NOTEFLIX’s Binge-look, noir, romcom “Troubles In The Garden” continues production: See our Hero, The Multicolored Blue Bird of Happiness, as it awaits its side-kick Googie …but HOLD ON…What is that in the lower right of the picture? Is it a rat? CUT!! CUT!!!
FIRST, A FEW WORDS AND SOME PHRASES
- GASLIGHTING: A psychological manipulation whereby one convinces a person, or persons, that they imagine things – which are in fact real, or see real things; but think they are imagining them. The ‘targets’ can lose confidence in: memory, perception and sanity. The term comes from a 1938 play by P. Hamilton “Gaslight” …later a film with Ingrid Bergman. In the play the bad guy dims and brightens the house lights (which are gaslights) and convinces his wife that no changes have occurred…and she slowly goes bananas. It seems to me there is a lot of ‘Gaslighting’ going on these days. Sometimes I think everybody out there is insane and then sometimes I think maybe I have been successfully gaslighted myself. And then I wonder if an insane person in an insane world is sane because of the double-negative thing that they have proved in quantum physics. ( See ‘LAMPPOSTING’ – last post)
- FACE-APP: The cruelest app of all. Apparently, the Russians (what is it with the Russians these days?) have devised an app which can take your picture and alter it to show what you will look like 50 years from now. As Kurtz said in “The Heart of Darkness”…”The Horror. The Horror.” Our Intelligence agencies do not like this for some reason; I do not like this because I do not want to see a picture of me in a decomposed state.
- WEALTH DISPARITY DENIERS: There is no such term. I made it up; but I think it is a good money making idea. We could ask for money from some of the ‘One-Percenters’ to fund our “Think Tank”, like they do for the Climate Change Deniers – and we could publish articles about how the wealthy are not any better off than the disappearing middle-class and sometimes even the poor. We could say how they pay all the taxes – and that there are no tax advantages to being rich – and that the One-Percenters give all their money to philanthropy and the museums. We’d lobby and make television ads. And there will come a constituency. Do you want in?
- FUTURE-PROOF: This is an actual architectural wording. You see, we need to build parking lots today; but in the near future we may not need them when self-driving cars rule the day. So, the idea is to build the parking lot in such a way it could be easily converted to a ‘residential’ or office space. Smart, eh?
- ZOMBIE CARS: These do not exist, yet; but they are coming to a street near you. Once again with the self-driving (autonomous) cars – some of them will be searching and on the roam, looking for passengers – to suck the money out of them. I did not make this up.
- URBAN SPRAWL WISDOM: This is one I made up. You know how there is Country-Folk wisdom? Like “Can’t fix the leaky roof when its raining…no need to fix it when it aint raining ’cause it aint leakin.” And then there is City Slicker talk? Like “It gets late early here.” And “Men don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses.” Well, I have not yet read or heard anything sharp coming out of the Urban Sprawl set. If you are ahead of the curve on this one, and have a good barb or two, please send what you have to me. If we don’t make it big on the Wealth Disparity Denier think tank thing, maybe we have a best seller in a book of clever Urban Sprawl witticisms.
- Greenwar: One last fabrication for the day. It means what will happen if Greenpeace does not work out.
Since this posting has been about ‘Words’ I end it with a few relevant quotations from the ‘Well of Past Utterances’:
- The Master said,…”Without knowing the force of words, it is impossible to know men.” -Confucian analects 551-497 B.C.
- “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean.” -Lewis Carroll 1832-1886
- “Words are the most powerful drugs used by mankind.” -Rudyard Kipling 1865-1936
- “In my youth there were words you could not say in front of a girl; now you can’t say “girl’ ” -Tom Lehrer 1928-
I’ll talk to you later,
