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The first two items are true stories in the news recently. A friend from Missouri sent the third item to me. I doubt if it’s also a true story but in Arkansas anything is possible.

 

Linda Burnett, 23, was visiting her in-laws in San Diego and went to a nearby supermarket to pick up some groceries. A customer who had been in the store for some time noticed Burnett sitting in her car with the windows rolled up and her eyes closed, clutching the back of her head with both hands.

 

The customer walked over to the car and asked Burnett if she was okay whereupon Burnett replied that she had been shot in the back of the head and had been holding her brains in for over an hour.

 

When the paramedics arrived, they were forced to break into the car because the doors were locked and Burnett refused to remove her hands from her wound.

 

Upon close examination it was discovered that Burnett had a wad of Pillsbury biscuit dough stuck on the back of her head. Apparently, the biscuit canister had exploded from the heat, making a loud noise that was mistaken for a gunshot, and when Burnett reached back to find out what had happened she felt the dough and assumed her brains were coming out of the back of her head. She had originally passed out but soon recovered, then spent over an hour trying to prevent her brains from leaking out any further.

 

Let this be a warning -- if you’re ever shot in the back of the head and your brains are seeping out, leave your car door unlocked so you can keep a lid on the brain seepage until help arrives and they don’t have to break the car window. Also, have your head examined just to make sure you really don’t have biscuit dough for brains.

 

*  *  *

 

A wedding took place recently at Clemson University with 300 guests. At the reception after the wedding, the groom thanked everyone for coming, many from long distances. As a token of his appreciation he announced he had a special gift for each guest, including the wedding party, taped to the bottom of each chair.

 

Upon opening the special gifts, the room went silent. Inside each manila envelope was an 8X10 glossy of his bride having sex with the best man. The groom turned to the best man and uttered a couple of words that most newspapers won’t print. He turned to his bride and repeated the phrase. Then he told the crowd, “I’m outta here,” and marched out of the room.

 

The following morning, the groom had the marriage annulled. The parents of the bride had spent over $32,000 on the wedding and reception, and another $3,000 for photographs.

 

Some guys have all the luck -- it took me five years to get out of my marriage.

 

*  *  *

 

An Arkansas farmer drove to a neighboring farm and knocked on the door.

 

A young boy about 12 years old opened the door.

 

“Is your paw home?” the farmer asked.

 

“He went into town,” the boy told him.

 

“Well, is your maw here?”

 

“No sir, she ain’t here neither. She went into town with paw.”

 

“How about your brother Merle?” asked the farmer.

 

“He went with maw and paw,” the boy said.

 

“Well, I really need to talk to your paw. It’s about your brother Merle getting my daughter pregnant.”

 

“You really need to talk to paw about that,” replied the boy. “If it helps any, paw charges 50 bucks for the bull and 25 bucks for the boar hog, but I really ain’t got no idea how much he gets for Merle.”

 

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Quote for the Day -- "The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.” Harlan Ellison

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Bret Burquest is the author of 9 books. He lives in the Ozark Mountains with a dog named Buddy Lee and where dreams are who you are when you're too tired to be you.

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In September 2002, parliamentary elections took place in Algeria resulting in the formation of a new government. The King retained powers to appoint key ministers, including the Prime Minister and the Minister of Justice. Thus, the illusion of a democracy began to take shape in the northwestern corner of the Sahara Desert.

 

Moroccan journalist, Ali Lmrabet, is the general manager of Demain, a weekly satirical magazine, and a correspondent of the French media watchdog Reporters Sans Frontieres. In an October issue of Demain, he published an article about the possible sale of a royal palace to foreign investors.

 

In November, Lmrabet was arrested and prosecuted for ”diffusing false information in breach of peace or likely to be a breach of peace.” According to the prosecutor, Lmrabet was undermining the authority of the state. He was sentenced to four months in prison and any future publication of Demain was banned.

 

Ten days later, the prosecutor appealed the case, seeking a more severe sentence.

 

On May 22, the First Appeal Court of Rabat sentenced Lmrabet to four years in prison and also levied a fine equivalent to $2,000 US dollars. He was immediately sent to prison after the sentence was handed down.

