(no subject)

[mrissa]

Ever since I saw the relevant movie, I've been going around mentally questioning people's commitment to Sparkle Motion. All sorts of people. The mailbeing. The arborist's secretary. My great-aunt. You; you are not exempt. Sometimes my physical therapist says, "Do you think we could try this with your eyes closed? Because that's more of a challenge to your vestibular system, if you can do it safely." And my mouth says, "Sure," but silently I question her commitment to Sparkle Motion.

In a very silly way, this makes me feel better.

Also it makes me happy in a very silly way when we both sing the same wrong words to Amazing Grace. This happens with my parents and also with timprov, though not with Amazing Grace itself, as we all sing the same right words to that, I'm pretty sure.

Also occasionally my brain asks itself what do I mean, William Blake? and I can answer with confidence that I mean William Blake. And that's good, too.

What really stupid or silly things make you happy or comfort you? They don't have to be movie things. Although these all are.

Comments

[sensational.livejournal.com]

I always pronounce "dilettante" as "diletan-tee" in my head (that's a movie thing). I have a Max next to my computer and when I especially need to be virtuous, I put his hood down (because he's not a monster, then, see). If anybody says "I'm sexy" or "I'm cute," I think "I'm popular to boot" (also a movie thing; same as the first, which worries me a tiny bit).

I'm sure there are more, but I can't think of them right now.

[sensational.livejournal.com]

Oh, oh, whenever I see any kind of reference to the town "Conetoe," which is usually only when I'm going to visit family, I say "Cone toe!" in my head or out loud, depending on company. It's pronounced "kuh nee tuh," but it's been cone toe for me since forever, and it makes me happy.

[moiread]

Oh god. You have that in my head now. "I'm bitchin'! Great hair! The boys all love to stare! I'm wanted! I'm hot! I'm everything you're not!"

[orbitalmechanic.livejournal.com]

Sometimes it's nice to tell a friend that I will do the hating for them, when they are not petty enough to do it themselves. (The actual line is, "Let me carry the hate for both of us" but one doesn't always need to say it.) I think that's an important social function.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Oh yes. Ohhhh yes. Sometimes one's friends are being all reasonable and proportional and stuff. Silly monkeys.

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

My cat chasing her tail. She's not long enough and her tail isn't flexible enough to chase it by running round in a very small circle, so she tries to pounce on it repeatedly when it's not looking. This results in what looks like a small black furry whirlwind, on springs.

Also your mention of Amazing Grace reminded me of the time that I was cheered up by possibly the worst busker in the world, attempting to play Amazing Grace on an alto saxophone. Most buskers can manage at least one out of the usual list of pitch, rhythm and tone, but this guy was cheerfully and loudly producing a noise that sounded like a whooper swan with laryngitis, off-key, with pauses for him to gasp for breath in all the wrong places. "HAM a ... zing ... GRACE how ... sweet ... THE sound ..." It took me the length of the high street to recognise it.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Ista chases her tail only as a demonstration of cuteness. It is her signal for, "Look at the cute dog! Pay attention to the cute dog! Do the cute dog's bidding!"

When markgritter's parents lived in Florida, their neighbor was learning to play the bagpipes very, very badly. It took me a good five minutes to figure out that the tune he was butchering was "The Marine Corps Hymn," and my grandfather's a Marine; it was one of the first tunes I learned to pick out on the piano.

[mightyjesse.livejournal.com]

I like the "huff!" sound my dogs make when they run out of steam mid-bound and their legs collapse and suddenly they are napping! I wish I could fall asleep that fast.

Also, I find the universal smell of babies to be extremely relaxing. Holding babies make me sleepy... And it seems to be a mutual thing, since usually the babies I hold pass the hell out within minutes.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Now *there's* a useful superpower.

[columbina.livejournal.com]

"What do you mean, William Blake?" "I mean William Blake!" is standard house dialogue here in response to anything which one party takes to be a logical continuation of the conversation and the other takes to be a complete non sequitur.

I had to look up Sparkle Motion. I have never seen Donnie Darko and question whether I would have the ability to sit through it. (Note please that is not a judgement on the quality of the film, but instead one on the quality of me.)

[pixelfish.livejournal.com]

"I'm just passing through on my way to Australia." You could have knocked me down with a feather when I saw it quoted in a Jenny Crusie book. (Faking It.)

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Silly phrase butchering. The "untied parcel service", and those pretty insects with very large wings known as "flutterbys".

And Monty Python, always. "This power supply is bleedin' deceased!"

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It is an ex-power supply. It is pining for the fnords.

