Coaches Chizik and Childress

In a press conference a few days ago, Auburn head football coach Gene Chizik said something other than what he meant to say amid allegations against his star player, quarterback Cam Newton.

Chizik: "I'm standing up here on a very important week trying to defend something that's pure garbage."
That's a harsh way to describe your star player. Maybe he meant he was trying to defend AGAINST something — the allegations — he considers pure garbage (and is "pure garbage" an oxymoron?).

He also said, "I want to get off the table up front the fact that Cameron Newton will be playing Saturday against the Georgia Bulldogs. I want to get that off the table."
The idiom "off the table" means to remove from consideration. What Chizik said, and repeated, is that playing Newton is NOT one of his options. Of course, he meant the opposite. What Chizik took off the table was the option of forcing Newton to sit out the game.

If Chizik says the opposite of what he means, another coach makes statements that tell you absolutely nothing — but at least he uses big words to say it. Minnesota Vikings coach Brad Childress said this of trading Randy Moss: "It was a programmatic nonfit, and it didn't work out. When things don't work out, you need to move quickly to take steps."
Programmatic nonfit? Why not "he didn't fit in"?
"Move quickly to take steps"? That literally means hurry to make incremental change — not an apt description of booting Moss.

Neologisms defined

Neologisms

Definitions to the neologisms I listed in the last post:

Alpha geek: The most knowledgeable, technically proficient person in an office or work group.
Blamestorming: Sitting around in a group, discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed, and who was responsible.
Chainsaw consultant: An outside expert brought in to reduce the employee headcount, leaving the top brass with clean hands.
Cube farm: An office filled with cubicles.
Irritainment: Entertainment and media spectacles that are annoying, but you find yourself unable to stop watching them (e.g. professional wresting).
Mediocracy: A society or organization in which people of mediocre talent prevail
Meetnik: A person who enjoys meetings and seminars and tries to attend as many as possible.
Mouse potato: A couch potato whose attention is riveted to a computer rather than a TV.
Phobosopher: A person with an irrational aversion to wisdom.
Starter marriage: A short-lived first marriage that ends in divorce with no kids and no regrets.
Stress puppy: A person who seems to thrive on being stressed out and whiny.
Tree ware: Printed material.

Neologisms

A neologism is a new word, expression or phrase. Sometimes a neologism will make it into the dictionary. Other times it is in vogue only for a season then fades into disuse.

Following are some neologisms, mostly from the 1990s, that didn't make it into common usage. See if you can guess the definitions (no Google searches). Hint: Most have to do with office work.

Alpha geek
Blamestorming
Chainsaw consultant
Cube farm
Irritainment
Mediocracy
Meetnik
Mouse potato
Phobosophers
Starter marriage
Stress puppy
Tree ware

The wit and witless

This weekend kicks off the college football season. To celebrate, here's another sampling of the wit and witless of the coaching world.

From incoherent:
“These guys are missing one thing, and that's experience. Until you've been out on the field, it's tough to simulate that.” — Houston Nutt
(So go onto the field where it will be easy to simulate experience.)

“The biggest thing, ... was getting here at 7 o'clock Sunday morning from Southern California after a 70-whatever whipping to get to the point where your team went from a whipped, terrible look to having a chance to win as good as Alabama was. That gave us a lot of hope. Build off that. Correct those mistakes. Now go win a game. That's where you see the parallels. I believe that.” — Houston Nutt
(To someone somewhere, something in there might make sense.)

To humorous:
"If you make every game a life and death proposition, you're going to have problems. For one thing, you'll be dead a lot." — Dean Smith

"The man who complains about the way the ball bounces is likely the one who dropped it." — Lou Holtz

To wise:
"Leadership is getting someone to do what they don't want to do, to achieve what they want to achieve." — Tom Landry

"The harder you work, the harder it is to surrender." — Vince Lombardi

"Success without honor is an unseasoned dish; it will satisfy your hunger, but it won't taste good." — Joe Paterno

"People of medicore ability sometimes achieve outstanding success because they don't know when to quit. Most men succeed because they are determined to." — George Allen

To inspirational:
"I firmly believe that any man's finest hour, the greatest fulfillment of all that he holds dear, is the moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle-victorious." -- Vince Lombardi

And just for fun, this from the writer Jack Handy:
“I remember that one fateful day when Coach took me aside. I knew what was coming. 'You don't have to tell me,' I said. 'I'm off the team, aren't I?' 'Well,' said Coach, 'you never were really ON the team. You made that uniform you're wearing out of rags and towels, and your helmet is a toy space helmet. You show up at practice and then either steal the ball and make us chase you to get it back, or you try to tackle people at inappropriate times.' It was all true what he was saying. And yet, I thought something is brewing inside the head of this Coach. He sees something in me, some kind of raw talent that he can mold. But that's when I felt the handcuffs go on.”