 

On May 29, his royal majesty King Mohammed VI made a speech to his nation on Moroccan TV, announcing an end to leniency in dealing with those who “take advantage of democracy.” He claimed that some citizens had been misusing the freedom of opinion. He insisted, “exercising one’s rights and freedoms entails necessarily that the duties and obligations inherently attached to citizenship be fulfilled.”

 

In other words, one is free to express an opinion as long as that opinion reflects the opinion of those in power.

 

He ended his speech by claiming that Moroccans “will find me, as their first servant, in the front line, repelling anyone who attempts to pull the country backward.”

 

What a great guy – a servant of the people fighting on the front line to preserve the obligation of the people to speak favorably of his rule.

 

In the interest of humanity and for the sake my own sanity (such as it is), please allow me to address your royal majesty with a few observations:

 

1) A democracy is a government where the supreme power is invested in the people and exercised by them through a system of representation usually involving periodic freely held elections. If you are a king in a democracy it is your duty to pose for currency and to attend ribbon-cutting ceremonies. It is not your duty to repel anyone who is pulling your country backward. If anyone is pulling your country backward it is you.

 

2) It is not possible to use democracy to undermine the state authority. The democracy itself is the state authority. Suppressing the freedom of speech and freedom of the press undermines a democracy. It may make the state authority stronger but destroys any semblance of rule by the people.

 

3) A journalist is simply a person reporting the news, perhaps even satirically at times. To confine a journalist in a cement box to rot for four years for doing his job, or even expressing an opinion, is outrageous. Life is difficult enough without being under the thumb of barbaric rulers with no concept of common decency.

 

4) You are a disgusting human being. You should be chained to a heavy object outside your palace gate where children can toss peanuts at you. Comparing you to a pile of camel dung would be an insult to camels.

 

5) If there is any justice on this Orb of Wounded Souls there will come a time in every person’s existence, be it here or in another dimension, where they shall reap what they have sown.

 

Morocco is a wonderful place if you want to get a taste of what life was like in 1400. Needless to say, I won’t be travelling there soon. I prefer to stay here in Arkansas where it’s about 1959 these days.

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Quote for the Day -- “Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear." Harry S. Truman

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Bret Burquest is the author of 9 books. He lives in the Ozark Mountains with a dog named Buddy Lee and where freedom of speech is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

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A couple of years ago, ABC TV news had a fluff story about a six-year-old girl named Abby in Naples, Fla., who set up a lemonade stand at the end of her driveway. According to the report, one of the neighbors had complained to authorities that Abby didn’t have a license to conduct such a business at that location. Abby’s mother, with the press in tow, went to city hall and obtained a business license, issued for free on a temporary basis, for her daughter. Soon Abby was back in business and everyone felt fuzzy all over because of the happy ending.

 

Perhaps it’s just my nature, but I didn’t feel fuzzy all over.

 

First of all, I doubt if any of the neighbors cared if the girl had a business license. Most likely a neighbor was concerned because of the various problems caused by a lemonade stand at the end of a driveway. Abby’s neighborhood had narrow streets and no sidewalks. There was a column of bushes alongside the driveway blocking the lemonade stand, which appeared to be within two feet of the street, from oncoming traffic in one direction. It was an accident waiting to happen. Perhaps one of the neighbors perceived a dangerous situation and called authorities. Or perhaps one of the neighbors didn’t care to have cars stopping in the street or parking on their lawn.

 

Believe it or not, some people who don’t have kids don’t necessarily find the offspring of their neighbors to be delightful little creatures. Many kids tend to be noisy, reckless and downright irritating. They consider the entire neighborhood, including other yards and the street, to be their entitled playground.

 

Conversely, responsible adults assume the street is for automobile traffic, not a recreational area for rowdy children. A neighbor upset about a kid setting up shop at the end of a driveway has a legitimate complaint.

 

In my opinion, everyone except Abby acted inappropriately.

 

The neighbor who made the complaint was inappropriate. Enterprising kids all over America have been opening lemonade stands in their driveways ever since they invented lemons and driveways. I had one when I was in the third grade. Most kids learn the hard lessons of business right away. You sell several glasses the first day or two, mostly to kind-hearted neighbors, then it tapers off. You spend hours sitting there alone wondering if Bill Gates started this way. After about a week, you close up shop. If the complaining neighbor had a little more patience, the lemonade stand would have probably disappeared in short order.

