V is for verbage

V is for verbage, and vitriol.. probably not the kind of thing you were hoping to read. If that’s all I can come up with when I get the opportunity to pay out my two cents worth, perhaps I should shut up? Talk is cheap, right?

 .. Well no, not anymore. Talk will cost you. Especially if you say the wrong thing, the wrong word, at the wrong time. No, you don’t get to spill your verbage in our progressive cities unless you want to back it up with your wallet and risk a criminal record. I’m sure we’ll soon be missing the days when anybody’s two cents worth was worth just that.. when anybody had the freedom to be an ass.

Welcome to the New Age, but it isn’t what they promised us. Comedians had better not be funny unless they stick to the script. If you’ve got an opinion, keep it to yourself unless it’s shiny and happy. You can see what’s going to happen, can’t you? All those bottled up opinions are going to pickle nicely for a while in the dark but eventually that lid has got to pop. We’re a society with a serious case of bloat.. the question is, will it come out quiet and sneaky or blast a hole in our proverbial pants? We’re humans for Pete’s sake! You can’t shut us up!

I never thought I’d say this, but I’m for the trolls. I’m for their rights. Yes they’re a pain in the ass, but the price of shutting them up is a gag for us all. I have my two cents and I want the right to spend it.

Oh I love the way you say it doctor!

Oscars only ostrich oiled an orange owl today..

If I make a list of the people who most influenced me as a child, it would have to include Dr Seuss. A quick look at wikipedia tells me he was Theodor Geisel, produced 44 children’s books and won a pulitzer prize. What, only 44? I had expected to find hundreds. I must have read the whole lot then. I went to places like Pompelmoose Pass, the island of Gwark and the country of Motta-fa-Potta-fa-Pell, chasiing Poozers, visiting Sneeches, marvelling at the Tufted Mazurka, and Fiffer Feffer Feff. C’mon, what an imagination!

My life is still a little like a Dr Seuss book. A combination of sense and nonsense, a river of words many of which are not found in any dictionary, and a love of funky individualism. If you can learn to recite ‘I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew’ you will not only have done a great deal of excellent exercise with your tongue and lips, but will have learned some fabulously bodacious new words and a sensible life lesson to boot.

Childhood is a long way off now. Can you think of what influenced you way back then? Mum, Dad..sisters, brothers, those are a given. What else? Teachers? A coach? A film star? Friends? Taking a look at the small stitches that knit us up can be a surprising revelation of how just a few hours or few words made a lasting deposit. Who knows what makes certain people or events stick in our minds? Sometimes just a short unexpected connection with someone leaves us impacted right into adulthood. Good or bad. And it never stops. We take new things on board every day.

And that means...yes me, yes you. We’re not Oprah, Orwell or Obama, but we still influence other people, probably without even knowing it. Authors like Dr Seuss are well aware that they make an impact, no doubt they write with that well in mind, but I don’t think most of us are aware that unless you’re a hermit, just about everything we do affects others. Perhaps it seems like a big responsibility to bear. It’s certainly something to think about considering that modern motto: “Do whatever you want, as long as it doesn’t hurt anybody else.” ... I’d be happy to change that motto to “Do whatever you want, as long as it doesn’t affect anybody else.”

Live obstinately or obediently..  or ostentatiously, outrageously, originally, orderly, openly, or outstandingly, or omnivorously... do it your way... but...

Know that it does matter. Ok? ;)

Taken from Dr Seuss's ABC