Out of the Mouths of Babes

   
     Kids do put things so neatly:

     The baby sitter told her little charge to go to sleep because it was late.
     "I can't", was his reply, "My mouth is still full of words."

     A neighbor tyke's mother was taking him to school on opening day. When she asked him how he felt about finally going to school.
     "My stomach tickles on the inside," he told her.

     At the school one little girl was also asked how she felt about her first day at school.
     "I feel in a hurry all over, but I can't get started," she replied.

     Grandma, meeting her four year old grand daughter who had just flown alone for the first time, asked how the girl liked the flight.
     The girl allowed it was pretty wonderful, especially when God talked to her.
     "God talked to you?" asked surprised grandma. "What did he say?"
     "He said, 'Fasten your seat belts.'

     The eight-year old, after getting cleaned up to go to a birthday party, was admonished by her mother not to soil her dress while waiting to go. So she went around the house chanting, "Keep your dress clean. Keep your dress clean. This is a recording."

     The family tattle-tale ran to mom to report, "Mom, Robert used a bad word! And it wasn't a children's bad word, it was a GROWN-UP'S bad word!"

     The nine-year old son of a family visiting Los Angeles for the first time noticed all the spectacular advertising signs lining the thoroughfare they were on. "Look at all the bull boards," he said.

     One young man, discussing the Christmas season with his playmate, offered this advice, "A good thing to remember about standing under the 'kisseltoe' is don't...or you'll have to watch out for slobbery girls."

Endings with Smiles

     I think everyone likes a joke that surprises him/her, like these.

     Two Martians landed on a corner in front of a traffic light. "I saw her first," one Martian says.
     "So what?" argues the other Martian. "I'm the one she winked at."  - Sandy Hartman in Globe

     Marvin, the nature lover, spied a grasshopper dining on a clump of grass and, in a mood for communing with nature, he spoke to the grasshopper. "Hello, friend grasshopper. Did you know they've named a drink after you?"
     "No kidding!" the grasshopper replies. "They've named a drink Fred?" - Anon.

     First farmer: "How'd Charlie Black lose the fingers on his right hand?"
     Neighbor: "Put 'em in a horse's mouth to see how many teeth it had."
     FF: "Well, what happened?"
     N: "The horse closed its mouth to see how many fingers Charlie had."  - Anon.

     A man went shopping for a used car at one of those enormous sales lots. A super-salesman there decided that the very car he needed was a 2000 model "in perfect condition, driven only a few thousand miles by an elderly woman"...an absolute steal at $1200.
     The customer took this prize out for a trial run and, after circling a few blocks, drove back into the lot. Another salesman dashed to his side. "Wanta sell that car?" he asked before the dazed customer could explain, and he proceeded to make a quick check of it, reporting, "Engine needs work, interior needs cleaning, body's not in very good shape -- give you $876 for it."
     The customer looked at the salesman, slapped the keys into the salesman's hand and said, "Aw, if that's all it's worth, I'll GIVE it to you!" And he walked away, feeling fine. - AP

   

   

The Nonpareil Wordsmith

   I was looking up an exact quotation by Shakespeare recently. The piece involved was on the increasing opulence bestowed on job titles, sometimes to obfuscate the true character of a job, sometimes to upgrade an ego without having to add cash recompense, and sometimes to modernize a sexist title, like "male" nurse.
     The quote I was searching for turned out to be from "Romeo and Juliet":
          "What's in a name? That which we call a rose
           By any other name would smell as sweet."
     It is almost always misquoted or at least paraphrased. But it was a fitting lead-in to the story I planned.
     However, as I searched through John Bartlett's famed Familiar Quotations, I also browsed. And it struck me again - the first time having been when I took a Shakespeare 101 class in 1943 - how modern Shakespeare remains, at least in his use of the language. He was so expert at innovating pithy slang expressions that a great number, through continued usage over the decades, have become English majors' cliches today.
     In his day not everyone was a fan of his. Voltaire expressed the French sentiment of his time when he declared that Shakespeare had genius "full of force and fecundity, of naturalness and sublimity, without the slightest spark of good taste, and without the least acquaintanceship with rules." And that is true, of course.
     Nevertheless, Shakespeare's literary outflow has been so studied that it has even been taken apart word by word for analyzation. In 1974, for instance, the Harvard University Press issued a 1,600-page tome, titled The Harvard Concordance to Shakespeare, wherein each of the 884,647 words in the works of Shakespeare were entered and the context of every one of them given. (Exceptions were the 43 most common words, like "the", used 27,457 times, and ending with "now", used 3,002 times.)
     More than 500,000 quotations illustrate the 29,066 different words used. And each is identified as to source, - play, act, scene and verse, or poem - with the number of times it appears in verse and in prose also noted. I'm not sure who or how many people paid the $40 cost for this wild compilation, but it has served trivia assemblers well.

