Randomness
by Tom Neven on 06/23/2008 at 11:12 AM
Stuff I've learned from others -- and from hard experience -- during my 50-odd year journey on this planet:
In a showdown between foolhardiness and gravity, gravity usually wins.
Throw the firecracker, not the match!
Middle school boy. (Okay, boy of any age.) Bendy plastic spoon. Orange Jell-O. The worst possible combination of those three things in all known universes. (Other colors just as hazardous.)
Figure out what you don't do well and don't do it.
Never end a sentence with a preposition? That's the sort of nonsense up with which I shall not put.
Every house has a junk drawer.
Corollary One: No matter what you're looking for, it's always at the back of the drawer.
Corollary Two: No matter what you take out, no matter how small, you can't get the
drawer closed again.
Don't sweat the petty things.
Don't pet the sweaty things.
If you come to a fork in the road, take it. (HT: Yogi Berra)
If you had an infinite number of good ol' boys with an infinite number of shotguns and an infinite number of stop signs, could they reproduce the works of Shakespeare in Braille?
Every toolbox requires only two tools: duct tape and WD-40. If it moves and ain't supposed to, duct tape. If it's supposed to move and don't, WD-40. (A hammer comes in handy every once in a while, too.)
Where I grew up, y'all is singular. The plural is all y'alls.
If a good ol' boy says, "Hey, y'all, come watch this!" stand clear. They're likely the last words he'll ever speak.
I bet all those people who bought Hummers to shop at the local grocery store are feeling kinda stupid now.
Five things you'll never hear a Texan say:
1. I'll take Shakespeare for a thousand, Alex.
2. Pass the arugula, please.
3. Wrasslin's fake!
4. No kids in the back of the pickup. That's dangerous.
5. Why, yes, Sam Houston was indeed a cad and a coward.
The high heels on Barbie's shoes were specifically engineered to penetrate the first three layers of skin on the bottom of your foot at 3 in the morning.
A Lego block was specifically engineered to separate the bones in your foot at 3 in the morning after you leap off a Barbie high heel.
It's hard to explain what certain words mean at 3 in the morning because your 5-year-old just happened to be up getting a drink of water, and, no, you really don't wish that Barbie and Legos had never been invented, although you didn't word it quite that way in the heat of the moment.
1. Ted Slater said the following at 11:28 AM on Jun 23:
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Tom, in addition to duct tape and WD-40, every good tool chest should have Vice-Grips.
2. Tom Neven said the following at 11:35 AM on Jun 23:
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Or Vise-Grips, even, since I think vice-grips will get you arrested in most cities.
3. Katherine said the following at 11:41 AM on Jun 23:
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These are pretty funny, and rather true except the "Texans are dumb and reckless" ones. Seriously, why the hate on Texas?
4. Heather Koerner said the following at 12:10 PM on Jun 23:
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Tom,
Sorry to contradict you but I do believe that the plural of "y'all" is "all y'all." (sans the "s")
Therefore, "Would all y'all come over here so we can bless the ice cream?" (as was said last night at my Sunday school party) would be correct. Perhaps that pure mountain air has fuzzified your memory?
5. Tom Neven said the following at 12:19 PM on Jun 23:
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Heather
Where'd you learn English? It's plural, hence the need for a final "s"!
6. Ted Slater said the following at 12:29 PM on Jun 23:
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Can you believe I'm an editor, Tom? Goodness -- I even looked that one up, even included the hyphen!
I might could learn from your keen editorial eye.
7. Ted Slater said the following at 12:31 PM on Jun 23:
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Sheeps? Oxens? Deers? Childrens? :-)
English: What a language. What, a language?
8. B. Minich said the following at 12:36 PM on Jun 23:
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I never understood "all y'all". I've come around to y'all, but that's short for "you all", right? So isn't that all good enough to indicate plural, rather than adding another all to effectively say "all you all"?
9. Susan said the following at 12:51 PM on Jun 23:
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That supplied a laugh! It's great to hear about quirks of people from various states. Here in Philly, many people say wudder instead of water.
10. Dan Gill said the following at 12:56 PM on Jun 23:
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Five things you'll never hear a Texan say:
1. I'll take Shakespeare for a thousand, Alex.
2. Pass the arugula, please.
3. Wrasslin's fake!
4. No kids in the back of the pickup. That's dangerous.
5. Why, yes, Sam Houston was indeed a cad and a coward.
This Texan has said number 4 in the past month. And I've said something similar to number 3, but I know how to spell and pronounce "wrestling".
11. Motte said the following at 12:59 PM on Jun 23:
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Tom,
I'll take a good ol' southern "y'all" over the mountain west's "your guys's" anyday.
You know, like ...
"Hey can I use your guys's phone for a sec?"
-Napoleon Dynamite
12. John said the following at 1:39 PM on Jun 23:
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Tom,
This is great. A Mid-Western addition to the tool box is baling wire - with duct tape and baling wire you can fix anything.
13. Dan Gill said the following at 1:42 PM on Jun 23:
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Y'all is plural. All y'all is redundant.
14. Loris said the following at 2:03 PM on Jun 23:
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Ha, my New Yorker eighth grade English teacher laughed at us for saying y'all. And then she got mad and "Yous guys" slipped out. Instantly discredited forever...
15. Laura_MH said the following at 2:09 PM on Jun 23:
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WD-40 is my dad's solution to just about everything!
16. Heather Koerner said the following at 2:24 PM on Jun 23:
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B. (#8) and Dan (#13): Not redundant, simply clarifying and emphasizing in rather large groups.
Take last night, for example. Instead of "Hey, y'all over on the patio and y'all over playing washers and y'all in the jupiter jump, come over and let's bless the ice cream", our host used the all-encompassing "Would all y'all come over..."?
