Worty Dird

"Great performances, killer soundtrack, plenty of Beyoncé... Please go see the criminally ignored Cadillac Records." (from Entertainment Weekly, 1/16/09, pg. 7)

I found my old poetry notebook from high school and on the first page I have a definition of figures of speech copied from who knows what dictionary or encyclopedia: "A word of group of words used to give particular emphasis to an idea or sentiment. This special emphasis is typically accomplished by the user's conscious deviation (I love that word) from the strict literal sense of a word, or from the more commonly used form of word order or sentence construction. Such figurative locutions (another great word) have been extensively employed by orators and writers to strengthen and embellish their styles." In other words, "criminally" is a very funny word when put in front almost anything, but it struck me especially in the EW quote before "ignored." Not to kill the humor by explaining the joke, but obviously ignoring a movie is not illegal and therefore not criminal. You can tell me I have a sick sense of humor, but take a serious word like "insane," put "criminally in front of it, and suddenly it's funny to me. Comic books and horror movies use it all the time. Just take some synonyms for "funny" and put "criminally" in front: "amusing, blithe, capricious, droll, gay, gelastic, jocular, ludicrous (remember Spaceballs?), playful, and side-splitting" (from Yahoo Answers). Those last two paint some very bizarre/disturbing pictures, but funny too. For bathroom humor, there's criminally diarrhetic. If you're above that, there's oxymorons like criminally immaculate, criminally justified, and criminally legit (as in II legit II criminally quit). Got more?

For those who are interested in my new "Deep Thinkings" label, I got the idea for quotes followed by journal entries from my 11th grade English class. I still have a list of well-known proverbs, quotes, and sayings from my teacher that I keep in the aforementioned poetry notebook. Here's my first quote-and-journal entry from 9/19/96:

"Human beings are not perfectible, they are improvable." - Severeid

All my goals point toward progression, plain and simple. I believe all good involves progression and all bad involves digression. Going along on a plateau in life can't be good because it doesn't wholly meet the definition of progressin, which involves constant improvement. Furthermore, I believe unattainable perfection to be a misnomer. I agree that there is no end to the need for improvement, but I disagree that perfection is not also an eternal principle, as the quote would imply. At the point that a human being no longer undulates by digressing, even in the slightest, then a state of eternal progression in perfection has been achieved. One could argue that a concept like this would not essentially be eternal, because a point, as suggested above, would be required. However, it would just be the culmination of all terrestrial truth, not a zenith gradations, but a nexus point. Under my outlook, both eternal and mortal timeframes can be lived in. All truth would be infinite, yet its focus definite. I've pondered perception a lot - perfection is merely misperceived.

Uh . . . wow. Where did I come up this stuff?