“Oh I don’t think anybody matures. I think adults are just children who have money.”
As a parent, let’s hope that’s not true. However, that is some of the wisdom from this 1992 movie directed by Kenneth Branagh about college friends who have a reunion over New Years Eve at an English country manor. There are some witty lines and good British humor in Peter’s Friends … though I’d put it in the good, not great, category.
“I love to bring people into the oval office…and say, this is where I office.” George W. Bush
I used to think it wasn’t professional to say I worked at home. But then I was explaining to my kids that Barack Obama and his family would soon be moving into the White House and I realized even the President of the United States works at home! His home office is just oval, and fancier, and, well, not the same at all as my little spot under the stairs. But it made me feel better.
Obama pronounced his soon-to-be home office “pretty nice” after touring the White House earlier this week.
“We’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note … a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
Loving words as I do I became mesmerized by the words floating by on a New York Times page where you “vote” the word you feel about today’s presidential election. The larger the words, the more frequently they have been chosen. Of course, the red ones are for McCain and the blue for Obama. So how are people feeling? McCain’s top words are anxious and scared. There are also a lot of “d” words including disappointed, discouraged, depressed and even disgusted.
Obama shares anxious as a top word with other frequently-chosen words being nervous and hopeful along with exhausted and excited. We’re having a fancy cracked crab dinner and watching the returns. The kids will watch the first part – we might be seeing history tonight and I don’t want them to miss it…
“Lost time is never found.”
Are all your clocks set to the “right” time? The wise Benjamin Franklin is credited with this sentence. With daylight savings ending on November 2nd , I feel we have been gifted one more glorious weekend hour. We’ll spend it with a cozy Sunday supper of roasted chicken criss-crossed with bacon strips topped with a wine, thyme, shallot sauce. Good thing my husband recently found his inner chef!
Ne mange pas trop de bonbons!
It sounds so much nicer in French than the “no more candy” we have said a dozen times to our kids today! Tonight the Candy Fairy is taking away much of it…. sneaky! Or should I say sournois!
“With the economy likely to be weak for several quarters, and with some risk of a protracted slowdown, consideration of a fiscal package by Congress at this juncture seems appropriate,” Ben S. Bernanke Federal Reserve Chairman.
I guess if I was speaking to the House Budget Committee, I would use formal speak too. Here Bernanke correctly uses a word that must be on the list of most misused words – juncture. It is defined as, “a point of time ; especially one made critical by a concurrence of circumstances.” I’ve heard people say “junction” instead which means joining rather than having anything to do with time. At least this misuse is not quite as jarring as hearing people say “it’s a mute point.”
“There must be quite a few things a hot bath won’t cure, but I don’t know many of them.”
Sylvia Plath (1932 – 1963) was a poet and novelist known for her semi-autobiographical book The Bell Jar. She experienced a lot of trauma in her short life and committed suicide when she was a mother of two young children. However, she was also a wise woman and a keen observer of human nature. You can read more about her here. Writers may appreicate this sentence, “Nothing stinks like a pile of unpublished writing.”
“Us being in a kerfuffle with a Buckley is disheartening and absurd.”
So said The National Review editor Rich Lowry over the resignation of Christopher Buckley from the conservative magazine his father founded. Who says kerfuffle today except the British? Webster’s says the word, meaning disturbance, is of Scottish origin.
The sentence is from a New York Times article in which Buckley talks about leaving the magazine over his endorsement of Obama. Although there has been a flap over Buckley’s endorsement, he doesn’t think his late father and conservative icon William F. Buckley, Jr. would have disagreed with him. Whatever your politics, Buckley’s novels are filled with witty sentences. And his column on The Daily Beast which explains his vote, ends with his version of a cliche, “Necessity is the mother of bipartisanship.”
Idioms in our own language are silly enough. But here’s how the French would say, “When pigs fly!”
“Quand les poules auront des dents!” Or literally, “When hens have teeth!”
The German version is identical to ours, “Wenn Schweine fliegen können!” But whatever language you use, it refers to an event that you think will never happen. However in art, anything IS possible and this saying has inspired some whimsical art including this flying pig at the Cincinnati Airport.
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