Giving the poor sick dog a break.
Allow me to get the obligatory "I'm a bad blogger / What a slacker" paragraph out of the way right up front. Hmm. Okay. Done.
So I'm sick right now. I wouldn't say I'm quite "sick as a dog," I'm just regular sick. No dogs were harmed in the qualifying of this sickness. What dog are we refering to when we say that anyway? In my experience I've actually known fewer sick dogs than I have sick people, and I never got the impression that dogs are known for their tendancy to be extremely sick. (well, eating your own turds is sick, and dogs do that, but that's not the kind of sick I mean.) So why is it that when we are really, really sick we say "sick as a dog?" I propose that we cut dogs everywhere a little slack and amend this phrase to read "sick as the dog who is really, really fucking sick." I further propose that we allow this new phrase to be shortened to "sick as the dog," assuming that we all understand that the dog in question is the one who is really, really fucking sick.
Glad we're all agreed. So, to correct myself, I am currently sick, though not quite "sick as the dog."
It's one of those coughing, stuffed up kinds of sick, as opposed to the barfing, fevery kind of sick. For those of you keeping score.
Ever notice that whenever you are sick, and tell someone about it, they always say "Oh yeah, there's something going around." And they always know two other people that are sick. I've been wondering about this. Do we really think that we always get sick right in the middle of some sweeping epidemic of sickness, or is this a variation of the "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" thing? I propose (since I seem to be on a proposal roll in this blog) that whenever you are sick, it is inevitable that whoever you tell will know, in their vast circle of aquaintances, two people who are also sick, or at least "a little under the weather." I think that at any given time enough people are sick out there to create this effect. Therefore I think it's pointless to say "There's something going around" because there is always something going around. Let's take the precious time we save by not uttering this phrase and use it to spread the love instead. For example, you could pay the person a compliment:
MAN: "I'm sick today. Sick as the dog."
WOMAN: "That's a lovely cumberbund."
See how much more pleasant that is?
So. To recap:
a) Sick as the dog
b) Cumberbund
Now honestly, don't you prefer it when I don't write in this thing?
Allow me to get the obligatory "I'm a bad blogger / What a slacker" paragraph out of the way right up front. Hmm. Okay. Done.
So I'm sick right now. I wouldn't say I'm quite "sick as a dog," I'm just regular sick. No dogs were harmed in the qualifying of this sickness. What dog are we refering to when we say that anyway? In my experience I've actually known fewer sick dogs than I have sick people, and I never got the impression that dogs are known for their tendancy to be extremely sick. (well, eating your own turds is sick, and dogs do that, but that's not the kind of sick I mean.) So why is it that when we are really, really sick we say "sick as a dog?" I propose that we cut dogs everywhere a little slack and amend this phrase to read "sick as the dog who is really, really fucking sick." I further propose that we allow this new phrase to be shortened to "sick as the dog," assuming that we all understand that the dog in question is the one who is really, really fucking sick.
Glad we're all agreed. So, to correct myself, I am currently sick, though not quite "sick as the dog."
It's one of those coughing, stuffed up kinds of sick, as opposed to the barfing, fevery kind of sick. For those of you keeping score.
Ever notice that whenever you are sick, and tell someone about it, they always say "Oh yeah, there's something going around." And they always know two other people that are sick. I've been wondering about this. Do we really think that we always get sick right in the middle of some sweeping epidemic of sickness, or is this a variation of the "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" thing? I propose (since I seem to be on a proposal roll in this blog) that whenever you are sick, it is inevitable that whoever you tell will know, in their vast circle of aquaintances, two people who are also sick, or at least "a little under the weather." I think that at any given time enough people are sick out there to create this effect. Therefore I think it's pointless to say "There's something going around" because there is always something going around. Let's take the precious time we save by not uttering this phrase and use it to spread the love instead. For example, you could pay the person a compliment:
MAN: "I'm sick today. Sick as the dog."
WOMAN: "That's a lovely cumberbund."
See how much more pleasant that is?
So. To recap:
a) Sick as the dog
b) Cumberbund
Now honestly, don't you prefer it when I don't write in this thing?
posted by CommonWombat at 6:43 PM
2 Comments:
Shmau,
It's time to update your blog!
xxoo
O
Still pillaging your old posts.
You're right about "sick as a dog" being nonsensical. I've always complained about that phrase. Dogs are almost never sick. In fact, my Rottweiler will, from time to time, puke up some green swill on my carpet, but she does it rather cheefully, not appearing to be sick at all. So even when puking, dogs aren't really sick. Phrases that make perfect sense: Dumb as a stump. Mad as a wet hen. Happy as a clam. (I know, we can't tell if clams are truly happy or not, but they DO look like they're smiling, so I say it's a go.) Phrases that don't make sense: Drunk as a skunk. Fit as a fiddle. (Fiddles don't even work out.) Loose as a goose. (Geese are, as far as I can tell, extremely uptight.) Raining cats and dogs. Gay as a wombat. (Actually that one does make sense. Okay, I confess, I made that last one up.)
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