I hesitated to report the damage and I kept the speaker—I cleverly wired it to my radio and used it as a backseat sound source. Voila! Stereo!

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

 
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Posted by on June 21, 2010 in Uncategorized

 

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Rabbits speak Arabbitian . . .

04 Jun

The second born of my three princesses, the one that lives, loves and works in Alexandria, Virginia recently posted a series of photos of an animal that was grazing early one evening in the common area behind her townhouse. In her narrative she says the animal was in the company of a robin and two squirrels—I suspect that was a meeting of WANNA, her neighborhood’s local chapter of the national Wild Animal Northern Neighborhood Association, an organization that was formed to ensure and protect the rights of neighborhood animals, both wild and domestic—sister national chapters are WASNA, WAENA and WAWNA denoting chapters in the southern, eastern and western sections of the United States.

Her neighborhood has a similar association for humans—my daughter and her husband were active in that association for a considerable time, but finally withdrew their support because of the constant conflict created by board members.

Click here for her original posting. These are her photos, and her narrative introduction follows:


I was scrounging around the refrigerator earlier this evening, hunting for something interesting to eat for dinner. I glanced out the window and saw this large rabbit (about the size of a normal-sized cat, actually!) grazing in the grass on the common area strip in front of our townhouse, alongside two squirrels and a robin. He was out earlier than I normally see them in the neighborhood (still daylight at about 7 p.m.). I grabbed my camera with a 105mm lens and ran outside, slowly approaching him. He let me get within five or six feet of him before slowly turning away, and even then he didn’t go very far. I was able to fire off almost 20 shots—these are the cream of the crop.

I was intrigued by the photos so I did a bit of research on rabbits, specifically on the differences between rabbits and hares. I learned that hares have longer ears, longer legs, bigger feet and prefer to live above ground. I learned that hares have black markings in their fur, and those that live in northern climes turn white in winter, a protective measure provided by nature to make them less vulnerable to predators. And finally I learned that one female rabbit can conceivably, so to speak, birth as many as 36 babies each year—at that rate my daughter may soon be up to her uh-huh in rabbits. The results of my research were inconclusive—the animal in the photos may or may not be a rabbit, and conversely it may or may not be a hare.

I made a rather lengthy comment on her posting, but before I bring that into this posting I will share a comment I found during my research. I would credit the writer but I could not identify a name, e-mail, blog post, etc. I found it hilarious—enjoy!

This was very helpful in settling a trivia question with a friend. However, it has also exposed a very ugly and troubling issue. Now that we know a “bunny” is specifically defined as an immature “rabbit,” this can only mean that employing the “Easter Bunny” to deliver swag baskets and hide eggs on Easter Eve violates a whole host of state, federal, and UN Child Labor Laws. Inexcusable child exploitation! This means there is no difference between our traditional Easter festivities and an El Salvadoran sweat shop full of hungry orphans making Nikes. We are just lucky we haven’t been caught yet. The only solution is to quietly change the job description to “Easter Rabbit,” purge all history books and greeting cards of incriminating “bunny” references, and never speak of this again. Furthermore, to ensure political correctness, diversity, and ethnic inclusiveness, in alternate years the contract for Easter Eve responsibilities must be awarded to the “Easter Hare.”

I mean, like, hey, is that funny or what!

The real reason for this posting was to share my comment on my daughter’s rabbit photos with other bloggers, and finally this is it, exactly as posted:

thekingoftexas

This is a great series of shots, no matter how domesticated or how wild this animal may be. Evidently this one is accustomed to posing—or perhaps it’s because of your facility in foreign languages. I know that you have accumulated a working knowledge of Spanish, but when and where did you learn to speak the language of rabbits?

And don’t bother to deny it—only with a working proficiency in the rabbit’s language could you have recorded these poses.

I realize that in your case I am preaching to the choir, but perhaps a brief (?) briefing of rabbit language and poses will be of some benefit to your blog visitors, so I’ll be brief—as always.

Rabbits speak Arabbitian, a language that originated in ancient—prebiblical—Arabia and for thousands of years was restricted to rabbits. Very few humans have mastered the language—obviously you are one of those rare exceptions. The others are photographers, mostly, with just a smattering of hunters. That’s because the IQ of most hunters is severely limited and cannot handle the intricacies of the language.