Samples

     I won't belabor the point, but my bet is that every reader will have used one or another of his quotes at one time or another, probably not even realizing he or she was quoting long-hair prose from the bard of Brittany. Check the following partial list to determine how great a plagiarizer you have been.
   One of the most used has probably been "Love is blind!" It comes from "Midsummer Night's Dream", but the actual quote is:
          "Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;
           And thereafter is winged cupid painted blind."
     Others?
"The course of true love never did run smooth." - Also from "Midsummer Night's Dream".
"All the world's a stage And all the men and women merely players..." - from "As You Like It".
Misery attracts strange bedfellows. - Actually stated "Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows", from   "Tempest".
"Why, then the world's my oyster..." - from "Merry Wives of Windsor".
Smooth water runs deep. - Actually stated  "Smooth runs the water where the brook is deep" from "King Henry IV".
"Something in the wind" - from "Comedy of Errors".
"True is it that we have seen bettter days" - from "As You Like It".
"Not so hot" - from "A Winter's Tale".
"The naked truth" - from "Love's Labour's Lost".
"Truth is truth to the end of reckoning" - from "Measure for Measure".
"The evil that men do lives after them..." - from "Julius Caesar".
     Still others of his works have each furnished several examples of his rapier wit. In "king Richard III", for example, we find: "How is the winter of our discontent..." and  "A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!" And in "King Henry IV" there are three prime examples: "He will give the Devil his due...", "The better part of valor is - discretion." and "He hath eaten me out of house and home."
     Found in "The Merchant of Venice" is "It is a wise father that knows his own child", "All that glitters is not gold", and "The quality of mercy is not strained."
     The champs incorporating the bard's wordsmithing, however, are "Othello" and "Hamlet". The Complete Works of Shakespeare, Red Letter Edition, once tallied his most quoted plays and found Hamlet" led with 79 famous passages, including: "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark", "...each particular hair to stand on end...", "Though this be madness, yet there's a method in it", "To be, or not to be? That is the question...", "Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all", and "The lady doth protest too much, methinks".
     From "Othello" we got: "But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve...", "...of hair-breadth escapes..., "Who steals my purse, steals trash...", and "It is the green-eyed monster...".
     Finally, Shakespeare also offers a great line for the columnist to hang his close on: "I'll tell the world" (from "Measure for Measure").

Biblical Parody

 
     A Kamiah, Idaho lady named Flora Teachman shares this Biblical parody, stating that her father, Clarence Hunt, penned it in 1984 at age 90.

     The government is my shepherd, therefor I need not work.
     It alloweth me to lie down on a good job.
     It leadeth me beside still factories. It destroyeth my initiative.
     It leadeth me in the path of a parasite for poitic's sake.
     Yes, though I walk through the valley of laziness and deficit spending, I will fear no evil for the government is with me.
     It prepareth an economic Utopia for me, by appropriating the earning of my grandchildren.
     It filleth my head with false security. My inefficiency runneth over.
     Surely the government should care for me all the days of my life!
     And I shall dwell in a fool's paradise. Forever.

 (Apologies for my month-long absence. At age 90 one is bound to have health blips on occasion, and so it was with me...a little hospital care to settle down a racing heart and lower the blood pressure. Now I'm back and feeling great again.)

The Unexpected Juxtaposition of Incongruities

     The "unexpected juxtaposition of incongruities" is a definition I like for "humor". I first read it, of all places, unexpectedly in a novel titled "The Marathon Man" by William Goldman.
     Here's a little story I read some years ago in a nice little column, titled "Words, Wit and Wisdom" penned by William Morris, that illustrates that "deftnition". It wasn't intended to be funny, but see if it doesn't fit admirably.
     An Air Force major was talking about a publication bearing the title "Normal and Reverse English Word List" that was the result of an Air Force research project (for what purpose I can't imagine) and it resulted in eight giant volumes encompassing 354,252 English words taken from a variety of dictionaries, spelled in alphabetical order, then carefully spelled backwards, also in alphabetical sequence. This monstrous job was undertaken by computer, of course.
    But the most engaging aspect of the entire work was this notation in the preface: "For reasons best known to the computer there are two more words in the reverse list."
     In other words, the computer created two backward-spelled words...and no one knew what they were!
    That unexpected juxtaposition of incongruities deftnition also fits more mundane "surprise ending" stories, except they are usually intended to be funny at their ends. Examples are a lot easier to find, or even to foment, as I found out some years ago from a writing class where I issued an assignment to "write a short, short story with a surprise ending". This ultimately resulted in a small-press-published book titled "Script Tease - The Treasury of Surprise Endings" that class members autographed and sold to all their families and friends, while basking in the limelight for their 15 minutes of fame.
     I love this type ingenuity, so I keep a folder for collecting them. So, here, years after that little book cause its little stir, I offer you more "script teases".

