This blog is a phantasmagoria

phantasmagoria / fan-taz-muh-GOR-ee-uh / noun

1. A shifting series or succession of things seen or imagined, as in a dream.
2. Any constantly changing scene.

The new writings more and more take the form of apocalypses -- that is, of supernatural visions which reveal past, present and future under the guise of a phantasmagoria of symbolic persons and animals, divine and diabolical beings, celestial and infernal phenomena.
-- Edmund Wilson, The Dead Sea Scrolls: 1947-1969

David Nixon created this version of the fairy tale -- a phantasmagoria of grim goblins, dancing cushions, flying fish and magical mirrors -- for his former company, BalletMet Columbus, in 1997.
-- Stephanie Ferguson, "Beauty and the Beast", The Guardian, January 6, 2003


History: Phantasmagoria is from French phantasmagorie, from phantasme, "phantasm" (from Greek, from phantazein, "to make visible," from phantos, "visible," from phainein, "to show") + -agorie, perhaps from Greek agora, "assembly."

-- Dictionary.com

With apologies, pun intended

Those who jump off a bridge in Paris are in Seine.

A man's home is his castle, in a manor of speaking...

Dijon vu - the same mustard as before....

Practice safe eating - always use condiments.... 

Shotgun wedding - A case of wife or death....

A man needs a mistress just to break the monogamy....

A hangover is the wrath of grapes....

Dancing cheek-to-cheek is really a form of floor play....

Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?...

Condoms should be used on every conceivable occasion....

Reading while sunbathing makes you well red....

When two egotists meet, it's an I for an I....

A bicycle can't stand on its own because it is two tired....

What's the definition of a will? (It's a dead give away.)...

Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana....

In democracy your vote counts. In feudalism your count votes...

She was engaged to a boyfriend with a wooden leg but broke it off....

A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion....

If you don't pay your exorcist, you get repossessed...

With her marriage, she got a new name and a dress....

The man who fell into an upholstery machine is fully recovered...

You feel stuck with your debt if you can't budge it....
Local Area Network in Australia - the LAN down under....

Every calendar's days are numbered....

A lot of money is tainted - It taint yours and it taint mine....

A boiled egg in the morning is hard to beat...

He had a photographic memory that was never developed....

A midget fortune-teller who escapes from prison is a small medium at large....

Once you've seen one shopping center, you've seen a mall....

Bakers trade bread recipes on a knead-to-know basis.....

Santa's helpers are subordinate clauses....
Acupuncture is a jab well done.

(Thanks, Lainey, I think)

Cliches: join the herd

Martin Amis, the British novelist:

If you can't say something nice

From Maggie's Farm:

"Euphemisms are about creating an illusion of a nursery school pretty pony and rainbow view of the world in which evil does not exist, in which we can all get along if only we wanted to, and in which we can all be anything we want, if only we would label things properly.

"Rabid Jihadists and criminals become "the oppressed," kids who cannot read well become "learning disabled," klutzes become "hand-eye coordination impaired," the socially-awkward become "Asperger's," global warming becomes "climate change," housing developments in swamps become "Riverview Estates" - and Killer Whales become cuddly "Orcas" (so as not to offend their delicate sensibilities, no doubt)."

Take the bull by the hand

The late William Safire's rules for writing:

1. No sentence fragments.
2. It behooves us to avoid archaisms.
3. Also, avoid awkward or affected alliteration.
4. Don't use no double negatives.
5. If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times, “Resist hyperbole!”
6. Avoid commas, that are not necessary.
7. Verbs has to agree with their subjects.
8. Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
9. Writing carefully, dangling participles should not be used.
10. Kill all exclamation points!!!
11. Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
12. Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.
13. Take the bull by the hand and don't mix metaphors.
14. Don’t verb nouns.
15. Never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
16. Last but not least, avoid clichés like the plague.

Does anyone understand you?

As you watch news reports about Iraq or Afghanistan, think about this: how hard it is for our military to communicate with the locals? Then think about this: when you're trying to communicate, does your audience have as much difficulty as the Afghans and Iraqis?

Dennis M. Murphy, director of the Information in Warfare Group at the Center for Strategic Leadership, US Army War College, has written a rather academic piece about this, but we can bring his insights into our own presentations at work, before the PTA, wherever. He writes:

The difficulty with cultural understanding is that culture is, by its very nature, a local phenomenon. As MacNulty notes:

The society in which we live—in this context not the national culture . . . but the fairly small area in which we grow up . . . results in different culture, values, beliefs, religion, and views about money, work, marriage, gender roles, and so on.

Neighborhoods take on their own personalities, driven by such considerations as socio-economic factors and ethnic and racial identity. Value sets are different among communities that form the integrated society of a large US city.19 Transfer this reality to a foreign country where the US military is conducting operations. It should not be difficult to understand how challenging it is to influence perceptions among audiences with a “one-size-fits all” set of actions and messages.

Imagine yourself giving a presentation at work. You look at your audience. Each one of those people out there brings his or her own culture to the room, and they're hearing you differently. The finance guy isn't going to hear the same thing the IT guy hears.

Businesses segment their customers on the basis of gender, age, geography, previous purchase history, and on and on. Perhaps before we create that first brilliant PowerPoint slide, we should segment our audience.

Murphy notes that studying a language can help officers understand the local culture better, and that's always our tip No. 1: what jargon are you spouting, and do your listeners understand it? What language do they speak?

(Thanks, Rudy)

Language police: does this affect you?

effect / ê-fekt / verb, transitive

To cause to happen, to make (something) come about.

I hope the good Dr. Goodword has some effect on you:

Affect and effect are two verbs similar in sound and meaning. What you need to remember is that the one beginning in [a] is defined in terms of the one beginning in [e]: affect "to have an effect", as in "Words affect the way we think". To effect means "to cause", as "to effect radical changes in the way we do things."

Here are a couple of sentences that demonstrate the difference between these two confusing verbs: "Nothing Ivan Odor said seemed to affect Leticia romantically, so he resorted to flowers to express his affection. The flowers from Ivan effected a change of heart in Leticia that eventually led to their engagement."

History: Effect started out as Latin effectus, the past participle of efficere "to accomplish", based on ex- "out of" + facere "to make". The root fac- in Latin, which also gave us fact, feature, feat, and dozens of other words, goes back to the PIE root *dhe-/*dho- "put, set", which also evolved through Old Germanic into English do and such of its relatives as deed (thing done) and doom (done in?) The name of the Russian parliament, the Duma (where very little gets done), actually is a descendant of *dho-, via dumat' "to think" (possibly an even a worse connotation).