Fishing

Nice little phrase for a common behavior: fishing for compliments.

If  you are fishing for a compliment you are saying something that virtually forces – or at least very strongly encourages – somebody else to make you a compliment.

Do my thighs look fat in this dress? pic: myhouseholdcapers. blogspot.com

Fishing for compliments is very frequent and not just in teenage girls.  It is generally thought of as a typical female behavior, but men are’t immune to it either.  In case you want to learn how to do it right, here is a guide.

And here are some examples of compliment fishing:

Woman:  “Honey, how do I look in this dress?  I think my butt looks really fat in it!”

Man: “Darling, what are you talking about, your butt looks spectacular in this dress. ”

And:

Man: “Sweetie, I think I  am getting a bald spot up here!”

Woman: “No dear, absolutely not, your hair is as thick as it was the day I met you 25 years ago.”

Europe = Bad?

Maybe Europeanization wouldn't be such a bad thing after all. Source: http://nyti.ms/hsL0iy

I read a blog at the Guardian the other day which made an interesting observation that I think is worthy a mention here. The claim was the following: if you want to call something bad in the US but can’t quite put your finger on the exact nature of the badness just call it “European”.

First I thought this was an overstatement bordering on the outrageous but come to think of it, there is something to it:

Small cars = European shoe boxes

People using strong language say “excuse my French” as if the French were particularly prone to obscenities when in fact the Americans have a pronounced fondness of the f-word, even if it is bleeped out on TV.

People against health care reform carry on about the risk of Europeanizing the country – as if that was the end of the world as we know it or a head first plunge into Marxism.

Senator McConnell (a Republican) just recently warned that the health care reform plan will turn the US into Western Europe.  He said this not in support of the health care plan (which all Republicans are opposed to as a matter of ideology) but as a scathing damnation of Obama’s health care reform – and everybody understodd it to mean that, no explanation required.

Nobody even seems to feel the need to explain how health care for unemployed and children should be a scary thing.