Patience or patients This is your brain on drugs

Pot store

  Funny signs make my day. 

There as been an onslaught of new majiuana dispensaries around Colorado.   One of the local ones had this sign on its door.  Thanks to my friend Heidi , mayor of heiditown.com, a movie review blog, for pointing this one out to me.

I have blanked out the company name and phone number–you will have to find your own pot, sorry,

If you can’t read it, it says:  —- Open by Appt only.

Due to State law we can only conduct business with our patience who have us as their care giver.  —- Provides the best available meds to our customers.  Any questions contact us at ——

We are taking patience who wish to list us as your care gibver with the State.  All meds 10 Gram.  Quality unmatched.

The quality of their product may be unmatched but they do not know the difference between the word patience and patients.  Hmmmm   This is your brain on drugs?

Give me patients–errr– patience.

Friend or unfriend?

 

flickr Lance McCord

Unfriend?

That is the word of the year according to the New Oxford American Dictionary.

For the uninitiated, unfriend is a verb meaning to remove someone as a”‘friend” on a social networking site such as Facebook, etc.

I guess this is the politically correct way of saying you are dumping someone. So, can a couple be unmarried as opposed to divorcing. Why not call it like it is?

If Neil Sedaka recorded his hit “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do” now instead of 1962, it would have to be “Unfriending Is Hard to Do” I guess.

Who goes there? Friend or unfriend?

Surreal or real

by Jan Tik flickr

Surreal isn’t a word I use very often but I think it may apply to the reason for my lack of blogging for the past few weeks—well, months actually.

 When I used to do more public speaking, we were always told to never apologize. I have read the same thing about being absent from a blog.

 Sooo—I will not apologize but will characterize my absence by saying it was a surreal experience. Without boring everyone with the details, since May 31, I have had a heart attack, stents put in my artery and quadruple heart bypass surgery.  Someone once said a minor heart attack is one that happens to someone else! HA.

 Anyway,  back to the word surreal. It means to be disoriented, unreal or having the hallucinatory quality of a dream.

 For quite a while after my Sept. 17 surgery, I have had all those.  It is normal (whatever that is) to have a lack of focus and/or short-term memory, lack of motivation and maybe depression.  Fortunately, most of those did not happen to me.  My wonderful wife might argue with some of this.  I will admit to getting a tattoo—actually a couple of them to “celebrate” and commemorate my saga and triumph.

Moving on in 2010, I am back and ready to blog.  I am strongly considering a second blog about the coming and going businesses in Loveland and maybe northern Colorado.

 Have you had a surreal experience?

Pizza on my mind

 

by Oakley Originals flickr

Pizza is on my mind.  Maybe it is because it is on the list of things I can’t have very much of. Maybe that is also why an ad on television for Papa Murphy’s “cowboy pizza” recently got my attention.

 Papa Murphy’s makes a good pizza.  We celebrated New Year’s with one of their pizzas. If my cardio nutritionist reads this, I didn’t eat it all at once. The pizza we had was great but not the cowboy one.

 Cowboys and pizza? Hmmm.  Cowboys and Indians maybe but I doubt that the cowboys were cooking up pizza over the open fire out on the range.  It seems they did like beans if you remember the scene from Blazing Saddles.

 If they did in fact have pizza, they probably didn’t use the same ingredients that Papa Murphy uses.  Their version contains “three cheeses topped with pepperoni, Italian sausage, mushrooms, black olives and herb & cheese blend.”

 What would the cowboys have put on theirs?  Maybe some buffalo or some varmint. (What the heck is a varmint? Sounds like a new blog post in the making)

 Time for me to go have a salad.

Where’s your Aspen?

Recently, I did a blog post about slogans and mottos. Closely tied to this (same say it is the same) is the tagline. In that post, I mentioned the tagline that Hooters restaurants use.

(Go to the post if you don’t know what it is) Other well-known taglines are McDonald’s “Have it your way” and Star Wars “In a galaxy far, far away.”

