Tag Archives: exaggerate

Chatter

Chatter: (n) incessant trivial talk.

I make a practice to never refer to myself as an artist.

Using that term is similar to someone who has sex calling himself a lover, or folks who occasionally have a garage sale in their front yard
deeming themselves to be entrepreneurs.

Truthfully, because we’re all a little insecure about the quality and veracity of what we do, we chatter on to try to magnify our significance to the yawning yokels.

How many times do I need to explain what I do before you are truly impressed?

How many different ways can I exaggerate my abilities, hoping deep in my heart that you will finally understand that I am better than you?

Chatter is what people do when they are nervously afraid they can’t cover the time alloted with simple truth.

So they elaborate. They use words like “interesting, wonderful, great, amazing and awesome” at diabolical rates. And they smile a lot, hoping what they have to share is not only convincing, but dazzling.

A wise man once said that it is much smarter to answer questions “yes” and “no.” He contended that anything other than this is usually born of evil.

If by evil you mean the incessant clatter of chatter that doesn’t matter, then…

Amen.

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Centipede

Centipede: (n) a small, predatory, long, thin animal with many legs.

Ignorance can be very appealing and humorous–as long as it’s presented as the stupidity it truly is. Matter of fact, humor is often the
exposure of ignorance.

There are times I pull up a word for this daily essay and decide to study a little further, so that the information I impart to you is tinged with accuracy. (God knows I wouldn’t want to give you fake or faulty facts.)

But on this particular day, I chose NOT to look up anything on the centipede because my ignorant understanding of it is so darling.

Over the years I did not know the difference between a centipede and a millipede, except that one creature touts a hundred legs and the other brags a thousand.

What always tickled my funny-bone was the knowledge that the animal with the hundred legs is quite large and dangerous, while the “slitherer” with a thousand legs is small and fairly harmless.

So much like our world.

When in doubt, when feeling insecure, when confronted with competition–over-advertise. Exaggerate.

The millipede was certainly intimidated by the prowess of the centipede, so it picked a name that immediately had legs to it. A thousand, to be exact.

So over the years, whenever I thought about these beings, I always reminded myself that the one who bragged about the most appendages was actually the weaker.

Huh.

Maybe there’s a lesson there.

 

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Biography

Biography: (n) an account of someone’s life written by someone else.

Dictionary B

An autobiography: lies I am willing to share about myself.

A biography: lies which others are willing to share about me.

  • Truth is more precious than gold.
  • It is also more difficult to find.
  • It is also more frightening than all the demons of hell.

The reason that truth is avoided is that we cannot control the reaction of others. Since life seems to be about finding favor among our fellows, we try to extract the best rendition of the story of our choices.

So we are often disappointed to discover that the biography of the life of someone we revere fails to mention some of the flaws while also exaggerating the virtues.

Is it possible to produce a biography which is faithful to the facts without tainting the subject of our story so much that people are left unimpressed?

When we consider the statement that “truth makes us free,” what we come up with is that if the truth were spoken about each of us, we are freed from the need to judge others, knowing how easy it would be for them to judge us.

But as long as the human race wants to put white hats on the good guys and black hats on the bad guys … we probably will never learn to affix gray hats on us all. 

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