"Thou Mewling Clapper-Called Lout!"

Shakespearean

Shakespearean

You see, Bridget said that I wrote like Shakespeare so I am practicing my Shakespearean quotes. How about, "Pall thee in the dunnest smoke of Hell!" Or, "Thou puking tardy-gated bladder!" or "Thou wouldst eat thy dead vomit up, and howl'st to find it!" I can get into this. Bridget is very observant to note my Shakespearean tendencies.

No, she didn't directly say that. But from her question you can easily discern what she meant. You see, it is answer time.....time to address all those pesky questions that you asked.

Bridget, who is jbchicione, asked...

Okay, here's a question...Does your wife find these soliloquies, monologues, pseudo-dialogues--or whatever they are--the least bit alarming? 

See. I told you. She called my little vignettes soliloquies. I thought calling them vignettes was about as fancy as I could get but then she got all Shakespearean on me. And I immediately understood her obvious inference -- I write soliloquies.Shakespeare wrote soliloquies. I'm humbled.

Soliloquies tend to be long and drawn-out, and boy I can do that. At first my wife would read my blog and ask, "Did you really mean to say that?" When she figured that she couldn't redirect my train of thought, she progressed to the more technical. "You sure have a lot of run-on sentences here", and then would proceed to start inserting commas all over the place....and I would sneak back in and start deleting commas.

I think the turning point was my blog entry filled with exciting and explicit sex, the one called Spies Are Us Keyhole Review. I remember she read that soliloquying vignette twice, looked at me, and read it a third time and calmly mentioned, "You know the kids may read this." When I didn't respond, she shrugged her shoulders and muttered, "Well, it's your blog".

These days she sometimes reviews my blog before I post it. Sometimes she catches up to it later. If she likes it, she will tell me. If she is not impressed she will not say anything. She understands I am too stupid to get into too much trouble and she more or less just puts up with it. I think though she secretly likes it because one of her Christmas presents was a T-Shirt that had printed on it: 'Read my Blog. GentlySaid@Blogspot.com.

Pat Tillett asked...

If a turtle loses it's shell, is it homeless or naked? 

Mr. Tillett is trying to force me into a philosophical treatise fully understanding that the turtle was recognized recognized by one of those old Greek guys, Aristophanes or Socrates or someone, as a symbol of mankind carrying the world on it's back. It is a test and he obviously wants to see if I will cut through the chaff and bombast to actually break down and express an opinion.

  

Well, here it is. If the turtle is female and she has lost her shell she is naked. If it is a male, he should be ashamed!

glnroz asked...

Ok, my quesion,, what the hell was in that bottle?

Oh, that is slick. You see how he tries to sucker me in. Note his spelling of 'quesion' followed by the double-comma. It is a sly attempt to say, "Yeah, we're buddies here You can tell me...just between us. What's wrong with you?"

I refuse to answer.

TB asked...

What's the matter with kids today? 

Kids are the recipients of a lot of blessings built up over generations, and we ask them to pick and choose and prioritize under the guise of  empowering them, and they are incapable of doing so. We are afraid of our kids. Inside we know they are stupid because all kids are built that way.They just don't know it.

Arkansas Patti asked...

If the world is ending in 2012, can we max out our credit cards in November? 

Yes. Please...let me help you.

Adrielleroyal asked...

What are the top three things on your bucket list?

I have walked around all week thinking about this. It seems pretty obvious that I should have a Bucket List, an itemization of stuff I want to accomplish and see and experience. But I don't.

Do I want to travel and experience neat things? Yep -- but my life will not be unfulfilled if I don't. Do I want wealth or fame? Not really -- although it would be kind of cool to get rid of all those monthly bills. Don't I want to go to Antarctica? Or Brazil? Or wander in the Gobi desert? I can.

"Darling, I think for my sojourn this year I'm going to head out to China."

"Oh. Do we have money for that?"

"Well, maybe I could take a cargo ship. Sign on as a hand."

"Be sure and take a lot of pictures."

This how the conversation would go.

