The Sorrow and the Pit

Nothing angers me more than to see a can of olives labeled “PITTED” only to discover, upon purchasing and opening the can, that the advertised pits have been removed. When a vehicle is fueled, that means it’s full of fuel. When a man is said to be moneyed, that means he has lots of money. If the same man is bewigged, he has a wig. If the horse he is riding on is shoed, the horse has shoes. So why are olives said to be “pitted” when they are, in fact, de-pitted?

Olive mongers who engage in this duplicitous practice should be stoned.

Go Red

The current traffic light color code is upside down and backwards. What fool decided stoplights should be red? Red is the color of heat, of energy, of pulsing blood, raging passion. Red means action. Red means GO! Green, in sharp contrast, should not be the signal intended to spur action. Green is the color of repose, of Spring, of dallying in the meadow ‘neath the willow. Green bids you stay awhile and harken to the pipes of Pan. To dream. To bask. No wonder so many motorists die at intersections.

The GO traffic signal should be a blazing ball of fire. The stop signal—and stop signs—should be jet black, or even ultraviolet. The middle light, now yellow, should be robin’s egg blue.

Bow Wow°•°

I am so sick of seeing animal talk transcribed with human punctuation marks. None of them apply. When animals speak—excepting owls, of course—they are not making statements, exclaiming or asking questions in the human sense of all these verbalizations. They are vocalizing in their own unique way, much like boiling steam kettles or thunder on the plain. Human punctuation marks, such as the periods, exclamation points and question marks used in English, are an inadequate indication of the import of a cat’s meowing, or a cows lowing (itself wrong transcribed as “moo” when it should be written more like “lygheauxgh”), or the Asian open-bill stork’s hey-mring-mrinking. I call for the development by zoophilologists of a panspecies animal speech punctuation system NOW.

Until one is invented, I use two degree marks, one on either side of a bullet, because they look like animal eyes glowing in the dark and an open mouth.

Pardon Me, Boy…

How can people let themselves be seen public wearing unshined shoes? Do people think Shoeshine Boy is still waiting on every corner with his box of polish, his rags and his brass footrest? If so, they think vainly. They will not find Shoeshine Boy. They will only make a poor, foul world still more foul with their dirtspecked, dull matte footwear as they wander in futile search of the once ubiquitous restorer of pedal decorum and train timetables.

The only shining shoes you are likely to see are running shoes with glowing LEDs built into the heals.

Do You Call Buffalo Hunters “Train Shooters”?

This is the last time I’m going to say this, so listen up good. It ain’t “ice-fishing.” It’s just plain fishing done in a little hut on a frozen lake. When you fish from the shore, do you call it “mud fishing”? When you fish from from a boat, do you call it “water fishing”? Then why, just because the fisherman is sitting on ice with his line dropped through a hole, do you say he is fishing for the platform from which he fishes? Stop it. Now.

You might as well call ice-skating “fishroof scraping.”

Steamjello

No matter whether Jell-O™ brand gelatin dessert is in its liquid, solid or gaseous state, we still call it Jell-O. We say “liquid Jell-O,” or “solid Jell-O,” or “vaporized Jell-O.” Water, in sharp contrast, enjoys a particular name for each particular state. As a solid, water gets the name ice; as a gas, steam. Is this fair?

Personally, I’ve always thought of vaporized Jell-O dessert as “Cumul-O.”

Licensiousness

Why is vanity the only one the seven deadly sins to get a license plate? Is the vice of vanity itself vain? Okay, fine. So be it. But surely, amongst the millions of automobiles that crisscross this great land of ours, we can make at least a litlle room for sloth, say, or anger.

Personally, I’d go for the gluttony licenses. Extra large plates with the names of foodstuffs, restaurants and famous fat people.

Stop the Spin Machine

Can’t someone in authority do something about night and day? All this changing from one to the other can’t be good. Just when you get cozy in the dark, the sun comes up and spoils it. Just when you’re starting to frolic amid the sparkling streams and wind-tossed flowers, down goes the sun and you stumble into a tree. Look, night is okay if that’s what you want. And so is daylight. What I can’t stand is the rapid alternation. It’s like a strobe light. Why not put an end to global spinning? Then days and nights would be six months each. Plenty of time to finish up whatever you’re doing.

The moon does it, so why not Earth?

You Call That a Song?

People, especially ornithologists, are always raving about “birdsongs.” Every bird is supposed to have its own song. The Red-foot Borgiole goes “Chut wow too-wee.” The Squareheaded Puddlehatch says, “Oy yo yo PaTANG!” And so on, ad infinitum. But I say, if you call repeating the same two or three notes a couple of million times a “song” then that hardhat out there with the jackhammer must be Caruso.

Nothing like driving along the highway tuned in to the All Cuckoo Clock station.

Stop Calling Them Dashboards

Man, I see red when I hear someone call the instrument panel in an automobile a “dashboard.” This is the kind of ignorance that spreads disease and causes war. I always tell the idiot, just before the light of conciousness dims in his eyes, that for his information a “dashboard” is the foot-height panel at the front of a horse-driven vehicle that keeps the horses’ hooves from spattering (“dashing”) mud or snow or what-have-you on the shins of the carriage driver and passengers. The instrument panel on a modern automobile is at chest height, not at the driver’s feet, and it doesn’t shield anyone from anything.

It’s like calling a horse diaper an air bag.