the cat's out of the bag!

it's labor day, and with absolutely nothing to do today, i will toil away to bring you a long overdue blog.

i love idioms. a picture is worth a thousand words, but i can't draw, so i'll stick with the thousand words to present you with some of my favorites

"tall drink of water"

i get this one all the time, and to be quite honest i kinda like it. if someone is fat, are they a "a huge bite of pizza?"

"barking up the wrong tree"

my dog barks all the time, but never up trees. i guess that means he is on point and i shouldn't tell him to stop.

"what's good for the goose is good for the gander"

"what the hell is a gander anyway?" "it's a goose that's had the old switcheroo pulled on her."

"have your cake and eat it too"

it's not too much to ask to be able to eat a piece of cake if one has been offered to you. possession of cake is fine, but rather pointless and un-fulfilling if not consumed.

"actions speak louder than words"

i disagree. words are spoken, not actions. therefore, actions are inaudible, and thus cannot be louder than words, which are, of course, heard.

"an accident waiting to happen"

shawne merriman strangled tila tequila the other night. now that was an accident waiting to happen. except that it most likely wasn't an accident. so more accurately, that would be "a domestic violence waiting to happen."

"six in one, half dozen in the other"

that's one dozen according to my calculations. if i have twelve of anything in my hands, then i am pretty content. unless it's a dozen steaming piles of poop.

"when life gives you lemons, make lemonade"

of course, if you have two hand-fulls of poop in your possession, you might as well throw them at your friends for a good laugh.

"kill two birds with one stone"

i once killed a bird with my bb gun. i felt pretty bad about it. had i killed two birds with that one shot, i would have been amazed.

"a bird in hand is better than two in the bush"

not if you're the dead bird. i wonder if birds have idioms that they share with one another: "when berries give you diarrhea, crap on somebody's head."

"a little bird told me"

i don't trust anybody who gets their information from birds, or any other animal. the only talking bird i trust is Big Bird, and he wasn't little.

"if you want to make an omelet, you have to break some eggs"

the current cincinnati reds' season is a lot of broken eggs, but no omelet in sight.
all's well that ends well... except not.

"don't put all your eggs in one basket"

what is it with idioms about fowl and their offspring? better advice would be: don't put eggs in your jeans' pockets and ride a bike.

"don't count your chickens before they hatch"

again with the reproductive habits of fowl. it's enough already.

"a watched pot never boils"

untrue: i just watched a pot of water boil in order to cook my macaroni & cheese. (we call that research, and i'm willing to put in the extra work to provide a quality product).

"two peas in a pod"

anthony bourdain just compared a dish that he was eating to "having sex with twins." "identical twins in a uterus" would convey similarity better than "two peas in a pod."

"beggars can't be choosers"

can choosers be beggars? if so, that's unfair.

"a day late and a dollar short"

one day and one dollar? i feel like we can work something out here. are you really going to "bust my chops" over something so minor?

"an apple a day keeps the doctor away"

if an apple is "just what the doctor ordered," and the result is good health and less-frequent visits from patients, perhaps the doctor should consider another order that is more financially advantageous.

"cool as a cucumber"

if this refers to temperature, then there are several items that are cooler than a cucumber. if the reference is to personality, "cool as jay z" would be appropriate (speaking of HOV, the news of his album release being moved up to tomorrow has me feeling "like a kid in the candy store." "dollars for donuts" it will be great.

"an ax to grind"

you can only grind an ax for so long before it's time to just "bury the hatchet."

"cat got your tongue?"

apparently there are many cats getting many tongues in the world of baseball. taking steroids not only shrinks your balls and expands your cranium, but also has adverse effect on the tongue. (allowing the cat to get your tongue is an attempt to circumvent "eating crow" or having "egg on your face," rather than "taking the bull by the horns").

"best of both worlds"

is this the experience of having your cake and eating it too?

"bring home the bacon"

my mother-in-law brings home bacon all the time. she works for a bacon company.

"colder than a witches' tit"

that's just funny.

"go fly a kite"

and if you tie a key to that kite and fly it in a lightening storm, you just might discover electricity.

"beating a dead horse"

as in, "justin, this blog is beating a dead horse. take a hike!"