A Small Rant

You know, I have worked hard for what I have. I take pride in what I have.

And then, there are those who don't care what you have or how hard you've worked for what you have or the fact that you take great pains to keep what you have nice.

Like the jerk that keyed my car. I don't know the reason, nor do I care. The fact that someone is SUCH A JERK makes me want to knock his/her block off! I just couldn't believe my eyes.

There. I feel better already. Thanks for listening!

FOR LEXOPHILES (those who play with words, or mess with common phrases)

I wondered why the baseball was getting bigger. Then it hit me.

Police were called to a day care where a three-year-old was resisting a rest.

Did you hear about the guy whose whole left side was cut off? He's all right now.

The roundest knight at King Arthur's round table was Sir Cumference.

The butcher backed up into the meat grinder and got a little behind in his work.

To write with a broken pencil is pointless.

When fish are in schools they sometimes take debate.

The short fortuneteller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.

A thief who stole a calendar got twelve months.

A thief fell and broke his leg in wet cement. He became a hardened criminal.

Thieves who steal corn from a garden could be charged with stalking.

We'll never run out of math teachers because they always multiply.

When the smog lifts in Los Angeles, U.C.L.A.

The math professor went crazy with the blackboard. He did a number on it.

The professor discovered that her theory of earthquakes was on shaky ground.

The dead batteries were given out free of charge.

If you take a laptop computer for a run you could jog your memory.

A dentist and a manicurist fought tooth and nail.

A bicycle can't stand alone; it is two tired.

A will, is a dead giveaway.

Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.

A backward poet writes inverse.

In a democracy it's your vote that counts; in feudalism, it's your Count that votes.

A chicken crossing the road: poultry in motion.

If you don't pay your exorcist you can get repossessed.

With her marriage, she got a new name and a dress.

Show me a piano falling down a mine shaft and I'll show you A- flat miner.

When a clock is hungry it goes back four seconds.

The guy who fell onto an upholstery machine was fully recovered .

A grenade fell onto a kitchen floor in France, resulted in Linoleum Blownapart.

You are stuck with your debt if you can't budge it.

Local Area Network in Australia : The LAN down under.

He broke into song because he couldn't find the key.

A calendar's days are numbered.

A lot of money is tainted: 'Taint yours, and 'taint mine.

A boiled egg is hard to beat.

He had a photographic memory which was never developed.

A plateau is a high form of flattery.

Those who get too big for their britches will be exposed in the end.

When you've seen one shopping center you've seen a mall.

If you jump off a Paris bridge, you are in Seine.

When she saw her first strands of gray hair, she thought she'd dye.

My kind of humor! Thanks, Carol!!!

I Am Hungry...

I work in downtown Detroit. I see a lot of things. Some make me angry, some make me sad, and some just amaze me.

Yesterday morning, someone in a car jumped a curb and pinned a man between a building and their car. I am pretty sure he died. I heard quite a few people say, "Oh, he was only a homeless person..." or "Oh, he was just a homeless person." This bothered me greatly. Everyone is a human being regardless of their situation. It really made me sad. (I have since found out that the man didn't die -- I also found out that the person in the car was a police officer on his way to work.... his license plate read "furious" -- nice, real nice.)

Then, at the end of the work day when I was walking to the garage where I park my car I could see that the crossing light was going to change so I slowed my pace. There is no point in trying to step up the pace when I know that I don't walk quickly enough to make it across the street before the light changes and people zoom passed in their vehicles lost in their own world with their booming music and their cell phones.

As I was waiting for the light to change in my favor a gentleman came up to me and said hello and that his mother had just died last week. Before you go, "Oh, I know what his game is," hear me out. This man was grown, probably in his late 40s or so.... and had the mental capacity of about a 12 or 14 year old. There are a lot of people like that downtown. They live in squalid apartments because that is all they can afford, and if they are mentally challenged and living with an aging parent, suddenly they are left alone to cope in a very cold world. He said he was hungry and hadn't eaten in two days. He also said he wasn't asking for money, just for someone to buy him something to eat. He was clean, and so were his clothes, so I knew he had been taken care of by someone. I felt so bad because I had to tell him I didn't have any money. Instantly he went from nice to calling me a b*tch among other things and said he was so hungry and walked away. I continued to wait for the light and I watched him walk up to several people who either walked a wide berth around him or just shook their head before he could say anything. He didn't keep walking, he stood in front of the gas station that is on the corner. They have pop and chips and sandwiches, milk, eggs, bottled water, and lots of things one could eat.

