The Year of Sarchasm

Omigosh! I hear you cry, What’s the matter with her spelling today? She’s usually so particular about the niceties of the English language!

For niceties, read – basic literacy skills. Although, who really needs them, in this age of social media, text-speak, and auto correct?

I promise you, that the spelling is quite deliberate, as you’ll soon see.

Essentially, sarchasm is said to be the gaping void between your own waterfalls of acid wit and your listener’s complete lack of understanding. Or, as someone once told me, ‘a total 747’. At the time of hearing that phrase, my own blank face was met with the speaker waving a hand over his head and making an aeroplane noise (747 being an airliner plane built by Boeing).

Vampires are not good at sarcasm. I’ve said this several times before. I’ve tried to learn, but I mostly sound either rude or incredibly dim-witted. Or simply very, very literal. The hubster is very good. As previously requested, he gives me marks out of ten when I attempt sarcasm and gives me pointers and examples. And yet, I continue to miss the mark consistently.

I do know there are several factors to making sarcasm work. Choice of words, tone of voice, facial expression, body language…

Ah! Facial expression!

Something that is mostly lacking of late. Face masks = loss of facial expression. But it’s a small price to pay. Have you heard of something called the pee analogy?

Oh, here we go…

It’s all going cock-a-donkey…

Well, the pee analogy goes like this… If nobody wore trousers, if someone peed, it’d get on you. If you wore trousers, then only some of the pee would get through. But if everyone wore trousers, the pee would stay with the pee-er. And that’s why we wear face masks.

I’ll explain the cock-a-donkey thing now.

And further down the rabbit hole we go.

It’s a Belgian saying – on va du coq á l’âne – going from the cockerel to the donkey. It means to change the subject suddenly and completely randomly. Great saying. I think it should catch on. Here’s a challenge for you – try to work it into a conversation once today. Let me know how you get on!

And you’d think I’d be ahead of the ‘facial expression’ game because apparently, I have a very expressive face – it’s why I trend to get ‘character’ roles when I’m acting.

Here’s a little tale to illustrate my point. I don’t often get manhandled at work, but there was this one incident where it was absolutely vital. The room where I worked was opposite the boss’s office. The boss was one of those capricious wolves-in-sheep’s-clothing. The human equivalent of cyanide. The only time this person was known to smile was when they saw someone dying a little inside. When I left that job for good, as I made my final farewells on leaving the building for ever, I said goodbye to them through the open office door. They never even looked up from their paperwork, let alone said ‘goodbye’ back.

Anyway, a colleague came haring in to tell me the latest micro-assassination perpetrated by this pycho-logical harpy. I didn’t even get the chance to move away from my doorway before she dropped the tempting little nuggets on me. But before she said a word more, she grabbed me by the shoulders and bundled me away from the door, then spun me around to face the opposite wall.

It felt like the weirdest game of Blind Man’s Bluff ever.

“Sorry,” she said, once she’d told me all the gory details, “I had to do that. Your face just gives everything away.”

And how about thanking people when they stop to let you cross the road? That happens here a lot. People will even stop at roundabouts to let you cross here. So different to where we lived before. A smile normally suffices as a show of appreciation. Well, that’s right out the window, isn’t it? I try to wave, but it’s not always possible when you have your hands full of either shopping or dog leash. You either end up juggling apples and bread rolls as they go flying into the air, or I have the fur baby glaring at me indignantly for disturbing her concentration. She’s very good at crossing the road and objects when she thinks I’m trying to tell her how to do it.

Oh well, I guess I’m just going to have to work harder on my tone of voice…

For anyone wanting to read all my rants in one place – including all-new exclusive stuff, then click below!

Volume 1 of my diary – why not start at the very beginning?

Volume 2 – more rants, musings and fairly useful advice

Volume 3 – things are afoot! The thot plickens…

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