Tag Archives: Hollywood

Alphabet

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter A

Alphabet: (n) a set of letters or symbols in a fixed order, used to represent the basic sounds of a language

Sometimes I understand a concept and can even put into the works a plan of action, but become completely baffled during implementation.

Do you do that too?

Such was the case with a cereal called “Alphabets.”

As a kid, when I watched the commercial on television I saw children much like myself (except made more gaunt due to Hollywood’s requirements) sitting at a breakfast table, taking their little pieces of cereal and laying letters out on the table in front of them to make words.

It was perfect.

It was like going to school, feeling a sense of accomplishment upon completing an assignment–but then being able to eat it.

I was so impressed with what I saw during this advertisement that I begged my mother to buy me a box of Alphabets so that I, too, could sit in my nook and build my own personal dictionary made out of overly sweetened cereal product.

The only trouble was that every letter I pulled out seemed to be either an X or an O. Apparently the manufacturer found it easier to make those particular letters, so the box was not adequately stocked with all twenty-six representations used to form the English language.

They failed to share this in the commercial.

So by the end of breakfast I had dumped the entire box of cereal on the table in the quest of forming language, only to have my mother walk in and think that I was goofing around instead of pursuing the Rosetta Stone.

I can tell you of a certainty–there are absolutely no P’s, R’s or T’s in a box of Alphabets. I think I found two A’s, one E and four U’s.

I was vowelless.

So what I came up with were a bunch of Eastern-European-style words, a table covered with cereal and the dust that accompanies it, and an angry mother, who swore never to buy me another box of Alphabets.

The next week I found myself back to eating oatmeal, which, by the way, doesn’t evoke any other words than Y-U-C-K.

 

ACLU

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter A

ACLU: (abbr.) American Civil Liberties Union

I’ve got it figured out. (Well, I probably don’t, but I thought I would begin this article without using the passive voice.)

EVERYONE is conservative.

That’s right. Everyone is trying to conserve something. And everybody who disagrees with what the other guy is trying to conserve believes that the other party is either a hick, an ignoramus, a pseudo-intellectual or a hippie.

All you have to do is mention the American Civil Liberties Union in a positive light, and you are already labeled a liberal. There is no such thing as a Republican who is an advocate of this organization. But if you read their charter, all the ACLU wants to conserve is the liberty and individual rights of every American citizen, with an emphasis toward honoring the sanctity of the freedom of minorities.

THEY want to conserve liberty.

Now, you find some organization down the road called the Family Research Center, or something of that ilk, and they are just as deeply convinced that they are divinely ordained to conserve morality. Now, the ACLU may not be nearly as concerned about morality as they are liberty, but quite honestly, the Family Research people are not nearly as concerned about liberty as they are morality.

You can see the problem. They’re all conservative, without realizing that they need each other. That’s right:

  • Liberty without morality is a train wreck right outside your front door.
  • Morality without liberty is a decision to build a dungeon in your basement for all the people you have decided are evil.

If we could learn to respect one another and listen to each other’s core belief, we might be able to meld into a strong unit for justice.

But it’s much easier to throw rocks across the fence–because you have the great joy of tossing them without ever knowing who they hit on the other side.

I would not want to live in a country that does not have the American Civil Liberties Union. They remind me of people I might forget about–if it weren’t for their presence.

I also would not want to live in a country that does not have the Family Research Center, which informs us when we begin to take good health for granted–be it emotional, spiritual, mental or physical.

Since we’re all conservatives in our own way, we might want to conserve our energy by not fighting–and expend some of it in an attempt to become reasonable.

But since that won’t happen, the ACLU should probably not do a lot of traveling south of Louisville, Kentucky.

And the Family Research Center people might want to avoid taking the big tour of Hollywood.