Considering it takes us about twice as long as the average Northerner to say a sentence, we must be allowed our time-saving collective pronouns. :)
17. Erin said the following at 3:11 PM on Jun 23:
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Having lived in Texas for 18 years (until 2 years ago) I can vouch for the "all y'all" being plural.
Ted, "might could" is something I've had to learn not to say now that I'm in yankee territory. It's right up there with "fixin' to". ;)
18. Carrie said the following at 3:18 PM on Jun 23:
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#13: I beg to differ
Pretend to you're talking to a large group of people:
"Y'all come here!": a few people will come forward, some will wonder if you're talking to them
"All y'all come here!": the whole room moves
Try it in the South some time and tell me that doesn't happen.
RE: "Middle school boy. (Okay, boy of any age.) Bendy plastic spoon. Orange Jell-O. The worst possible combination of those three things in all known universes."
Try this on: Liquor, cigarettes, and fireworks don't mix. Ever.
Ask me how I know. :)
19. Savannah said the following at 4:37 PM on Jun 23:
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From a Texan...
To the purist, "y'all" is singular, "all y'all" is plural, and if you add an "S" to the end of either it is possessive.
...
D'jeet Yet?
20. Sam ELiza said the following at 5:00 PM on Jun 23:
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All y'all is needed to get a group of people's attention fixed upon the task at hand (such as blessing the ice cream). I've lived in the state just south of Ohio for seven of my sixteen years, and it was lots of fun 'learning the language'. Take 'done', for example. Traditionally, this means that one has completed something. Used in a context such as this: "I done fixed it yesterday," it means 'already'. One of our many, lovely quirks. Loved your post, Tom.
21. Lisa A said the following at 5:29 PM on Jun 23:
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Motte, I can't believe you rebuked me for dissing Southerners on the podcast, and now 1) you didn't do the same for Tom's slam on Texans, and 2) you gave a big diss to Westerners in the same breath. Total hypocrisy! Don't dish it if you can't take it, friend. :)
22. James said the following at 7:03 PM on Jun 23:
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Dan (#13), you ain't from 'round these here parts is ya now?
Tom, bravo!
And Heather is correct, if you want to speak correct general Southern, "all y'all" is the plural of "y'all." Such as, "Y'all kids gitouttahere or I tell all y'all parents what youse did!" That was in the lowest form of Southern, commonly heard in the traitorous state of West Virginia (whose people are paying for their treason against the Confederate States of America by suffering inbreeding and other sorts of unpleasantness not fit for conversation around women-folk).
If y'all can't tell by now, I'm from Virginia. I speak accentless American mostly (Arizona has influenced me greatly), but can talk like all 'em other good 'ole boys back there in Southwestern Virginia.
Oh, and Jeff Foxworthy's "Redneck Vocabulary" jokes aren't merely entertainment, they're cultural linguistic FACTS ;).
23. Gene said the following at 7:33 PM on Jun 23:
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Carrie @18
Or this: Computers make it easier to make more mistakes faster than anything ever invented, with the possible exception of handguns and tequila.
24. Dan *real name* said the following at 10:11 PM on Jun 23:
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Hey Loris (#14):
"yous guys" is common here in Minnesota also (I have been guilty of this one).
Hey anyone outside of the Upper Mississippi Valley/Minnesota:
Do you hear the "across" pronounced ACROSSD? ("across" ending with a -d or -t sound). THIS ONE REALLY BUGS ME!!!!!!! Usually said by people trying to sound cute and "local".
25. Shona said the following at 12:35 AM on Jun 24:
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very very funny. would buy the book if it became one.
26. Dan Gill said the following at 11:20 AM on Jun 24:
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Remember that Texas Southern is sometimes different from "Deep South" Southern. I don't know many Texans who use "all y'all". Go further east, and it's quite common. But YMMV.
For that matter, there are four or five regional Texas accents. But we all move around so much you can't tell so much anymore.
27. Esther said the following at 2:21 PM on Jun 24:
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Dan (#24)
I believe the pronunciation quirk you are referring to is related to the largely Norwegian background of many in Minnesota. In college, I worked with a post-doc who hailed from MN, and we laughed about how she said "toast" with a d-sound.
28. Esther said the following at 2:26 PM on Jun 24:
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I forgot to mention that this should be evidence to all of those who objected to our jokes about manglings of English by foreigners: we are just as hard on our fellow English-speakers.
I just can't figure out where I learned to talk. Born and raised in upstate NY, but people there ask me if I'm foreign, and I've had others insist that I have a Swedish accent (I don't speak a word of it)!
Being a yankee, now living in the south (if Florida counts), I've found that y'all is a very useful term, and that the rest of us don't have anything nearly as quick and simple to address a group warmly and politely.
29. Sam Eliza said the following at 10:45 PM on Jun 24:
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Esther (#28), I have also found that y'all is very convenient. When I try to recall any other way to address a group of people, I draw a blank.
My father was born and raised in New England, and is still dropping his r's from words (like when he asks for something out of the drawer, he'll say 'draw'). He gets funny looks and a confused 'What?' when that happens.
30. Esther said the following at 1:25 PM on Jun 25:
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Another fun one: my grandfather is from Vermont, where there is a very strong accent (but nobody knows it, because Vermonters rarely leave!), with a notable trait being the use of "aigh-ut" as an affirmative term (e.g. "Sure is a hot one." "Aigh-ut.") Another memorable one is the pronunciation of the name of Turtle-necked Lake, which comes out as "Turtle-nekkid", always hilarious to a carful of kids (try to imagine a "nekkid" turtle!).