Here lies a liar

I can't remember where I obtained the little pocket-size book, "Everybody's Book of Epitaphs: Being for the Most Part What the Living Think of the Dead." But it is entertaining to read the epitaphs found on tombstones in English cemeteries.

Like this one from the Berkeley Churchyard:

Here lies an editor!
Snooks, if you will;
In Mercy, Kind Providence,
Let him lie still!
He lied for his living, so
He lived while he lied.
When he could not lie longer
He lied down and died.

A number of tombstones carry variations of a bitter widow's lament:

He lied while he lived
And dead he lies still

And a few widowers got their shots in, like this one from Selby, Yorkshire:

Here lies my wife, a sad slattern and shrew,
If I said I regretted her, I should lie too!

Kids

Kids' ears

Sometimes what we say is not what they hear. The following comments are taken from a thread on a friend's Facebook page:

Gavin told me that his bus driver told him that they sit in "science seats." It took me just a second to realize that she was discussing assigned seats on the bus! Funny boy.

Josh referred listening to "Rap City" instead of Rhapsody today ... those 5 year olds!

When Kathleen was in kindergarten, she told me that she learned about gutters in school — the ones that cows have.

Heidi once had a guest speaker in her Lutheran school classroom tell the story of Bert the Troll. The mother of a boy with a speech impediment marched into her classroom the next day demanding to know why she was teaching fourth graders about birth control.

Speaking of kids

Did you catch the story in The Paducah Sun about the students instructing the instructors? Teachers at Heath High School will attend sessions on how to use their new iBook computers. The instructors will be high school students.

Hope the student-teachers are patient. The brains of geezers (all those over 30) just aren't as pliable as brains of teens.

There was a grammarian

James Kilpatrick died Aug. 15, three months shy of his 90th birthday. He was best known for his conservative commentary in newspaper columns and on the "Point-Counterpoint" segment of 60 Minutes. After the death of his wife, sculptor Marie Louise Perri, in 1997, he married liberal columnist Marianne Means. It would have been a gas to sit in on their dinner conversation.

Later in life he became better known as a grammarian. He wrote a column on English usage called "The Writer's Art," as well as a book with the same title. His books also included "The Ear is Human: A Handbook of Homophones and Other Confusions" and "Fine Print: Reflections on the Writing Art."

Here's a sample of his writing on language from a June 2008 column, selected because it echoes one of the constant nags of Sun executive editor Duke Conover:

"In the writing game, everybody has to have an irk. Am I being fastidious or merely fussy in my irk against 'there'? A few weeks ago The New York Times' editorial writers backed repeatedly into their morning lectures.
"'There is a lot of talk that Sen. Hillary Clinton is now fated ... There is a lot that Senators Clinton and Obama need to be talking about ...' 'There is no doubt that President Robert Mugabe's henchmen have used ...'
"The yawing or introductory 'there' is an ancient device, not to be condemned out of hand. All the same, a sentence often will be improved by backing up and starting over: 'Some observers contend that Sen. Hillary Clinton ...' Or, 'Senators Clinton and Obama need to talk about ...' Let us trim our shrubbery."

Duke would take it a bit further. He doesn't like "there" anywhere. If you write, "The team is not there yet," he will ask, "Not where yet?"

I admit I'm not so rigid about "there." But then, I have that luxury. Duke is herding cats. I am not. So I take refuge in Kilpatrick's words: "The yawing or introductory 'there' is an ancient device, not to be condemned out of hand." Duke, of course, would emphasize: "... a sentence will often be improved by backing up and starting over."

We agree, however, that your writing will be improved if you avoid "there" where possible.