Foot in Mouth Man (FIMM) is our lovable mascot here at Art of Eloquence. A bumbling miscommunicator who sticks his foot in his mouth each month for your amusement and "confusement." He does it so often that he has Athlete's Tongue! However, there are some people I have encountered recently on social media and blog sites who are vying for the coveted title of FIMMpersonator of the Month and I thought I'd give it out to one lucky winner. Communication doesn't break down significantly if someone has a typo or two and, as my editor knows, I can't spell my way out of a paper "bagg" so I'd never complain if someone had a grammatical error or a misspelled word...
What's in a name? A child by any other name would perhaps...just be silly! When I was pregnant with my first, and we thought she was a boy, my father came up with a name for him that would have necessitated psychological counceling. Are you ready? Horace Morris. Yes, he would have been Horace Morris Tabares. No! We didn't name our son Horace Morris (Dad was kidding), but there are some celebs who have named their children things that sound equally as ridiculous: Jermaine Jackson named his dd Jermajesty. Penn of Penn & Teller named his child Moxie Crimefighter. The one and only Frank Zappa named his children: Moon Unit, Dweezil, Ahmet and Diva Thin Muffin (My personal favorite.). Forest...
I was cleaning up my draft file a while back and found 109 articles or series of articles that I never finished. This one spoke to me and I thought I'd post it now. You may never know it by listening to political rhetoric, TV commercials or the main-stream media, but words actually mean things. Specific things! If we allow ourselves to get caught up in the current trend to re-define words and to use them as we see fit, we end up saying nothing of value. If we don't realize that today's societal trend is to adopt a Shakespearian attitude in applying meanings to words, we may be fooled into believing something that just isn't so. In the next...
8 FUN Ways to Win! 18+ Prizes! Contest Runs: August 1st-October 31st, 2010 ------- This is our BIGGEST contest EVER! November 1st Art of Eloquence will celebrate eight years in business. In recent years, we have celebrated by offering a few hours of online fun and a contest where we gave away a prize package to one lucky winner. This year, we would like to offer THREE MONTHS of fun and give away 18+ prizes! So this year we have eight fun ways for you to win from August 1st through October 31st! ... 1. Our Facebook Fan Page members will be able to play Communication Bingo. Here's how this will work. I will post 75 different communication terms on the fan page and...
I must look at the world through funny nose and glasses because my life is just funny. Two weeks ago, as some of you know, my dd and I were baking brownies when, instead of smelling our delicious treat, we smelled burning plastic which we eventually learned was our AC going out. So a week later my dd and I found ourselves baking brownies again. It was the same day of the week at the same time. I even had the same number of eggs left in the egg carton. We called my dad, who had helped us out the week prior, to put him on alert to be on stand by. LOL If you're thinking we didn't, WE DID! ...
