The Literal Truth

I've always enjoyed thinking of how odd sentences sound when you take things that are said literally. I hope you enjoy this modest tale that I wrote in 20 minutes this morning...

Paul ran up from the basement at the sound of the phone. He had been busy moving boxes and hadn't been able to hear anything upstairs for a time. His fear was that the phone had been ringing off the hook. Sure enough, the receiver was lying on the floor, still ringing. He stooped down and picked it up.
It was his good friend Rachel. "Help, Paul! Philo is going bananas! He's throwing them all over the house. What can I do? I was supposed to make banana bread!"
Paul was worried. Philo was Rachel's husband and a close personal friend. It sounded serious. Rachel's banana bread was to die for.
"Will he take Artichokes or Brussel sprouts and throw them around the house? Something not as important as bananas?"
Rachel half sobbed on the other end. "Paul! We're Americans! We don't have that kind of food in the house! We have Spam, hamburger meat, and apples, lots of Chinese takeout boxes."
Paul nodded grimly. "Good point. But I have a plan. Sit tight until I get there."
Rachel was glad she was speaking on her cell phone. "OK. I'm getting into my smallest chair. But I'm having to cram pillows around me to get it as tight as possible."
"That's fine," Paul said absently, thankful he hadn't suggested that she hang tight instead. "I'll be there soon," he said hanging up the phone. That didn't work very well, since the receiver was above the base of the phone, so he instead tried hanging it down, which worked much better.
Paul grabbed his secret weapon and put it into a bag. Rachel and Philo lived just down the street, so he decided to walk. He ran outside, only to be dismayed that it was raining cats and dogs. He was momentarily stunned after being hit in the temple by a Chihuahua hurtling through the air. Thankful it hadn't been a Great Dane, he slipped back into the house.
Due to the poor weather conditions, he decided to drive there instead. He got into his all-wheel drive SUV, and thankful once again that he made sure his model only had one steering wheel (he supposed some all-wheel drive cars made you have to drive with several steering wheel at the same time - why else be called all-wheel?) he drove out of his garage into the horrible weather. It was still pouring. The small cats were bouncing off the car without leaving a mark, but he had to drive carefully to avoid the larger dogs that were raining. It was really coming down.
He made it safely to his friends' house and rushed inside with his bag. He was quite chalant about it. Inside Rachel was not only not non-plussed at what was happening with her husband, she was plussed.
"Here!" Paul said, handing her the bag. "It looks like you still have a few bananas left for bread. For God's sake hurry and give this to him!"
Rachel threw the contents of the bag at Philo. Astonished at the Plantains that he was now covered with, he apparently decided they were close enough to bananas, and began to go plantains instead. Rachel and Paul quickly collected the remaining bananas that were still usable and Rachel began making bread. The smell of it cooking seemed to snap Philo out of his spell. By the time the bread was done, everything was back to normal; all of the bananas pieces had been picked up, and most of it was out of the curtains.
As they sat down to eat the bread, Rachel and Philo insisted that Paul have an extra piece for saving the day.
The End



Raining cats and dogs
going bananas

Kames vs. Kim

Have you ever thought about the strangeness of our naming conventions? Here are some that I thought that I would mention:
1. Kim, Tim, Jim. Why is there no consistency here? Kimberly becomes Kim, Timothy becomes Tim, James becomes Jim. Kim could be short for Kames, Jim for Jimothy, Tim for Timberly. If you're out there reading this, be more adventurous in naming kids things...
2. Isn't it odd how you can just add -bert, -ward, or -mund to names and get new ones? My friend and neighbor Jay has a short name. Often I will add the bert to make it more like a full name and less like a nickname. Doesn't Jaybert have a nice ring to it? Some other names don't work with that suffix, though. Aaron for instance works better as Aaronward.
3. At some point over the years of watching basketball, I noticed that the commentators for some reasons started calling three pointers "trays" or "treys." I never understood why, or even what the word meant, but just assumed it was the sort of normal idiocy that people who are actually paid to watch and talk about games would say. Then I noticed that it was becoming moderately popular as a name. Why? What does it mean? Isn't it an object that you serve food on? No offense meant to all of you out there with a three pointer as your name. I guess "free throw" or "field goal" are too long. But they could be the full name, and the nickname could be "Dunk."
4. I heard Gwyneth Paltrow used the name "Apple" because it gave a connotation of sweetness and healthiness. It's the natural followup to the name "Sugar" in our health conscious culture. I would also suggest to Ms. Paltrow "Aspartame" where she could use a multitude of cool nicknames, like "Asp" or "Party." If she's concerned about the potential headaches Aspartame causes (but I would point out that kids cause headaches too), she could just use "Splenda." Maybe she should ask the opinion of the parade of nannies who will actually raise the child...

Weird Phrases

At work, two different friends mentioned phrases to me that are quite common, but when you stop to think about them make you scratch your head.