 

Abby’s mother reacted inappropriately. Instead of recognizing the numerous problems of the stand at the end of a driveway, she was determined to have her way. If it disturbed some of the neighbors, the stand didn’t belong there. She should have taught her child to be more considerate of others and put a stop to it.

 

The City of Naples blew it too. They gave the girl a free business license. Soon other kids in Naples opened lemonade stands, wanting similar treatment. The city was then forced to accommodate everyone or shut them all down. Just because you’re a cute little girl doesn’t give you any more rights than anyone else.

 

With all the national publicity, including an appearance on the David Letterman TV show, Abby’s lemonade enterprise did volume business. She even had to recruit some friends to keep up with the demand.

 

In my warped sense of justice, it all disintegrated into a sad lack of closure. Traffic had grossly increased in the once tranquil neighborhood. The complaining neighbor will probably be ostracized and may even be forced to move. Abby’s mother had encouraged her daughter to be self-centered. The City of Naples undoubtedly incurred legal fees.

 

Abby has had her 15 minutes of fame and must now deal with the consequences, which may include being responsible for a neighborhood feud and the inevitability of closing a popular tourist attraction.

 

One person’s happy ending is another person’s notion of a big fat mess.

 

Speaking of being fuzzy all over, I recently discovered a fuzzy object on the bottom shelf in my refrigerator. It was dark blue and wiggled a bit when I reached for it. If I’m not mistaken, it was originally a lemon.

___________

 

Quote for the Day -- "I believe that if life gives you lemons, you should make lemonade… and try to find somebody whose life has given them vodka and have a party." Ron White

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Bret Burquest is the author of 9 books. He lives in the Ozark Mountains with a dog named Buddy Lee and where being fuzzy all over sometimes means it's time for the monthly bath.

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Except for conceiving and raising them, one of the hardest things involved with bringing children into the world is agreeing on a name.

 

For many years, Michael has been the most popular name for a boy. Lately, names like Cody, Wyatt and Dustin have been moving up the list in popularity.

 

Believe it or not, my cousin in Phoenix has a neighbor who had difficulty coming up with a name for his kids so he named them after the model name of his two trucks: Cheyenne and Sierra. I wonder what other vehicle names he was considering, perhaps Volvo and Hummer.

 

Some people come up with even more outlandish names. Rock star, Frank Zappa, named two of his kids Dweezle and Moon Unit. When your last name is Zappa, I guess anything is fair game.

 

A couple of years ago, a New York couple expecting a baby boy within the next 30 days put up a web site where they accepted bids from corporations. They intended to name their son after the highest bidder, such as Pepsi, Ajax, Goodyear or Microsoft.

 

It’s bad enough to name your kids after the model of the truck sitting in your front yard, but this is going a little too far. To me, this is another sign that civilization as we know it is about to come to an end.

 

Some of the potential names this poor kid could be saddled with include:

 

1) Mr. Clean

2) Dr. Pepper

3) Green Giant

4) Drano

5) Minute Maid

6) WD-40

7) Easy Off

8) Roach Motel

9) Captain Crunch

10) General Electric

11) Brillo

12) Amazon.com

13) Stop Leak

14) Frito-Lay

15) Taco Bell

16) Jiffy Pop

17) Milky Way

18) Spam

19) Fruit of the Loom

20) I can't Believe It's Not Butter

 

So what would you name your baby boy if you had to name him after a corporate sponsor??

 

Personally, I think I'd name him Stop Leak or Drano, and send him to medical school.

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Quote for the Day -- The weather is here, wish you were beautiful.

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Bret Burquest is the author of 9 books. He lives in the Ozark Mountains with a dog named Buddy Lee and occasionally talks to trees.

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There are several schools of thought on how to raise your children.

 

1) You can teach them that if they don’t have something nice to say, they shouldn’t say it at all.

2) You can teach them to be honest at all times and let the chips fall where they may.

3) You can let them to learn life on their own and form their own set of values.

 

As long as your intentions are what's best for your children, there is not right or wrong way to raise them.

 

But no matter which method you use, your children are doomed to a life of conflict.

 

Those who are taught to only say nice things are doomed to be untrustworthy. These people try to tell you what they think you want to hear. They’d rather tell you a lie or say nothing at all if they think they might hurt your feelings. And when you catch someone in a lie, you can never trust that person again.

