#902 Garbanzo

I have a love affair with words. Occasionally I’ll just get off on the sound of them. Sometimes the sounds of them cause me to wander down verbal back alleys. Sometimes a particular word or phrase will suddenly achieve common parlance and its just exciting to say them over and over.
Like recently when the economy cratered and the government started talking about “injecting liquidity” into the market. I just love that term—“injecting liquidity.”
Sounds like someone is mainlining Southern Comfort. Or has a bottle of tequila plugged into his IV. Injecting liquidity also sounds like a process using one of those fancy cooking show food syringes. Chock full of melted butter and jammed into a pork loin.
Another of my favorite new terms is “fleeting expletives.” As in: Henry Paulson used a series of fleeting expletives, as he was frustrated in the process of injecting liquidity into the financial markets.
Fleeting Expletives. Sounds like a flasher of words. Whipping aside his verbal trench coat and giving you a brief glimpse of his naughty parts. Is that a dangling participle or are you just glad to conjugate my verbs?
Or maybe a college grunge band. “Ladies and gentleman, lets hear it for the Fleeting Expletives.”
Words can be powerful, and different words for the same thing can make you want to try them or deny them.
Like chickpeas. If you like peas, you might try them. Or you might think they are a vegetable dish you can only have with fried green tomatoes or steel magnolias. “Yeah, I’m going to watch Sleepless in Seattle on DVD so I’m stocking up on chick peas.”
Contrast that with their other name, Garbanzo Beans. Now all of a sudden they sound like something a person with a red nose and giant shoes might eat. “Hey Kids, here comes your favorite entertainer, Garbanzo the Clown!”
Or perhaps eating the beans gives you a case of the garbanzos. I’d say the f-word that refers to flatulence but I can’t use fleeting expletives on the radio. But you get the picture.
Garbanzo. Sounds like an explosion in your pants.
Injecting gas-idity.
America, ya gotta love it.