Slow Day For Funny

Dull church, Dull, Perth and Kinross (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I read this on Imagine FM’s Facebook page:

No word of a lie, there’s moves to officially twin the Scottish hamlet of Dull with the US town of Boring.

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This came to my inbox.  What does the Arts council have against tall people?

From the Arts Council: Calling all short film makers…

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Spud told us that as he was coming out of school yesterday, he overheard two sixth form girls giggling about a man’s shoe size being the same size as his youknowwhat (he used the correct term; the girls used an explicit term; I’m middle-aged and reporting a rude conversation my teenaged son told me about; ‘youknowwhat’ is all I can manage without fainting).

He couldn’t resist: as he passed them he smiled, winked and said, ‘I’m a size twelve…’

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A picture of a dictionary viewed with a lens on top of it, at the word "Internet" (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Clearing out my draft box the other day, I came across a WordPress prompt and my reply from postaday2011.  Can you believe I missed one?  I know why it was still a draft: it’s not funny.  But I have to flesh out this post somehow, so here you go:

Would you rather have the first word, or the last?

This is a tricky one, because I don’t own an up-to-date dictionary, and it would depend on the dictionary, because they must all be different, or else why would there be so many?  Online dictionaries are useless in this instance because you can’t page through them.

Let me see…thumbsuck…thoughts coming up…in a minute…let me think…thinks…thinks…

‘A’ must be the first word.  ‘Zzz’ must be the last.

A is the start, zzz is sleep.

Start something or sleep?

I would have to say, I’d rather have the last word.

But I’m scouse and we say ‘a’ for ‘hay’ and, despite my Heidi-loving childhood, I’ve never fancied sleeping in ‘ay.

So it’s still the last word.

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Hey – we started with dull and boring; we might as well finish that way.

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Some Words

Image via Wikipedia

Bitch.  That’s what Plinky Prompts says I should write about today – my favourite word.  I love the sound of it, the way it bursts out of my mouth like an alien from John Hurt’s stomach.  Titch or itch or twitch; rich, witch, which; glitch/hitch/stitch – not even pitch, switch or ditch come close to the satisfying pop of the lips that saying bitch gives.

Sadly, I can’t use it; I’m a good girl.  I don’t swear: except at the Hub in an argument; but I defy anyone to live with the Hub and not swear at him.  It can’t be done.  Nor is it possible to avoid arguing with him in the first place.   We were squabbling the other day when Matt the Finisher was here and the Hub said to him, ‘Don’t get married, mate.’  To which I unfortunately replied, ‘Yeah,  do all women a favour.’  When he started crying I had to backpeddle quickly and explain that I meant men in general, not him in particular because I’m sure he is a very nice young man who can fix anything in the house and I bet he could catch mice; Barbara Cartland once said pinkly, ‘There’s simply no equality when it comes to mice.’  By this time the Hub was rolling in the aisle make him pay for it later and I gave a How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria? shrug and retired to my kitchen.

Another favourite word is solipsism.  Also another one I can’t use, but this time because I can never remember its meaning, no matter how many times I look it up.

According to Dictionary.com:

–noun

1. Philosophy.  The theory that only the self exists, or can be proved to exist.
2. Extreme preoccupation with and indulgence of one’s feelings, desires, etc,; egoistic self-absorption.

I’d say that describes every blogger on the planet.*  

*I know I don’t have to apologise for that one because the paucity of comments lately means that I can prove my readers don’t exist.**

**Except for slp and Viv, of course; thank you, dear readers.

The first time I came across the word solipsism, I wrote it on my A Level English folder, meaning to look it up later.  My tutor noticed it and said, ‘There’s a word.’  Then walked away and never mentioned it again.

Proving that sometimes it’s better to believe – to paraphrase The Sex Pistols – I am a solipsist.

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Looking for a suitable photo, I came across this website: http://www.moviedeaths.com/alien/kane/.  I thought I was a nerd – I have seen every episode of every series of Star Trek, you know; more than once – but these people are something else.  You should take a look at the comments. 

It’s actually a pretty useful site.  I have never seen any of the Alien films and it gave me some interesting details, such as Hurt’s character’s name, and where he was at the moment of death: a sort of latter-day Kane and Table.***

***Pun. – noun.

1. A deliberate infliction of the wince factor on one’s faithful readers.  Punishable by desertion in droves, leading to the belief (correct) that only the self exists in one’s personal blogosphere.