 

Those who are taught to be honest at all times are doomed to alienate people. A lot of people don’t really want to hear the truth because sometimes the truth is unbearable. Nobody wants to think they have faults and certainly don’t want them pointed out. They’d rather live a life of denial than face reality.

 

Those who are left to learn on their own are doomed to struggle through life with no direction. With no defined set of values, a person tends to experiment. Sometimes they will be honest, other times they will say what they think the other person wants to hear. And if it suits them they will lie through their teeth. Basically, they will take on the personality that fits the situation. Many in this category are in high political office or jail, depending on their guile.

 

I was taught to always be honest. This could explain why I live alone in the middle of nowhere.

 

I dedicate the remainder of this piece to all of those who were raised under the illusion you are being kind if your philosophy is the deception of "niceness" -- i.e., if you have nothing nice to say, you shouldn’t say it at all.

 

Butterflies and rainbows are nice.

 

Puppies and kittens are nice.

 

Babies are nice.

 

Well-behaved children are nice.

 

Considerate adults are nice.

 

People who help people are nice.

 

People who help animals are nice.

 

People who respect the environment are nice.

 

People who don’t litter are nice.

 

People who don’t smoke in public places are nice.

 

People who don’t use the world as an ashtray and discard their cigarette butts wherever they may be standing are nice.

 

People who don’t give their young kids ATV’s and allow them to drive like maniacs on dusty county roads are nice.

 

People who don’t play their music so loud that their neighbors are forced to take extreme action before they go completely insane are nice.

 

People who don’t discharge firearms so close to occupied dwellings that their neighbors are forced to duck for cover or return fire are nice.

 

I sense I’d better quit now. I can utter only so many nice things at one sitting.

 

If you want to hear only nice things, don’t bother striking up a conversation with someone who was taught to be honest -- they might wind up telling you something you don’t want to hear, like the truth.

 

If you are not ashamed to think it, you should not be embarrassed to say it.

 

When you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.

___________

 

Quote for the Day -- “Silence becomes cowardice when occasion demands speaking out the whole truth and acting accordingly.” Mahatma Gandhi

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Bret Burquest is the author of 9 books. He lives in the Ozark Mountains with a dog named Buddy Lee and where the truth will set you free, but first it may annoy you.

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Being rich simply means having acquired much more wealth than others. If everyone is rich, on one is rich.

 

First of all, there are several ways to never become rich. Avoid the following options:

 

1) Working for the government – Good job security but no financial bonanza to be had here.

 

2) Working for someone else -- Fat cats who own the company get rich, you get down-sized.

 

3) Gambling -- The only person who ever wins the lottery is some dimwit who accidentally gets into the wrong line and buys a ticket, usually a single ticket, simply to avoid the embarrassment of standing in the wrong line.

 

4) Marriage -- Marrying into money is highly competitive and potentially humiliating. You must be young and attractive, with an overwhelming desire to hang out with old codgers.

 

5) Theft -- Stealing is a real a bad idea. On the plus side, you will get to spend many years in a rent-free environment, with free meals and lots of exciting social encounters.

 

6) Inheritance -- An excellent road to riches. However, unless your family is rich, this probably won’t work.

 

There are two major ways to become rich: real estate and starting your own business.

 

More people have become millionaires through real estate than by any other method. To get started, take real estate classes and become a realtor. This will get you into the business, help you find properties, work negotiations, deal with financing, etc. Basically, you buy under-valued and/or high-potential property, with favorable financing, whereby you can repair and rent the property with a positive cash flow.

 

Real estate is a long-term prospect. It takes years to acquire properties, continually using them as financial leverage to acquire additional properties. But your wealth is basically tied up in the worth of the property rather than with a high cash flow. As you make money, you must spend it to continue to expand. Plus you must deal with bad tenants, property maintenance, vacancies, etc. This would be a headache business for most people.

 

Starting your own business is another alternative. Find a field that interests you, then get some experience. If you want to open a beauty shop or a welding business or a computer software company, get a job in a beauty shop or a welding business or a computer software company. Offer to work for minimal wages – after all, you’re getting paid to learn a trade. Volunteer to do additional tasks, such as helping with the accounting or inventory or sales or whatever. Learn the business before you strike out on your own.

