Colloquial Conundrum Contest

LYRIC O' THE DAY:
Sleep delays my life.
--Get Up, REM


It’s been an amazing few weeks of being a newbie blogger.  I’ve had a blast meeting so many talented and fascinating people.  In honor of my new friends, I decided to hold a little festival.

The inspiration for this celebration is my father.  Occasionally I get an artsy bent, and usually enlist my dad to help me out because he owns many tools and is crazy enough to let me use them.  On Saturday, we went garage sale-ing looking for cheap crystal bowls and such.  On Sunday, we courted electrocution and horrific eye injury while drilling through our trinkets.  Drilling through glass is unsafe enough--doing it while the object is submerged in a roasting pan full of water to keep the drill bit cool may be bordering on Darwin Award territory.  Here’s a sample of our final product:

I love flowers! And these don’t need water!

But the best part of the day was listening to my father’s never ending litany of clever colloquial phrases and metaphors.  These fantastic bits of speech just roll off his tongue; a completely normal part of Bob’s lexicon.  When I was a kid, I was mortified when dad would greet me and my friends with exclamations of how it was hotter than a popcorn fart outside.  My mother perfected the evil one eyebrow raised scowl when he would call her latest concoction tougher than boiled owl.  During election years he’d yell at the TV about the latest politician sounding like a shit salesman with a mouthful of samples.

Except for Dan Rather’s truly unique election night coverage of 2004 and episodes of Swamp People, these verbal gems are sorely under appreciated.  In literature, many novels are peppered with colloquial sayings, especially Mark Twain’s works and Catcher in the Rye.  I feel compelled to give them the spotlight they deserve with the Colloquial Conundrum Contest.

I don’t want to get too technical in terms--I consider colloquialisms to encompass many things others may call slang, metaphor, aphorism, or hyperbole.  If it’s a figure of speech you’ve heard said in your part of the world, that’s what I’m looking for--even “y’all” could be considered a colloquialism.  In its broadest application, it’s simply the manner in which a group speaks.  Here’s how to play:

1.  Put your favorite colloquialism of any type in the comments.

2.  The winner will be chosen at random, but I will give added chances for mentioning this contest on your blog or Twitter.

3.  Following my blog is not necessary, but it would be cool if you did.

The prize?  Well, it involves a literal twist on one of my dad’s sayings.  This one’s a little less colorful than the others, but I use it as inspiration almost every day--at work, at the store, while waiting in line at the DMV. . .

  You’ll get more flies with honey.

The winner will receive a gift basket from It's All About Bees, this fun little store down the street from me that focuses on using bee products in food and beauty items.  Included in the basket is:

Local honey, zesty honey BBQ sauce, Bee Butter body cream, Bee Magic Salve, Buzz off Insect Repellent, Honey sticks, Raw honey (3 flavors), Bee Lip Balm, Honey Almonds, and Choke Cherry Honey Jelly.

The contest will end Sunday, July 31st at midnight, central standard time.  Then I’ll tally and alert the winner on Monday.  Anything goes, after all, there’s more than one way to skin a cat.  And sometimes soda is really pop, except when it’s a Coke.

***Did a quick search of customs rules for food and glass containers, as well as international shipping costs, and unfortunately I will have to keep this one limited to folks in the U.S.  Sorry!