Tag Archives: Twitter

Cornball

Cornball: (n) person who indulges in clichés or sentimentality.

“I am just so blessed to write to you every single day. You are such terrific people.”

You see, this passage I just wrote is considered “cornball.” Another word is “cloying.” How about “maudlin?”funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

And then there’s the classic: sappy.

Somewhere along the line we became so frightened of being insincere that we became sincerely mean.

It doesn’t take more than half an hour of watching old television to realize that the producers of nearly every show were determined to leave the watcher tingly with goodness.

Nowadays, it would be impossible to market a show called “Breaking Good” or to suggest that a life of gentleness and kindness could make you anything but a victim waiting around to be victimized.

How much cornball do we need? Do we need any?

When I grew up, people walked around and said things to each other like, “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.”

Or, “Honk your horn if you love Jesus!”

But somewhere along the line, the bumper stickers and slogans filled with such cornball notions of “peace on Earth” were suddenly replaced with apocalyptic concepts of doom and gloom.

Maybe it happened when the first person affixed, on the tail end of his or her car, the thought, “Shit happens.”

But even in our modern world, “shit happens” would be considered cornball—because it maintains an attitude of being patient with the shit instead of twittering about it.

That’s interesting. When I was younger, if you felt good, excited and full of great hopes for the ‘morrow, you would say to people that you were “all a’twitter!”

Now, when people are “a’twitter,” they are merely considering better ways to destroy one another.


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Aphorism

dictionary with letter A

Aphorism: (n.) a short, witty remark containing a general truth.

The definition is filled with redundancies.

For I will tell you that after years of writing articles and even speaking in front of audiences, if something is not short, it will never be viewed as witty. And honestly, it is virtually impossible to be witty without revealing some sort of abiding truth.,

So what is missing today? In an age of Twitter and Tweets, when we’re trying to limit ourselves to 140 characters, we should be uncovering the secret to communication–and a great doorway for sharing abiding precepts.

But remembering that it is out of the abundance of human emotions that we speak, when we are devoid of emotional purity, entangled in webs of our own deceit and selfishness, what emerges from our speech and our writing is the drivel of nonsense, as we attempt to be clever, often ending up crude.

  • Is it possible to be pointed without stabbing everyone with your jaded attitude?
  • How about using comedy minus vulgarity?
  • Can you challenge without becoming a critic?
  • Can you question while leaving out all the brattiness?

You can awaken the senses without slapping the face. It takes a willingness to improve the human situation without trying to degrade humanity.

Will there be a cycle which will take us back to a time when “short,” “witty” and “truth” mingled with each other to hatch delight?

I certainly think so.

But I do believe we’ll have to learn how to tip-toe through the pasture, avoiding all the bullshit, to make sure we can get to where the flowers grow.

 

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Thank you for enjoying Words from Dic(tionary) —  J.R. Practix

Achy

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter A

Achy (adj.): Suffering from dull continuous pain: e.g. she felt tired and achy.

That’s not what it makes me think of!

Because of the foolishness of a crazy song, when I hear the word “achy,” I think of Billy Ray Cyrus singing “Achy Breaky Heart.”

I don’t know what it is about our society, but for some reason or another, to escape the doom and gloom of everyday problems, we will occasionally take on trends which are absolutely too silly for words. Our nation has a whole series of these:

  • The hula hoop: a circular plastic tube you placed around your waist, to wiggle around to keep it constantly rolling.
  • How about The Twist? I saw a movie the other day and people were doing The Twist and I wondered how we were so blind to the stupidity of the vision?
  • Of course, that goes for La Macarena, too.

We have these notions that certain things are cool for a season. They are silly and we want to escape the drudgery of thought, so we jump on the bandwagon and start tooting our horns with the rest of the off-key crowd.

Achy Breaky Heart??? How did that ever get past a publisher?? How did that get recorded?

Somewhere along the line we need monitors in our society who remind us that our particular difficulties are not so seriously devastating that we need to escape to utter childish pursuits.

I see them every day–people chasing this, pursuing that…and I’m telling you, even things like Twitter and Facebook will eventually have the same fate as telegraph lines, designer phones, 8-track tapes and My Space.

Didn’t they have an Achy Breaky Heart dance?? That is the definition of a double hell.

I am not trying to be some sort of curmudgeon who doesn’t see the joy in an occasional flippant trend, but when we’re chasing down causes which we know are stupid even as we’re doing them, it would just be better to avoid the detour.

And you know what’s worse? This guy, Billy Ray, is still traveling around every night–singing that song to adoring fans who remember where they were the first time they heard it. Do you know where I was? In musical hell!

It’s just too much. Even the word “achy” itself is a little bit “Sesame Street.”

Please just be mature enough to go ahead and have an ache.