 

Starting your own business usually requires some start-up capital. The government offers many business loans to beginners, especially woman and minorities. Make a presentation to a bank loan officer – even if that fails, you’ll learn how to make a better presentation next time.

 

You can even get started without much capital. If you have a bucket, a sponge and a squeegee, you can start a window washing business. If you have a lawn mower and a rake, you can start a lawn service. If you have a pickup and a chain saw, you can sell firewood. Once you establish a steady flow of clients, you hire people to meet the demand. Over time, you oversee the business while others are working for you.

 

It's not all that difficult to make money -- it's a lot harder to make a difference.

 

Those who succeed work long hours and slowly build a business. But there are no guarantees. Nine out of ten new businesses fail within the first year. On the other hand, some enterprises have grown into giants.

 

Then there’s the easy way to be rich. It starts when you realize there are more important things in life than the pursuit of the almighty dollar. No one ever goes to their grave wishing they had spent more time on the job. Quality of life is measured by the amount of time you spend doing what you want to do, when you want to do it.

 

The richest people in the world are the ones who don’t need riches to find happiness -- it's better to live rich than to die rich.

 

By the way, the best tax shelter is to keep income at a minimum. Plus, remaining poor requires less effort than becoming rich. So enjoy life and let the rich fight it out. Be poor and happy. It works great for me.

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Quote for the Day -- "Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver." Ayn Rand

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Bret Burquest is the author of 9 books. He lives in the Ozark Mountains with a dog named Buddy Lee, where his riches are his friends, his freedom and his memories.

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There is no cure for the common birthday.

 

Today (August 10) is another birthday for me. It’s amazing how quickly time passes when you’re on the downhill skid of the last half of your life. Traditionally, I almost always spend much of a birthday trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my life. This year is no exception.

 

When I was knee-high to an aardvark, somewhere in grade school, most of the guys I hung out with wanted to be policemen or firemen or cowboys or outlaws. Something with a bit of danger involved. I was no different, except my dream was more unusual than most – I wanted to be a treasure hunter. There would be tons of adventure in exotic places involving a potential of danger with vast riches waiting to be discovered.

 

After high school, I became a tad more realistic and yearned to be an architect. It required creative and technical skills, and had a high ceiling of compensation. I started college at the University of Minnesota as a math major, planning to enroll into architectural school after I had completed the prerequisites. Some of the required courses were art classes, including drawing. Having no aptitude for such things, my life reverted back to the directionless stage.

 

In my sophomore year, I decided to become a geologist. It required some technical skill and the possibility of adventure in exotic places. So I took an introductory geology course and nearly died of boredom.

 

Then one day I read a newspaper article about how computers were going to play a major role in the future and there would soon be a big demand for computer programmers. It sounded like an interesting profession involving technical skills with plenty of prestige and compensation. I immediately announced to family and friends that I was going to start a new life as a computer programmer. Since they were all tired of hearing about my next new life, I had an extra incentive to do it and stick it out to the end.

 

Miami-Dade College, UNLV and San Jose State were considered to be the three best schools for computer technology at the time. All were a long drive from Minneapolis and Miami-Dade was the cheapest so I headed down to Miami in August of 1964 in a ‘53 Chevy to start another new life. After I finished all the computer courses and returned to Minnesota, I started working in St. Paul as a computer programmer.

 

Before long, I was drafted into the U.S. Army and spent two years as a data processing analyst at a small Army post in Atlanta. Afterward, I went back to Minnesota to re-start my life once again, this time by returning to the University of Minnesota to earn my BS and MS degrees. Then I got back into the wonderful world of computers as a programmer and project leader.

 

Eventually, I moved to Los Angeles where I started another new life by working my way up the ladder as a senior systems analyst, later as a general manager of a software company and soon became self-employed as a consultant.

 

During this period, I started a new phase of life as a married man. Six years later, I started a new phase of life as a divorced man. I also spent much of my free time writing screenplays, trying desperately to start a new life in the movie business.

 

In my 40s, I quit the rat race and started another new life as a treasure hunter after all, spending the next six years prospecting for gold, mostly in central Arizona. When life as a desert rat wore off, I moved to the hills of Arkansas to start another new life as a college instructor, newspaper columnist and novelist.

