Basking on the rug

A friend of mine has a nephew who glories in being the only grandchild in the family. This is all about to change for him in December when 3 baby cousins will arrive within the space of a month. Apparently he's really going to struggle with sharing the attention, I mean

"no one likes having the limelight ripped out from under them."

Talk about tripping the light fantastic.

A blinding bookmark

A colleague in an email, explaining a cancelled meeting:

"We did have this afternoon eyemarked for that, but I'll reschedule for next week."

Somehow, that sounds more painful than the otiological alternative.

Don't mention the champagne

Out the other night for drinks (which will become apparent) and my friend was recounting the scare she'd had with her little boy who'd narrowly escaped being seriously hurt by a falling mirror. Afterwards, she hadn't wanted to discuss the responsibility issues with the family and it had become

the pink elephant in the room that noone wanted to talk about.

Did I mention the champagne? Ooops.

An arresting note

The little heiress has been going to day care for all of 2 weeks when we get the note asking for donations. A couple of gems in here:

Genes for Jeans [sic] Day coming up on Friday 6th August. Wear your jeans from Monday 2nd August until Friday 6th August. Please donate for this probable cause.

We didn't have to pick her up from county jail, thank goodness.

Trash talk

The following came from an iPod Touch sales pitch:

"With so much to do in such a neat little compacted device you’ll ever wonder how your life was worth living before."

Looks like they've got apps for everything, but maybe not a thesaurus.

Iseered

So the Heart Foundation have this new campaign to raise awareness of heart disease in women. You can check out the details on their website:

www.goredforwomen.org.au

Okay, so it's one thing to show your support, but I'm sorry, there is no way I am letting any angry bovine insert it's cera in to my vital organs. Even if it would make me go red for women.

Double word score?

A quote from an SMH commentary today:

"This is typical of Apple. Resellers stood by Apple when

everyone was scrabbling to sell Compaq..."

Hmm, maybe its because they come with a built-in spell-checker?

Spot the 'ole in this argument

Picture the business meeting. The factory manager is getting increasingly frustrated with the bad news about downtime and manufacturing delays until he can hold it back no longer and lets rip with:

"This place is an absolute fiesta!"

5 degrees of separation

A noticeable airheadish interviewee on 702 this week managed to drop:

"...so we were really able to take a 365 degree look at ourselves"

I bet you did - on any one of the 360 days each year.

Shower it the way

A friend's facebook status was recently updated (from Singapore) with the following:

"Can't work out how to make the shower go in her hotel room"

I suggested it may have a hotel room phobia and if she asked it nicely and offered to hold it's hand maybe it would oblige.

The last posting

Just saw this on Facebook - a friend had his status update as:

"...is sad, but is glad Grandma is at peace!"

To which his friend had replied:

"if we can live to that of age we have done well and seen and archived great things"

Who knows? Maybe she worked in data storage?

outweighing the benefits

In a meeting today: a discussion on how, rather than relying on cumbersome and costly auditing, we might have to just trust our delivery arm to come through with the goods:

"We have to give them the credibility of the doubt"

Frankly, it's a little more than they deserve, but probably an accurate assessment of how toothless we are...

Who needs an entire phrase?

On SBS news last night, one of Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme victims was speaking out about how dastardly Bernie's deeds were.

"What he did was inconspicable."

True enough, no one saw what naughty swindling he was up to with his pyramid scheme for a very long time...

Not a language funny per se, but a linguistical observation. I am deeply concerned about tautologous usage of the word 'probably'. This affliction seems preponderant among rugby league players, where you could say they are using a transformed version of the word, prnounced 'probly' or 'prolly', which has taken on a different semantic range to the original.

The usage of the word is as follows. In a situation of absolute certainty, a footy player will invariably use 'prolly' as an adverb. An example from the radio this morning:

"There's no doubt that we're prolly flying up to Brisbane tomorrow."

I would think that this could be said on any situation. 'There's no doubt I prolly won't have a car accident tomorrow.' 'It is absolutely definite that I will prolly work tomorrow.' In each case, the speaker expresses their certainty about a likelihood. While I'm sure that this prolly isn't strictly tautologous, it could be a little completely redundant.

Hey?

And from the weekend, another colleague stated it was:

"Like looking for a needle in a haybarn"

Which depending on how many haystacks it has could be more or less difficult.

Getting pulled up

A colleague recently stated in a meeting that one of our teams had better:

"lift their socks or pull their game up"

And yes, it's good to be back.

hit the nail over the head

The attrition rate close to Christmas is clearly detracting from the atmosphere in the office. According to 'Jacinta',

"It's dead as a doorknob in here"

If rigor mortis sets in, none of us will be able to use the exits to spend the season with family...

The very poster of totally mellow fiscal negligence, dude

I saw this one in the New York Times from someone commenting on a story:

"George W. Bush is the flower child of irresponsible, neglectful government."

It conjures up all kinds of mental images one doesn't normally associate with G.W.B. I like it so much I can't even think of any clever pun commentary to go with it.

Vanquishing Act

Looking for language funnies in sports commentary is like trying to find a needle in a ha[berdasher]y stack. Seeking them out in politically earnest emails comes in a close second (e.g. A Right Goose). In one received after the NSW State Govt shake up:

"...Our tenth such antagonist, Minister of Planning, Frank Sartor has bitten the dust. Other now-vanished foes have been:

• Andrew Refshauge, Minister of Urban Affairs and Planning
• Sue Holliday, Director General of the Department ... etc..."

Never challenge Merlin to a duel.

little finger percussion

Feeling a little daring and reckless, Let's-Call-Him-Simon declared that he was prepared to remind management yet again of a priority action item, and,

"I don't care if we get wrapped around our knuckles because of that one"

He'll be needing those bandages if it comes to a punch up.