Posts Tagged With: firemen

Paul’s Awesome English Dictionary – Today’s Word: Liquidating

How many times has this happened to you? You’ve spent a week’s pay taking the one who makes your skip to the oh so elegant Mille Oiseaux. You yearn to impress, but you ruin the candlelight dinner by knocking over a candle. The flame from the candle sets the tablecloth on fire. Soon you and your date have progressed to a tablelit dinner. The ravenous flame spreads to the rest of the patio. Fire leaps to hairdos kept in place with cans of hairspray. Whoosh! Panic panic. Flame-bearing people cram the exits.

Firemen charge into the patio. They unleash tsunamis of water over the widespread flames. Just to be safe, the burly firemen blanket diners and tables with foam. Your sweetheart, you, and everyone else now look like the Michelin Man. Dresses are ruined. Tuxes are ruined. Things could not possibly get any worse.

Well no. The police, guardians of the law, arrest you and your date and haul you away in separate squad cars. As the door shuts on your date, you hear the shriek, “I hate you. I hate you to death. You fecking piece of shite.” You sense the moment to impress has gone.

As you can see, dating can be stressful.

You try speed dating. That’s stressful too. You have only five minutes to charm. But the bean burrito you wolfed down at lunch comes back to haunt you. You let rip a particulary stinky and sonorus fart. The fart gasses greet the lit candles. Whoosh! Where moments ago there had only been life sustaining air, there is now an immense fart fireball. The fireball spreads everywhere. You grab your date by the hand and say, “Come this way. We need to leave before the police come to arrest us.” Strange to say, you do not awe your date with your expertise and solicitude. In fact, you never go out again.

As you can see, all forms of dating can be stressful.

But wait, there is one form of dating that’s sweeping the nation, trending even. In this lucky event, the partners meet each other in a pool. There’s no fancy clothes to prepare. There’s no candles to burn down everyone. Just dog paddling, gazing into each other’s eyes, and falling in love.

If only there were a word to describe dating in a pool  And now there is:

TODAY’S AWESOME WORD

Liquidating

 

Awesome entry #47

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

A Better World Through Pessimism

Optimism is overrated. Optimists always preach to pessimists,  “Stop being Dave and Debbie Downers. Just be happy. Life is too short to be downcast. You’ll never get anything done if you always dwell on the negative.”

Well, oh ho, let’s look at all the great life enhancing inventions pessimists have gifted the world.

1)) The first one is the parachute. Sure, optimists brought us the magnificient airplane. That gets shot down in war. Parachutes, concieved by pessimists, enable pilots to survive a crashing plane.

2) Fire extinguishers, neglected by optimists who built opera houses and movie theaters, help patrons to escape a fire.

3) Seat belts help drivers and riders to live through car crashes, sometimes unharmed. It took a look time for pessimists to win the battle on that one.

4) Air bags for cars. You had to be pessimistic about fatal automobile crashes to come up with that idea.

5) Backing up files on computer, on memory sticks, and the cloud. You had to be pretty darn negative here to think up that.

6) Hiring CPAs, tax attorneys, and the lot to do your taxes.  Depressed about doing your taxes correctly and avoiding an audit, weren’t you?

7) Insurance. Preventing you from being financially devestated by a unlikely distaster. Imagine, an entire thriving industry built on pessimism.

8) Our armed forces. We are indeed pessimistic that something horrible will happen to our nation and the world without a military to protect us.

9) Our police force. Our negativity constantly anticipates loss of property from thieves and murderers.

10) Antiseptics and ether. Would you chance surgery without them?

11) Locks on your house. The chance of your house being burgled is clearly less than 100%, yet we all get them and feel more secure as a result.

12) Alarm clocks. We don’t think we can get up in time without them.

13) Firemen. We can be pretty optimistic than we’ll never need a fire station. Yet thanks to pessimists they get built over and over. Homes and lives get saved.

14) Multiple engines on early airlines. Customers were so pessimistic about engine failure, that airlines were forced to add engines to the planes. Airline travel has flourished ever since. Can you imagine our world with air travel?

15) The eraser. Enough said.

There are many, many other life-enhancing inventions spurred on by pessimists. Please feel with ones that come to your mind. Thank you,

Anyway, three cheers for pessimists. I feel more optimistic knowing they’re around.

 

Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

 

Categories: observations, pessimists | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.