English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat.
We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig. And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?
If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell? How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?
Have you noticed that we talk about certain things only when they are absent? Have you ever seen a horsefull carriage or a strapfull gown? Met a sung hero or experienced requited love? Have you ever run into someone who was combobulated, gruntled, ruly or peccable? And where are all those people who ARE spring chickens or who would actually hurt a fly?
You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which an alarm goes off by going on.
|
I remember two years ago a bunch of us went out on the boat and it was my birthday. We had a great time out there. That's the little things you miss. Johnny was a great person. He was the first guy to step in front of the media when things weren't right, when things were right.
|
What is it about genus arboretum that socks us in the figurative solar plexus We see a logging truck go cruising down the road, stacked with a bunch of those fresh-cut giants, we feel like we lost a brother. Next thing you know, we're in The Brick, we're flopping money down on the bar. Wood. We're under a roof. Wood. We're walking the floors. Wood. Grabbing a pool cue. That's wood. Our friends in the forest carry a set of luggage from the mythical baggage carousel. Tree of life, tree of knowledge, family tree, Buddha's Bodhi tree. Page one of life, in the beginning. Genesis 322. Adam and Eve. They're kicking back in the garden of Eden and boom, they get an eviction notice. Why is that Lest they should also take of the tree of life, eat and live forever. A definitive Yahweh no-no. Be good to yourself, go out and plant a wet one on a tree.
|
I like to hold the microphone cord like this, I pinch it together, then I let it go, then you hear a whole bunch of jokes at once.
|
Most of the public lands in the West, and especially the Southwest, are what you might call cow burnt. Almost anywhere and everywhere you go in the American West you find hordes of [cows].... They are a pest and a plague. They pollute our springs and streams and rivers. They infest our canyons, valleys, meadows, and forests. They graze off the native bluestems and grama and bunch grasses, leaving behind jungles of prickly pear. They trample down the native forbs and shrubs and cacti. They spread the exotic cheatgrass, the Russian thistle, and the crested wheat grass. Weeds. Even when the cattle are not physically present, you see the dung and the flies and the mud and the dust and the general destruction. If you don't see it, you'll smell it. The whole American West stinks of cattle.
|
I graduated pretty quickly. When I was eleven or twelve a close friend of the family got lynched. I guess he was about forty years old, married, and we used to play with his kids. I remember the Saturday night a bunch of white men beat him to death at the Decatur fairgrounds because he sassed back a white woman. They just left him dead on the ground. Everyone in town knew it but never said a word in public. I went down and saw his bloody clothes. They left those clothes on a fence for about a year. Every Negro in town was supposed to get the message from those clothes and I can see those clothes now in my mind's eye.... But nothing was said in public. No sermons in church. No news. No protest. It was as though this man just dissolved except for the bloody clothes.... Just before I went into the Army I began wondering how long I could stand it. I used to watch the Saturday night sport of white men trying to run down a Negro with their car, or white gangs coming through town to beat up a Negro.
|
Merrill Morgan, this crop stuff is just about a bunch of nerds who never had a girlfriend their whole lives. They're like thirty now. They make up secret codes and analyze Greek mythology and make secret societies where other guys who never had girlfriends can join in. They do stupid crap like this to feel special. It's a scam. Nerds were doin' it twenty five years ago and new nerds are doing it again.
|
It is ridiculous claiming that video games and internet influence children. For instance, if Pac-man affected kids born in the eighties, we should by now have a bunch of teenagers who run around in darkened rooms and eat pills while listening to monotonous electronic music.
|
A man always remembers his first love with special tenderness, but after that he begins to bunch them.
|
History is one war after another with a bunch of murders and natural disasters in between.
|
You bunch of nerve-racking sons of bitches, it's like playing cards with my brothers kids!
