Congratulations to Jag Bhalla, whose witty wordsmithery adorns many comment threads on The Hannibal Blog, for publishing his new book today.
It’s called: “I’m not Hanging Noodles on your Ears” and is about idioms–their mystery, meaning, beauty. I’ve read it, and it’s witty and entertaining, humorous here and intellectual there. Get yourself to Amazon now.
Now if I could just set my own publisher’s butt on fire to get my own publication date.
Hannibal and Me: life lessons from history 
I gotta check out this book. Is it full of sarcasms too?
No sarcasms (since that would be the lowest form of humor). Some irony, though.
Great catch. Will check and read this book.
Andreas – I can’t thank you enough for your generous words!
Instead of setting your publishers butt on fire – go with the Chinese equivalent and set their ‘eyebrows on fire’. I imagine that would be even harder to ignore than a burning butt.
I know I speak for my fellow readers of your blog – that we can’t wait for your book. You might say we are yearning for it – which in Chinese is to ‘have 3 foot long spittle’.
Chester – some of the expressions are certainly sarcastic (which originally meant flesh-cutting) e.g.
Mexican Spanish – to get married is ‘to hang oneself’.
French ‘love is blind but marriage restores your sight’.
Portuguese ‘guests always give pleasure – either when arriving or when leaving’
I protest: That’s wit, not sarcasm (even though wit can cut flesh too), no?
Andreas – ironically though I know of the ancient flesh cutting roots of sarcasm – your insistence on the nuances of its modern usage sent me to my dictionary…
Or rather, since you have featured Erin Mckean in another post, to the new new thing in dictionaries – wordnik.com . Check it out – the wordnikers (have to be careful with the spelling of that) have done an excellent job.
Net result – overlapping definitions depend on the ear of the beholder – sarcasm can be ironic and/or witty – but wits often disagree about whats witty.
Congratulations, Jag!
A thrill, to be sure.
Hi Cheri – thanks – it is thrilling – and more than a little frightening. Or as the Puerto Ricans might say it makes me feel ‘like a crocdile in a wallet factory’.
Writing is already a difficult act of exposure – but radio for book promotion takes it all one step further. And like with writing – its much better when edited – hence taped interviews are OK e.g. here’s the heavily edited piece that PRI’s The World ran on Hanging Noodles last night:
http://www.theworld.org/?q=node/26981
However – live radio is whole extra kettle of wracked nerves – I have a 20 minute in person slot with Leonard Lopate of WNYC coming up. He had David Sedaris on his show last week promoting his latest paperback – yikes…
Great job, Jag! You kept your answers short and pity, so the back-and-forth was dynamic. And what a great idea to have some of the idioms spoken out loud in their original languages!