As I was driving down I-25 to Denver last weekend, I saw an interesting tagline. It was from the Aspen Bakery (which appears to be in Denver, not Aspen, CO) The side of the truck had the normal company name and contact information. On the tailgate in huge letters was the phrase, “Where’s Your Aspen?” What an attention-getter.

Got any interesting examples you have seen?

Musings about speedometers

Words, the use of words and humor in words are what this blog is about. Today, I have the urge to post about numbers.

I guess I can put this item in the context of words.  Maybe it is about form and function, limits, reasonability or common sense.

Anyway, I will try it. I own a Honda van.  Actually, we own two Hondas since my wife drives an Accord.

For some strange reason, I was looking at the speedometer recently.  No, it wasn’t because I saw a cop with a radar gun.  Have you ever notices the numbers shown on a speedometer?

Isn’t it strange that the posted speed limits are mainly 25, 35, 55, etc. but these number do not show on my dashboard.  I almost have to estimate where the right spot is between 20 mph and 30 mph to say within the limit.

The main curiosity on my speed dial is that it goes to 160 mph.  160! Give me a break.  No one would or could do that in an Odyssey van even on the Salt Flat racing grounds. (My wife’s car only goes to 150 so I guess I could beat her in a race.)

The only explanation I can figure is that since the display is round, they needed all those number to fill space. Why not just leave it blank?

So, I guess this is just one of the mysteries of life.

While I sit and contemplate it, I will put something on the microwave oven and “nuke” it for 45 minutes. (But maybe that is another post for another day.

Change, alter or amend? You decide

Change, alter or amend?

Which word is best? Well it depends on what you are trying to convey.

At first blush (and why do we say first blush) the terms are the same or at least very similar.

• Change
  

  This means to make something different from what is. Also different from what if would be left alone.
  

• Alter
  

  To modify or adjust something. To change its size style or shape.
  

Amend Most people think amend means the same as the two phrases above. HOWEVER, it means to change for the better, remove, or correct faults. Ok, here is your reward for reading this far. There is another word in this grouping. That is revise. It seems it only applies to something written or printed.  Now you know when to use the right word at the right time.

You do the math…or not

flickr by ptwo

“You do the math.”  I can’t say when I first heard this term but it seems to be fairly new.  That said, it is being used incorrectly a lot in my opinion.

 I would imagine that originally it mean to compare numbers.  An example might be that if you buy one or two of an item compared to a dozen. Ears of corn or doughnuts, maybe?  If you do the math, it is better to buy the larger number if you do the calculations.

 Now people throw the phrase in even if the situation is not one of numbers.  I was reminded of this when I heard an advertisement as I was driving around today.  The pitch was for some kind of substitute cigarette.  They were trying to convince potential buyers that their product was healthier than smoking.

I almost drove off the road when the voice-over said something about the fact that the company could not claim the product was health, but we as listeners could “do the math.” 

Hello—there were not figures involved!

Funny sign on a business

I really saw this sign, and had to go back with my camera.  It is a double FAIL.  The apostrophe police should be after them to start.  Then the grammar police.

Didn’t most of us learn early on that words ending in F should be changed when made plural?  Dwarf–dwarves, scarf–scarves, wife–wives.  Oh, well.

I wonder if they paid someone to apply the letters on the sign.

And, by the way, what is a meat bundle? 

You can’t make this stuff up!

Innocent or naive?

flickr jglsong

I was reading in the local newspaper last weekend about an upcoming musical event. The director of the music called the characters “not so much naive as they are innocent.”

This statement got me thinking.  I guess I always considered innocent and naïve as being synonymous. (For my Iowa readers, this means they are essentially the same.)

 On further investigation, I found there are some differences.

 Innocent means pure or without sin and not involved with evil intent. It also means guiltless (like O.J.?)  Actually, I think he was found not guilty which is a subtle different.  But, I digress. 

Naïve on the other hand means unaffected simplicity or absence of artificiality. A naïve person is usually considered unsophisticated.   They also probably lack life experiences.

 

What other pairs of words have a close but not exactly the same meaning?