Hail, hail rock n' roll.
(Always wanted to start one of my posts with that.)
Your Pope (that would be me, John The Tall of the All John
All The Time World Church and Massage Parlor; the history of my meteoric rise
to Papal stardom appears above), recently moved from the sunny climes of
Southern California, specifically the San Fernando Valley area of LA
(pronounced "LAH"), back to my roots here on the frigid plains of
Northern Illinois ("Illinois" in the Hulahoop Indian tongue means "flat
as a table and up to your butt in icicles"); a number of my more sane
friends questioned the timing of this move, coming as it did in November,
which, while still relatively warm in SoCal, is considered winter, i.e, effing
cold, in table/butt-icicle land.
"Why are you moving back there in winter?" asked my
erstwhile ex-neighbor Susie, better known (to me) as TL, which is short for
TennLamb, her email handle, TennLamb being a contraction of Tennessee Lamb, as
in "If you'll be my Dixie chicken, I'll be your Tennessee lamb," from
the great Lowell George/Little Feat song "Dixie Chicken".
The answer to her question was, hell, I don't know; like the
guy that jumped naked into a cactus patch, it just seemed like a good idea at
the time. (Actually, I wanted to be home with my family for the holidays; I've
come back to visit every year for the last several, so, I figured, why make it
a round-trip?)
Honestly, the cold and snow really didn't concern me when I
was considering the move; I lived here for many years previously, still had my
long underwear, hats, scarves and gloves and knew how to drive in winter
("steer into the slide"), so I knew the gig. Besides, as I told
Susie, and everyone else who questioned my sanity, now that I'm mostly retired,
having no day-job to get up in the mornings and go to, hell, what did I care
what Ma Nature was inflicting upon the world outside; I don't have to go out
in it if I don't choose to.
Not calculated into this plan was a certain amount of time
for my body/physiology to adjust from daily 70-80 degree Valley weather to, are you
kidding me, the wind chill is WHAT?
I hadn't been here three weeks when I got the flu; sickest I
think I have ever been in my, using the term guardedly, adult life. Spent a
week in bed miserable, figuring that I would have to get better to die.
Got back on my feet and, within a week, promptly caught a
cold; lacking bad luck, I wouldn't have any at all.
It was during my second stint in bed sick (this time for 5
days), that I learned of a phenomena of which I had previously been blissfully
ignorant.
The company that makes those Halls "triple soothing
action, mentho-lyptus" cough drops puts pithy little sayings on the
wrappers.
Word.
And I quote:
"Don't
waste a precious minute."
"Get
through it."
"Put
your game face on." (Which begs the question, "On whom?")
"Take
charge and mean it."
I love this one:
"A pep
talk in every drop." (That one was trade marked.)
Now I don't mean to sound like a curmudgeon here, but after spending
half of the first six weeks subsequent to my triumphant return to the Land Of
Lincoln in bed, hoping to die, my appreciation for these gems of wisdom was
limited.
I have never really liked or appreciated the little slips of
paper with the brief Oriental philosophies contained in fortune cookies either;
frankly, although I like the cookie part, I've always thought most of the
sayings were trite or, in a lot of cases, rather stupid. No slam to Confucius,
but I mean, is there a point to these?
My all-time favorite fortune cookie messages:
"You
just ate cat."
"Never
tease an armed midget with a high-five."
And of course, at the end of a dinner with friends in a
Chinese restaurant, some too-clever-for-words-genius will invariably comment to
his/her (usually her) fellow diners, "Oh, read your fortune and add the
words 'in bed' at the end", which, in my mind, typically only makes the
message sound even more inane.
"You will inherit a potato farm and make a killing in
tubers." Yeah, Einstein, add "in bed" to that.
I'm going to lobby someone to try my cough drop/fortune
cookie sayings as alternatives to what they're using currently.
To wit:
"The
last thing I want to do is hurt you, but it's still on my list."
"If I
agreed with you, we'd both be wrong."
"I
didn't say it was your fault, I said I was blaming you."
"Since
light travels faster than sound, some people appear bright until they
speak."
"You
do not need a parachute to skydive; you only need one to skydive twice."
"Going
to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes
you a car."
"You
only live once, if you're lucky."
Besides being infinitely more clever than the ones on the
cough-drop wrappers and in the fortune cookies these companies are boring us
with currently, mine are a lot funnier.
(FYI, for those of you unaware of this, my sayings actually
have a name...they're called "paraprosdokians", which in the Hulahoop
Indian tongue means "potato farm".
Okay, I lied about that; here's what the word really means,
per WikiPedia:
"A paraprosdokian is a figure of speech in which
the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected in a way
that causes the reader or listener to reframe or reinterpret the first part. It
is frequently used for humorous or dramatic effect, sometimes producing an
anticlimax. For this reason, it is extremely popular among comedians and
satirists. Some paraprosdokians not only change the meaning of an early phrase,
but they also play on the double meaning of a particular word, creating a form
of syllepsis."
Is it possible to have an "anticlimax"? I mean,
you either do or you don't, right?
So on top of being in bed, sick and miserable with my cold,
I had to endure Kraft Foods' (the maker of Halls Cough Drops) idea of uplifting
messages on the wrappers of their product. (Yeah, I know, I didn't have to read
them, but once I knew they were there, oh well.) Somehow, this must rise to the
level of "cruel and unusual punishment".
"That wasn't moo goo gai pan, it was sweet and sour
raccoon testicles."
Love and chop suey,
PJTT
copyright 2014 Krissongs Inc.
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