Read It See It Whatever

A friend recently pointed out to me that my favorite expletive, my catch-all-foul-phrase is
"fucking hell"
apparently I'm the only person who uses this verbal construct.
It got me thinking about what I refer to as "verbal tics"*
In the comments section I referred to "Rhymes With" and mentioned the fact that she has the verbal tic of saying "clearly"
it happens usually when someone talks about off the wall behavior or ...I guess I would say your garden variety aberration? such as:
"so the other day I thought it would be a good idea to try and trim the grass by using gasoline and matches..."
"Clearly..."
I have a verbal tic that fills the same space..
I say "like you do"
"I was trimming my toe hairs with a switchblade.."
"like you do"
I stole this construct.... and many others.
It comes from Eddie Izzard's show Dressed To Kill...If you don't know who or what that is....well he's an executive transvestite and he does this amazing monologue in which he talks about history from...sometime around the time of the druids "So you're building a henge are you?"
through Martin Luther "ein minuta bitte!" and the Mayflower arriving in the Americas "who the fuck are these guys?"...all the way up to now...and if it sounds dry in the slightest I assure you it's not.
Anyway, is this something our generation does but not the ones before us?
I can think of a ton of things that we say that are stolen from Seinfeld** , John Hughes movies***and hip hop****
but did the preceding generations do it?
I think a little, but not as much as us. it's got to be media saturation right?

tune in. turn on. drop out.
make love not war.

or even another generation?

loose lips sink ships.

you get my point.
But I doubt the generation before us said " sock it to me baby" nearly as much as we say "yadda yadda yadda?"
But I digress...(inside joke...sorry)
the point is....what is it? oh yeah, I say "fucking hell"
I stole that from Anthony Burgess.
"Who the fuck is that" you say?
(or, considering I have a fairly conservative readership..."who the fudge is that?")
he wrote a book called A Clockwork Orange...which was later developed into a movie called...cleverly enough...A Clockwork Orange..
If you haven't seen it? see it.
but more importantly? If You Haven't Read It?
READ IT.
Get a copy of the book that has a dictionary in the back. he makes up a language in this book that is a sort of hybrid of British and Russian slang. this i love. It's one thing to make up an imaginary world, it's a whole other to completely reinvent the one we already know. alternate reality? I'm in.
the opening line?(I'm quoting this from memory)
"There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, Pete, Georgie and Dim, Dim being really dim...."
brilliant.
It is basically in the same vein as
"catch 22" and
"kingsblood royal" and
"the wanting seed" and ....
what the hell was that Aldus Huxley novel...? hey I didn't even have to Google it!
"Brave New World"
and Orwell's "1984"...
(oh and I should say...if you have not? read it x 5) (ok if that's too much homework? leave off Kingsblood Royal, and the Wanting Seed.....and you probably already read Huxley and Orwell in school....so just read Clockwork and Catch 22. You'll thank me.)
It is about, in the simplest of terms, the suppression of society over the individual...
at the point in the novel in which they have stripped Alex of his humanity and made him into a drone
(the titular "Clockwork Orange")
and then given his humanity back?
....they are showing him pictures and he is meant to interpret them and he is presented with a picture of a woman holding a basket of eggs and they ask what he would do and he says
" I'd smash them!" and he makes a smashing motion...and because of the fact that his arm is broken and it hurts when he makes this motion he says
"I'd smash them...Fucking Hell!"
so I stole that, I also stole "so that happened"
And "Rhymes With" knows what I mean.
I stole it from a movie by David Mamet. "State And Main"
Mamet is a genius. If you haven't seen it? Do.

When you are confronted with absurdity? you say: So that happened.
see the movie and you'll know.
But what other verbal tics do I have?
what stolen phrases...

don't be that guy
jumped the shark
but that's another Oprah
so I've got that going for me

(when you mention something that is not going well at all, actually. "hey did I tell you I have Kidney stones? so I've got that going for me..." that was from Caddyshack of all things...)
think about it, take inventory.
what are your verbal tics, your conversational crutches?
I have like 5 that I can think of just specific to Turbo.
what to do when a child is so adept at annoying behavior as turbo is?
I would say
"it's not WHAT you're doing...it's WHERE you're doing it."
if you want to hop on one leg and go "mang! mang! mang!"
great! express yourself!...but....
in your room! not in the kitchen where I am...
that got shortened to "where are you doing that?"
"umm...in my room?"
perfecto!
when he would get a little too smart mouthed?
"umm...who are you talking to?"
it goes on...

what's my point?
none really. I just am airing one of my ocd's
I think incessantly about the words we say...
I used to say "very occasionally " to impart the idea of "rarely" but occasionally has no need for a modifier.
Rarely can be modified (very rarely?) to mean rare in the extreme...

think about all the words that leave your lips.
i do.
I think about the words that leave yours and mine....


* this friend said I need to get a flea and tic collar for all of mine...so, they are many and varied?
** double dip, re-gift,yadda yadda yadda, festivus etc..
*** so that's social...demented and sad..but social
**** Yeah Boy!, Aight, Biatch!