Wait, that's something else.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

In re Sparkle Motion: I commend the first drabble here (http://daegaer.livejournal.com/913225.html?style=mine) to your attention.

I think:
"Vampires don't sparkle."
"It depends how much gunpowder you use."

is going to become a regular quotable.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's lovely.

[bradipo.livejournal.com]

When I pass certain road signs I raise my fist and chant them as if at a big rally:

End school zone!
End speed zone!
End construction zone!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

In California everything is backwards on the roads, so it will say
XING
PED
It will be close enough together that you read them as a block of text rather than coming across PED and wondering what on earth PED are up to until you later come across XING.

Also, there was a stop sign near my parents' house when I was a teenager that read, "All traffic does not stop." My dad expressly forbade my mother and I from going out with spray paint to fix it, because, he theorized, only three people in Omaha would do that, and two of them lived in our house, so the police would know where to look.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

For years and years, it was John Cleese's line from the end of one of the early episodes of Fawlty Towers where he is marching down the drive with a gnome under his arm.

"Where do you think you are going, Basil ?"
"I'm going to see Mr. O'Reilly, dear. *sotto voce* And then I think I might go to Canada."

This is less use for comfort purposes now that I actually live in Canada, but Canada turns out to be more comfortable in general, so that's OK.

Also, any number of quotes from Hardware, and the occasional one from Jesus of Montreal: "I could have been born in Burkina Faso" is often a useful thought for getting a bit of perspective.

[loup_noir]

My baby superpower is to make them cry in that shred-your-eardrums frequency.

My favorite silly thing to do is sing to the dogs. I cannot carry a tune to save my life, so the dogs are the only ones who will put up with me singing. Doggerel for the dogs.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

XING PEd bothered me when I was very small, but I got in trouble for bringing it up (my dad summarily decided I was showing off, years before I actually began doing that) so I learned to keep such things in my head.

Things I get a lot of silly pleasure out of? Unexpected encounters with BORED OF THE RINGS or MAD MAGAZINE. I can chuckle all day after a ref to either.

[timprov.livejournal.com]

Have you seen skinship's BotR icons (http://community.livejournal.com/koicons/5419.html#cutid1)?

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

I am not actually sure why, but around here we tag things that are exaggerations or non-sequiturs with 'like the Sphinx' at the end, usually after a pause. So you get things like 'and then her head exploded and she completely destroyed everything in the entire vicinity with the sheer force of her wrath... like the Sphinx.' I don't know how this started, but its proportion of being actually funny is high enough for it to have kept going.

People around here also say that they are leaving by saying 'All right, I am going to run screaming into the night' a lot. This led to the perfectly accurate exchange the other week 'All right, I am going to run screaming into the gorgeously lovely afternoon.' 'Have fun! We're going to stay home and make a clown suit!'

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

We flee more often than we leave, I think.

[profrobert.livejournal.com]

OMG, so many:

"My advice to you is to drink heavily."
"What do we do now, Tennessee?"
"Observe the snow. It fornicates." (From a Straight Dope item to which Columbina and Nonelvis alerted me.)
"Looks like I picked the wrong week to give up sniffing glue."
"That's the second-largest {blank] I've seen this week."
"Do you 'ave a leesanse for your minkey?"
"All we need now is a brain -- A LIVING BRAIN," which goes with, "Interesting monsters need interesting hairdos."

Curse you, now I'm going to be thinking of these all day.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

My family -- mostly it's a Lingen thing -- tends to mutter "swahn minkey," or "swahn [whatever]," rather than inquiring after the leesanse.

[kythiaranos.livejournal.com]

My hearing is starting to go. That, or everyone in Buffalo mumbles. Whenever I start to mourn my lost hearing, I remember an exchange the hubby and I had a while back. We were having one of those random-segue conversations and he said, "Speaking of snacks, I heard that people from Puerto Rico put Cheez Whiz on almost everything."

Only what I heard was, "Speaking of sex, I heard that Puerto Ricans put Cheez Whiz on almost everything."

Quite a difference there. So whenever one of us is showing our age and doesn't quite hear something, the other of us says, "Speaking of sex . . ." and it's a guaranteed laugh.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

My family is... okay, if you get us in the right mood and/or reach critical mass on either side and then take us to a restaurant, hijinks will ensue. See how many sugar packets you can slip into Aunt Leslie's purse when she isn't looking (answer: a lot, especially if it's a big Krahe get-together and everyone at both ends of the table passes theirs down). Also, ice cubes *everywhere*. My (tipsy) mother put an ice cube down my (drunk) Aunt Nancy's back during the father-of-the-bride toast at my (still sober) cousin's wedding. The Krahe side of the family also bought a lot of moderately offensive glasses-- black plastic frames with cardboard lenses and very saggy, vacant eyes. We bring them out all the time. Had I been thinking, I would have given them as wedding presents.
Basically, if you get a certain number of family members around, we become unrelentingly silly.

