Time to Pay the Piper!

No not that Piper! This post is actually inspired by true events that occurred last Thursday and Friday at my sister's Scottish themed wedding (we aren't but her husband's Maternal Grandparents are Scottish). Going through the final details at the rehearsal the day prior the Best Man and Groom were trying to figure out who would pay the Piper. Both Garry (my other brother in law) and myself found this really amusing literally having to figure out who would pay the piper. The day of the wedding things we were about a half hour behind starting dinner. The piper was supposed to pipe in the wedding party, but around 6:30 pm he got really agitated and demanded payment, I guess his Winnebago was double parked. The best man gave him his money and the guy took off before the wedding party could be piped into the reception hall. Well not quite what the cautionary tale about the Pied Piper of Hamlin is about but certainly anytime someone uses or misuses the expression, well it will have a whole new meaning to me, this finally brings me to my actual posting... one of my biggest annoyances is the reliance on cliches, or corporate speak, or sports analogies or war metaphors unless it is specifically used for the purposes of irony or humour. I'm going to just briefly describe some of the more common instances of what I believe to be annoying reliance on cliches:
The most common place to hear cliches is of course in sports. Hockey athletes are well known for their really dull interviews riddled with "one game at a time", "give it 110%". I find it really amusing when hockey analysts describe an offensive defenceman as the "Quarterback" of the powerplay, yes we all understand what you mean when you use the term, but I didn't ever see Tomas Kaberle putting his hands up Mats Sundin's butt last season and Sundin hike him the puck. Boxing is quite popular, "going toe to toe" or being in a "heavyweight bout". I notice Tony Kornheiser likes to throw in a lot of baseball terms when he is on Monday Night Football, it makes me wish they brought Dennis Miller back.

War references are very commonly used in sports. In basketball, announcers often refer to a particularly skilled Point Guard as a "floor general". Football loves to describe a very physical game as a "war" and coaches love to describe the opposition as the enemy and "we are going to go out there and take no prisoners", which I presume to mean they are going to kill everyone, because otherwise it wouldn't be very threatening "ok you are free to go now". Ironically enough in war, they tend to use a lot of sports or medical analogies, or so all the stuff I've seen on HBO's Generation Kill seems to tell me. When a unit has been selected for a special mission there is often talk of "taking the ball and running with it" or "being on the goal line" (presumably the oppositions goal line). I suppose the use of sports analogies in the military is a sort of common language, so many kids who end up in the Marines at some point in their life played high school football so I guess using the war as a game metaphor sort of distracts them from the seriousness of what they are about to do and also sort of brings the unit together to accomplish a goal, either that or they are all bunch of dumb jocks I don't know. I suppose on the other hand the "game as war" serves to turn a pointless game that is supposed to be played for fun into something really serious. Strange, I was tempted to quote something from Confucius that I saw in Ghost Dog about paying great mind to trivial things and little mind to important things but blah, blah, blah.

Along with sports and war references you also hear a lot of other expressions that no one really is quite sure where they came from like: "crunch time", which I always think of like Captain Crunch and start wondering what that has to do with football, did Captain Crunch play football for the Naval Academy?
I don't know whether the use of cliches in sports has something to do with the intelligence of the broadcasters and the fact that they are former athletes for the most part who have spent their entire life listening to former athletes now coaches feed them the same pre-game, halftime/intermission speeches or whether it is indicative of the intelligence of the people at home watching and listening.

Even worse than the use of cliches in sports is the reliance on cliches in the Corporate Environment. The worst part about cliches in an office environment just about any sort of cliche or analogy can and will be used sometimes rendering the entire conversation completely ridiculous and incomprehensible. The one expression I hear most frequently "touch base", I have no idea where this came from perhaps it is some kind of sports reference I don't know it just always sounds so insincere, what's wrong with "we should do lunch", or "I'll give you a call", also frequently insincere but at least it's clear what is meant. I hear a lot of corporations refer to their work units as "teams" and managers and supervisors as "coaches", I find this all a bit ironic. What usually happens to a baseball or hockey team that performs poorly, the coach or manager gets fired, in most corporate environments the first people to go are the lowest level employees and not the management team so I find this fictitious "team" concept to be a bit amusing. Call it what you want "coach", "supervisor", "manager" in the corporate world it is hierarchical and everybody ultimately has a "boss" usually more than one.

The most amusing thing I've ever heard was a mid level manager who liked to mix sports analogies in a corporate environment to create if you followed it some crazy combo sport. "Well we need to see you step up to the plate and see if you can make it from behind the 3 point line and if we have confidence in you we will give you the ball and let you run with it and maybe give you a shot at goal". I hear this and I was like this is some weird base-ket-foot-soccer ball game almost sounds like something I might want to create and sell to corporations as a "team building exercise" unless they are already playing this in Ireland or Australia or something.

My final point about cliches is that when they are intended to express a certain sentiment on a subject, frequently people do understand what you mean and it is efficient, however on occasion people pretend to understand what you mean but are just too embarrassed to admit they don't and your very profound point that you thought you just made with a clever use of a cliche wasn't made at all. An example of cliches being lost on certain people, we have different themes for the instruction every month in my aikido dojo and the month of May the theme was "Silence is Golden". One of the members who is not originally from Canada, wasn't really sure what this meant he says to a group of us "This silence is golden....what does this mean....silence is good...." being the topical comedian that I am I'm like "yes, very good and increasing in value every day".