My Tight Ass
I'm not one to brag, but I've got a nice ass. Many a lady has complimented it in my day, and I pooh-pooh it all away, blushing and trying to change the subject onto something that doesn't have to do with that part of me that blackens the sky for those who are unfortunate to live in a toilet bowl. Yes, I do have a soft spot for the maligned and misunderstood bacteria of the world who get shit on day after day...
But I digress. The problem with having a nice ass is that--in my case--it's tight and firm. And my tight ass has got me into a lot of trouble, most recently with my contributing partner. I silently edited the title of one of her posts because she was making an obvious reference to one of my posts--and she botched it all up. She's not a close reader (not to be confused with the project ass who sits across from her, who is a close talker), and it does cause me some discomfort from time to time, kind of like when my hemorrhoids flare up and I have to douse my hole with cream. She has already commented a number of times to me about how she didn't read this or that correctly, and I let it all slide, but it irked me to no end that her title--a reference to something I had written--was wrong. So I sat there for about ten minutes, me and my tight ass stewing over this, and I thought that since I'm not changing any of her ideas or thoughts or overall meaning, then it would be okay to change the title to match my comment (that's what silent editing is, changing a word here or there, or fixing an obvious mistake, without changing the overall idea or meaning, something I did all the time as a project ass and never once got caught doing it, and something editors do all the time, even to books published many times over), but my fellow contributor sniffed my tight ass out like a fart in an elevator, and I stand here red-faced and brown-assed (actually I'm sitting here with swamp-ass because it's hot in this room and my ass is sweating in this cloth chair, but I'm still red-faced and brown-assed).
Yes, my tight ass is the perfectionist in me: It may look good, but it sure does piss people off--or should I say shit people off? But my faux pas indirectly belies the tight ass of my contributing partner. If someone silently edited a title of my post, I would be most grateful, for my tight ass desires perfection, whereas her tight ass desires freedom. We all have tight asses with which we cram with coal--it's just a matter of what types of diamonds we prefer.
But alas, my tight ass has gotten the best of me again, and I must inquire: Does there not seem to be some inconsistency between what my contributing partner revealed in a comment to her post entitled "Highlights of a Weekend" and something she said in her most recent post, "Sherbet and Deer"? In her comment to another blogger, she writes, "Yeah, I think it's actually chamois, but I prefer SHAMMY." But then, in her post she writes, "I hate the fact that now Webster's dictionary is changing the spelling of words because it is the more common misspelling." Do I need to point out that "shammy" became such a popular misspelling that it actually became a proper spelling? Now don't get me and my tight ass wrong: I love the morphing slipperiness of language as much as the next deconstructionist, and I loathe those purists who tout a prescriptive grammar when every linguist worth his word knows that the very essence of language is descriptive in nature, thus rendering the prescriptive aspect an oxymoron if there ever was one. It's not the spelling of the word I take umbrage with; rather, it is the inconsistent logic with which my contributing partner is speaking from. It seems odd that one would rail against those who like looking at deers in the woods from their front porch while eating serbert, while at the same time admiring their newly waxed car sitting in the driveway, the dirty shammy lying in a bucket underneath said porch.
And while I'm on the subject, I always spelled the word pronounced "sure bert" (not "shore bert" for those of you with a slightly different dialect, and not "sure bit" as my grandmother would say) "sorbet." "Sorbet" is the same thing as "serbet" and "serbert", except that "sorbet" is from the French variant of the Persian, whereas "serbet" is the English variant of the Persian. As far as I know, all three spellings are pronounced the same, just as all three spellings of the word pronounced "shammy" ("chamois," "shammy," and "chammy") are all pronounced the same. With this logic, one would think that "Herbert" and "Hebert" would be pronounced the same, but the former is pronounced "her bert" and the latter "ay bare."
And one other note of trivia, after which I promise my tight ass and I will retire for the evening: I was in Pep Boys a number of years ago buying car-cleaning products. My friend told me to buy a shammy, so I spent the better part of my trip looking for a shammy, completely overlooking all of the cam-o-ises I kept finding. I finally asked a sales clerk for a shammy, and he gave me a cam-o-is. It was then that I discovered that a chamois is a shammy is a chammy.