The light changed and I started across the street. I kept looking back and kept seeing people just ignore him or shake their head. I was almost to my car when I couldn't go any further. I turned around and with tears streaming down my face I went up to him. One could instantly see the shame on his face because he knew he had made me cry. He said, I'm sorry many times to me. I told him that if the gas station would take a credit card, I would buy him something to eat. He kept thanking me profusely. Instead of heading for junk, he picked out a carton of eggs, a pound of butter, bread, crackers, two sandwiches and then asked me if he could have toilet paper because he didn't have any. As he was putting his things on the counter, the line behind us grew. No one became angry, no one said hurry up, they were trying to figure out why I was crying. Then he asked me if he could have a cookie. Dear God in Heaven, something so simple as a cookie. Of course, I said yes. His purchases added up to quite a bit, but I didn't care. As I paid for them, he couldn't thank me enough. He just kept saying it over and over again.

You see, there was a time when my father had no income, no place to live and nothing to eat.... nothing to eat for days. I also remember quite vividly when I was little being without food, heat, lights. People think I make it up that I used to do my homework by a kerosene lamp. It's not a lie. We couldn't afford to pay an electric bill, so we had no lights. We couldn't afford to pay for the gas to be turned on so that Mom could cook on the small stove. There was no money to pay for a delivery of coal, so there was no heat. I've been there. I cannot ever say no to someone (or an animal) that is hungry.

I cried all the way home. I am still crying. The words "I'm hungry" are still ringing in my ears.

Just a Word...

Seems I have been tagged by Alan Pardoe. You have to think of a word and then add to it. For example, water... waterwheel.

Let's see... how about band.... bandwagon.

Alas, I've been told I have to do more than one word "extension", so..... how about bandage, bandwidth, bandit, bandaid, bandicoot, bandstand, oh, and bandshell and bandsaw uh, and bandanna?!!!

How'd I do?

For anyone who wants to jump on this bandwagon, please feel free to join in on the fun!

Dr. Goodword

I get a word a day and this was today's word... after driving home yesterday behind a bunch of "we do not know" how to drive (and are not apt to learn any time soon) persons, I thought it fitting to post this!

IGNORAMUS

Part of Speech: Noun

Meaning: 1. An ignorant person, a person lacking basic knowledge. 2. (Legal Latin) The status of a grand jury indictment in cases where evidence is insufficient to send the case to jury trial. The Latin word means "we do not know".

Notes: Today's Good Word has no English derivatives, but English did borrow a few Latin derivatives with similar meanings that form a kind of family. 'Ignorance' is the quality that characterizes an ignoramus, and all ignoramuses are 'ignorant' (a related adjective). Although you will occasionally hear 'ignorami' used jokingly as the plural of today's word, 'ignoramuses' is the only form accepted by dictionaries.

In Play: Ignoramuses absorb much of the lubricant on the wheels of progress: "And just which ignoramus tried to dry the dog in the microwave after its bath?" However, without them we would have far less to laugh about: "Some ignoramus listed the languages of the website as English, Italiano, Deutsch, and Françoise."

Word History: This word first appeared in legal documents with the original Latin sense of "we do not know". Apparently some ignoramus who didn't know Latin moved it to the general vocabulary as a noun with its current meaning. To be fair, though, English speakers have had difficulty dealing with Latin ignorare "to not know", for it also shows up in English as 'ignore', ostensibly unrelated to the Latin meaning. The Latin verb comprises i(n)- "not" + gno- "know" + ra-, a verbal suffix. The same root also passed through the Germanic languages, coming to English as 'know'. The Greek negative prefix, corresponding to Latin 'i(n)-', was 'a(n)-'. Adding this prefix to the Greek cognate of 'gno-' + the adjective suffix -tik-os results in the source of English 'agnostic', someone who believes that no one can know whether God exists. (We cannot ignore Chuck Lee, obviously a man of considerable knowledge himself, for suggesting today's Good Word.) -Dr. Goodword, alphaDictionary

Taken from:
< http://www.alphadictionary.com/goodword/wordtofriend.jsp?worddate=2008-05-14 >

Literary Words of Advice

IF

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you.
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired of waiting
Or be lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master,
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet your Triumph and Disaster,
and treat those two imposters just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken,
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn out tools.

If you can make one heep of all your winnings,
And risk it on one turn of pitch and toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breath a word about your loss.

If you and force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the will that says to them "Hold On!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much.

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
with 60 seconds worth of distance run.
Yours is the earth and everything that's in it
And- which is more- you'll be a man my son!

-- Rudyard Kipling

Profound Words

These words were at the bottom of an email I got today. Pretty profound (not to mention true).

"The irony of life is that by the time you're old enough to know your way around, you're not going anywhere!"

Sums it up pretty well, don't you think?