I asked you to tell me where you’ve been all afternoon!
Don’t tell me again that you were over at Jimmy’s because
I called and he told me that you weren’t there. Now, tell me
the truth!
Mother, do you have the audacity to doubt my veracity and to
insinuate that I prevaricate when I am as pure and undefiled as the
icicles that hang from a church steeple?
Johnny’s mother didn’t say any more at the time because she decided to use her vocabulary resources to prepare a
proper sesquipedalian response.
John, my son, please transport from that recumbent collection of
fragmentary combustibles to the threshold of this edifice two curtailed expressions of defunct logs and do it in this present tense of contiguous chronology!
For none who claims to represent
The “homo” species sapient
Will loiter Einstein’s fourth dimension
Or sea’s quotidian declension.
Translation
#18.
Faced with material esculent
As source of liquid nourishment,
Avoid excess—’twill but displease—
Of culinary expertise.
Translation
#19.
It is fruitless to endure lacrimation over precipitately departed
lacteal fluid.
Translation #20.
A revolving lathic conglomerate accumulates no diminutive
glaucous brophitic plants.
Translation #21.
Missiles of ligneous or crystalline consistency have the
potential for fracturing my osseous structure, but appellations
will eternally be benign.
Translation #22.
Members of an avian species of identical plummage
congregate.
Translation #25.
Individuals who make their abode in vitreous edifices would be
advised to refrain from catapulting petrous projectiles.
Translation #26.
Exclusive dedication to necessary chores without interludes of
hedonistic diversion renders John a hepetudinous fellow.
Translation #27.
I entered the abode of the tonsorial artist to have my hirsute
appendage diminished.
Translation #29.
They were seated on adjoining stools in a dimly lighted
cocktail lounge. “Honey,” he said, “what about
forgetting your inhibitions and spending a quiet weekend with me
at the beach?”
“See here,” she answered, “after an
exhaustive perusal of the corpus of documented evidence garnered
by research on heterosexuality as applied to contemporary
sociological mores, and in view of the innate predisposition to
the more exotic manifestations of concupiscence evident in your
demeanor, a categorical negative is my response.”
“I don't get it,” he said.
“That’s right,” she exclaimed!
Here is part of a letter written by a government bureaucrat in
response to a plumber's question about using hydrochloric acid to
clean out some water pipes.
“The efficacy of hydrochloric acid is indisputable, but
the corrosive residue is incompatible with metallic
permanence.”
The plumber wrote back that he hoped that the government
bureaucrat agreed that it was useful to use hydrochloric acid,
but he said he didn’t understand the meaning of the letter.
Would the official clarify what he meant.
The government official wrote back, “Don’t use
hydrochloric acid to clean water pipes. It eats hell out of the
pipes!”
Verbosity and circumlocution are too often substituted today
for clear, direct expression. What Shakespearean play title, for
instance, might now be worded like this?
“There is an ongoing viability to the aggregate of human
enterprises that attain a terminal configuration without being
adversely impacted.”
—As seen in a Book-of-the-Month-Club pamphlet several
years ago [date unknown].
Translation #32.
“Scintillate, scintillate, globule vivific!
Fain would I fathom thy nature specific,
Distantly poised in the ether capacious,
Closely resembling a gem carbonaceous.”
Translation #33.
A weapon designed with an anti-ballistic trajectory in defiance
of gravity to defend against a transgressing projectile
assault.
Translation #34.
Part 1, if
you want to see it again.
