A Manor of Speaking Preface

 

I’d write an Almanack if I could. That’s always  been a good forum for pithy sayings. God knows I’m full of pith. I can barely hold it in.

(I’d leave all that weather and crop stuff out of my Almanack, though. You want the weather? Here’s the weather: It’s hot in Summer, cold in Winter, and … eh! … the other parts of the year are somewhere in between. You want planting advice? Plant stuff when it’s warm, pick stuff when it gets ripe. Rotate your crops. How hard is that? It’s the Agronomy, stupid!)

Alas, I’m not cut out to write an Almanack. I’m no Ben freaking Franklin! My meager kite wouldn’t be struck by lightning if I held a fish in my mouth and blew a whistle. Or whatever else might tickle St. Elmo. I’d make a Poor Richard, indeed.

I’ve considered other media as a means of expressing my thoughts, observations and abject cynicism. I could draft a dictionary like Dr. Johnson; I could proffer proverbs for fortune cookies, like Confucius; I could wrangle witticisms for bubble gum, like Bazooka Joe. If I were a legendary copy editor like … well … um … there are no legendary copy editors. But, if I were one, I could really make a newspaper headline sing!

Sure, I could poo on the path of the greatest aphorists in history, feebly following the scent of what others have done before, piddling puns and sniffing the butts of my betters. But I’ll never make my own mark no matter how doggedly I try.

Then, along came the Facebook status.  Guess what I stepped in?

The Facebook status was ideal for the expression  of epigrams, aphorisms and adages. It was an underutilized medium, one which, in the proper cheeky, impudent hands, could easily be elevated to an art form.     Unfortunately, from what I’ve seen, most people on Facebook couldn’t grab their sass with both hands. But — boyoboyoboy! — this was my chance to shine!

So, I put my laconic wit to work and assembled a superfluity of statuses; a conglomeration of quotidian quotables. I present here epigrams, bon mots, frivolous and meaningless wordplay that  might make you titter a bit or maybe say, “Well … that guy’s weird.”

At the end of the day, I may be no Oscar Wilde or Dorothy Parker, but if I gave you a gainly grin, my bass humor was worth all the treble.