This week's topic is a real doozy. Let me cut to the chase: I'm going to talk about those same phrases we use day in, day out, til the end of time, until hell freezes over. I'm talking about clichés.

Clichés pepper the speech in our every waking moment. But, they are some of the most ridiculous things we say. We rarely think about them as we say them. We spare, at most, a second's thought when writing them. Well, it's time someone took a look around and saw what's what. I'm just the man for the job.

First off, let's look at what I've written so far. Too many dreadful cliches to count. But let's look beyond the numbers.

Doozy. Not just doozy: a real doozy. I've heard this a billion times before, what the hell does it mean? Are there fake doozies running around. Does everyone secretly live in fear of ever finding an illicit doozy? Perhaps there are groups of criminals out counterfeiting doozies for nefarious purposes. If so, I'm completely unaware of them being a law-abiding, real-doozy-only kinda guy.

That's precisely the kind of thing that people say without ever thinking about it.

Cut to the chase: A film reference. Very nice, but does anything in daily life ever really approach the excitement of a car chase. I think not.

And how about day in, day out. I wasn't aware that days acted like the tides. Do we have ebbdays and ripdays? Is every 7th day bigger than the preceding six? No, so let's eliminate the silly analogy.

Til the end of time: Well that's an over-bloated completely undeterminable saying. Take the phrase, "I'll love you til the end of time." Ok, so it's for a really long time, we get that. I think people who use this phrase are big, wishy-washy, liar-heads. The end of time could be the next minute. It could be millions of years. It could never end. So, this is really saying a whole lot of nothing.

And what's more, what happens when they die? If we don't have a spirit, then they've just lied to everyone because there's nothing left to love anyone, end of time be damned. And if they do have a spirit, what if that spirit finds it doesn't really want to be tied down to some silly concept of love it pledged itself to in a fit of angst while tied to an infinitely more fragile version of itself.

More precisely, they should say, for instance, "I will love you, not until the end of time because I know that that is silly and entirely wishy-washy, but until both my corporeal being and my spirit cease to exist in any recognizable way, or my spirit being (of which I am unable to provide any proof of at this moment) finds itself entirely not needing the emotional baggage that I've piled it with."

Until Hell freezes over: So, we are to assume that Hell doesn't freeze over? Having no direct knowledge of the existence or non-existence of Hell, why do we have the arrogance to presume they can't have snow there? I think it's entirely unwise to think that they don't have the occasional slush down there. Hell, if I was Satan, I'd make it freeze over every other day just to muck with people up top.

Our every waking moment: Do you find yourself constantly in the process of waking up? No, no, discount that morning class. I mean right now, are you waking up every moment? I didn't think so. Another entirely silly phrase. It would be more appropriate to call it "our every non-sleeping moment." I mean, let's call a spade a spade.

A second's thought: Has anyone ever clocked this? I didn't think so. Fwuh. I would guess that most thoughts worth thinking take up much longer than a second, and those not worth a second's thought probably clock in at much less that one second. What we really need here is a government study to determine just exactly how rare the one second thought is. After that, I think we could be trusted to use that phrase.

Of course, the problem with that phrase is it's a derivative of another one: "a minute's thought." Even putting the important scientific issue aside, what exactly are people saying when they say, "Don't give it a minute's thought"? They're either saying, don't bother thinking about it for a minute, 59 seconds or less will do. Or they are saying, think about it for some unspecified time that is a lot longer than a minute. Either way, they are being complete fascists about _your_ thoughts. Next time someone tells you, "Don't give it a minute's thought," say to them, "Get out a stopwatch, cause that's exactly what I'm giving it, you fascist dirtball. (Omit "you fascist dirtball" where politically necessary)

Take a look around: For one thing, people don't generally take looks. Is there some sort of look repository you can go to and pick some up whenever you're running low? And just where would you be taking it around to once you did take a look? "Hey, let's go to the Space Needle, the arboretum, then down to Pike Place Market." What makes us think that a look would be interested in all that, or really, in anything we might happen to show it. Blatant arrogant assumption on our part.

What's what: Without getting too Abbot and Costello-ish here, it's pretty obvious that what is what and not it or who. Let's just leave it at that, or maybe leave it at what.

The man for the job: Well, it's pretty obviously sexist for one thing. And for another thing, what is "the job"? It's this nebulous thing that changes every time you turn around. And nost things we call a job are hardly a job. I mean, look at Superman, he always said, "This looks like a job for Superman!" I can only imagine his disappointment when he found out all those times that it wasn't a job at all. He didn't get paid one red cent for anything he did!

What he should have said was, "This is not a job for Superman, but an unpaid internship!" Then, when he went back to being Clark Kent, he could get his assignment for the day, sit down at the type-writer and quite happily and correctly exclaim, "_This_ looks like a job for Clark Kent!"

I think we'd all be a lot happier if we'd just consider the things we say. Call me crazy, but I don't think it'd be good to run this into the ground. I think I've driven the point home by now. Best to get while the getting's good, as I always say.

Copyright © 1994 by Robert T. Bakie