Friday, March 21, 2008

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.

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