On a smaller scale, I cannot help but crack up at, "Nay! We are but MEN!" from a Tenacious D song because a friend of mine did a video of it, and that line involved pulling open her button-up shirt and making it clear that yes, girl. I sometimes accidentally speak in lolcat, or try to make jokes in it; that trick never works. There's a lot of Monty Python, too. The Haugh side of the family has a get-together tradition that everyone is allowed one tantrum-- any of the sisters can throw a fit, go outside, smoke, and come back without comment. They also yell, "CINDERELLA!" when one of them goes to the kitchen with a list of things to bring back, or when demanding extra snacks.

We also know that the word 'buttsex' will crack Mom up immediately, 'cheesewrapper' will make Baby Sister punch you and run from the table while everyone laughs (it makes her want to vomit), and every child must be told not to smile. Don't smile! Don't you dare smile. You'll be in big trouble if I see you smiling. Grin like a maniac the entire time.

[writingortyping.livejournal.com]

Heh. My cousin was squicked out by the words "moist" and "panties."

So my aunts and uncles turned it into a toast. Glasses are hoisted to a chorus of "moist panties!"

[laurel]

I'm sure it comes as no shock to you that we, especially in the summer, make lots of references to Twins commercials, Dick & Bert-isms, and pretty much all things Twins-related. Plus we have all manner of in-jokes involving stuff that happens at the Metrodome. And it will never get old to roll our eyes and say "WHATEVER" when people get engaged at the Metrodome, sometimes with additional commentary.

When they announced it was "Lutheran Night" at the Dome on Tuesday night, we had great fun all through the game making jokes. Possible giveaways: Luther bobblehead, inkpots/inkwells, little wooden doors, etc. Folks getting wild with too much coffee-drinking and card-playing. People getting in trouble for smuggling hotdish and jello salads into the game. And so on.

We have many many running jokes, references, and other such things in our household; sometimes I wonder if folks would be able to understand us at all were they to eavesdrop. Of course I can't think of any of them right now, despite how common they are. (It has sometimes occurred to me to jot these things down and post them somewhere, could be fun.)

One of the many cool things about Kevin is that he gets most of my pop culture references. Years ago, I made a ton of references but when my social circle became mostly local fans, I learned most of them didn't get my references at all and eventually I just kinda stopped making them. With Kevin, I can burble about TV and movies and sports and music and video games and he gets more references than not. Though sometimes he gives me grief for making references that he thinks would mostly be made by folks who are 60 or 70 or 80, but that's fun too. It's also cool that we have a shared history in local fandom that goes back 20+ years even though we only became friends 5 or 7 or however many years ago; we were at the same conventions, some of the same concerts, etc.

I really used to be someone who just made references constantly, I still do it a lot less than before, just got out of the habit. Still hear some of them in my head tho!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I really think that having compatible baseball babble is an important thing if you're going to watch a game with people. And I'd have been right with you on the Lutheran jokes (although mine probably would have involved foosball).

[mkille.livejournal.com]

Veggie Tales songs.

Quotes from National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.

Various comic panels.

Collectively, onehipmama and I have a small body of formerly extemperaneous silly songs that were created specifically for reassuring and comforting.

[aedifica]

An old, old happily silly family saying: "It will fit better in your suitcase if you blow on it!" Product of two family conversations happening at the same time when I was young. I yelled downstairs that I couldn't get something to fit into my suitcase, while apparently my sister called from the kitchen that her hot chocolate was too hot (but I didn't hear her). One of our parents replied "Did you try blowing on it?"

Deliberately misunderstanding ambiguous phrases (not to the point of being obtuse or annoying about it, I hope) is a lot of fun for me.

I didn't get a single one of the references in your post! I don't sing the wrong words to Amazing Grace, I sing the wrong tune to it. (It's a much happier song when sung to the tune of "Joy to the World." I've gotten to the point where I don't remember the words to "Joy" anymore because I'm always singing "Amazing Grace! how sweet the sound" etc.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

They were "Donnie Darko," "Maverick," and "Bull Durham," respectively.

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

"Your wheels are going 'round!"

(Do you know where that's from?)

My mom and I say it to each other and laugh and laugh.

And then there's the onslaught of "Wiener dog, Superstar" lyrics that we never stop singing.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I'm not placing it, no.

I would like to know more "Wiener dog, Superstar" lyrics, though.