Coin baffling aphorisms


More than anything, I remember the smell of the streets back then – a brackish funk my mother used to call the “potato waltz.” She was full of pithy phrases like that, with one for every occasion. Mealtimes were “dingo rose gardens,” holes in our socks were “delving bolsheviks” and if one of us kids came home with a cut or bruise we couldn’t hide, she would tell us: “there’s no leaf falls as fast as Princess Mulch, and none so riverish as Spanish Dan.” We took that kind of thing to heart – it didn’t put us off fighting, but it sure as hell made us want to win.
If I’m honest as a shoe can be, I think some of my mother’s way of talking – the way they all talked in the old country, I suppose – rubbed off on me like mustard on a Major. To this day, I still call bullfrogs “purple postmen” and scissors “papier-mâché Art Garfunkels.” I still greet people by asking how their cousins are spinning and if anyone crosses me, they can expect an outburst of shuffling autocratic seedbeds and flamingo dovetails. It’s just my way, I guess. Like they say, to each according to his own and to all a good night.

12 comments:

  1. Another cracker. I want to read the rest of this one!

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  2. I just finished playing the latest Sam and Max game yesterday, so all of these phrases make perfect sense to me.

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  3. that doesn't look anything like bad writing at all! i would continue reading anything like this.

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  4. or as they say in France "Boolavogue"

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  5. I'd definitely read that. Ok, I admit, I'd be hoping it would back off a bit as the story grew, but I'd read on.

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  6. Echoes how I felt when i read A Clockwork Orange for the first time.

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  7. If the aphorisms were a trifle less baffling this could work...

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  8. "...papier-mâché Art Garfunkels." Hahahahah, oh, I'm dying

    Hilarious, Joel

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  9. Not directly relevant to this post, but relevant to this blog: Risqué Business.

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  10. This is my favourite.

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  11. I ditto the Clockwork Orange reference above.

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  12. Reminds me of a book I read where the main character was terrible at "metaphors" (most of them were similes), leading to lines such as, "I mix with people as well as a gerbil mixes with paint," "It's like a banana farm for guns," and "The sun rose like a giant radioactive manatee."

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