Arabbitian is pronounced air-ruh-be-she-un with the accent on be, the center syllable. Every rabbit world-wide speaks the same language—they are fluent in it from the moment of birth—it’s innate in their DNA.

There are different dialects, of course, just as there are in other languages, particularly in English. Very few natives of the deep South can follow the staccato speech of a Yankee speaker, and conversely southern speakers—Mississippians, for example, especially Mississippi girls—speak so slowly that the listener has ample time to refer to a dictionary for clarification on pronunciation and definition.

I’m sure you’ve heard about the southern girl and her Yankee date. They were parked on Lover’s Lane and the boy, as boys are wont to do, posed a question to her involving a certain activity, and before she could tell him that she had never done that—she had.

And that was not an isolated incident—it’s happened countless times and will happen countless more times, happily, perhaps, for both participants. Some day a brilliant dialectologist may develop a system to speed up the word production of southern girls, but that’s doubtful, so in such instances they will continue to produce—so to speak.

I knew you could speak Arabbitian when I saw the sequence of poses presented by the rabbit. A rabbit—any rabbit, regardless of its origin, will only offer five poses to a viewer—rabbits will pose at a 45-degree angle facing the viewer facing slightly to the right or to the left, at full side view facing right, a full side view facing left, and a backside view with its backside rapidly shrinking into the distance, because the only time a rabbit would turn his back on someone is to run away.

The one pose a rabbit will never assume, not even for a centerfold spread in PlayGirlBunny or PentBurrowBunny—that pose is one of facing a viewer squarely to the front. Rabbits will readily present a rear view, but it will be a fast-disappearing view as discussed earlier.

These restrictions rabbits place on photographers’ photo shoots is for a good reason. Rabbits’ eyes, as are those of most herbivorous animals, are placed on opposite sides of their head and each eye rotates in its socket independently of the other eye, enabling the rabbit to spot danger in a circle approaching a full 360 degrees, except directly ahead or directly behind. Contrast the herbivorous animal with the carnivorous animal. All carnivores are predators, and in most circumstances have no fear of what may be outside their field of vision—their eyes are fixed on their prey.

And as an afterthought, one should never crop a rabbit’s ears as many well-meaning owners do with show rabbits or with pet rabbits. Rabbits’ ears also rotate in opposite directions in order to detect sounds coming from all directions and thus perhaps avoid becoming dinner for a carnivore, whether the carnivore is bird or cat or photographer. Crop a rabbit’s ears and if it gets away or is turned loose in the wild, it cannot effectively pinpoint the source of danger and will become road kill or dinner for a carnivore, either human or animal.

There—I was not as brief as I hoped to be, but apparently I had a lot to say—so I said it.

Great photography—keep up the good work.

 
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Posted by on June 4, 2010 in Uncategorized

 

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Texting kills + A repost of Quickies, cashews and conjugations . . .

16 May

Quickies, cashews and conjugations . . .

I first posted this subject four months ago on January 22, 2010. That posting is primarily a dissertation on conjugation, specifically on the past tense of the word text when used as a verb. The posting has been available for four months on Word Press and has garnered zero comments and only one vote, and in the interest of full disclosure I must admit that the one vote is mine—hey, I realize that shows partiality on my part, but I enjoy reading my own writing. Nothing improper about that, right? Right? Right!

Texting while driving is under fire all across our nation. Here in San Antonio the use of cell phones is banned in school zones, and our city commissioners are now considering a city–wide law outlawing texting while driving. I have serious doubts that it will happen, but hope springs eternal—it’s the right thing to do.

Texting is killing people. Let me rephrase that—texters are killing people, killing them just as surely as if they had held a gun to another person’s head and pulled the trigger. Texting while driving, whether reading a message or sending a message, should be outlawed nation-wide—nay, world wide! Both practices are distractions, and both kill people.

Click here for Car Accident Cell Phone statistics.

This is an excerpt from that web site:

In 2008, at any given moment, over 800,000 Americans were texting, making calls, or using a handheld cell phone while driving during the daytime. With distracted driving killing nearly 6,000 Americans in the same year, it’s no mystery that cell phone use is risky for drivers.

