In promulgating your esoteric cogitation or articulating your superficial sentimentalities, and amicable philosophical or psychological observations, beware of platitudinous

ponderosity. Let your conversational communications possess a compacted conciseness, a clarified comprehensibility, a coalescent cogency, and a concatenated consistency. Eschew obfuscation and all conglomeration of flatulent garrulity, jejune babblement, and asinine affectations. Let your extemporaneous descanting and unpremeditated expatiation have intelligibility and voracious vivacity without rodomontade or thrasonical bombast. Sedulously avoid all polysyllabic profundity, pompous prolificacy, and vain vapid verbosity. In short: "Be brief and don't use big words."

At Sea World, our grandson absolutely refused to see the show featuring Shamu the killer whale, but he wouldn't tell us why. No amount of discussion could get him to change his mind. Later, when we got home, we discovered the reason for his reluctance. An aunt had told him how exciting the show would be because "they choose children from the audience to feed Shamu."

Discovering too late that a watermelon fruit punch spiked with vodka had accidentally been served to a luncheon meeting of local Baptist ministers, the restaurant's owner waited nervously for their reaction. "Quick, man," he whispered to the head waiter, "what did they say?" "Nothing," replied the waiter. "They were too busy slipping seeds into their pockets."