"The Barbara Bush Blues" - by Rohan Preston

Star Tribune Sunday, September 25 • 2005

The Barbara Bush Blues
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By Rohan Preston | Star Tribune Staff Writer
"So many of the [displaced] people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this [chuckle], this is working very well for them." Barbara Bush, Houston, September 2005.

Poor people everywhere:
hope for disaster, displacement, flood,
pray for mudslides, earthquakes, wildfires —
for that's when the going really gets good!
Pray to be flushed out of your home — to watch it float away to rot; pray to end up in the Astrodome on a little Red Cross cot.
Away from the 'hood, you get nutritious food and free dental care; you get coupons to hoity-toity salons that can scrub the goo from your hair.
You get clean clothes, deodorant soap
and warm water to wash;
you get all this and most every wish —
plus a tidy bit of cash.
True, you may lose some of your little bums and your minimum-wage job, but these are just blips: after the apocalypse you live high on the hog.
So, clasp your hands and pray to join the
thousands living large and scot-free!
They've got such good gravy, forget First Lady - I wanna be an evacuee.
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Rohan Preston is at rpreston@startribune.com.

"The English Language!" - by Anonymous

"The English Language!"
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Anonymous
If you speak fluent English, you must be a genius! Peruse at your leisure, English lovers.

Reasons why the English language is so hard to learn:

1) The bandage was wound around the wound.
2) The farm was used to produce produce.
3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
4) We must polish the Polish furniture.
5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.
6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
7) Since there is no time like the present, it must be time to present the present.
8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum
9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
10) I did not object to the object.
11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
13) They were too close to the door to close it.
14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.
15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail
18) After a number of injections my jaw got number.
19) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
20) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests
21) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France (Surprise!). Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat.

Quicksand works slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham?

If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend. If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it? Is it an odd, or an end?

If teachers taught, why don't preachers praught? If vegetarians eat vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? In what language do people recite a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell?

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?
You must marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out, and in which, an alarm goes off by going on.

English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. That is why, when the stars are out, they're visible, but when the lights are out, they're invisible.

P.S. - Why doesn't "Buick" rhyme with "quick"?