All truths are equal, but some are more equal than others

Some guy named William Faulkner once said, "The past is not dead. In fact, it's not even past."

I agree.

That being said, I just discovered today, 43 days into this new year, Dave Barry's 2015 Year In Review. I recommend it highly for your reading edification and pleasure because not only has Dave Barry already won a Pulitzer Prize, he is probably on somebody-or-other's short list to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature.

I jest.

But I do hope you will read and enjoy his take on 2015 because (a) it proves that sarcasm is alive and well, (b) we ought to be able to laugh at ourselves, and (c) some other guy named George Santayana once said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

Some guy named George Orwell once said something sort of similar to the title of this post.

Some things just never get old

...and I never tire of reading Dave Barry when he goes into his “Ask Mr. Language Person” mode.

Here, from The Miami Herald, is Dave’s column from November 10, 2010, which first appeared in The Miami Herald way back on April 9, 1989.

Here, from the New York Times, is Dave’s column from October 9, 2004.

Here, from (I kid you not) the Arab News, is Dave’s column from May 28, 2005.

And here, from a website called Anvari.org, is an undated column of Dave’s.

I think I pointed you toward “Ask Mr. Language Person” a couple of years ago, but with my sides aching from laughing and my barely-suppressed giggles threatening to become full-blown uncontrollable guffaws, I am unable at this time to point you to that link.

If you want to read more of Dave Barry’s “Ask Mr. Language Person” you will just have to Google him yourself.

There is method in my madness. I’m just trying to put us all in a good mood so that we can be ready for whatever the Ides of March may bring.

(La Mort de César (The Death of Caesar), oil on canvas, 1867,
by Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904), Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland)

Hail to the master

Upon learning today about an article entitled “Oldest Living Thing On Earth Discovered” in The Telegraph, humorist Dave Barry immediately created a post with the title “Incredibly, It’s Not Keith Richards”....

Don’t look back or you might turn into a pillar of salt

Now that we are an entire week -- yes, kiddies, seven whole days -- into this, the happiest of all possible happy new years, I want to introduce you to Dave Barry’s Year In Review: The 2011 Festival of Sleaze so that you can laugh as hard as I did.

So there’s the link up there in the previous paragraph. I’m a man of my word.

The article is five pages long but unfortunately you will not be able to see pages three, four, and five unless you BECOME A SUBSCRIBER, FOR FREE, of the website of The Washington Post. Dave’s article is so hilarious that I recommend that you take the time to do just that (you will be given an opportunity after you finish reading the first two pages) so that you can read what Dave Barry wrote about the entire year 2011 and not just the first couple of months. When you apply, you can lie about your birth date if you like. No one cares.

We do what we can for your reading enjoyment, but there are some things you must do for yourself.

Here is Today’s Question From the field of science and industry:

Would Katherine Graham have thought this was any way to run
a railroad?

One of these is a photo of Katherine Graham and one is not.

Before we get very far into 2011 we should review 2010

...and who better to do it than the one, the only, America's own spot-on, hit-'em-in-the solar-plexus humo(u)r columnist, Dave Barry!

(Actually, I thought Dave Barry died a couple of years back, but apparently I was misinformed. Either that or he phoned in the above review of 2010 from The Great Newsroom In The Sky.)

Enjoy....

Ask Mr. Language Person

One of my readers, Ruth Hull Chatlien who lives somewhere on the frozen tundra up north, left this comment on yesterday’s post:

“Ah, you have the soul of an editor. Most people really don’t notice stuff like that, but to a language person, they are indeed disorienting.”

The jury is still out concerning whether I have the soul of an editor, but I really perked up when she called me “a language person.” That is definitely true. Yes, indeedy. However, I can’t hold a candle to the all-time champion in that field, the man with the phenomenally creative mind that had the entire English-speaking world rolling in the aisles and gasping for air for years, Dave Barry.

I can hear some of you saying, “Who?”

Well, according to our old friend Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, David “Dave” Barry (born July 3, 1947) “is a [sic] American author. He is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist who wrote a nationally syndicated humor column for the The Miami Herald from 1983 to 2005. He has also written numerous books of humor and parody, as well as comedic novels.” (Note. I don’t expect ever again to have an opportunity to insert such an accurate editorial addition at such an appropriate place in a sentence.) But he is so much more than that. To me, he will forever be the writer of the “Ask Mr. Language Person” pieces that have invariably left me, as I said, rolling in the aisles, gasping for air.

To anyone out there who considers himself or herself “a language person” (and you know who you are), I would like to say that “this too shall pass” but I cannot because it won’t. Therefore, as a humanitarian gesture, I am including this link to a number of Dave Barry’s “Ask Mr. Language Person” columns, or as my son-in-law would refer to them, a “plethora.” A plethora in this case means fifteen; my personal favorites are numbers 12, 14, and 15. If you are “a language person,” all of the columns are downright hilarious, so just be sure the aisles are clear and you have an oxygen tank ready. If your name is Pat and you are “an Arkansas stamper,” which is completely different from being “a language person,” an initial fit of giggles may lead to the accesses of insanity and you might come dangerously close to having a Pond Spell. [For those of you who don’t have any idea what I’m talking about, I refer you to my post of June 29, 2008, “It looks even more like Cair Paravel from this angle” and a couple of the comments afterward from Pat. --RWP]

A caveat to the curious, which is sort of like a word to the wise, only different: If you insist on clicking on any of the links in the link I linked you to, I cannot be responsible for what you may find. If you persist, you may even wind up on the web page of Dr. Robert P. O’Shea, a professor of psychology at Otago University in Dunedin, New Zealand.