Words Down Pat

Cussing creativity

April 22, 2008 on 5:21 am | In Humor | No Comments

When I was growing up, we didn’t cuss in our house. When my dad slipped up and said the sh-word, or Mom, lady that she was, said “hell” or “damn,” it was a cause for gasps all around. So, in my linguistic naiveté, I used to use words I’d heard that I thought sounded like cussing.

Let me clarify the difference between cussing and cursing. Cussing is using bad words, while cursing took it to another level. Cursing was calling down God’s
wrath upon someone, wishing evil to befall them. Cursing was strictly off limits, therefore. And you didn’t even have to use cuss words to do it. The curse could sound something like this, said to a nosey little brother: “If you ever read my diary, I hope your nose turns blue and falls off.”

One of my favorite existing words was Phenobarbital. Another was paregoric. Since my dad was a pharmacist—we call ‘em “druggists” back then—I suppose it was only fitting that the worse sounding words in my vocabulary were medicines. Diarrhea sounds as bad as the actual condition. When really angry, I’d draw out the third syllable in a growl. It sounded pretty much like cussing to me.

Somehow fiddlesticks or shucks didn’t sound quite ominous enough; darn was a mite better. I’d really step up to the big time if I used darnit or dagnammit. When I ran out of cuss-like words, I started to make them up, or combine words to make an original cuss word that no one knew was actually cussing.

Some of the ones I coined had harsh consonant sounds, sometimes with a real word sandwiched in between two nonsense syllables, the longer the better. Gara-drat-tation. Pan-drak-ton. Dang-crip-ity. Sounded pretty bad at the time, but perhaps some lexicographer will discover that my youthful cussing creativity was actually genius and include them in a Cussing Dictionary of English Speaking People. It could happen!

Blogging the Blog

April 8, 2008 on 9:19 am | In Uncategorized | No Comments

Hi there.  I know, I know, it’s been a while since I posted anything.  But I attended the Jubilee Writers’ Conference at the Terrebonne Parish Library on Saturday, and one of the sessions was on blogging.  Sooo, I decided that I should do this more regularly.

Here I am, then, staring at an almost-blank little box that cries out to me for a line or two of little black letters to make it less blank.

In the news this week is the story of some bloggers who blog themselves to death.  Fatal and near fatal heart attacks have been noted from around the country.  Bloggers who spend practically every waking moment keeping up with their blogs are endangering their health, so the article claims.

Round-the-clock Internet activities of any type could be life-threatening, though.  What about the kid who stays up all hours of the night to play video games?  Or the myspace or facebook addict who checks his/her page 15 or 20 times a day to see if there are any new messages?  And then there are those who post their profiles on dating sites and are constantly vigilant for new matches.

Never fear, friends; that’s not me.  Extreme blogging is not a sport I will succumb to any time in the near future.  Extreme anything is, well, too extreme for me.  I prefer moderation or at least management of my time.

Hmm, I haven’t played Peggle Master since last night.

wordsdownpat’s my name, writing’s my game.  (Okay, I know it’s corny, but it’s the best I can do at this point.)
Pat