Bears do what now?

I was thinking about writing something, but I can't quite remember what it was.  It was something funny...

As you all know, I love words and phrases.  Sometimes I hear things and see things that I find amusing or interesting, and they lead me to spout off one of these witty, little rejoinders.  But, sometimes, my mind betrays me.  Usually, I can conjure up adverbs and adjectives; expressions and euphemisms; metaphors and synonyms.  Not tonight.  Tonight I am without a word or a phrase or a story to relay.  And I can't even think of the name of a group of animals that would sound funny.
I wish I could think of something, but tonight my mind seems to have given me the shit end of the stick.  The phrase "the shit end of the stick" has a couple of different origins.  In their public toilets, Roman citizens would rely on a cloth that was attached to a stick which rested within a bowl that contained a mixture of two-parts salt water and one-part catastrophe.  The doo-doo rag, if you will.  After a person had finished their business, they would request this stick to be passed along to them. If they weren't concentrating on the task, they would end up grabbing the end of the stick that was covered in the shit of 50 other guys. This was considered grabbing the "wrong end of the stick." Yeah, no shit. But that's more disgusting than funny.  It's too bad, I'm usually pretty good at coming up with funny things.  Don't get me wrong, I don't think my shit doesn't stink, I'm just, usually, pretty good at this.  I guess I'm up shit creek on this one.  The phrase "up shit creek" first appeared to us in the 1860s and was used by the Secretary of War for the Confederacy to state that the boys of South Carolina really "had old Lincoln up shit creek."  Now, you might think I'm full of shit on this one, but you can actually look that up in the Annual report from 1868.  I know you're thinking that's a crock of shit, but believe my that this is no bullshit.  As a friend of mine would say, just for shits and giggles, let's say you give shit about what I'm going on about right now.  You're reading along waiting for the moment when the shit hits the fan hoping that it'll be hilarious.  I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I don't think its coming tonight.  Your shit for brains author can't even come up with a coherent thought tonight.  I'm just sitting here with a shit eating grin on my face thinking of all the other things I have written that have give me a chuckle.  The phrase "shit eating grin" we usually take to mean smug or being happy at the expense of everyone else's misery.  However, there is some evidence that its origin can be traced to the New England Journal of Medicine in the 1950s.  A doctor observed that some schizophrenics, while deep in their dementia, would eat their own feces and smile while doing it.   Holy shit that's awful!  I guess, I'm in deep shit on this blog entry.  No good ideas, no random customer observations.  Just a lot of nonsensical stuff.  Well, I guess I should just shit or get off the pot.  I mean, if I can't come up with something, its time to move along.  I suppose I could just start making notes about all the funny things I see and hear on a regular basis.  Maybe then I could organize them and make them into smaller, easier to manage ideas.  Alphabetize them, rank them, really put them to good use.  You know, some kind of list. 

But what would I call it?

Oh, wait, a group of dung beetles is called a qianglang.  Yeah, that was it...wait, that's not funny at all.

Out

How long do you cook a 3 minute egg?

It's tough to admit when you're wrong.

Let's face it, human nature, instinctively, wants us to be correct.  There are those who can tough up and take being wrong as a learning experience.  There are those who quietly accept that they thought one thing when it was actually another.  There are those who embrace being corrected because they truly did not know the correct answer.  And then there are those who cling on for dear hope even though they are just plain wrong.  They know they're wrong, but they are, in no way, going to admit that defeat.  Yes, it's tough to admit when you're wrong.  Losing is not something we like to do.  But, we all have to learn how. 

Unless, you're a customer in my retail establishment.

If that's the case, you can be wrong as fuck about whatever it is you are asking, and even when I try to tell you what the matter of the fact is, you can continue to talk to me like I'm wrong.  Not just wrong, like I just teleported onto this world and it is my first day among the humans wrong.  Not just like its my first day among the humans wrong, but like its my first day among the humans AND I took my dick out wrong.  Not just like I just took my....okay you get the picture.  But, seriously, if you don't know something, and you ask for my help, don't correct me like I don't know what I'm saying.  Believe me, I am one of those people who has the very strong ability to admit when I don't know something.  If you ask me a question and I tell you, "I don't know."  It means I DON'T KNOW.  Don't try asking the question a bunch of different ways and expect a different answer!

Case in point. 

Sporting goods store closed at 6pm.  It is now 6:57pm.  Phone rings:

Customer:  "Hi, what are your hours today?"

Me: "We actually closed at 6 today, sir."

Customer: "You closed at 6?"

Me: "Yes, sir, we closed at 6."

Customer: "I don't understand." Buddy, what's to understand? We closed at 6!

Me: "We closed at 6, sir.  Is there something I can help you with?"

Customer: "You closed at 6?  What does that mean?"  Let me clear the confusion.

Me:  "It means at 6 o'clock, we closed."

Customer: "What time is it now?"

Me:  "Almost 7."

Customer: "And you're closed?"  Now you're starting to get it

Me:  "Yes sir, now what can I help you with?"

Customer:  "Why are you still there?"  No you're not

Me:  "Well, sir, we have to clean the store and prepare for the next day's business."

Customer:  "So, you're open?"

Me:  "No, sir, we're closed."