 

After retiring on Social Security, I now have nine published books -- four novels and five nonfiction books containing numerous articles on various topics.

 

Starting a new life is easy. All it costs is money, energy and time. And in many cases, you’ll move from one rut of existence into another rut of existence.

 

But life is a journey and full of ruts. If you’re lucky or smart, you may eventually figure out what to do with the rest of your life. Unfortunately, I’ve never been lucky and am apparently not too smart either. I’m still trying to figure it out.

 

What to be or not to be – that is the question.

 

I suspect the answer is that my destiny is to forever be a seeker of the answer. Hopefully, by my next birthday I will forget the question and merely be.

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Quote for the Day -- "I'm at an age when my back goes out more than I do." Phyllis Diller

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Bret Burquest is the author of 9 books. He lives in the Ozark Mountains with a dog named Buddy Lee and where what will be will be.

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Arkansas is known as the Land of Opportunity. Many people from Arkansas have taken advantage of that opportunity on their way to fame and fortune.

 

Entrepreneurs thrive in Arkansas.

 

Sam Walton was a native of Newport, Ark., who opened his first Wal-Mart store in Bentonville in 1962. When he died in 1992, he was the richest man in America with more than 1,600 stores in 32 states. Today, Wal-Mart has over 3,400 stores in America and another 1,000 internationally. It employs 1.2 million people, second only to the federal government, and had $244 billion in revenue last year.

 

Other successful entrepreneurs include Don Tyson, CEO of Tyson Foods, the largest poultry processor in the country, and J.B. Hunt, founder of the largest truck carrier in North America.

 

Arkansas has produced its share of musical artists. Johnny Cash was born in Kingsland in 1932, to a family of sharecroppers who later moved to Dyess. A legend in country music, he was elected to the Country Hall of Fame in 1980 and the Rock-and-Roll Hall of Fame in 1992. Others include Glen Campbell and Conway Twitty.

 

Many other famous people have been spawned in Arkansas. A partial list includes Gen. Douglas MacArthur (soldier), Alan Ladd (actor), John Grishman (novelist), Paul “Bear” Bryant (football coach), Dizzy Dean (baseball player), Mark Martin (racecar driver), Helen Gurley Brown (publisher) and Jennifer Flowers (concubine).

 

By the way, the forty-second President of the United States was from Arkansas. He spent eight years either feeling your pain or giving you a pain, depending on your level of gullibility. He now resides elsewhere with his wife Hillary, where he is currently writing his memoirs. Some pains never seem to go away.

 

There’s also a long list of people from Arkansas who remain unknown to the general public, but their contributions to humanity have forever changed the course of human events.

 

Harley Farley – In 1947, Farley had indoor plumbing installed in his house in Viola. He tore the old outhouse down and used the lumber to enclose his back porch, including his washing machine. Thus the first utility room in Arkansas came into existence, a trend that appears to have caught on nationally.

 

Abner Skittles – On July 24, 2001, Skittles caught a largemouth bass on Bulls Shoals Lake that weighed 38 pounds and 11 ounces, a new world record. Unfortunately, Skittles wasn’t too bright. The largemouth bass turned out to be a Goodyear tire. However, due to a clerical error, it’s still listed as the world record.

 

Lloyd Floyd – Born in Toad Suck in 1807, Floyd was the inspiration for the invention of the spittoon. He always had a mouthful of chaw and paid no attention to his surroundings whenever he needed to relieve himself of some of it. The receptacle made little difference though; Floyd tended to drool and was a bad shot anyway.

 

Betty Sue Ledbetter – Having made over 220 predictions, Ledbetter is the world’s most accurate negative psychic. Nothing she foresees has ever come true. She once predicted that America would have a six-month drought. Two days later, it rained so hard her mobile home in Horseshoe Bend became a houseboat.

 

Waylon Smucker – As a young musician from Calico Rock, Smucker formed a band in 1957 that had an annoying beat and would shout words instead of singing them. They called their style “rap music” because they were often told to “rap it up and get out of here.” Forty years later, rap music became popular once again.

 

Billy Clodhopper – Raised on a hill near Gepp, Billy had a cousin named Billy who lived down in a hollow. To keep from being confused, a common occurrence among the Clodhopper clan, they call them “Hillbilly” and “Hollowbilly.” Hillbilly eventually became part of the English language to describe a backwoods dunderhead.

