"Put your tits on the table"

This is a new phrase I'd like to hear used in earnest. It means to assert oneself, like "damn, girl, you really went out there and put your tits on the table tonight." Or it means to be really frank and up front about one's business, like "Ok, let's just all sit down, put our tits on the table, and see where the cards land," or "all right, bitch, you talk a big game, whyn't you put your tits on the table and let's see what's what."

The great thing is that I mean as far as I know it seems like people don't really literally put their tits on the table that often, so this metaphor doesn't have that messy overlap with the literal that can really ruin a phrase for everyone, especially foreigners.

I don't know what happened

I was trying to do some schoolwork when all the sudden my scanner went to work on the box from some novelty salt and pepper shakers my brother got me for Christmas and my photoshop opened and then this happened:

Critique of Pure Reason, Part VII

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

I think I better ask first.

Critique of Pure Reason, Part VI

A stitch in time saves nine.

How you think the first plushy hit upon the first glory hole?

Critique of Pure Reason, Part V

Necessity is the mother of invention.

Ain't nobody need no god-damn radio, Mr. Tesla. Ain't nobody.

Critique of Pure Reason, Part III

If at first you don't succeed, try try again.

There was this dude who tried to go over Niagara falls in a barrel and live to tell the tale. His barrel broke right before he got to the falls, and he went over as just himself, you know, without the barrel. He broke seventeen bones and almost drowned and had to have prosthetic eyebrows put in because his real ones had lodged below his cheeks. So he got to tell the tale, but he didn't really quite accomplish the deed itself. So a year later he went back, and this time he accomplished the deed, only he died before he got to tell the tale.

Critique of Pure Reason, Part II

Don't judge a book by its cover.

There was this lady who loved reading. But she was really, really against being judgmental. So she would just go to the libraries and bookstores and she just started reading from the authors that started with A, moving alphabetically. By the time she was 50, she had still only got halfway through the B's, and we're talkin' an AVID reader here, people. She signed up for a book club because, you know, she loved reading, and wanted to talk to other people. But then nobody had heard about all her favorite authors like James Aberdeen and Ronald Aardwall and Samantha Adren and Judith Allers and Thurston Applequist. Hell, how was she gonna know any Thomas Wolfe or Kurt Vonnegut when she hadn't even gotten to Emily Bronte yet? Shit, she thought to herself. Shit. I guess I should've judged those books by their covers.

Critique of Pure Reason, Part I

If it ain't broken, don't fix it.

There was this dude named Thomas Pedison who was real into candles. He was just amazed by them. Every night he couldn't wait 'til it got dark, because then he'd get to light some. "They give so much light!" he would say. "They are so, so much better than, like, a torch, or just an open fire." He thought they were just the greatest thing since bread (not sliced bread, they didn't figure that one out until like 1945 or something). He also loved full moons in cloudless skies. He used to say "any more light than that is just a sin, a sin of gluttony."

Thomas Pedison never invented no damn lightbulb.

Two tips for the attentionally challenged

People, all my life I've had this thing where I'm not very good at paying attention to stuff. "I'm sorry, I wasn't listening," while honest and heartfelt, doesn't always cut it. "Huh?" gets really annoying after you use it once or twice in the same conversation. "Mmm hmm"s and head nods can help, but can also backfire, as you may find later you've agreed to something you never even registered in the first place. Randomly switching between confused shrugs (as if to say "heh, how about that crazy shit"), "amens," and various "ssss" or "clucks" (meant to denote understanding) can sometimes work in a pinch, but can also make you come off as, well, aribitrary.

Through careful research and a lot of trial and error, I have arrived in my older age at two short phrases that can actually make sense if said in response to quite literally ANYTHING ANYONE might say, EVER.

1. "Nobody said it was gonna be easy."

2. "There's only one way to find out."

Not only do these phrases fit anywhere, but they often come off as insightful and/or hilarious.


Figure 12: Example Conversation

Dude, wanna watch the game?
-There's only one way to find out.
Wait, I can't tell if that was a yes or no.
-Nobody said it was gonna be easy.
Do you or don't you want to watch the baseball game?
-Huh?
Fuck you.
-I'm sorry, I wasn't paying attention.
I'm gonna watch the game. You wanna join me?
-There's only one way to find out.
Ya, asking you. So what do you say?
-Mmm hmmm.
Cool, I'll be over in a bit.
-Wait, what?
Were you even listening to me?
-Nobody said it was gonna be easy.
[CLICK]
-(to self): Nobody said it was gonna be easy.

the corn in the turd

People, life is bound to hand you a lot of turds. But sometimes those turds at least have little kernels of corn in them. You always have to look for the corn in the turd. I didn't make it up. It's something we've been discussing a lot around my household lately, with a good friend having moved last Sunday. He and his dog are gone and I will miss them-- there's the turd. But there's some corn in that turd, too, like the fact that I get his old room.


I'd like this saying about the corn in the turd to spread beyond my own sphere. It's a much more honest way to look at what is sad in life than what those other adages have to offer. Think about it-- I've never really seen a silver lining behind a single cloud; when I walk down a dark street, it's generally the case that there is no sunny side to keep on; at least 30 or 40 percent of dogs never do have their day; never once has even the most carefree hippie's deep-down disposition been "all good"; the negative has a way of being resistant to elimination, while accentuation of the positive often results in the grotesque; the sun is actually less likely to come out tomorrow on a rainy day than on a sunny day, and often there is no next time.


