Get Real

I like things real. Sometimes I hear folks talk in circles. Everyone nods approvingly or knowingly, but I sit and shake my head. When we come away from the meeting people ask me: "What did he just say? Or What did she mean?"

Why do they ask me? Were they not the ones nodding their heads? I should be asking them what was meant, but I already know. No one said anything in the meeting. Everyone really knows nothing was said, they're just not admitting it.

It's funny, as some of the speakers spout off their words of wisdom, I imagine flowers coming out of their mouths. It's like watching an old Beatles show, The Yellow Submarine. Everyone is walking around cardboard-like and spouting flowery, pretty stuff, none of which is really palatable, just nice to listen to. When I call them on it, they stare at me bemused. They give me that "Don't you speak English?" look. Well, yes, I think so, but I don't hear it spoken here. ha.

I usually use concrete words, stuff you can touch, feel, see, and picture in your mind's eye. But sometimes I just hear multisyllabic words of fluff.

Which reminds me of this advice:

In promulgating your exotic cogitations or articulating your superficial sentimentalities, amiable philosophies or psychological observations, beware of platitudinous preponderance. Let your extemporaneous descanting and unpremeditated expatiations have intelligible and vivacious veracity, but without the rodomontade of bombast. Eschew all conglomerations, jejune babble, vapid rumination, and asinine affectation. Shun double-entendre, pestiferous profanity, and contumelious epithets, ostensible or obscure. Be not inordinately contumacious or incorrigibly recalcitrant about using exotic comprehensibility in your etymological delineation.

In other words, speak simply.

...dave
I was gratified to answer them promptly. I said: "I don't know."