1. Mind your P's and Q's. I seem to remember watching a show on the Food Network where they explained the origins of this one, but it honestly baffles me. Why those letters? I'm going to keep minding all of my letters of the alphabet. Lots of other people focus on the P's and Q's, so the S's and T's are going to be my primary responsibility.

2. Another friend said something about "reading me the riot act." I don't know if that is supposed to prevent rioting or encourage it by telling you step by step instructions on how to do it. I prefer to think it's the latter. Step one - gather in a group (it's hard to have a riot with one person. That's usually called "going postal."). Step Two - get really angry about something. You don't have to understand it at all. In fact, it's usually better if you have no idea at all about the real issue - just try hard to be suggestible to someone with an agenda of some kind. Step Three - smash things, shout, and swear profusely. Step Four - Find someone in authority who is trying to restore order and prevent people from being hurt and attack them as being evil fascists who are trying to stop people from having fun. Teach them to have laws to protect people, evil fascists. Step five - Steal and loot as much as possible from the evil people who have stores and shops and actually force you to pay for things. Step six - I don't know any more of the steps. She stopped reading me the riot act at that point.

Coupons

Have you ever noticed that coupons will say at the bottom that they have a cash value of 1/20 of a cent? Have any of you ever tried to exploit that? The next time that you have to pay $5 for something, try paying with 10,000 Friskies coupons. Let me know what happens...

By the way, you'll have to make sure that you have exactly 10,000 coupons and not 9,998. I'd recommend counting them all in front of the sales person. Just don't lose count or you'll have to start again.

Emily Dickinson

A friend at work had some extra calendars, one of which had some great images of New England. Each month also had a poem by Emily Dickinson. Until recently I had never had any interest in poetry. I do, however, remember an English teacher telling me that most of Emily's poems can be sung to the tune of the Yellow Rose of Texas. To me this brings up a good question: If we have trouble with the rhythm of poetry, could we pick a song at random and write poetry to it? Give it a try. I'm going to try something with an actual melody, but feel free to try rap as well, I suppose.

Raisins and Prunes

Thought for the day:
Why are dried grapes called raisins and dried plums called prunes? What about dried bananas or dried pineapples or other dried fruits? They don't seem to have special names. How about bananins? Pineappunes?

Questions that need answering...

There are some unanswered questions that transcend all others, and I have made a list of several of them in hopes that the answers may yet be determined in my lifetime. Here are a few - Some are not original, but instead are the type of questions that effect every man, woman, and child in existence.



1. What is Goofy? Is he a dog? If he is, why does he talk and wear clothes, when Pluto does not?



2. Why don't Porky Pig and Donald Duck wear pants? When they show them coming out of the shower in a cartoon, why do they put a towel around themselves if they don't usually need pants?

3. Who are these doctors and dentists who are always the one of ten who don't support something? "Nine of out ten doctors believe that drinking water is important to your overall health." Is the other doctor a moron or just someone who can't make up their mind? How do you know the 1oth doctor isn't your doctor?

4. Is there anything scarier than this? I drove past a gas station last night that had a little sign where they can change their messages - normally things like "Hot dogs - 2 for $1." This one said "We do taxes." Is it just me, or is the gas station the last place you would think to go to get your taxes done? I'm planning on going to a CPA soon and ask for an oil change and to replace my brakes. I bet it will be cheaper than going to a mechanic. I already have a good quote from H&R Block.

Slovakia - Our Drive to the Plant

We were heading to Nove Mesto. We flew into Vienna, rented a car, and then drove across the border into Slovakia. I have never driven a stick shift car, and all of the vehicles were manual transmission, so my coworker Aaron was elected our driver. We had been told that we were to decline extra insurance on the rental car, and we did so.

We had our Mexican controller, Octavio, with us, and he caused a minor sensation when we crossed over the border and we had to show our passports. I would imagine that Mexican passports were rare heading into Slovakia. The border areas were a lot like toll booths. I couldn't help looking around as we went through to see if I could find any sign of what I suspect were the more stringent protective areas left from the Soviet days, but I didn't see anything.
Everything went smoothly at first. Aaron kept to the speed limit briefly, until we saw that like the US people totally ignore it. At that time he decided to "follow the flow of traffic." We sailed through Brataslava and into the middle of Slovakia. At that time, there really only appeared to be one main highway in the whole country, and we were on it. About half way through our journey, we came around a bend to a overpass, and a truck was stopped on the side of the road. The driver had lost his load, which were crates and boxes, and they were strewn all over our lane. The lane to our left had cars in it, so there was nowhere for us to go. Aaron just drove through them. We didn't want to stop and inspect the damage because we couldn't speak the language, and I don't believe that we had a cell phone that worked either. We kept going and for a while everything seemed OK.
But then, what we feared in the back of our minds happened. Our speed started dropping and the temperature gauge started rising! We were more than a little nervous. This continued formsome time, until we weren't going that fast at all. We barely made it to the plant, but then the admin assistant there helped us get a new rental car. There ended up being some trouble because we had not asked for the extra insurance, but it worked out for us in the end.