Word.

Words are but wind… So wrote William Shakespeare. Or so transcribed William Shakespeare. Or so someone else wrote, right about the time William Shakespeare was plotting to take all the credit for it.

Point being, said line is from the Comedy of Errors, Shakespeare’s alleged first play.


In other news, Shakespeare is the prime poet to quote when the need arises to base the baseless in some sort of intellectual context. From direct-to-video hits such as Hammerhead, to cult classics such as Nightmare on Elm Street, to vaguely Shakespearean films such as Kennith Branagh’s Hamlet; Shakespeare can always find a way to express the infinitely complex in a matter of a few indecipherable phrases. All with the mere use of a few well placed words.

After all, words are but wind.

For, while someone may put forth the premise that, my momma’s so fat, her type-two diabetes has type-two diabetes, I could easily end all discussion by stating:

No, she’s not.

My mother, in fact, is well within her weight class, Your Honor.

And so, such words become meaningless. Fade into a meaningless existence amongst an endless list of such insults, or anything reported by the press to frighten us into dry-humping that ass-hole with his own show… you know the one.

Language has also been described, most recently by me in this sentence, as a virus from outer space.

“Virus?” you may ask… “Goodness gracious, great balls of fire!”

To which I would be forced to reply, “Precisely.”

For I know there are not, literally, great balls of fire currently practicing in my congressional district. At least not today. And were they to be, I would have to further question whether these were great! balls of fire, or if they were, pejoratively speaking, great (large, immense, brogdignagian) balls of fire!

Then again, the statement could be one of ironic detachment, accompanied by a slow shake of the head, as in:

Great… Balls of fire. They won their Supreme Court case, so now they’re marching.

But does it end merely at securing the use of the term great?

Great balls of fire, no.

Because now I must ask myself, in no uncertain terms, whether these balls are actual orbs of flaming debris, or whether they are simply testicles that took one to many nips from the gas tank. And if these balls do turn out to be of anatomical lore, perhaps they are not suffering from an exterior attack of Texan wildfires, but the inward burn of whatever disease I happened to give them. To wit, perhaps these testicles have been shooting craps (yes, wrap your head around this one, please) in Vegas, and they’ve rolled hard eight five consecutive times. Consequently, some passerby might note that those balls, are in fact, on fire tonight.

To which the call girl, draped on testicles’ left arm, might shout with glee: Goodness gracious, great balls of fire!

Either way, by the time I finish analyzing the statement, there’s no doubt I’ll glance around to find that Jerry Lee Lewis has already left the stage, taking with him the fourteen year old I had so hoped to read my poetry to.

…So, in summation, don’t trust a ball. It’s on fire. It will kill you.

Word to your mother.