The Pun Also Rises(as seen in the North Adams Transcript)
"The Da Vinci Cold"What's the Da Vinci Code? It's whed Da Vinci is berry sick and stuffed up. And even if the bad pun made you moan, Alisa, being sick is serious business. If you don't believe me, look at someone with a cold. They tend to look pathetic, coughing and sneezing, often dripping from their nose and huddled in a corner with a box of tissues and an unhappy serious look on their face. In other words, me for the past two days. It's not funny. But when one has humor to write, you hope it's snot funny. There's got to be a way to make things cilia, because otherwise you'll drag everyone down, heaven nose. Still, it's hard to clear one's head of depressing thoughts when the large portion of your day is spent just trying to clear your head of oppressing snots. Just last week I was as fit as a fiddle. Presuming that your average fiddle spends most of the day sitting around without exercising (which I think is likely), and that your average fiddle eats lots and lots of fried foods (which I think is perhaps less likely). But if there's a particularly out of shape fiddle with a penchant for fried foods, then I was as fit as a fiddle. Come to think of it, it's probably more accurate to say I'm as fit as a fiddle faddle. I'm not sure why people in good health are compared to inanimate objects. If someone's particularly robust, you might say, "He's a machine." At least in my office, if you're referring to the copying machine, you may as well be saying, "He's unreliable, highly frustrating, and likely to eat the occasional sheet of paper." Which isn't a bad description of John McCain, all things considered. I really liked John McCain when he first ran for President back in 2000. He was against special interest politics, and spoke for what he believed in. I think he still doesn't like special interest politics, but now he kowtows to the party line so much that I feel betrayed. If the political arena were The Last Supper (and with all the pork these guys take, it may well be), then John McCain's turnaround would be the Judas of that particular Da Vinci Code. Take what he said in previous years and what he has to do now, and you can see him eating his words. Often on paper. Regardless, I don't think we should be comparing healthy people to inanimate objects. When people become inanimate objects, they are rarely very healthy. Although I suppose most inanimate people don't have the sniffles, which is one point in their favor. People who do have the sniffles, that's one point in their fever. If they were surprised about it, that's Hey, Fever! I'm not quite sure how I got sick. Maybe it's allergies. Maybe it's dust. Maybe it's your fault, and I caught something when you were reading my column last month. You should cover your mouth when you read. Especially since people can see you mouthing the words. Besides, some words are contagious. Certain words of the four-letter variety tend to multiply rapidly once they get into your system, until one day you notice that they've infected half of your sentences. These, I tend to have good antibodies for, like "cornsarnit" and "pestilent pox". Sadly, I have no antibodies for actual pestilent pox. There must be something to blame for my contracting this virus. Maybe next time, I'll have my lawyer look over that contract first. I should have known something was up as soon as he said "sign on the dotted lines". Five lines, with dots in between them? A clear sign of a staff infection. And I failed to take note. Hopefully with sufficient rest the me sick stops, but the malady lingers on. Come to think of it, I probably got sick from visiting my friends when they were sick. One of them warned me that she wasn't feeling well, but I wanted to see them anyway. And sure enough, I came, I saw, and now I habe a code. Veni, Vedi, Vinci. ___________________________________ All work on this page is copyright Seth Brown. If you are sharing it, please give attribution. If you want to reprint it, please contact me first. |