     And here are a couple for the "adult" readers:
     A guy walks into a bar, sits down, takes a little guy out of his left pocket and places him on the bar. The he reaches into another pocket and removes a small piano and stool and puts them on the bar. The little guy walks over and begins to beat out some of the greatest blues the patrons had ever heard.
     The barkeep asks where in the world he got the little musician.
     Believe it or not, I found an old bottle on the beach, pulled the cork out of it and out popped a really old genie. He gave me two wishes, but, after seeing this, I wasn't anxious to use the second one.
     "What'll you take for it then?" asks the intrigued barkeep.
     So they made a deal and the barkeep used the passed-on second wish. Almost immediately the entire bar was filled with ducks, roosting even on patrons' heads. "You and your damned old genie," the barkeep shouted. "I think he's deaf. I asked for a thousand bucks, not ducks!"
     The gift-seller gathered up his little man and piano to go, then turned to the barkeep and asked, "Do you really think I asked for a 12-inch pianist?"
 
     An American, touring Spain, wanted to try the local cuisine. While sipping an aperitif, he noted the sizzling, great smelling, scrumptious-appearing platter being served at the next table. When the waiter asked his order, he said, "I think I'd  like the same thing you just served at the next table."
     "Ah, senor, you have excellent taste. Those are the bull's testicles from the bull fight this morning, a real delicacy."
     Momentarily daunted, the American watched the neighbor wolfing down his order with evident pleasure, and said, "What the hell! When in Spain...go ahead and bring me an order."
     "But I am so sorry, senor. Since there is only one bull fight per morning, there can be only one special serving per day. But, if you come early tomorrow, l will put a save on the order-of-the-day for you."
     Next day the American entered the restaurant in expectation and was served his promised specialty. After a few bites he motioned for the waiter. "These are much smaller than those I saw you serve yesterday," he complained.
     "Si, senor," the waiter replied with a sad face. "Sometimes the bull wins."

   
   
   
   

Plagiarism and Other Copywrongs

    On the copyright page of Jan Adkins' book Toolchest was placed this statement:
     "We have gone to considerable difficulty and expense to assemble a staff of necromancers,. sorcerers, shamans, conjurers and lawyers to visit nettlesome and mystifying discomforts on any ninny who endeavors to reproduce or transmit this book in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission from the publisher. Watch yourself."

     When a New York publishing house brought out a volume of blank pages called The Nothing Book, the publisher was accused of plagiarism by the Belgian publisher of a blank-paged book that had been creatively titled The Memoirs of an Amnesiac.
     The American firm rejected the claim, contending that blankness was in the public domain, therefor not subject to copyright restrictions.     --UPI

     The Rev. William Wallace, a Dominican priest and former researcher at Catholic University who for 15 years studied the manuscripts of Galileo Galilei, the 16th century scientist whose work has been called the foundation of all modern science, found that all three of Galileo's most important notebooks show "considerable evidence of copying, or at least of being based on other sources....Practically all of this material...derives from textbooks and lecture notes that were being used at the Collegio Romano, a Roman university Galileo visited."
     "Today people would call this plagiarism," Wallace noted. "But at that time everyone did it. People then felt that ideas, once shown to be right, were automatically the property of everyone. People were flattered to have their class notes used by other instructors. "I'm not saying Galileo was not the 'father' of modern science, just that there was a 'grandfather' too."           --Washington Post

        In 1991 a committee at Boston University - where Martin Luther King, Jr. received his doctoral degree from the Division of Theological Studies - concluded that he had plagiarized the writings of others in his 1955 dissertation.
     This followed the 1990 findings by Clayborne Carson, Stanford history professor chosen by Dr. King's widow to head the king Papers Project, that other academic papers by the  late Nobel Peace Prize winner contained numerous passages that "can be defined as plagiarism".
     His conclusion was supported by Keith D. Miller, Assistant Professor of English at Arizona State University, who added that King's tendency to plagiarize should be understood in the context of his background on the pulpit, where "preachers borrow partly because their culture fails to define the word as a commodity and instead assumes that everyone creates language and no one owns it."
     All the scholars involved stressed that their findings did not diminish King's accomplishments.
                                                                                     -- Parade 8/94
   
     Writer's Digest has also offered four interesting copywrongs:

     Alvin B. Harrison's short story titled :The Perlu", which ran in the June 1935 issue of Esquire Magazine, was exposed by alert readers as a plagiarism of Ambrose Bierce's "The Damned Thing"...which, in turn, was revealed as a rip-off of Guy de Maupassant's "The Horla".