|
Tony Montana What you lookin' at You all a bunch of f***ing assholes. You know why You don't have the guts to be what you wanna be You need people like me. You need people like me so you can point your f***ing fingers and say, That's the bad guy. So... what that make you Good You're not good. You just know how to hide, how to lie. Me, I don't have that problem. Me, I always tell the truth. Even when I lie. So say good night to the bad guy Come on. The last time you gonna see a bad guy like this again, let me tell you. Come on. Make way for the bad guy. There's a bad guy comin' through Better get outta his way
|
What? They're like any holiday photographs. A bunch of people stood around squinting, and didn't realise they were that fat.
|
Cattle dragged and choked...Knocking ‘em four, five, ten times. Every now and then when they’re stunned they come back to life, and they’re up there agonizing. They’re supposed to be restunned but sometimes they aren’t and they’ll go through the skinning process alive. I’ve worked in four large [slaughterhouses] and a bunch of small ones. They’re all the same. If people were to see this, they’d probably feel really bad about it. But in a packing house everybody gets so used to it that it doesn’t mean anything.
|
A farmer who had a quarrelsome family called his sons and told them to lay a bunch of sticks before him. Then, after laying the sticks parallel to one another and binding them, he challenged his sons, one after one, to pick up the bundle and break it. They all tried, but in vain. Then, untying the bundle, he gave them the sticks to break one by one. This they did with the greatest ease. Then said the father, Thus, my sons, as long as you remain united, you are a match for anything, but differ and separate, and you are undone.
|
Harry Yeah I called her up, she gave me a bunch of crap about me not listening to her, or something, I don't know, I wasn't really paying attention.
|
Life's dirty. Life's unclean you know. It's birth, it's sex, it's the intestinal tract. One big squishy, unsanitary mess. It never gets any cleaner either. You know, dust to dust, worms crawl in, worms crawl out, right Even though we know that, we still walk the walk, we still live the life. We're like a bunch of little kids. Little kids, you know, we jump in this big old pond of mud and we're slapping it all over our face, rubbing our hair all down our backs and we're making these glorious, gooey, mud pies. That's us.
|
From an actual newspaper contest where entrants age 4 to 15 were asked to imitate 'Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey':
My young brother asked me what happens after we die. I told him we get buried under a bunch of dirt and worms eat our bodies. I guess I should have told him the truth -- that most of us go to Hell and burn eternally -- but I didn't want to upset him.
|
Define irony... a bunch of idiots dancing on an airplane to a song made famous by a band that died in a plane crash.
|
No greater thing is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.
|
We couldn't make a first down running the ball. They were tough and got after our tail. They'll bring an excited bunch in here. I'm sure they'll want to get away from the distractions of the family issues with the flood, and they have nothing to lose.
|
I don't really want to win races like that. That doesn't take a whole bunch of talent to knock a guy out of the way. Racing tight is one thing, but to get a run in the middle of the corner and get the guy's bumper all at once - it is what it is.
|
Americans want grungy people, stabbing themselves in the head on stage. They get a bright bunch like us, with deodorant on, they don't get it.
|
We had to battle our way through with Miami. They were a tough, scrappy bunch, and they fought until the end.
|
She gave me a bunch of crap about me not listening to her or something. I don't know, I wasn't paying attention.
|
The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don't play together, the club won't be worth a dime.
|
That's the whole problem with science. You've got a bunch of empiricists trying to describe things of unimaginable wonder.
|
'Empire' had the better ending. I mean, Luke gets his hand cut off, finds out Vader's his father, Han gets frozen and taken away by Boba Fett. It ends on such a down note. I mean, that's what life is, a series of down endings. All 'Jedi' had was a bunch of Muppets.
|
Especially early, I thought we were really sharp. Executed fairly well. Didn't have a whole bunch of mistakes. A few. I thought Erik had a really good game, except the two sacks. He didn't need to have either one of those. He could have thrown the ball away a bit sooner. We need to continue to work with him in those areas.
|
It's like any divorce. If you see your ex-wife at the grocery store, either she's going to throw a bunch of eggs at you, or you're going to have a genuinely enjoyable conversation. To be able to see those guys and laugh with them and reminisce a little bit was good for my soul.
|