"How Horrible!" as said by Benny Hill

One of my all time favorite British phrases!

I am huge ho for British comedy with Benny Hill being my most beloved. It just so happened that I was detained in Heathrow Airport the weekend that he passed away. (When I say detained, well, let’s just say it was a misunderstanding of security forces concerning the passport under which I was traveling.)

Being the easy going person (I so want to say bloke right now) that I am, I proclaimed my sincere remorse at the lost of one so admired the world over. Considering the circumstances in which I found myself, I was already aware the police force in the United Kingdom was severely lacking in humor. Which is undoubtedly why the genius, who was Benny Hill, lampooned them often as the police farce.

Yet I was still taken aback at the vigorous retort I received for my heartfelt condolences.

“How horrible!” I was rebuked with overly forthright self-righteousness by a picture perfect depiction of a Benny Hill characterization.

Instead of upsetting me, why bother, I was about to be sold down the River Thames anyway, I began to chuckle. Which wasn’t well received either, but thank goodness not illegal. His obvious horror at my laughter set me off in a bout of giggles so tremendous it still amazes me I didn’t end up in the tower. Which thinking about it now, I realize would have been a tour indeed.

With the letter ‘h’ being the assignment, I challenge you to recall your most ‘h’umorous accounting of the humpbacked letter.

For me and my own, my multiple personalities that is, we will stay with, “How horrible”, and our fond memories of the greatest comedian to ever live…Benny Hill.

G is for Gassler

I galloped through the gamut of ‘g’s but couldn’t garner one that got me going so I gave up.

And will use one of my own, “gassler”.

Writing YA the vocabulary changes as rapidly as Paris Hilton’s lovers.

I have a couple of online sources that I go to often http://www.thesource4ym.com/teenlingo and http://onlineslangdictionary.com. I also ‘Google’ like mad for new Adalonic (Adolescent Vocabulary) Dictionaries. But sometimes even that’s not enough.

For instance, my current WIP is a dystopian set in post apocalyptic America, vaguely set about seventy years in the future. Writing dialogue becomes more of a challenge.

Will ‘lame’, ‘tard’, ‘sick’, ‘sweet’, ’awesome’, or ‘bank’ still be common teen usage of the future? Or will they have gone the way of ‘stoked’, ‘stellar’, ‘tubular’, ‘dude’, and ‘chill’?

The language of the future is just as unpredictable as the fashion sense of their generation. But instead of taking this as a roadblock, I’ve made up a few of my own words and given an alternate meaning to common words. For even though the words will change, a teen’s need to be different and possess their own vocabulary will not.

So that brings us to ‘gassler’. It’s a slur. A newly seized genetically unaltered human and is non-gender specific. So go ahead and insult someone today, call them a gassler. The worst that can happen is they think you are accusing them of wasting too much fuel or burning up the ozone layer.