For your convenience: a glossary of Dr. Larry-isms (I paid 70k for those damn two letters, let me have my vanity!), aka, my favorite ways to make quick notes or comments on shit that scrolls through the FB feed. BTW, fuck Zuck and fuck FB, but this is my only soapbox so there’s that. Make sure you print this out and tape it to the front of your computer / tablet / smart device for your reference. Print it out now before you read it. Stop stalling and print the damn thing…you know copy/paste into something and hit print. That color laser printer in the corner needs some use. If you want, color each point below a different color for variety, and you know, all that printer ink just sitting there. Jeez, go on eat some cheetos too, but watch out there’s onion powder in ’em. Or just watch this, instead, do I need to tell you everything?
Accurate – something that is way the fuck true. So true that you don’t even have time to shave. So true that that Japanese curry just needs a little more red chili powder so the burn in your mouth extends beyond each spoonful, although, hell yeah that piece of meat is better consumed via those aluminum chopsticks you just bought a few weeks back. So true that Patsy Cline and Lynyrd Skynyrd and Buddy Holly and Jane Russell would approve. So true that even Robert Mugabe would concede that everyone being a multi-mega-trillionaire just wasn’t helping.
Current Mood (and variations) – OMG I’m so fucking happy to have added a new pattern into my repertoire. Happy New Year 2020! A NEW DECADE! Just there’s literally a bug in the system and it has literally given us pause to gauge our mood. Shit, what’s gonna happen next? Is this just a 30-minute sitcom that will have resolution? OK, actually 22 minutes because of the fucking marketers…
A pause! A time to reflect! I mean, yeah, I grew up on sitcoms, so everything should be resolved quickly. Who isn’t having mood swings right now? Among all my FB brethren and sisthren there are the pray-ers, the drink-ers, the meme-ers, the political-ers, and the ones I least understand, those who keep it strictly personal with photos of their dogs and cats and living room furniture. Well fuck all that, I’m gonna cuss because there’s empirical research showing I’m a goddamn genius for doing so. Moody? Foody? Goody? Broody? This one I’m gonna milk for a very very long time.
Framing – George Lakoff. George Lakoff. George Lakoff. George Orwell. George Orwell. George Orwell. Lev Vygotsky. Lev Vygotsky. Lev Vygotsky. What do a modern day linguist, an anti-fascist fighter in the Spanish Civil War, and a Soviet educational psychologist have in common? Language is a way to make sense of a world where there’s no sense, until you dig down and see how language itself has been used and is still being used to bend minds, and souls, and morality, and pineapple on pizza. As a language teacher who has always paid attention to the “whose English, exactly, are we teaching?” debate, and keeping in mind Orwell’s lament of the death of hundreds of other languages as the worst legacy of colonialism and hegemony… well shit…sticks and stones may break your bones, but you are fucking wrong to think names will never hurt you, moron. STAY THE FUCK INSIDE.
Kwaheri – Kwaheri is Swahili for “Goodbye”. Straws aren’t destroying the earth, corporations are, and we are all complicit. Dire predictions, animal extinctions, stuff lost forever, like tears in rain … it’s all kwaheri, though it used to be adios.
Pearls – (found in many different phrased ways). Clutch clutch clutch. Remember, in these times, there is no bottom. None. NONE. Almost every day something even lower happens. Because of this new given, nothing that happens from this moment forward should surprise you. Those who want to see the world burn are also dragons, sitting on their piles of gold, the worst hoarders of all, and we are supposed to admire their success. Well, you know what? Framing. The rest of us are their servants in one way or the other. Deep inside me there’s an optimist, but like that speck of dirt that causes oysters to secrete whatever the fuck they secrete to form a pearl, that’s pretty much where I am personally. Also, I really was getting into the XFL because fuck the NFL. I will never learn, will I?
PSA – Public Service Announcements are usually sometimes actual real important serious things…or they aren’t. If you know me and my sense of humor, you’ll be able to tell them apart. It’s really my shorthand for saying… do you really NOT have the basic common sense and decency that this post is flagging? What the ever living fuck is WRONG with you? I think it’s me being Calvin and ranting at all the injustices I PERSONALLY AM SUFFERING. It’s maybe the sociopath in me (I have strong genes in that area sherioshly). Anyway, it’s something that you should take note of.
Zen – Use this as reference
Face it: the contradictions in the human condition baffle as much as they entertain. They make waffles as much as they use sump pumps on sailboats headed to St. Croix. You either try to connect it and control it, or you realize that all is well because nothing is under control. It’s why I’m a left-handed-ambidexterous Unitarian. Now go enjoy your snickers.