My wife said she had the hiccups before when in fact she had the hiccoughs – yep, everyone misspells it & mispronounces it including me – lol. Actually both are accepted – that’s the way the English language works, if enough people say it a certain way for a period of time, it morphs and evolves into generally accepted use.
It occurred to me the other day that while many are living the good life and so many others do without, the once oft use phrase “The life of Riley” is rarely, if ever, heard these days. Serendipitously, as is so often the case, it was suddenly mentioned while watching (what else) PBS in which the woman was heard to mutter, “Life of Riley”. I wondered who this Riley character was and what popularized him and his idyllic lifestyle. What research I came up with sums up the fact that since no direct reference is made to any one particular Riley, the name was chosen merely as a generic one.
I literally almost laughed myself into unconsciousness; I had almost forgotten how fumy and silly “The Seven Dirty Words” were. This morning I spent some time listening to the variations of “The Seven Dirty Words” and several of the spin-offs on YouTube. We here at WhadaWeThink do not generally use profanity unless in quotes; it is not that we are opposed to the use of such words per se, but we just do not feel the need to use them in our journalistic prose. We are not trying to be elitist here, after all Shakespeare is replete with vulgarisms and the very Bible itself has its share of profanity. The use of dirty words is very effective and serves a greater purpose when there is dialogue or interaction as in a play or screenplay. This is the subject and topic for many more blogs to come. Right now, just prepare to laugh as you have never laughed before. I’ve gathered and collected some of the best and funniest bits and spin-offs of the “Seven Dirty Words” (George wrote and performed the original “Seven Dirty Words” in 1972. Just amazing! Almost 40 years later and it has not lost an iota of its freshness.)We will be launching a new web site in addition to Whadawethink. It will tie in nicely with this Op Ed blog and we plan to get it off the ground sometime in May. When I tell you what it is you will probably cry out – how boring! GRAMMAR! Believe me, we’ve been planning this for years and we’re going to make grammar fun and believe it or not “Sexy!” I know for a fact that many employers (I used to be a Recruiter) will dismiss a viable candidate from consideration for a job just because his or her grammar is less than perfect. Grammar is MUCH more important than simply having a broad vocabulary.The domain is grammarmarks.com however don’t visit it just yet – it’s under construction; the closer we get to the opening day, the more details I will divulge. English is difficult and everyone makes grammatical errors even the so-called experts in grammar – grammarians do; but there are some tricks and secrets to make learning perfect grammar not quite so Exasperating!
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I am a voracious reader and have read perhaps 500 + novels or pieces of literature in my lifetime and perhaps even more works of non-fiction. Unfortunately, I actually find myself reading more and more non-fiction for reasons I’m not quite sure.
In my opinion Literature is far more important than Non-fiction because unlike the latter there is an artistic quality that speaks to us beautifully regardless, even if the subject matter is ugly. Literature speaks to us in a voice that can never be duplicated in non-fiction; the themes are universal and literature is abundant in eternal truths and it enriches us with a feeling that never leaves us. Once you have read ‘Moby Dick’ or ‘Tom Sawyer’ one can never be the same.
And finally, and most obviously unlike almost all non-fiction, Literature passes the test of time. I am reading a half dozen books on non fiction right now and I can assure you that most of the stuff I’m reading will be obsolete or not relevant in ten years or so, however ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ will remain a classic forever and never become outdated.
To list just 10 of my favorites is more or less arbitrary because I have hundreds of favorites but nevertheless here they are and please note they are not in any particular order:
This is turning out to be a longer blog than I expected. Honestly I can write 10 blogs just on a single book. I will attempt to summarize the next eight books over the next coulple of blogs and I urge you to join in and give me your thoughts.
WHADAWETHINK ? What are your favorite works of literature? Do you prefer literature or novels over non-fiction? I read a lot of novels when I was young and am very interested in current events, I’m assuming that’s why I read more non-fiction now – What do you think? What book has changed your life forever ?
