The Imagery of Old Times

It looks like the company is going to be getting me a cell phone and I'll be joining, at least during working hours, the majority that carries these damn things around. I guess I'm an old, anti-social curmudgeon because I really don't have any use for these things in my non-working life. In the past, when I have had a cell phone, I've gone weeks without a personal call.


I'm convinced that these things are an overall detriment to society and personal communication. Oh sure, people communicate more because they can do it anytime, but the quality of thought and of communication degrades in the process.


People seem to think they need to be connected at all times. Here are two things that I won't be doing. Driving while talking on a phone and putting on lipstick.


This is off the list too. Although, I won't promise not to talk on the phone when sitting on the toilet. I will promise not to flush until the call is finished.


The basic problem is that cell phones and, especially texting, is that imagery in language is traded off for brevity. "What up dog? RU home?"


So in celebration of imagery in language, here are a few sayings from a time when people liked to use there imagination as part of communicating. Not say its artistic, but....

The cleanest of these was a saying my mother used often. When the storm was clearing and there were patches of blue in the sky, she would say, "The weather is going to clear. There is enough blue for Dutchman's britches."

From an old movie I saw recently. "You remind me of me, kid. Your cocky. I came here with nothing but a fiddle and a hard-on. I've still got the fiddle."

My friend Garl has shared some favorite sayings from his late father.

"He is as dumb as a box or an ox."

"He is so dumb he couldn't pour piss from a boot if the instructions were printed on the heel."