In a syndicated cartoon recently, two teen aged characters were eating pizza on a high diving board as a sprinkling came down from the sky.
One character says to the other that it is too bad they have outgrown random spontaneity. The other says, "dude, we're literally eating pizza on a high dive in the rain."
And gets this morose response: "Yes, but we're using napkins."
Was that quoting something? The phrase "pizza on a high dive in the rain" is not merely a vivid image, it is metrically regular.
PIZ - za on a HIGH dive in the RAIN.
It sounds like it might have been used in someone's song as a metaphor for, yes, a spontaneous live-for-the-moment life.
Either the cartoonist had a moment of genius, or he borrowed from a source that escapes me now.
We hear an abundance of superfluous language flying about. Those who are, or were, doing something say they are (or were) literally doing it. Very curious. For, if the act of doing is/was figurative, it never happened in the first place, did it? Or maybe, it did happen, somewhere other than in the real world. That is speculative. Anyhow, the abundance of superfluous utterances must be evidence of some circumstances shifting as contingencies surface. An intellectual surge? Or just incipient boredom?
ReplyDeleteThe most annoying one for me is "going forward," as in "We should do such and such going forward." If we dropped "going forward," no one would think that we meant going backwards or sideways. And then there is "close proximity." There is no other kind of proximity.
ReplyDeleteYeah. That's what I'm talking about. Sorta like: our #1priority is...
ReplyDeleteOne can have a #2 priority. One of the definitions of "priority" in my dictionary is "highest or higher in importance, rank, privilege, etc.: 'a priority task.'"
ReplyDeleteI understand your distinction.
ReplyDelete