Customer:  "I don't get it."  And you probably won't


Continuing to ask the question in a myriad of ways does not change the answer.  Some people think that it will.  I like to refer to these people as, "stupid people."  But, there is another class of people called, "stupider people."  These are the folks who don't know that they're wrong.  In fact, they don't even know that they are the root cause of the problem.  All they know is that they have one thought in mind and you'd better give them the answer they want, because they are not going to accept anything less than that.  Doesn't matter to them that what they are saying sounds like a sack of screeching spider monkeys on acid, they just want you to shake your head and tell them that they're right.  Or, better yet, that you can fix their problem.  Asshole, if you looked in a mirror, you'd see the problem.  It's like the fifty year old woman who is wearing yoga pants and a halter top even though her muffin top has become an exploded can of biscuits.  I'm all for curvy, but 360 degrees is an arc, not a curve.  Hey, sweetheart, cheerleader tryouts were thirty-five years ago!  News flash, you didn't make the squad then either!

Woman is returning some ceramic cookware because her eggs stuck to pan and burned.  I have to fix her problem.

Her:  "Every pan I use burns the eggs."

Me:  "Ok, well I have a big selection of non-stick pans."

Her:  "I've tried those.  Everything still sticks."

Me:  "Yes, ma'am, but you still have to use something to help loosen the food."

Her:  "What about this stainless stuff?  Is that any good?"

Me:  "Yes, I actually prefer stainless.  However, there is more of a chance that something will stick or burn on stainless steel."

Her:  "Well, what about the most expensive stuff?  That shouldn't burn, right?"

This conversation went on for about twenty minutes.  I explained every piece of cookware that I sell.  What was good, what was great, what I had many people return.  How to use it,  how to care for it, and how to make it work for her.  We had it narrowed down to two pans whens he hit me with this question:

Her:  "Of these two, which one is going to burn the eggs."

Now, I don't want to get grouped in with the stupid people.  I certainly don't want to get grouped in with the stupider people.  But, fuck me, there I was.  Twenty minutes before it hit me that the real problem with the eggs burning and sticking to the pan:

SHE'S A REALLY BAD COOK!!!!!!!

 

So, now that I have come to this epiphany, how to break it to her.  I don't want her to feel bad.  I certainly can't tell her that she sucks at making eggs.  I, honestly, can't sell her something high end, because I know she's just going to return it and blame me and be even more upset.  What to do, what to do?  I came up with this:

 

Me:  "Ma'am, if you were at a car dealership and they present you with the choice of a Cadillac or a Hyundai, and you ask the dealer 'Which of these is going to crash?'  The dealer is going to tell you that by themselves, the cars are fine.  Whether or not they crash depends strictly on the operator."

 

Her: "Oh,...."

 

Her:  "Maybe I'll do some online research before I make a purchase."

 

 

Glad I could help.....

 

 

 





I thought it was "hoidy-toidy"?

Can't sleep again.

Unfortunately, I get to thinking about lots of things.  I think of things I've read, movies I've seen, people I've met.  All kinds of things.  Things that don't help me go back to sleep.  My mind has a tendency to race in various direction when I think of things.  Usually, it's money, or the lack thereof.  Don't get me wrong, I do ok. I mean, I'm not piss poor. The phrase "piss poor" comes from a time when urine was used for the tanning of animal skins and dying cloth. If you had a very lousy job or no work at all, members of the family would urinate into a pot and then that was sold to a local tanner(bet that guy loved his job!). But if you were really bad off, you didn't even have a pot to piss in. And, there is an even longer version of this phrase for the lowest of the low who didn't have "a pot to piss in or window to throw it out of."

I'm certainly not hoity-toity.

The phrase "hoity-toity" has been kicked around a lot.  There's been discussion on how it's spelled, where it comes from, or even what it means.  By definition, hoity-toity has been used to mean pretentious.  Many people claim that it comes from the French and two words: haut and toit, which translate (literally) into high roof.  The thought is that those with higher roofs looked down on those of us who were piss poor.  The phrase isn't French, however, and probably has more to do with our penchant for liking rhyming phrases like "artsy-fartsy" and "fuddy-duddy."   The base of the phrase is the word hoit which is an obsolete, 16th century verb which means "to play a fool."  I guess those with money could be more frivolous than the commoners.

That's some hifalutin knowledge, eh?

The word "hifalutin" is a strictly American word.  It comes from the days of steamboats.  The expensive seats were high up on the decks next to the smokestacks.  The smokestacks had very high fluted tops for the sake of the smoke.  Those up on deck had money.  Ergo, hifalutin.  Wait a minute, that boat had a high roof.

The riff-raff couldn't sit up there.

The phrase riff-raff does come to us from the French (ah, those sneaky French).  There was on old expression rifle et rafle. These words are from the verbs rifler, to strip, and raffler, to carry off. The phrase referred to the plundering of the bodies of the dead on the battlefield and the carry off  the spoils.  The French phrase came into English in the forms rif and raf  meaning "every scrap".  It’s more than likely that the negative associations of common soldiers ransacking the bodies of the dead linked the expression to mean "general undesirable people."

Riff-Raff was one of Underdog's arch enemies.

The phrase underdog comes from...awww, who cares?  I know my logastellus (look it up, I'll wait) isn't all that important to you.  In fact, I'm just hoping that it will help me sleep.  Hey, at least I haven't delved into what groups of animals are called.  Because a group of dogs is called a pack....

The Alpha dog is the hoity-toity one.