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For those of you here reading this now and who believe in God please see if you can resolve what I call – The Theologian’s dilemma.
In order to arrive at any sort of logical conclusion or proof one must have a basic structure which include premises to support any given conclusion.
I am 47 years old and I have yet to hear anyone come forth with a strong argument to resolve the Theologian’s Dilemma. The argument goes as follows:
Premise Theologian’s response
Now here’s the zinger:
4. Do bad things happen? The obvious answer is YES – but it can’t be
If you answered yes to all 3 of the above premises then your answer cannot be yes to the 4th question – do bad things happen. One of the premises must be removed in order make sense. If an all powerful, all knowing benevolent God was aware of an imminent deadly Tsunami which would kill tens of thousands of people, an all-powerful God who was also all good would certainly use (his/her/gender-free) power to stop it. If he (we’ll just stick with male gender) didn’t have the power to stop it then God is not all powerful!
No one can satisfactorily answer the Theologian’s Dilemma. Some folks will proclaim it’s because of freewill. God has given us freewill, so he can’t possibly intervene. Well, if that’s indeed the case then God is not all good. Try this one out on your self (and you’re not even God) – if you were walking along a path and you took notice of someone strangling a child and you had the power to stop it, would you? Or would you say to yourself – no I couldn’t possibly intervene; the killer is merely exercising his freewill.
So now it’s your turn. WHADAWETHINK? This is quite a thorny dilemma, isn’t it ? Can you resolve this ? Do you believe in an all-powerful, omniscient and benevolent God ? How can one reconcile the Theologian’s Dilemma ?
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How many times do we hear the statement “he’s a nice guy” or more frequently “he’s a really nice guy?” Everyday several times each day, right? But, what exactly does a nice guy mean – exactly? I imagine that everybody at sometime has been referred to by someone as a nice guy at one time or another even if he or she (I’ll be using the masculine he and guy throughout the rest of the blog, though I’m referring to both sexes, i.e. “really nice woman”) may not be a “nice guy”.
Let’s begin by attempting to define this much generalized, ambiguous, non-informational, non-specific, trite phrase, shall we? When we look up the word nice in the dictionary there’s a plethora of definitions but I think the best way to go about defining this word is eliminating what were not referring to when we utter nice guy and see what we’re left with. I think we can all agree that we’re not referring to a refined (a very refined, anal retentive and pedantic individual can be perhaps be the most incredibly annoying and disagreeable personage one is apt to encounter) person, nor a subtle, fussy, finicky and fastidious person. No, what we’re really saying when we say he’s a nice guy is – this person is temperamentally pleasing, agreeable, non-confrontational, kind, amiably pleasant, perhaps mellow, easygoing and laid-back (but not necessarily), non-threatening, well – nice guy.
Not only is the phrase difficult to define in terms of laser beaming the definition with a few words or perhaps a sentence; but a nice guy is also very relative. One person’s idea of a nice guy can be another’s worst nightmare. Prison guards, prisoners, MMA fighters, bounty hunters, members of the mafia, cops, border patrolmen and Howard Stern have all been called a “nice guy” at one time or another by someone.
Not only is nice guy difficult to specifically define and an ambiguous relative idiom, the parameters are boundless. What do we call Mother Teresa? And furthermore the intensifying superlatives are limited to very, real, really and maybe super; so I guess you can call Mother Theresa a super duper, really, very real “nice” woman.
So WHADAWETHINK ? Shouldn’t we be more specific with our use of language? Shouldn’t we call Mother Teresa a world renowned internationally famed humanitarian? Or Bill Gates (somebody has called him a nice guy) a soft-spoken, Philanthropic billionaire? Oh and very often anyone who is highly-motivated, ambitious and competitive is more infrequently called a nice guy than someone who lies on the couch all day eating ice cream, living off someone’s inheritance and watching Oprah – a loafer.
So in addition to all the aforementioned I might add is being called a “nice guy” even a compliment? I invite everyone to comment and open this up.
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