Double Speak

Hello World, Happy Hanukkah! For everyone out there in the wide world celebrating the Festival of Lights, which began on Sunday, I hope that your holiday was not only "de-light-ful," but also delicious and de-lovely, to paraphrase the late and lamented Ira Gershwin. One positive aspect of the rock-solid Christmas lollapalooza is that it stands resolutely firm on the same day in December every year, no matter what. Whereas Hanukkah, like Easter, is more of a slippery character, skittering around from one part of the month to another like a boxful of puppies chasing a ball, so you never know where it's going to turn up next. Sometimes it's early like this year, while other times, it's closer to Christmas - but let's face it, it's always welcome, whenever it chooses to shine its sparkly lights, so break out those dreidels and latkes, and pull out all the stops like a fiddler on the roof. Hava nagila, anyone? Speaking of seasonal observances, two Sundays in Advent are already in the books, as it were, so you know there's no slowing down that yuletide juggernaut at this point, try as you might. It goes without saying that the 25th will be here before we know it, and every mouse that wasn't stirring, or every sugar plum that wasn't dancing already, will suddenly be upon us like a basketful of kittens pouncing on a ball of yarn. Not wasting any time, and right on schedule for holiday gift-giving, apparently Pope Francis has released a music CD (I kid you not) called "Wake Up!" which featured prominently in the USA Life section of our local newspaper recently. The dinosaurs, Grammar Police, assorted curmudgeons, and linguistic sticklers will not be surprised to find that my favorite part was in the opening sentence: "He draws crowds of ecstatic fans wherever he goes, as the media pours over his every word and gesture." Ye gods! "Pours" over? Here I'm thinking that it shouldn't be beyond the grasp of even the over-matched music critics at USA Life to comprehend the distinction between "poring" over and "pouring" over - or if not, to refrain from using the expression in the first place, and choose a simpler phrase more in line with their language mastery so far. Although admittedly, the mental image of the media "pouring" over His Eminence is not one that I'm likely to forget in a hurry, I can tell you that. And while we're on the subject of language mastery, the dinosaurs and I have certainly lived long enough now to recognize for ourselves the curious phenomenon that words have not only lost all of their meaning, heaven knows, but for many of them, their pronunciations as well. Why, I can remember back when we were splashing around in the primordial ooze amidst the great unformed land masses, if someone wanted to subject an item to scientific scrutiny, they would perform what we called an experiment, and it was pronounced exactly the way it looks, with all of its many syllables intact. Nowadays, everywhere you turn, people are doing what they invariably refer to as "eck-SPEAR-mints," which always sounds to me like someone extracting a javelin from a candy dish, and which is to say, something that makes no sense at all. Just recently, I heard a TV commercial for a medical product that I didn't recognize, as the announcer assured me that this treatment from Bare was just what the doctor ordered. When I looked up, I saw that the company in question was not Bare at all, but the internationally renowned Bayer pharmaceutical giant, summarily shrunk down to one measly syllable due to time constraints, one supposes. It reminded me of the local commercials they have for New York's famous Circle Line tour boats, giving sightseers a chance to view attractions such as Gracie Mansion, home of New York's "mares." Inasmuch as they don't allow horses in the building, one can only suppose the announcer meant "mayors" instead. Next it was a college football game, and even though it did not take place in the deep south, where regional accents might come into play, nonetheless the sportscasters in the booth repeatedly referred to the team members as "plares," rather than players, which was as out of place in this far northern contest as hush puppies and mint juleps, I dare say. But it didn't stop there, because hard on its heels was another television commercial, this time for ladies active wear, which they assured me was warm without being bulky, so I could easily dress in "lairs." It sounds a little less ominous when you realize they meant "layers" instead of "lairs," but frankly, the whole situation has just given me such a headache that I'm going to go take some Bare. Also happening around the old stomping grounds lately, I had occasion to visit the bank last week, to straighten out a small but stubborn glitch in one of our checking accounts. Of course, they won't let you do anything with your own account at the bank without iron-clad proof of your identity, heaven knows (I always say that the only people who can easily get into any of my bank accounts are 13-year-old computer hackers from South America, and definitely not me) so I had come prepared with a fistful of documentation, all to attest to the veracity of my claims. I pulled out my drivers license at the request of my new bank friend, the estimable Roderick Fletch, but I had to forewarn him (as alert readers will no doubt recall) that the picture on it makes me look not only like a Mafia hit man, but a dead Mafia hit man at that. In fact, it's one of the reasons that the Police don't bother to arrest me when they see it, because it must be obvious to them that I'm already dead, and my life of crime has long since come to an inglorious end. For his part, I will say that Roderick was too much of a gentleman to flinch at the sight of my license photo, and in fact, he had his own horror story to tell. It seems that his picture was from his younger and wilder days, with unruly hair and a scruffy beard, and a far cry from the clean-cut model citizen before me at the bank. He freely admitted that upon impartial consideration, even he would believe the person pictured was a terrorist with no redeeming qualities, and after seeing the picture myself, I had no other option but to agree with him. And, I pointed out regretfully, he didn't even look dead like I do, marking him as a menace to society still at large, while my supposed reign of terror had mercifully come to a close. Although he agreed with my overall assessment, he insisted that the pictured individual was only temporarily alive in the most tenuous sense, since it would be plain to anyone that he was clearly a suicide bomber, and it was just a matter of time before he joined my dead Mafia hit man in the criminal netherworld. Unfortunately, that eventuality wouldn't be newsworthy on the scale of the Pope's music CD, so we couldn't expect the media to "pour" over us, and more's the pity, I'm sure. Elle