Compare the corn you might find in a turd to any of these old rose-colored glasses adages. Even if the turd does have its corn, it's only a handful of kernels, and they've already been eaten once, and are now covered in shit. This is not the kind of corn you go out of your way to find unless you are already unavoidably in the turd. This is not the kind of corn that can lift you up and reverse what has happened to you and put you at peace with your world. This corn makes no promises and offers as little in comfort as it does in nutrition. But this corn is honest about the turd it lives in, and so I find this corn far more appealing and befitting a world as ready to hand out turds as ours is. So remember, next time life hands you shit, you gotta look for that corn in the turd.

"God willing and the creek don't rise"

I don't know if you've ever heard that old expression, but my grandparents and parents say it all the time. I recently took a journey down to Shannon County, MO, where my grandparents' families are from. When they were growing up, the saying was a lot more literal. When it rained hard, the creek rose, and they couldn't get to town. That seems pretty clear to me, but now I'm not so sure, given some sources I've found on the internets (such as this one) that take the "creek" part of the expression as referring to a native american tribe known for harassing west-bound travellers. Then from etymology to current usage, I don't quite agree with the definitions provided here, either. Now I'm no expert, but if I were, I might paraphrase the old saying with something like "barring any unforeseen obstacles" or something like that. For a remote, rural, and religious family in the Ozarks, God and the creek were two very real obstacles to be reckoned with.



There were other obstacles, too. My grandpa's family had a truck with disfunctional brakes. When they drove to town, they had to coast down some big ol' hills on some thin passageways through trees that we might hesitate to call roads today. So, God having willed it and the creeks having stayed at a ford-able level, they'd drive that way to town, but on the way back there was a hill that was too high and steep to coast down safely. So they had this tree they'd cut down, and they'd tie it on a long rope or chain to the truck at the bottom of the hill, then drive up and over, dragging the tree up as a counterweight to their descending truck.

Not all obstacles come in deity or natural-phenomenon form, either. Language is another barrier. I'm not talking words themselves, but specific usages. Take this dialog between a waitress and one of my great uncles on the occasion of his first-ever trip to a restaurant, for instance:

Uncle: (orders something)
Waitress: How do you like your eggs, hon'?
Uncle: Oh, I like them a lot. I eat 'em most every mornin'.
Waitress: No, I mean how you like your eggs cooked?
Uncle: Oh, now that's the best way to eat 'em, if you ask me.

Now, I know these stories seem implausible, but I have every reason to believe they're true. And I know it's trite, but it blows my mind to think about how much we take for granted today as compared with the world these stories tell of. Last night a violent storm tore down trees and knocked out power all over St. Louis. I wanted to find out about the damages, but there was no TV, no internet, no nothin'. I turned on my car radio and lots of the local stations were out as well. Hell, the Eads Bridge even closed for a while because some of a building fell on it. Now, that's not quite the same as the creek rising, but it's sort of close.

Hmm, that was supposed to tie things together and wrap 'em up a lot better than it did. Well, shit, as my grandma says, ain't that enough to gag a maggot? Well now that's a whole 'nother story for a whole 'nother time.

the fabled catbird seat

St. Louis native John Goodman was the first person I ever heard refer to "the fabled catbird seat," talking to his character's brother in Raising Arizona. Well, that's not really true. I most likely wasn't paying attention when I saw the movie, and I never really heard it until a friend kept saying it and I asked what it was. I had a vision that looked something like this:

My friend had no idea what it meant. Hmm, I thought, this is the exact reason the internets exist. So I looked it up, and had to amend my mental image:


Turns out the catbird is just a kind of bird in the South that tends to pick really high branches to sit on, according to this little investigation. The phrase may have originated down south, but it's currency in the north was assured by none other than legendary Brooklyn Dodgers broadcaster Red Barber, who heard it playing poker (which does sound to me like the perfect time to use it) and added it to the list of colorful phrases that so endeared him the public (here's a nice discussion on that).

Here's where it comes full-circle for me. I first (maybe) heard the phrase from John Goodman, a hometown hero from my current hometown. It's entirely possible that John Goodman first heard the phrase from famed humorist James Thurber, a hometown hero from my ancestral/fake hometown of Ohio, who wrote a short story called "The Catbird Seat" (cliff notes here) in 1942.

Turns out The Catbird Seat is also an indie record label/podcast/review site, a rabble-rousing political intrigue & exposé site, and even the personal web log of a youth minister's wife and mother of two. One thing is clear: wherever it came from, this phrase is here to stay. In a world such as ours, what with its neverending panorama of rising and falling idioms, with phrases flashing in the pan for just a year before they fade from favor and consciousness, "the catbird seat" is truly sitting in the fabled catbird seat.

my giving nature

Generally I am a very giving person. But let it be known that I will not, under any circumstances, give the following:
1. A rat's ass
2. A flying fuck (in general or specifically at a rolling donut)
3. A ladybug
4. A shit, half a shit, or any fraction of a shit
5. A god-damn

Conversely, I am at all times ready to give:
1. A damn (of the non-denominational variety)
2. A hoot
3. A fuck (of the non-flying variety)

Glad we could clear that up. Thanks.