 

Gus “Bubba” Ballas – As a breeder of exotic animals on his farm near Moko, Ballas crossbred a possum with a raccoon. He called it a poon. It looked like a sewer rat wearing a mask. Today, he’s the largest breeder of poons in the world. He also crossed a possum with a skunk, called a punk, but it smelled like a French armpit.

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Quote for the Day -- "In my hometown of Hope, Arkansas, the three sacred heroes were Jesus, Elvis and FDR, not necessarily in that order." Mike Huckabee (former Governor of Arkansas)

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Bret Burquest is the author of 9 books. He lives in the Ozark Mountains with a dog named Buddy Lee and where life in the Land of Opportunity is bountiful.

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The average person speaks 31,500 words per day. Since I only utter about 47 words per day, mostly to my dog, I once again find myself at the far, lonely end of the Bell Curve.

 

The main problem with the English language is that it was invented by the English, a race of island bound twits whose major contributions to the human race are cricket and Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

 

To insure the human race has plenty to say, the Oxford English Dictionary folks recently added 3,500 new words to their dictionary, last updated in 1993. Politics and current affairs are monitored closely for new words, as are contemporary subject areas such as technology, food, films and television.

 

Some of the new words originating in Great Britain due to NEW LABOUR’S election victory (a few years ago) are OLD LABOUR, NEW LABOUR, CLAUSE FOUR, BLAIRISM and BLAIRITE.

 

British initiatives such as LITERACY HOUR, STAKEHOLDER PENSIONS and BACK TO BASICS were also added, along with topical words and phrases like ASYLUM SEEKER, ASYMMETRICAL, WARFARE, BED-BLOCKING, BENEFIT TOURIST, ECONOMIC MIGRANT, IDENTITY POLITICS, JUST WAR, NAME AND SHAME, SPIN CONTROL and SPINMEISTER.

 

Slang terms from Great Britain include ANORAKY, BLING-BLING, EARLY DOORS, GOALHANGER, GO COMMANDO, GET REAL, SHEDLOAD and WEDGIE.

 

Slang terms from the USA are ASS-BACKWARDS, BADASS, BOGART, ECONOBOX, GOOF-PROOF, LOOSEY-GOOSEY, LOSINGEST and STICKER SHOCK.

 

Other USA inputs include THE FORCE, JEDI, KLINGONS, GRINCHES, GEARHEADS, CARJACKING, CONTROL FREAKS, DVDs, LINE DANCING, LAP DANCING, PASHMINAS, ROAD RAGE, SHOCK JOCKS, SPEED CAMERAS, SUPERMODELS, BUNNY-HUGGERS and BUNNY-BOILERS.

 

A BUNNY-HUGGER is defined as a conservationist or animal lover, while a bunny-boiler is a vindictive woman, as portrayed by Glenn Close in the movie “Fatal Attraction.”

 

A close examination of the new dictionary reveals that they missed a few new words, including:

 

WEED-EATER – A vegetarian on a tight budget who lives near a deep ditch.

 

INOCULATTE – to take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

 

INTAXICATION – Excitement at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money in the first place.

 

BLAMESTORMING – A group discussion attempting to find an excuse for missing a deadline and finding someone to blame.

 

KARMAGEDDON – When the human race reaps what it sows.

 

HIPATITIS – An inflammation of coolness.

 

GIRAFFITI – Vandalism spray-painted in very high places.

 

GLIBIDO – All talk and no action.

 

TEXAS BOASTER – All hat and no cattle.

 

OHNOSECOND – The miniscule fraction of time when you realize you just made a colossal, non-reversal mistake.

 

DOPELER EFFECT – The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly and quickly disappear into the background.

 

YONG – A state of confusion when your yin and yang are out of balance.

 

REINTARNATION – Coming back to life as a hillbilly.

 

FOREPLOY – A misrepresentation of oneself for the purpose of an intimate interlude.

 

SARCHASM – The gap between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn’t get it.

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Quote for the Day -- "Some people have a way with words, and other people… oh, uh, not have way." Steve Martin

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Bret Burquest is the author of 9 books. He lives in the Ozark Mountains with a dog named Buddy Lee and occasionally uses words to express himself.

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