“Hey, listen, Cathy, why don’t we go up to my place tonight? You know, I’m a marvellous cook.”
“Really? What’s your specialty?”
“______________.”
PS: How embarassing: The name is Dick, not Dean. Thanks, Meg, for setting me straight!
Let’s continue our conversation about Laugh-In up here. Chris was saying that he was watching Laugh-In “from the conformity of suburban London”. Well, Washington, DC was also not exactly California, either, and Laugh-In (1968-73) was a revelation to little-girl-me, too, and gave me the specific sense of humor I have. It’s just hit me that [...]
My niece left us again today, sadly, and she left us a lovely bouquet of orange tulips. We’d talked about how valuable tulips were in the 16th and 17th century, when the bulbs that we consider commonplace were very rare and were traded for enormous sums of money. The tulip mania led to especially frenzied [...]
I understand. — Empathy, part 2: an effective active-listening phrase when you don’t really want to listen to somebody (”too much information”), but don’t want to sound rude. Laughs c/o sitcom Two and a Half Men, 1st season, 7th episode.
I put together tips and a language exercise on active listening here.
Dr. Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel, 1904-1991) is pronounced “Zeus” in English, like the Greek god. And he is a, if not the, godhead in the pantheon of English literacy. In a hilarious reading of Green Eggs and Ham, the Rev. Jesse Jackson called him a “latter-day saint”. He was a third-generation German-American who grew up [...]
First on my “K” list is “knowledge”. But I’m afraid I’ve overdosed on clever quotes and clichés for the next decade or so. Go someplace else if you want to talk about knowledge.
Knock, on the other hand, is a great word. In English we knock on wood for good luck (how about you? and what [...]
The lower case letter “i” was going to be for those high-tech gadgets, games and gizmos that have become part of our iCulture. But I read it’s now inappropriate to use the iPhone.
So what about that good old, no-tech game, I spy? That’s the guessing game where you say “I spy with my little eye [...]
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