Yesterday, I heard a commentator on TV say that something stuck out "like a sore thumb." That got me to thinking: What does a sore thumb look like? I wouldn't know, and doubt that I have every seen one. Was this person being ironic? Or was he just mindlessly using a stupid phrase? Why do we use these obscure and arcane phrases to describe things? Why don't we use something more descriptive and colorful, like "He stuck out like Richard Simmons at a biker rally"?
Speaking of cryptic English phrases, what, literally, does the phrase "how come" mean? It almost sounds like something Frankenstein's monster would utter while trying to speak for the first time. I mean, the two word sentence "how come" doesn't really have a subject and "come" is barely a verb in this context. How did such an asinine pairing of words come to universal usage? Or how did more complex, meaningful phrases like "I am rubber, you are glue. It bounces off of me and sticks to you" get popularized? Some precocious child dreamed it up on the playground one day and dropped that line on a schoolmate, who then used it on another, and pretty soon the whole world was infected. Just like the T-virus. Somewhere there's an old geezer trying to convince his friends that he invented the phrase and those friends are all dismissing him in disbelief. But someone invented it, right?
The words "up" and "down" mean opposite things, yet the terms "beat up" and "beat down" have identical meanings.
Using 26 letters of the alphabet, we have a virtually unlimited number of words we can create - yet we have so many words with more than one meaning, it's sickening. Why don't we invent new words and eliminate some of the secondary meanings to all these confusing words. And we have so many different rules for spelling and pronunciation that I am glad I grew up an English-speaker because I wouldn't be able to learn it if I grew up speaking another language.
It doesn't matter the venue or event, too many people think that alcohol will make their experience more enjoyable. And it doesn't matter the venue or event, being around a bunch of intoxicated people will make it far less enjoyable for me.
I was running the other morning, listening to the radio. The new Lynnard Skynnard song came on and it was so good that when the commercial came on promoting their concert stop here in Phoenix, I considered getting tickets. But when the DJ reminded me that I would be able to rock out to "Free Bird" for half an hour, I came to my senses. I hate that song.
If some alien civilization has developed the technology required to span huge distances of space in short times and developed fuel technology that allows deep space travel, why is it that the only thing we ever hear of them doing on Earth is abducting some drunken red neck and sticking a probe up his butt? Maybe it's the alien life form of Cow Tipping and these aliens visit our planet as a fraternity prank. It would explain an awful lot.