     Impersonators of writers Edna Ferber and Octavus Roy Cohen once appeared together on the same lecture program - neither aware that the other was an impostor.

     Lloyd Lewis, age 15, entered a 1936 essay-writing contest sponsored by performer Eddie Cantor and carried off he $5,000 prize. He had copied, word for word - and in professed innocence - an article by the president of the University of Newark, entitled "How Can We Stay Out of War?" from an issue of Peace Digest.

     Dr. John Hedley Barnhart, a bibliographer at the New York Botanical Gardens in 1919, found that 14 scientists profiled in the most recent Appleton's Cyclopaedia of American Biography were fictitious, although their bios had been reprinted continuously since 1886.
     Embarrassed Appleton execs vowed to set their house in order. But by 1936 an additional 70 counterfeit biographies were exposed.














   

Laughter Translates Into Any Language

     It's true that laughter translates into any language. Even from Russian, where life for the most part is no joke, as shown from the following.

     An elderly woman enters the Kremlin and insists on seeing the General Secretary. Mikhail Gorbachev agrees to meet her, and asks, "What can I do for you?"
     "I have one question that's been bothering me," she answers. "Was Communism invented by a politician or a scientist?"
     "A politician," he answers candidly.
     "That explains it," she continues testily. "A scientist would have tried it on mice first!"
                                   --from Grinning With the Gipper: A Celebration of the Wit, Wisdom and                                                   Wisecracks of Ronald Reagan, by James S. Denton and Peter                                                                     Schweitzer, Atlantic Monthly Press

     The newspaper Sovetskaya Kultura published a letter from a dispirited Odessa film director complaining about all the privileges available to foreign tourists and to Russians who use foreign currency, while ordinary Soviet citizens who lack foreign money, are refused service at many places along the Black Sea coast. He recalled a brief conversation with a Russian child from the area:
     "Vovochka, what do you want to be when you grow up?" he had asked.
     "A foreigner!" she had replied.
                                      --New York Times, July 22, 1987

     When Stalin was on his deathbed, he called in Khrushchev and said, "I've prepared two letters. When you find yourself in difficulty over your economic policies, open the first one. When you are in real trouble and your life is in danger, open the second one. Nikita didn't understand this strange advice, but he   accepted the two letters Stalin handed him.
     Later, when an economic crisis seemed imminent, Nikita opened the first letter. It stated, "Blame everything on me!" Nikita immediately saw the benefit of this advice and  promptly unmasked Stalin as a murderer and a despot. He weathered the crisis nicely.
     In 1964, when a real showdown came in another Kremlin power struggle, Nikita opened the second letter. It was even more brief, stating, "Prepare two letters."
                                        --Matt Weinstock, Los Angeles Times

     Some of the funniest stuff was immigrated with comedian Yakov Smirnoff, who has made it big time in the USA by telling it like it was when he was back home in Russia before the century changed.

     Two citizens were talking about the merit of Communism. One asked, "If you had two houses, would you give me one?"
     "Of course," the other answered. "You are my fellow Communist."
     "What if you had two automobiles? Would you give me one?"
     "Sure, you're my fellow Communist."
     "How about if you had two chickens?" probed the first citizen, getting down to the meat of the questioning.
     "No!"
     "Why not?"
     " Because I HAVE two chickens!"

     How do you improve the value of a coin from a Communist country?
     You bore four holes in it and sell it as a button.

     A citizen went into a Russian auto dealership, bought a car, and was told to come back in ten years to pick it up.
     "Morning or afternoon?" the buyer asks.
     "What difference does that make?" asks the dealer.
     "The plumbers will be coming on that morning," reports the buyer.

     President Clinton and Russian leader Yeltsin were standing on a cliff overlooking Moscow, each doing a little bragging, when the question of whose secret service staff was more loyal came up. Clinton, always the joker, turned to one of his agents and says, "Why don't you jump off this cliff for me?"
     The agent pragmatically replies, "Can't do that, sir. I have a wife and three kids."
     Yeltsin, with a winner's grin, turns to one of his agents and says, "Jump!" And the agent leaps off the cliff.
     The American agent, aghast, runs down and helps the badly bruised Russian agent up. "Why did you jump?" he asks.
     "Because I too have a wife and three children!"

     In English, a holiday is the word used to describe going some place different to have fun and get away from all one's trials and tribulations.
     In Russia, that's known as defecting.

     What's the definition of a quartet? A Communist symphony orchestra after a tour outside the Iron Curtain.