Tag Archives: macaroni

Dandy

Dandy: (n) a man who is excessively concerned about his clothes and appearance; a fop.

I’m a Yankee Doodle one.

Yes, the British soldiers were so intent on getting under the skin of the American Revolutionists that they accused them of being gay.

That was it.

This the whole meaning of the Yankee Doodle song.

In 1776, a dandy was a man who over-dressed, stuck feathers in his hat—which was a style in France known as macaroni—and was so prissy that every woman, upon encountering him, gave up on any possibility of a night of pleasure.

So what did the Americans do?

Did they go in a corner and cry?

Did they punch people in the nose and throw a fit? (Or maybe throw a fit and punch people in the nose.)

Did they curse? Did they swear?

No. They didn’t even claim they weren’t gay.

They just decided to use the song as a rallying cry for the cause, which certainly must have made the British dandies awfully angry.

When I was a kid, the worst thing you could call someone was “a fag.”  But I will tell you—the kids who survived such ignorance are the ones who didn’t throw a fit, but instead, made fun of their attackers. 

I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy

A Yankee Doodle do or die.

Yankee Doodle went to town

Riding on a pony

Stuck a feather in his hat

And called it macaroni.

You’ll never get people to stop being bigoted and offering lame attempts at humor to punctuate their prejudice.

You do have the power, though, to absorb their attacks, and turn them into your new marching song.

 

Adversity

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter A

Adversity: (n) difficulties, misfortune: e.g. resilience in the face of adversity

Excuses.

Matter of fact, you could stack adversity up with other made-up concepts, like trials, tribulations, difficulty, hassle and even temptation.

These are not real words. They’re lamentations moaned into the darkness by people who have run away, scared of the reality of this thing called life.

  • If things did not get edgy, we would never change.
  • If there were no challenge to our ideas, we would refuse to evolve.
  • And if life only threw softballs, we could never get into the big leagues.

Adversity is one of those words which is used to explain why we fail to show up for the gig. It is a whiny screech from the soul who has lost confidence in his or her own ability or faith.

Now, I am not unsympathetic to the condition–I frequently visit that defeated profile. But I never get OUT of the dismal dunes by being accommodated or having someone express empathy for my plight. That just doesn’t help.

In case you didn’t know, here’s the way it works:

  1. We decide to be creative and change our lives.
  2. Those around us are uncomfortable with change so they discourage us.
  3. We persevere.
  4. A society that despises perseverance attempts to throw roadblocks in our way to keep us from moving ahead of the crowd.
  5. We inch our way forward.
  6. Bigger bears come out of the woods, attempting to scare us away from our own joy and prosperity.
  7. We stare the bears down.

Look at that process carefully. This is how every piece of excellence has been achieved throughout the history of humankind, whether you’re talking about the introduction of fire into the caveman’s life, civil rights, light bulbs, computers or adding cheese to macaroni to create a new side dish.

Adversity is what small-minded people do to stop big ideas. It has many names, but the mantra is always the same: why don’t we just leave well enough alone?

If you object and want to try to revive hope, faith and love … brace yourself for adversity.