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Tag Archives: motivation

On idioms

At long last, here was the post I was going to post back in summer but never finished doodling for it.  Or, I had.  But then I inexplicably deleted the file somehow.  And then I was sad.  And then I lacked the motivation to do anything about it.  And then I started to do something about it.  But then I lacked the motivation to anything more about it.  I’ve been suffering an awful bout of ASD.  I finally mustered enough to finish it now.  So…yeah.

I was considering some idioms the other day.  You know, as one does.  One of them stood out to me though as being a bit ridiculous and nonsensical.  Or rather, it wasn’t so much that it was nonsensical as it was…sensical.  I present to you “head over heels.”

Um…you normally are oriented so that your head is over your heels.  Notable exceptions would be when you’re in bed sleeping.  Actually, your head could still be slightly elevated in relation to your heels because you’re probably using a pillow.  I guess other exceptions would be doing any inverted poses (i.e. yoga, gymnastics, dance, diving).  But really, how often are you doing that?  You spend most of your life with your head over your heels.  It’s a completely normal thing to do/be.  So how did the idiom “head over heels” end up coming to describe something that’s NOT in their normal state?

Wiktionary gives the following examples for usage:

  1. She tripped and rolled head over heels down the hill.
    Hill Head
  2. Hearing the noise in the dark, the children ran head over heels back home.Noise Head
  3. He was head over heels in love with the girl next door.
    Love Head

All of these examples try to illustrate that things are not in their normal state.  Taking a rather literal bent on and a florid description of the examples, you have:

  1. Someone who is literally falling and tumbling down a hill, rolling, so that her heels go over her head.
    Hill Heels
  2. Children who were sooooo scared by the noise in the dark that they ran so quickly that I guess their feet were faster than the rest of their body and their heels went over their heads.  This is not a good way to run away from things, btw.
    Noise Heels
  3. Some guy who was sooooo in love with the girl next door that um…his heels were over his head?  I know this idiom is actually most associated with being madly in love.  It’s never made that much sense to me though.  OH!  Maybe he was so in love with the girl that he wasn’t watching where he was going because he was staring at the girl so he didn’t see the rock in his path as he was walking toward the girl and he tripped and thus his heels went over his head, which makes this example fairly similar to the first one and they are totally cheating and not putting enough effort into applying idioms.  Also, sometimes I enjoy a good run on sentence.
    Love Heels

ANYWAY…

A brief poking around on the internet tells me that the phrase originated in the 14th century as “heels over head,” which makes much more sense than “head over heels.”  The literal meaning of the phrase gives you the impression that things are not as they are supposed to be.  Actually, I think the literal meaning was used to describe doing cartwheels and the like, during which your heels would indeed go over your head.  So why did it get inverted in modern usage?  No idea.  I didn’t bother doing much more research than what I just presented.  Wiktionary seems to think it’s due to “phrasal elegance” though.

Other idioms I rather like:

  • Killing two birds with one stone.  Which my brother enjoys (purposely) saying as “killing two stones with one bird.”  Just to be a butt and see how many people are paying attention.  Because think about it, it’s pretty hard to kill a stone.  It’s probably even harder to kill a stone with a bird.  I don’t really know; I’ve never tried.  But now you have to kill TWO stones with only one bird.  Wow.  That’s pretty impressive.
  • Dotting your i’s and crossing your t’s.  Which I like to (purposely) say as “dotting your t’s and crossing your i’s.”  Also jusi io be a buii and see how many people are paytng aiieniton.  And also because I ltke ihtnktng aboui how words would change tf you ltierally dtd whai I was saytng.
  • Water off a duck’s back.  Which I like to (purposely) say as “duck off a water’s back.”  No reason for this one.  I just like saying it that way.

 

Links to stuff:

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/head-over-heels.html

http://www.alphadictionary.com/bb/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=6498

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/head_over_heels

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Not in grade school anymore…

The other day, some guy pulled my hair.  Now, I’m not going to deny that I didn’t deserve it.  I most certainly did.  But the fact that HE PULLED MY HAIR was…interesting.  What are we, in grade school?

In order to keep myself amused and entertained at Clib and to hold back the tide of despair, I have reverted back to my old ways of pulling pranks on people.  This last prank involved one of my favorite full-time Clib employees whom I shall call Sock Guy.  Seriously, the nicest and most entertaining guy ever.  EVAR.  And because he’s so nice and entertaining, he makes the perfect target for a prank.  In that, one of my coworkers and I rearranged the letters of his keyboard.  Not a whole lot, but definitely so that it was noticeable and that maybe it also spelled his name (his actual name and not “sock guy”), albeit incorrectly, on the home row.

Were you aware that for many keyboards, the F and J keys are slotted differently in the back so that you cannot easily rearrange those keys?  We had to flip them upside down to get them to fit on another post for a different key.  Same with the “normal” key that we swapped in its place.  So we had some upside down keys on the keyboard.  Totally noticeable.  And hilarious.  Definitely hilarious.

In fact, we were laughing so hard that we were both tearing up and it caused our PM to look at us kind of strangely.  I mean, he already does that much of the time but we were laughing nigh uncontrollably because we thought the resultant keyboard configuration was so funny.  It was lucky that only THEM employees were there at that moment and that no Clib employees walked in.  I’m sure it would not have spoken well of us.

Anyway, we were able to do this to Sock Guy’s keyboard because he hadn’t been at work for at least a week.  Or maybe he had but was at the other facility.  I don’t know.  I never asked.  And after we were finished with the rearranging, we waited.

I was lucky enough to be in the room when Sock Guy showed up again.  But the room was incredibly crowded that day and Sock Guy couldn’t sit in his normal spot so he didn’t see his keyboard right away.  So I had to tell him that we left a surprise on his keyboard.  And he looked.  And was immediately thrown off by the post-it I had put on the keyboard several weeks earlier that he had seen before.  And then he left because he had something else to take care of.  And I had a sadz because I really wanted to see his reaction.

As it turns out, I never did see his reaction, but he did tell me about it.  Apparently, later that day after I had left, he went back into the room and was working at his spot.  He started to type in his password and was really confused as to why the server kept rejecting his login saying that his password was wrong.  And it took him another 20 seconds or so before he remembered that I told we left him a gift on his keyboard and then he compared his keyboard to another one nearby and then he nearly fell out of his chair laughing.  Apparently, he’s not a touch typist.

The next morning when he saw me again, HE PULLED MY HAIR!  Who does that??  Not that I didn’t deserve it.  But srsly?

Disclaimer: I am not actually upset that he pulled my hair because 1) I totally deserved it, and 2) did I not mention that he’s the most entertaining guy evar?  The fact that he did it is more amusing than anything else.  Possibly hilariously funny.  I haven’t really decided.

Disclaimer disclaimer: I know I didn’t post Friday.  Not even a filler, not even a temp post.  By the time I was able to get to it, I was far down the depths of a negative motivation pit.  I think I might be battling a flare up of ASD.