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
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