{"id":264,"date":"2004-04-23T23:09:00","date_gmt":"2004-04-23T23:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chrisandjanet.net\/blog\/2004\/04\/23\/"},"modified":"2004-04-23T23:09:00","modified_gmt":"2004-04-23T23:09:00","slug":"264","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chrisandjanet.net\/blog\/2004\/04\/23\/264\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<h4>Le meme est morte, vive le meme.<\/h4>\n<p>Pardon my French. With any luck, this will make more sense in a few seconds&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s a meme going around right now that involves listing the 5th sentence on the 23rd page of the book that&#8217;s nearest you. Most people, like me, will choose instead the book they&#8217;re actually reading. See, it gives us a chance to say something like, &#8220;Right now I&#8217;m reading <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/tg\/detail\/-\/0312317859\/qid=1082762066\/sr=8-1\/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14\/002-8863663-1236810?v=glance&amp;s=books&amp;n=507846\"><i>A Man of My Words<\/i><\/a> by Richard Lederer, and the sentence is: &#8216;While Simone and I were courting, we invited friends to go out with us for dinner and they insisted on going &#8220;Dutch treat.'&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>Sorry, but that already seems completely uninteresting, even to me. Part of the game is that you&#8217;re supposed to include the rules, but I refuse to do it. The meme dies here, people.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>But I <em>am<\/em> excited about reading the book, so let me quote something worthwhile. He opens with this joke:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The other day I went to the bookstore to buy a dictionary. The clerk showed me a really cheap one. I couldn&#8217;t find the words to thank her.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>His chapter on slang has gotten me inspired, so here are a few new terms I&#8217;d like to coin right here and now:<\/p>\n<dl>\n<dt><b>Bush-wacky<\/b><\/p>\n<dd>As in &#8216;That&#8217;s one of the Bush-wackiest things I think G-dubbya&#8217;s ever said!&#8217;<\/dd>\n<\/dt>\n<dt><b>whacked-up<\/b><\/p>\n<dd>Euphemism for f**ked-up, opposite of &#8216;whack.&#8217; Example: &#8216;That sh**&#8217;s not whack, it&#8217;s whacked-up.&#8217;<\/dd>\n<\/dt>\n<dt><b>no-fo&#8217; shizzle<\/b><\/p>\n<dd>Not for sure. Opposite of mo-fo&#8217; shizzle, which means really really shizzle. Usage: Yeah, like he&#8217;s da bomb&#8230; no-fo shizzle!<\/dd>\n<\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n<hr \/>\n<p>Reading a book on English also got me thinking about something I say and think all the time that&#8217;s kind of odd. <\/p>\n<p>Instead of saying, &#8216;I&#8217;ve been meaning to do that,&#8217; somewhere in my youth or childhood I picked up the expression, &#8216;I&#8217;ve been gonna do that for a long time now.&#8217; I said that to my friend Clare when I was about 19 years old, and she said, &#8216;I&#8217;ve been gonna???&#8217; like I was crazy, but I love that sense that you have a history of having meant to do it, as opposed to just simply meaning to do it.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, I have a huge list of &#8216;I&#8217;ve been gonnas&#8217; and they spring out at me wherever I look.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>One last thing. What is the deal with this Alan Greenspan? Every time that man opens his mouth, I lose a bunch of money. It doesn&#8217;t seem to matter what he says &#8211; whether the rate goes up or down, whether unemployment improves or get worse, whichever way the consumer price index goes, I lose money.<\/p>\n<p>So will somebody please tell Mr. Greenspan to shut the hell up?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Le meme est morte, vive le meme. Pardon my French. With any luck, this will make more sense in a few seconds&#8230; There&#8217;s a meme going around right now that involves listing the 5th sentence on the 23rd page of the book that&#8217;s nearest you. Most people, like me, will choose instead the book they&#8217;re &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/chrisandjanet.net\/blog\/2004\/04\/23\/264\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chrisandjanet.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chrisandjanet.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chrisandjanet.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chrisandjanet.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chrisandjanet.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chrisandjanet.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chrisandjanet.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chrisandjanet.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chrisandjanet.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}