Figures of Speech

While attempting to learn some Spanish, my more knowledgable friend, Dave, told me that the phrase tengo ganas (meaning feel like) was an idiom, causing me to question exactly what an idiom was. As I fumbled my way through the family-friendly reference guide known as Wikipedia, the very first example of an idiom is "spank the monkey".

No, I'm not kidding.

The same article proceeded to offer up other idoms along the same vein (no pun intended) one of which was even new to me: "Taking the pink canoe to tuna town".

But here's the thing: I saw this entry 3 days ago, wondering how on earth it was allowed being so .... I don't know.... dirty. Then today I decide to blog about it and when I went to link it for this post... it was GONE! Replaced by something infinitely more PG.

I was all set to make some comment about how I was beginning to rethink meeting my friends in Century City at Pink Taco (again, not kidding) for dinner tomorrow after learning about idioms the Wikipedia way, but then this sudden change in content threw my mojo off and I can't get the Pink Taco joke right, so I decided: forget it. You figure it out.

You can find the old cached version of the Wiki entry by Googling Wikipedia, idiom, and monkey, where you get the following:

In the English expression to spank the monkey, for example, a listener knowing only the meaning of spank and monkey would be unable to deduce the expression's actual meaning (which is to masturbate vigorously). Although it can refer literally to the act of striking an actual monkey with a hand, native speakers rarely use it that way. It cannot be directly translated to other languages - for example, the same expression in German is den Affen schlagen (to strike the ape), with the ape being as detachable from its usual meaning as the monkey in the English phrase is. The same expression in Dutch is het loodje leggen (to lay the piece of lead), which is entirely different from the English expression, too. Other expressions include taking the pink canoe to tuna town and yummy touchy cheeky time.

But enough about me and my problems...What are some of your problems?