Thursday Thoughts on Language

1) I'm going to start using the expression "that depends on whose ox is being gored" all the time, regardless of context. Somehow the idea of a large draft animal being stabbed will make people overlook the silliness of my arguments.

2) I'm also going to start saying "for all intensive purposes" instead of "for all intents and purposes" just to see what sort of nerd will correct me. Then when they correct me I'll accuse them of stabbing Al Gore with an ox.

3) There's a clip from "Under Siege"--the Steven Seagal masterpiece--where Tommy Lee Jones tarnishes his Oscar-winning credibility (yes, he had won an Oscar before that) with the line "This is not the work of a cook." While Jones was questioning whether one of his cohorts could have been expertly murdered by a mere cook, I think that line would also work well every time you're in a restaurant and get a bad meal.

4) "This is not the work of a dry cleaner" would also work well if they screw up your shirts. Even more so if the dry cleaner messed up your shirts while killing some bad guys.

5) If someone tries to be clever by saying "What sort of person doesn't know what 'rhetorical' means?" then you should really go ahead and answer them just to ruin their clever moment.

6) It just occurred to me that if Al Gore got stabbed by an ox it would probably be tragic enough that no one would make some pun about whose Gore got oxed. But if Richard Gere was the owner of the ox, things would get even freakier.

7) Just once I'd like to see a football coach ask his players for 110% and then one of the players get all nerdy and say "110 percent? Not possible, can't compute!" and then go into a fake convulsion on the ground.

8) The insipid expression "don't hate the player, hate the game!" should really be taken from our vocabulary and shot. But, if you use that expression when you're caught embezzling, that should at least get a standing ovation from the jury.

9) The expression "you can't fix stupid!" takes on a whole different meaning when "Stupid" is the name of your dog, and you're trying to keep him from impregnating other dogs.