Here's a proverb: Your proverb sucks

"Everybody likes a good saying." Curt Cobain said that shortly before committing suicide. Trust me, I was there. And it's true. A good saying is pithy, informative, and it's something you can throw in a bully's face shortly before he punches your teeth out.

But as everything has its opposite, there are also terrible sayings. And I'm not talking about sayings that are unwieldy, I mean sayings that just don't make any fucking sense. You can tell a proverb is stupid if you're more confused after saying it than before.

Why don't we run over some right now so that you never, ever use them. If you do use them, I will track you down and slap you once for each offense. And it won't be hard because I'm already looking at you AS WE SPEAK.

"Don't look a gift horse in the mouth."

Never understood this one, ever, but people say it to mean that you shouldn't look at a gift because... what? Here's how wikiquotes explains it: "Do not unappreciatively question a gift or handout too closely."

First of all, I'm not sure why you shouldn't look at a gift "too closely." If someone gives me a blender, why shouldn't I stick my hand in it to make sure it's not safe? What if it isn't safe? Then I could accidentally chop up my hand, and that'd be stupid.

I don't get this sentence's literal meaning, either. What's wrong with looking at a gift horse in the mouth? Wikiquotes says that people would examine a horse's gums to see if it was an old, broke-ass piece of crap horse. Well, that sounds like a good idea, doesn't it? That horse's gingiva is pretty goddamned important, wouldn't you say?

If your proverb tells you do the exact opposite of something that you really should do, whether it's sticking your hand in a horse or checking a blender's teeth, then your proverb is unbelievably retarded.

"Beware of Greeks bearing gifts."

Here's another senseless one, also incidentally related to horses. If you guessed this was referring to the Trojan Horse (ironically a Greek horse), congrats, you watched Jeopardy! on March 11, 2006. Don't get too cocky, though, because I would fuck you up in Jeopardy! and you know it.

Yes, Virgil coined this beauty after watching the Greeks crack a Troja's skull at Troy. Unlike the previous saying, this one is pretty straightfoward: Greeks are not to be trusted because they hide people in horses. But there are more than a few things wrong with this. I will list two:

1) It's racist. I know the Greeks are smelly and shit, but this is too racist even for me. And no, if you get an honorary "Πέρασμα γειτονιάς," that doesn't entitle you to use it, either. The stereotype of Greeks constantly trying to jump out and kill everyone they give a gift to is wrong, anyway. That's more of a Hungarian thing. So let's stop crossing the street when we see a Greek carrying anything but souvlaki.

2) It's old. The Trojan War was like a hundred years ago, I think it's time we just dropped it. You don't see the Germans still getting shit for being Nazis, right? How'd you like it if everyone kept bringing up that one time you couldn't find the fucking Meadowbrook? It's only RIGHT OFF THE FUCKING ROAD ONCE YOU GO OVER THE BRIDGE.

3) It's dumb. Whoever decided that taking a giant horse from an enemy army was a good idea was mega stupid. What the hell were the Trojans thinking? "Oh, this giant wooden horse will go so well with our giant wooden skunk in our giant wooden menagerie!!!" If you're dumb enough to take a giant wooden horse, and NOT immediately convert it into a giant killer horse robot, you deserve to get punked by like five Greeks. Either way, the only reason this is even an idiom is because the Trojans are dumb, and that's not the problem of the Greeks.

So why don't we bury the hatchet once and for all.

"A watched pot never boils."

Meaning: If you consciously wait for something, it seems to take longer. Which is entirely true, but this is the wrong way to state it. How do I know? I've watched plenty of pots in my life, and this is NOT TRUE. They DO boil, even if they seem to take longer.

So you say I'm nitpicking, right? But that's not the point. The real point is that you shouldn't stare at pots waiting to boil, because that's rude. That's really rude. That's why they take longer to boil, you're putting pressure on them. It's the same reason why you don't stare at clocks. It annoys them. Then they pull that bullshit where the minute hand lurches backwards for a second before going forward. Goddamn that bullshit.

Most of all, you shouldn't watch other people, waiting for them to boil. It takes a really long time for a person to start boiling in the first place. Staring at them just makes it worse. I know it's tempting, when you're staring at someone through a window, possibly when they're overseas in an apartment in Poland or some-- I MEAN, uh... I think we're done with this one.

"Don't change horses mid-stream."

If you hear this one, it's probably election season. Yes, don't change your horse if you're in mid-stream or else AL QAEDA WINS.

This is supposed to mean that you shouldn't change... um, something... when you're in the middle of doing something else. It's pretty vague. It's also kinda stupid because what's the problem with changing a horse mid-stream? You're in a stream, right? So what're you afraid of? Getting your ankles wet? It's a stream! What's wrong with the stream, it's made of lava? Then how can you ride a horse through it?

I can understand not changing horses if you're in the middle of a river, or quicksand, or a pit full of irate midgets or something, but it's just water, the thing that gives us life!! And what if you absolutely HAD to change horses? Like the one you were one was on fire, or it was mad at you and threatening to buck you off and take the kids with it to Tampa, or it's not actually a horse but two guys in a horse costume? There are plenty of reasons to change horses, even in mid-stream, thus rendering this idiom pretty idiotic. Ah ah ah ah ah! :is kicked in the face by a horse:

"An empty vessel makes the most noise."

You ask me how I can tell an idiom was coined by a drunk person? Here you go: It just makes no fucking sense when you think about it beyond one second.

So picture this: You have a vessel. Any vessel will do. Let's say it's a bottle. The bottle is empty. So, what happens when you shake it?

If you said it makes a noise, congrats, you should be killed for being too stupid to live. IF THE VESSEL IS EMPTY, WHAT IS INSIDE IT THAT WOULD MAKE NOISE? AIR? DARK MATTER? ANGELS? And don't tell me that the air going over the lip would make noise. There's a cap on the bottle. YOU GOT NOTHING.

The idea of course is that people who talk a lot have nothing going on inside them, but there are plenty of cooler ways of saying that (my personal favorite is "Scared dogs bark the loudest." Hell yeah). But this one goes over like Pinocchio starting up with "I've Got No Strings (And I Must Scream)." But yeah, this one is pretty goddamn stupid and I hope whoever coined it had a very long, very unsatisfying cry over it.

Well that was today's journey into idioms. There are more of them out there but I don't want to overwhelm you. So, as President George Washington said in his inaugural address, "Parting is such sweet sorrow, and seven years ago." - Alec Baldwin.