Friday, July 11, 2008

The meaning in demeaning

Poor Buffy. I caught snippets of a conversation she was having during the ambient music. One bit that I overheard was her admission "Oh--I'm a musical disaster."

She's not really. She can sing along to a song. Unless she's wearing earphones. (I have video of this. I'm still working on getting permission to post it.) But there's little shame in that. Most people sound horrible when they can't hear themselves singing.

Still--my sister and I were having fun mocking Buffy's musical abilities a few years ago. And Buffy was laughing more than anyone. She's a wonderful sport that way. A word of advice: don't come near the family unless you can handle being ridiculed. It's nothing personal. That's just how we treat people that we feel superior to. (Group therapy didn't help.)

We teased her by isolating segments of words to imply that the division and segment is morphemic altho we know very well that it is not.

In other words:

She puts the can't in cantata
She puts the phoney in symphony
She puts the no in piano/soprano
She puts the retard in ritardando
She puts the commode in comodo
She puts the wreck in requiem
She puts the dim in diminuendo
She puts the harm in harmony
She puts the ghetto in larghetto
She puts the pew in più mosso
She puts the ass in classical
She puts the flaw in flautist
She puts the rebel in treble
She puts the phew in fugue
She puts the joke in giocoso
She puts the mad in madrigal
She puts the why? in choir
She puts the ach! in nachtmusik
She puts the silly in Siciliana
She puts the shun in notation
She puts the lewd in prelude
She puts the sin in sinfonia
She puts the itch in pitch
She puts the bad in Badinerie
She puts the rump in trumpet
She puts the cuss in percussion

I know. Some of these don't really work or make sense.

5 comments:

  1. I just want to make it clear that the only reason I'm participating in this is because it's mean and potentially hurtful, otherwise I would never say these things:

    She puts the die in diatonic

    She puts the err in air

    She puts the fret in fret

    She put the dense in cadence

    [Hey, this isn't one of those things where it's ok if you do it, but if somebody else does it, it's not funny? Like ethnic humor? Because I get that, I really do. Anyway...]

    She puts the ew in tuning

    She puts the sick in music

    She puts the false in falsetto

    She puts the Oh, no! in monody

    I'll probably think of some more later. It's hard to stop once you get something like this going.

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  2. nice. the "oh no/monody" is kinda daring. we'll allow it.

    i thought of the "sick in music" but it's more like zick so i left it out. but then flautist doesn't really have flaw in it does it?

    love the ew in tuning. It works with both AmE and BrE pronunciations.

    oh by the way -- don't say that about my wife.

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  3. How 'bout:

    She puts the sic in music

    I just thought of that.

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  4. o mxrk. you're so good at being mean.

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  5. I have to say, I love how you dare to break up consonant clusters. Very audacious. (Taking the lust out of the clusters?)

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