Funny Words finished version

Funny Words ©

By Michael Casey

Thank you all for coming back, I left a note on my site that I’d write a new piece 14 hours later, after I’d been to bed and got up again. So it’s almost High Noon now so I’ll make a start, Annie Lennox is singing to me as I talk to you all. If you have never seen the film High Noon, then do dig it out and you’ll be glad you did. As for Annie I’ve had the album Peace since 1999 and listen to it regularly. You can take my word as a Writer that both the film and the album are good.

Words are strange things, and some words do make us laugh immediately, such as FART. Ok I’ll start with the obvious and continue afterwards. We were all in Shanghai in 2007, our girls were very small. My small daughter was still only 3 and all the Chinese family wanted her to speak. We had a large room for maybe 40 or even 50 people, all the Chinese Paternal side of the family with their own families. My daughter did not say a word, finally after much coaxing she spoke to the world, to her Shanghai cousins.

 And what did she say in Chinese to them? Annie fan pi.  Which translated means Annie, her sister, had FARTED. Annie fan pi.

This of course broke the ice and a wave of laughter ripped around the room. So what does that prove that some words are internationally funny. Hello to my Chinese and Russian readers by the way it’s nice to know that my funny words reach all the way to the East. I would like some Korean and Japanese readers too, so tell your friends.

Words are funny, but it’s the way you put them together that makes them funnier still. I am of course an athlete, being 110kilos, means I am so fast. If you can put the cartoon of me in your head you’ll think of an elephant in shorts, leaving Hussain Bolt for dust, or rather battered on the track as I charge elephant like over him. I would of course try to eat his gold medals, thinking they are chocolate covered in gold wrapping paper. It’s such a disappointment when they are not.

Every profession has words that have double or triple meanings, multiple meanings have been used since Shakespeare and beyond.  You can be drunk because you have drunk too much, or punch drunk because you’ve been hit too much. You may even say let me drink in your beauty, but the barmaid replies by pouring your pint on your head and the bouncers throw you out for being a drunk.

Words can be used as put downs, he’s a Hobbit may mean he’s so small, or because he’s always on a quest to somewhere except to buy a pint when it’s his round, his turn to buy a drink. Or he’d need Satnav to get to the kitchen, or to find the bathroom, and judging by the state of his trousers he didn’t make it in time, and his shoes are always wet.

I was called a burnt out old has been, the person who spoke those words became a vagrant, a tramp. I went on to marry a Shanghai girl, and write 10 books, available on Amazon, and have 2 clever bilingual daughters. So if you do trash somebody beware that God is listening and you never know where you will end up.

Praise is a funny thing too, if you praise too much you devalue your words, just as kids in the street sometimes swear too much and devalue the weight of their swears. Saturday Night Fever is a great film, it was an 18 when it first came out, I watched it and thought there was no need for the excessive swearing, later the film was released with a lower certification, so loads more people could see John Travolta on top form.

In our house we hardly praise at all, because we know our girls are really clever, if you have seen Willy Wonka there’s a really annoying posh girl, the one who wants a pony and everything else, she is just so spoilt. The best thing to give her would be a bucket of water over the head. So praise your kids, keep the fridge stocked with chocolate, then you can save using a dictionary of words of praise. Love you kids that’s all you need, and love is cheaper than ponies.