Old Sayings...Reconsidered: "An apple a day..."

"An apple a day keeps the doctor away."

All well and good until you need a doctor. 

This has been another episode of "Old Sayings…Reconsidered."

Old Sayings...Reconsidered: "Give a man a fish..."

Give a man a fish, and he eats for one day. Teach a man to fish, and, if he's lucky enough to learn this often tricky skill before he starves to death, which we've got to admit falls under the realm of possibility here - why the hell else would we even be talking about this? -  then he'll be okay. If not, he starves to death.

So why not give him a fish, you selfish bastard, and teach him how to fish?

Old Sayings....Reconsidered: "Never Bring a Knife..."

Never bring a knife to a gunfight—but a blender might be alright. You could whip up some daiquiris, get all the prospective gunfighters good and drunk, and when they pass out you could steal their guns and replace them with knives. Then, when they wake up, you could yell, "Never bring a knife to a gunfight, bitchez!", and shoot them.

Never bring a knife to a gunfight—bring a blender instead. And rum, limes, and a sweetener of some kind. (I prefer powdered sugar.) And make sure there's a power source for the blender. I don't know about you, but I've always pictured gunfights taking place in a barren place in the great outdoors—so you might want to consider a generator. And you're going to need a bunch of knives, to put in place of the guns on the gunfighters after they pass out, which of course means that you're bringing knives to a gunfight, which takes us right back where we started.

How about you just not go to gunfights? Is that so hard?

Old Sayings…Reconsidered: "A Stitch in Time..."

“A stitch in time saves 9.” A wise English person first said that a long, long time ago.

“A stitch in time saves 9.”

It’s like time is this gigantic piece of fabric—and it has a hole in it. Worse: 9 is gonna fall through the hole unless it gets stitched up. Hence “A stitch in time saves 9.” You get it?

And this is not some idle saying, this is important stuff. Because what would we do without 9? No more baseball. No more 9 o’clock. No more “Cloud 9.” No more “The whole 9 yards.” 3 x 3 wouldn’t equal anything. And how would we get to 10? We’d have to build a bridge from 8 to get to 10. And only 8 people could work on it until it was done. And they better finish the job in 8 hours—or they’ll never finish it at all! We’re in big trouble if they don’t finish it.

Of course everything would be ok if 6 was 9. Then every time you need a 9, you could just reach back and grab a 6. You’d be like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, reach back and grab the 6—6 is 9!—10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, reach back and grab the 9 that was 6—if 6 is 9 then it goes without saying that 9 is also 6, right?—and you’ve got your 16. And so on. This way you wouldn’t even have to bother stitching up time at all. You could just leave the hole right in it. There could be unforeseen advantages in this. It might even solve the energy crisis! If the hole came around and said, “Hey, where’s that 9 that was supposed to fall through me? That’s a 9 right there, isn’t it? Gimme that 9”. You could say “What, this? This isn’t a 9, this is a 6.” What’s the hole gonna do? You’re right—it is a 6.

That English person was pretty smart. But not as smart as Jimi Hendrix.

Old Sayings…Reconsidered: "The Darkest Hour..."

We continue now with "Old Sayings…Reconsidered":

Timothy thought about that old saying, "The darkest hour is just before the dawn." He had been trapped in his sensory deprivation unit in his Upper West Side apartment for three days now. Something had gone wrong with the latch. 

Worse: there was no light. He couldn't see his own hands in front of his face. 

"The darkest hour is just before the dawn," he thought, over and over again.

 After five days Timothy imagined he heard a rooster crowing. Then he died.

Old Sayings…Reconsidered: "I'm Rubber and You're Glue..."

‎"I'm rubber and you're glue: whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you."

This actually works pretty well…until the acid wears off. Then you're pretty much just as vulnerable to insults as the rest of us.

Old Sayings…Reconsidered: "Time Heals All Wounds"

I had a great-uncle who used to say that a lot. "Time heals all wounds." Until he fell down the back steps of his house and broke both his hips when he was 92. His body wasn't discovered for six days. His wristwatch had bite marks on it.

This has been another episode of "Old Sayings…Reconsidered."