But the fact is I don't want to go to China. My fulfillment these days don't come from big things, but from little things. Yeah -- I do a little traveling and wandering around and always look forward to coming back home. But being with the family, planning vacations, emptying the dishwasher, talking with my wife, watching the grand kids get into a mess of trouble, planning birthdays, paying off a bill, trying new things -- always have to try new things, being silly, trying to understand others....all of these things are fulfillment. Enjoying and appreciating. If I can do this, I don't want anything else.

Let me put it another way. If I were to die today, would I croak with regret because of all the things I haven't accomplished? No.

Robert the Skeptic asked...

A train leaves a station westbound traveling at a velocity of 45 mph. 35 minutes later another train leaves a station 1,200 miles away traveling eastbound at 62 mph.

The conductor of the first train notices that the telegraph poles along the track pass by his moving window every 1.2 seconds. The poles are spaced 122 feet apart. The engineer on the second train notices cars passing him on the highway paralleling the tracks at a rate of 3 mph.

Using these figures, calculate the probability that the Engineer is married to the Conductor's cousin. Show your work. 

Do you know how much I hate word problems? I used to sit in Algebra and the teacher would tell us that all we had to do was to understand what is unknown and call that unknown 'x', then simply derive an equation to calculate what that 'x' is. Everyone would immediately grab their pencil and paper and start jotting stuff down. I would sit there and go, "Huh"?

Surely this can be solved logically. Miss Vaughn was my Algebra teacher and she was a raven-haired beauty and maybe she is watching me now and I don't want to disappoint her.

The unknown is...the odds that the Engineer married the Conductor's cousin. Like 1 in a 1,000,000, or 1 in a 1,000, or something like that. Huh?

Don't give up. I can do this.

It becomes disturbingly obvious. The clue is that those telegraph poles are spaced exactly 122 feet apart, which just happens to be the exact distance that Miss Vaughn would walk after leaving the classroom to go to the Teachers Lounge -- not that I was following her or anything. The part about cars passing a 3 mph is a smokescreen, but traveling West at 62 miles per hour is the exact speed that Miss Vaughn would drive home from school -- not that I was following her or anything.

It rips my heart out to proclaim that the Conductor's Cousin is Miss Vaughn and there is a 100% chance that the Engineer would marry her because the Conductor is actually Robert the Skeptic and he would do anything to keep me away from his daughter, Miss Vaughn -- even to go so far as to shove her into the arms of a decrepit, drunken sot of an Engineer.

Joann Mannix asked...

If you were a nail polish, what would you name yourself?

 

Mel Torme used to be my favorite singer. He was known as 'The Velvet Fog' because of his smooth singing style. The color green in Spanish is 'verde'. Verde and velvet are both 'V' words -- so now the answer becomes obvious. I would be a green nail polish called 'Artichoke'.

Murr Brewster asked...

When does Jupiter ever not align with Mars?

This notion is based on the premise that the Zodiological signs have not changed. But now that the Mayan's have wobbled the Earth and I am no longer a Cancer and now they tell me I have never been a Cancer, I find that my whole life has been a lie. What's next? Will we find that our beloved planets are in different orbits....maybe they don't really exist?

I'll accept your premise today. Maybe not tomorrow. I need to visit my Psychiatrist to find out for sure.

If you had the power to give your wife any kind of tail, what kind of tail would it be?  

Tom Selleck.

If I wanted to put a tail on my wife and make sure that I always knew where she was, I would assign Tom Selleck to the job. That way she would never be lost. When she figured out that Mr. Selleck was following her, she would walk slower, stand still waiting for him to catch up -- she would even open the door for him.

Kathryn asked...

Okay, so how often does this "other Jerry" get out?

I'm lazy. It takes a lot of work maintaining the image of stability.

Carolyn asked...

What came first- the chicken or the egg? 

You have a male Platypus and a female Platypus who got drunk and giggly and ended up having extraordinary sex....and the sex was extraordinary because Miss Platypus got pregnant and gave birth to a chicken egg. This is the way it was supposed to have worked....it is an evolutionary thing. It is a mutation thing and may have actually taken a while. The first Platypuses had a kid that didn't look exactly like the parents, and then those kids had more kids that looked more chickeny than Platypussy until finally a chicken egg evolved. That's the theory anyway -- which supports the notion that the egg came first.

Do you buy this? I guess I might as well 'cause I'm not smart enough to think of anything else.