Posts

Showing posts with the label humor

The SWIFT MINDS Breakthrough! - Braintenance

Image
A swifter mind is a more efficient mind...a more useful mind...a more powerful mind, and of course a more desirable mind. There is actually no such creature (or feature) as The SWIFT MINDS Breakthrough [it hardly even qualifies as a Lingovation], but it is a neat term to describe the effect upon the improvement in your associative intelligence, creativity, spontaneity, speed of thought and sense of irony when you engage in reading or creating those adverbial oddities (distantly related to the Paraprasdokians, our second favorite family, the first being the Halogens -- they're a gas!) which are now called " Tom Swifties ." Here's Wikipedia's take on these hysterical swords of wordplay (this part is boring, but it gets better fast -- I swear [all of the time]): "The name comes from the Tom Swift series of books (1910–present), similar in many ways to the better-known Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew series, and, like them, produced by the Stratemeyer Syndicate...

OXYMORONS (Nowthen) - Brain Expanders

Image
Oxymorons are self-conflicting or self-cancelling combinations of words. They are often humorous, brief, thought-provoking (associatively) and memorable. They also help stimulate our mind's ability to freely associate and visualize with greater speed and clarity. They stimulate imagination and creativity. What's more, they're great fun at parties. We've all heard these: JUMBO SHRIMP, AUTHENTIC REPLICA, MILITARY INTELLIGENCE, HELPFUL CIVIL SERVANT and THE WAR ON TERRORISM (more obscure, but a bit more through-provoking in terms of semantics and shades of meaning). With the following list, read each one aloud in your mind , and when you've finished, visualize the conflicting physical images . Then : 1 ) See how many of them you can easily remember; 2 ) See how many you can remember in the sequence in which they are presented. Incidentally, this is my collection of the best of the worst of these creatures: Stretch those neurons....let them reach out and touch one anoth...