How many of those 6,000 Americans died as the result of a driver texting while operating a motor vehicle? Some of the distractions that caused 6,000 deaths in one year were unavoidable—as the saying goes, stuff happens, and some of that stuff is beyond a driver’s control. Texting, however,  is well within the driver’s control—all the driver needs do is don’t.  The number of cell phone users and the number of text messages sent and received has increased astronomically since 22008. If distractions killed 6,000 people in 2008, how many will die in 2010?

Please read the statistics on cell phone use carefully, and be afraid—be very afraid. The driver behind the wheel of that vehicle approaching you on a undivided two-lane highway is traveling at 60 miles per hour—both hands on the wheel, but the driver is holding a cell phone and using both thumbs to text messages by typing on a minuscule keyboard and all the while supposedly in control of  several tons of extremely hard materials—steel, rubber, aluminum, fiberglass and glass—lots and lots of glass.

Accept the fact that the other driver is not in control of that vehicle—that driver is wearing a shroud, holding a cell phone in one hand and a scythe in the other. In far too many instances—even one is too many—that driver is the Grim Reaper, a potential killer. So do yourself a favor—if you text while driving, stop. If your friends text while driving, implore them to stop, and don’t ride with them if they continue that deadly practice.

Contact your city officials—police, city commissioners, mayors, city managers, and state and national lawmakers and representatives and demand that texting while driving be outlawed.

I know, I know—it ain’t gonna happen.

This is my original posting of Quickies, cashews and conjugations . . .

I have been chastised by a viewer that finds my postings far too lengthy and reading them in their entirety requires extended absences from some of life’s more important activities, including such vital ones as texting and watching television (I would surmise that the viewer does not read books or periodicals for the same reason).

In response to that criticism I am introducing the ‘quickie’ posting. The use of that term necessarily mandates a definition. From Wikipedia: A quickie is defined as ‘a thing done or made quickly or hastily, in particular a rapidly consumed alcoholic drink or a brief act of sexual intercourse.’ The word may legitimately be used as a noun or an adjective to describe an infinite number of situations other than those involving drinks or sexual intercourse.

At this point I must note that a quickie (the noun) may be either given or received. Examples would be, for instance, ‘The featured speaker gave a quickie to the members,’ and ‘The members received a quickie from the featured speaker.’

Got it?

This quickie will not involve alcoholic drinks or sex (not that I’m opposed to either). My intent is to post a quickie (noun) from time to time, and such entries will be quickie (adjective) postings.

Now for my first quickie:

Texting is a relatively new word in our language. Virtually everyone is aware of its meaning, so no definition should be required. However, since the word is a verb it is subject to the rules of conjugation (no relation to the adjective conjugal as used in conjugal visits).

Incidentally, the generally recognized basis for permitting such visits (conjugal) in modern times is to preserve family bonds and increase the chances of success for a prisoner’s eventual return to life outside prison. The visit will usually take place in a structure provided for that purpose, such as a trailer or small cabin. Supplies such as soap, condoms, tissues, sheets, pillows, and towels may be provided (bold emphasis is mine).

Hey, I didn’t make that up—it came straight from Wikipedia! Check it out at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conjugal_visit

I haven’t seen an official conjugation of the verb text, but I assume the verb as presently used would be conjugated for the present, past and future tenses as follows:

I text on my phone daily (present tense)—the gerund of text would be texting, of course. I texted on it yesterday (past tense) and tomorrow I will text again (future tense). The conjugation would be text, texted, text, similar to the verb run (run, ran, run).

My assumption is based on the fact that all those that text use texted to indicate past tense, namely, ‘I texted the schedule to everyone.’

And now, to quote the bard, ‘Ay, there’s the rub.’

If texted is the proper past tense for the verb text, the sequence of a batter’s performance in baseball games would be, ‘He hit the ball on the first pitch, and he hitted the ball on the first pitch yesterday, and he will probably hit the ball on the first pitch tomorrow.’ The gerund in this case would be, ‘He is hitting 500 ( fifty percent) this season.’

There you have it—I rest my case. If text, texted, text is correct then it logically follows that hit, hitted, hit would be correct, rather than the current conjugation of hit, hit, hit.

