Thursday, September 30, 2010

A tube of Brylcreem.

Communication is a tricky thing.  You always have to have a sender and a receiver and a message, but you also always have noise.  In communication terms noise is anything that messes with the whole thing so that the message received isn't exactly what the sender intended.  Sometimes, noise is as simple as pronunciation or hearing problems.

I remember being very little and asking my Papa what davelduia was.  Brylcreem had
a little davelduia.  It must be a very important ingredient, I thought.  What the jingle actually said was "Brylcreem, a little dab will do ya."

I also sang, "Bringing in the sheets, bringing in the sheets, we will come from Jersey bringing in the sheets."  At Christmas I sang, "Bells on cocktails ring." I had no idea what a bobtail was.

And come on, you know you sang with Jimmy, "Scuse me, while I kiss this guy."  Everyone sang along with "There's a bathroom on the right."  I really thought it was "You and me and Leslie."  I found out decades later that Leslie wasn't in the song.  It was "You and me endlessly." 
When my daughter was younger, she sang, "I can see clearly now, the pain is gone.  I can see all Popsicles in my way."  That's a nice image, isn't it?

And it's not just mortals who are affected by noise.  Eric Clapton named a song Badge because he misunderstood when George Harrison referred to the bridge. So this type of miscommunication is excusable.

I'm not so sure about the excusability of using nonwords.  Pacificly I'm referring to words like irregardless, eckcetera. In cases like that, the sender should be slapped upside the head. And that's all I have to say about that.

3 comments:

  1. Laughing....I remember so well "Bringing in the sheets..." Right or wrong I like to play with 'the taste of words' and mess around with them a little to emphasize the tone I sometimes try to achieve.

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  2. You mean Jimmy didn't say "scuse me while I kiss this guy"? hahahahahah you crack me up. Funny stuff.

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    http://bouncinbarbs.blogspot.com/2010/10/sweet-surprise-ive-won-award.html

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