A friend sent me this list of winning words from the Washington Post's "Mensa Invitational," which asks readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or
changing a letter, and supply a new definition. Here some favorites from the list:
Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.
Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly
Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.
Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period.
Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.
Hipatitis: Terminal coolness.
Karmageddon: It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.
Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.
Glibido: All talk and no action.
Dopeler effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
Arachnoleptic fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.
Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.
Caterpallor (n.): The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you're eating.
And the pick of the literature:
Ignoranus: A person who's both stupid and an asshole.
Sunday, June 05, 2005
Saturday, June 04, 2005
Sunday, May 15, 2005
Let's be sincere...
This is prose,
not poetry, but
let’s be sincere
The truth will out, but do we take the time to note it, and will we recognize it when we see it? I ask because it’s a question of vision.
Sure it is. Follow me here, if you will.
See, I have this thing about roadside billboards that have been left to the weather —the paper withered and lacerated, mixed messages from sundry times melding into unintended meanings, rust and wood showing through. It appears flat but betrays secret depth.
And I wonder (sometimes, for no apparent reason, I wonder things like this) if maybe people are like these billboards torn by time, maintaining their shapes while hinting at the secrets hidden under layers of paper, ink and glue.
Sure they are.
See? Scratch the surface. People, too, camouflage enigmas under the cover of happy colors and bright slogans. Mysteries are concealed beneath their skin, forgotten layers that sometimes push through of their own accord, and other times are torn free by mere circumstance, memory or wild catastrophe.
Water-softened and sun-dried, the weathered membrane peels back. Real lives squirm under the onionskins we turn to show the world, the smiles like billboards by which we advertise something that maybe never truly was — reality now revealed by juxtaposition with that which lay secluded just beneath, that which would not (or could not) remain buried.
This is the viscera, the rawness poets ache to glimpse, the honesty Kerouac was seeking when, in Book of Blues, he wrote, “I mean / This is prose / Not poetry / But I want / To be sincere.”
But what does it mean, this contrasted with that — the before and the after, both fading together in the sun-bright face of the now?
The rusted backboard, the termite-eaten and time-rotted wood. The bleached paper and spotted ink that make up a person’s past? The half-messages, now garbled and misunderstood, ghosts of meaning left by those who came before, who passed this way, pressed their designs upon our surfaces, and have since moved on.
All of it, taken at once and jutting above the treeline for all to see?
It is what it is, and we must not make more of it than that. Look quickly, gaze deeply, take it in when you can. Because tomorrow, if not sooner, a new skin will be placed — bright smiles, fashionable slogans, happy colors on fresh paper.
It’s the only way we can survive together, after all.
Peace.
***
(The preceding appeared as my Sunday "Undercurrents" column in The News Herald, May 15, 2005, alongside a photo to follow as the next post.)
not poetry, but
let’s be sincere
The truth will out, but do we take the time to note it, and will we recognize it when we see it? I ask because it’s a question of vision.
Sure it is. Follow me here, if you will.
See, I have this thing about roadside billboards that have been left to the weather —the paper withered and lacerated, mixed messages from sundry times melding into unintended meanings, rust and wood showing through. It appears flat but betrays secret depth.
And I wonder (sometimes, for no apparent reason, I wonder things like this) if maybe people are like these billboards torn by time, maintaining their shapes while hinting at the secrets hidden under layers of paper, ink and glue.
Sure they are.
See? Scratch the surface. People, too, camouflage enigmas under the cover of happy colors and bright slogans. Mysteries are concealed beneath their skin, forgotten layers that sometimes push through of their own accord, and other times are torn free by mere circumstance, memory or wild catastrophe.
Water-softened and sun-dried, the weathered membrane peels back. Real lives squirm under the onionskins we turn to show the world, the smiles like billboards by which we advertise something that maybe never truly was — reality now revealed by juxtaposition with that which lay secluded just beneath, that which would not (or could not) remain buried.
This is the viscera, the rawness poets ache to glimpse, the honesty Kerouac was seeking when, in Book of Blues, he wrote, “I mean / This is prose / Not poetry / But I want / To be sincere.”
But what does it mean, this contrasted with that — the before and the after, both fading together in the sun-bright face of the now?
The rusted backboard, the termite-eaten and time-rotted wood. The bleached paper and spotted ink that make up a person’s past? The half-messages, now garbled and misunderstood, ghosts of meaning left by those who came before, who passed this way, pressed their designs upon our surfaces, and have since moved on.
All of it, taken at once and jutting above the treeline for all to see?
It is what it is, and we must not make more of it than that. Look quickly, gaze deeply, take it in when you can. Because tomorrow, if not sooner, a new skin will be placed — bright smiles, fashionable slogans, happy colors on fresh paper.
It’s the only way we can survive together, after all.
Peace.
***
(The preceding appeared as my Sunday "Undercurrents" column in The News Herald, May 15, 2005, alongside a photo to follow as the next post.)
Sunday, May 08, 2005
Wednesday, March 02, 2005
In the Woods
In the woods of his youth
In the dream, there are things that chase but never catch
In the doghouse
In the madhouse
In the woods where giants dwell and wolves lurk,
and little girls should not stray alone
even in cloaks of red
In the dreamland
In the nightmare
Under the moon of hunt and harvest
of faery fires lighting oak limbs and glens and lochs of crystal
There the skellyman dances and Little Red prances
and Big Bad smiles, licks chops
and glances over his shoulder, wondering where the hunter is
on this night under the moon in the woods
of the dreamland
of his youth
by the madhouse
in the nightmare
and harvest faery fires
In the dream, there are things that chase but never catch
In the doghouse
In the madhouse
In the woods where giants dwell and wolves lurk,
and little girls should not stray alone
even in cloaks of red
In the dreamland
In the nightmare
Under the moon of hunt and harvest
of faery fires lighting oak limbs and glens and lochs of crystal
There the skellyman dances and Little Red prances
and Big Bad smiles, licks chops
and glances over his shoulder, wondering where the hunter is
on this night under the moon in the woods
of the dreamland
of his youth
by the madhouse
in the nightmare
and harvest faery fires
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)