I boldly, with all semblance of humility aside, suggest that the past tense of text should not be texted—it should be simply text. The verbs hit and text are both one syllable, both end in ‘T’ and should therefore be voiced as, ‘I text her yesterday’ rather than ‘I texted her yesterday.’ The verb text should be conjugated as text, text, text. Try it—voice the past tense as presently used—texted, two syllables with equal emphasis on both syllables. Then voice the past tense as text, a word that is considered one syllable, but when voiced comes across as two syllables. Unless you omit the ‘t’ sound at the end of texttex, you’ll pronounce the ‘t’ as a second syllable—try it! (Note that ‘it‘ is also pronounced with two syllables).

Come on, admit it—texted is awkward. It’s completely unwieldy and should be banned.

If my viewers will admit that it’s awkward, then I will in turn admit that this posting does not qualify as a quickie because it ran amok, completely out of control. If it’s a quickie, then it’s a quickie on steroids. Posting can legitimately be compared to such mundane activities as running down hill, eating peanuts (or cashews) and sex. Once started, it may be difficult to stop—nay, in extreme cases it may be impossible.

Postcript: I did not intend to involve alcoholic drinks or sex in this first quickie. I kept my promise on the drinks, but the serpent reared its ugly head in the above paragraph. I offer an abject apology to any viewer that may have found the word offensive. I did not delete it (behead the serpent, so to speak) because the thought was applicable and the word fit well.

Or should I say it fitted well, as in texted?

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

 
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Posted by on May 16, 2010 in Uncategorized

 

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Irregardless—right, or wrong?

03 Feb

Wrong.

Warning:

Read this posting at your own peril. It’s a grammar lesson, the first of many to come, a veritable onslaught of similar postings and a site to which viewers will quickly become addicted. Anyone that adheres to the maxims presented on this site will be swimming upstream, ostracized, isolated and rejected by the multitudes that go with the flow. Ignore them. Stand out from the crowd. Keep swimming upstream.

This posting focuses on the use of irregardless, a word frequently used when a speaker wants to suggest that a certain something is to be disregarded. Its misuse is one of my pet peeves (and they are legion).

I plan to cover all my pet peeves eventually, and I will happily discuss any pet peeve that may be submitted by a viewer. I will also cheerfully answer, or attempt to answer, any question that may be presented, whether on pronunciation, sentence construction, spelling, subject and verb agreement, the use and construction of adverbs, the possessive form of nouns, etc. If I don’t know the answer and cannot find the answer, I will just as cheerfully admit that I don’t know it.

Try me.

As regards—or in regard to—or regarding—irregardless:

Irregardless is not a proper word, regardless of its appearance in dictionaries and regardless of its use in speeches and writings by supposedly erudite persons. It should not be used. One possible exception, perhaps, might be when a speaker is faced with an untutored audience of one or more persons that might tend to accept its use as proper—audiences in certain southern hilly or swampy areas, for example.

The proper word is regardless—it means without regard for, pay no attention to, do not regard. A loving and very understanding wife, for example, might tell her husband “Darling, I love you, regardless of your slovenly appearance and your disgusting bathroom habits.”As used here, the word means “in spite of.” (She may say it, but may not mean it).

Everyone is aware, of course, that the prefix ir means not, and the suffix less means without, therefore the word irregardless contains a double negative.

Less negates regard all by itself—it needs no help from ir.

Now that you’ve read my position on the word irregardless, I’ll give you Wikipedia’s stand:

Usage Note: Irregardless is a word that many mistakenly believe to be correct usage in formal style, when in fact it is used chiefly in nonstandard speech or casual writing. Coined in the United States in the early 20th century, it has met with a blizzard of condemnation for being an improper yoking of irrespective and regardless and for the logical absurdity of combining the negative ir- prefix and -less suffix in a single term. Although one might reasonably argue that it is no different from words with redundant affixes like debone and unravel, it has been considered a blunder for decades and will probably continue to be so.

 
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Posted by on February 3, 2010 in education, grammar, Humor, proper english, Writing

 

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Quickies, cashews and conjugations . . .