That English language. What a sham.
But I digress. The problem with having a nice ass is that--in my case--it's tight and firm. And my tight ass has got me into a lot of trouble, most recently with my contributing partner. I silently edited the title of one of her posts because she was making an obvious reference to one of my posts--and she botched it all up. She's not a close reader (not to be confused with the project ass who sits across from her, who is a close talker), and it does cause me some discomfort from time to time, kind of like when my hemorrhoids flare up and I have to douse my hole with cream. She has already commented a number of times to me about how she didn't read this or that correctly, and I let it all slide, but it irked me to no end that her title--a reference to something I had written--was wrong. So I sat there for about ten minutes, me and my tight ass stewing over this, and I thought that since I'm not changing any of her ideas or thoughts or overall meaning, then it would be okay to change the title to match my comment (that's what silent editing is, changing a word here or there, or fixing an obvious mistake, without changing the overall idea or meaning, something I did all the time as a project ass and never once got caught doing it, and something editors do all the time, even to books published many times over), but my fellow contributor sniffed my tight ass out like a fart in an elevator, and I stand here red-faced and brown-assed (actually I'm sitting here with swamp-ass because it's hot in this room and my ass is sweating in this cloth chair, but I'm still red-faced and brown-assed).
Yes, my tight ass is the perfectionist in me: It may look good, but it sure does piss people off--or should I say shit people off? But my faux pas indirectly belies the tight ass of my contributing partner. If someone silently edited a title of my post, I would be most grateful, for my tight ass desires perfection, whereas her tight ass desires freedom. We all have tight asses with which we cram with coal--it's just a matter of what types of diamonds we prefer.
But alas, my tight ass has gotten the best of me again, and I must inquire: Does there not seem to be some inconsistency between what my contributing partner revealed in a comment to her post entitled "Highlights of a Weekend" and something she said in her most recent post, "Sherbet and Deer"? In her comment to another blogger, she writes, "Yeah, I think it's actually chamois, but I prefer SHAMMY." But then, in her post she writes, "I hate the fact that now Webster's dictionary is changing the spelling of words because it is the more common misspelling." Do I need to point out that "shammy" became such a popular misspelling that it actually became a proper spelling? Now don't get me and my tight ass wrong: I love the morphing slipperiness of language as much as the next deconstructionist, and I loathe those purists who tout a prescriptive grammar when every linguist worth his word knows that the very essence of language is descriptive in nature, thus rendering the prescriptive aspect an oxymoron if there ever was one. It's not the spelling of the word I take umbrage with; rather, it is the inconsistent logic with which my contributing partner is speaking from. It seems odd that one would rail against those who like looking at deers in the woods from their front porch while eating serbert, while at the same time admiring their newly waxed car sitting in the driveway, the dirty shammy lying in a bucket underneath said porch.
And while I'm on the subject, I always spelled the word pronounced "sure bert" (not "shore bert" for those of you with a slightly different dialect, and not "sure bit" as my grandmother would say) "sorbet." "Sorbet" is the same thing as "serbet" and "serbert", except that "sorbet" is from the French variant of the Persian, whereas "serbet" is the English variant of the Persian. As far as I know, all three spellings are pronounced the same, just as all three spellings of the word pronounced "shammy" ("chamois," "shammy," and "chammy") are all pronounced the same. With this logic, one would think that "Herbert" and "Hebert" would be pronounced the same, but the former is pronounced "her bert" and the latter "ay bare."
And one other note of trivia, after which I promise my tight ass and I will retire for the evening: I was in Pep Boys a number of years ago buying car-cleaning products. My friend told me to buy a shammy, so I spent the better part of my trip looking for a shammy, completely overlooking all of the cam-o-ises I kept finding. I finally asked a sales clerk for a shammy, and he gave me a cam-o-is. It was then that I discovered that a chamois is a shammy is a chammy.
That English language. What a sham.
posted by terriamachine | 8:48 PM
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