22 Jan

I have been chastised by a viewer who finds my postings far too lengthy and reading them in their entirety requires extended absences from some of life’s more important activities, including such vital ones as texting and watching television (I would surmise that the viewer does not read books or periodicals for the same reason).

In response to that criticism I am introducing the ‘quickie’ posting. The use of that term necessarily mandates a definition. From Wikipedia: A quickie is defined as ‘a thing done or made quickly or hastily, in particular a rapidly consumed alcoholic drink or a brief act of sexual intercourse.’ The word may legitimately be used as a noun or an adjective to describe an infinite number of situations other than those involving drinks or sexual intercourse.

At this point I must note that a quickie (the noun) may be either given or received. Examples would be, for instance, ‘The featured speaker gave a quickie to the members,’ and ‘The members received a quickie from the featured speaker.’

Got it?

This quickie will not involve alcoholic drinks or sex (not that I’m opposed to either). My intent is to post a quickie (noun) from time to time, and such entries will be quickie (adjective) postings.

Now for my first quickie:

Texting is a relatively new word in our language. Virtually everyone is aware of its meaning, so no definition should be required. However, since the word is a verb it is subject to the rules of conjugation (no relation to the adjective conjugal as used in conjugal visits).

Incidentally, the generally recognized basis for permitting such visits (conjugal) in modern times is to preserve family bonds and increase the chances of success for a prisoner’s eventual return to life outside prison. The visit will usually take place in a structure provided for that purpose, such as a trailer or small cabin. Supplies such as soap, condoms, tissues, sheets, pillows, and towels may be provided (bold emphasis is mine).

Hey, I didn’t make that up—it came straight from Wikipedia! Check it out at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conjugal_visit

I haven’t seen an official conjugation of the verb text, but I assume the verb as presently used would be conjugated for the present, past and future tenses as follows:

I text on my phone daily (present tense)—the gerund of text would be texting, of course. I texted on it yesterday (past tense) and tomorrow I will text again (future tense). The conjugation would be text, texted, text, similar to the verb run (run, ran, run).

My assumption is based on the fact that all those that text use texted to indicate past tense, namely, ‘I texted the schedule to everyone.’

And now, to quote the bard, ‘Ay, there’s the rub.’

If texted is the proper past tense for the verb text, the sequence of a batter’s performance in baseball games would be, ‘He hit the ball on the first pitch, and he hitted the ball on the first pitch yesterday, and he will probably hit the ball on the first pitch tomorrow.’ The gerund in this case would be, ‘He is hitting 500 ( fifty percent) this season.’

There you have it—I rest my case. If text, texted, text is correct then it logically follows that hit, hitted, hit would be correct, rather than the current conjugation of hit, hit, hit.

I boldly, with all semblance of humility aside, suggest that the past tense of text should not be texted—it should be simply text. The verbs hit and text are both one syllable, both end in ‘T’ and should therefore be voiced as, ‘I text her yesterday’ rather than ‘I texted her yesterday.’ The verb text should be conjugated as text, text, text. Try it—voice the past tense as presently used—texted, two syllables with equal emphasis on both syllables. Then voice the past tense as text, a word that is considered one syllable, but when voiced comes across as two syllables. Unless you omit the ‘t’ sound at the end of text and pronounce it as tex, you’ll pronounce the ‘t’ as a second syllable—try it! (Note that ‘it‘ is also pronounced with two syllables).

Come on, admit it—texted is awkward. It’s completely unwieldy and should be banned.

If my viewers will admit that it’s awkward, then I will in turn admit that this posting does not qualify as a quickie because it ran amok, completely out of control. If it’s a quickie, then it’s a quickie on steroids. Posting can legitimately be compared to such mundane activities as running down hill, eating peanuts (or cashews) and sex. Once started, it may be difficult to stop—nay, in extreme cases it may be impossible.

Postcript: I did not intend to involve alcoholic drinks or sex in this first quickie. I kept my promise on the drinks, but the serpent reared its ugly head in the above paragraph. I offer an abject apology to any viewer that may have found the word offensive. I did not delete it (behead the serpent, so to speak) because the thought was applicable and the word fit well.

Or should I say it fitted well, as in texted?

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

 
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Posted by on January 22, 2010 in Uncategorized

 

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