We had a nice little dinner party last weekend, and at some point the subject of conversation turned briefly to the burlesque acts that have been gaining popularity in the Seattle area as of late. I expressed my fervent lack of interest in what seemed to me to be a totally outmoded and unappealing form of adult entertainment. But two good friends of ours—a married couple—sought to correct my misconception, explaining that they have gone to a number of the shows and found them very entertaining, more acrobatic than erotic. I remained unconvinced, thinking that it sounded like a combination of a gymnastics meet and a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue; two things I don’t habitually pursue individually, let alone glommed together.

“Yeah,” the male of the couple said sarcastically, “attractive women performing amazing acrobatics, what could possibly be interesting about that?”

If I’d had the wherewithal to come up with it at the time, I would have replied that there are certain activities—certain art forms, hobbies and passtimes that make up part of the Puget Sound experience—that seem to attract two separate, distinct yet almost totally indistinguishable demographics. The first group consists of people who genuinely, organically appreciate these things, be they burlesque, dive bars, roller derby or The Ramones. The second is made up of people who convince themselves that they appreciate these things, because to do so fulfills their embedded image of themselves as hip, artsy, cutting-edge Puget Sound kind of people.

I would have also hastened to add that, while I would never stoop to making any assumptions about which group our various contemporaries who pursue such activities fit into, I know damn well which one I would belong to were I to do so.

I can only speak for myself here, but I am very much over being “gritty”. I did gritty in my teens, with hardcore Punk, substance abuse, violence and mayhem. By the time I graduated college I had worked out all of my gritty. Now I’m more or less about comfort and personal gratification, a term that has been more or less ruined by its popular perceptual linking to the act of masturbation. Personal gratification takes many forms with me, from video games to charity work. Personal gratification may certainly involve forms of culture that might seem a bit “out there”; it might involve unusual venues or enigmatic activities. But just as often (oh Hell, let’s be honest and call it “more often”), it does not.

And what it almost never includes is, say, sitting in a grimy, poorly-lit downtown tavern drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon or Jack and ginger ale, listening to the wisdom of the street as blearily pronounced through pitted, Parliament-stained teeth.

Once again, though, that’s just me. It most assuredly does not mean that other folks don’t find pure, unalloyed fulfillment in just this sort of environment.

On the other hand, it also doesn’t mean that a good percentage of the people who profess to finding their bliss in such tableaux might not just be blowing Lucky Strike smoke up their own ass. From hereafter, such individuals will be known as fauxhemians.

We had ourselves a lovely holiday, starting with Thanksgiving I over at the in-laws’ with family and friends, good food and good company. A few of our pack were unable to attend due to their work schedules, so after a few hours we picked up the show and took it on the road to our house for Thanksgiving II. The sequel was all about my personal favorite part of the Turkey Day ritual: sammiches. Big, thick, slablike turkey sammiches with mayo and sweet pickles and provolone cheese. And pumpkin pie. But not on the sammiches.

All in all, a highly enjoyable array of holiday brouhahae. Wishing yours was as well. 😀

This particular neologism came about as a result of a dialog with one of the attendees at Thanksgiving I (and Thanksgiving II, for that matter), Curt. Curt is a—well, actually, here’s the heart of the problem. One wants to use the term “vegetarian” to describe his eating habits, but that’s not really the case. He has for many years now and for reasons not entirely clear to me (nor are they really any of my business) forsworn the consumption of the larger and more motile aggregates of organelles that fill the land and the skies, but has no such compunctions when it comes to the denizens of the sea. I have watched Curt tackle a mountain of boiled crawdads, gleefully sucking the brains out of the heads. I have attempted to eat him under the table at sushi restaurants, resulting in a stalemate and an agreement to maintain diplomatic relations.

In short, he is one of those “vegetarian-except-for-fish” guys, a concept as seemingly self-contradictory as being “pro-life-except-for-the-death-penalty”, though not nearly as asinine or potentially destabilizing to society.

Anyway, up to now, “‘vegetarian-except-for-fish’ guy” was about the best term I could come up with for this unique gustatory niche. That is no longer the case.

Ladies and gentlemen, to eschew the tasty bits of the flesh of animals of the land and sky but not the sea, shall henceforth be known as the quality of being bi-epicurious.

As stated previously, I’m a big fan of the Sci Fi (no, I most certainly will not refer to it as “SyFy”; if they want to dumb down their name in a feeble attempt to attract the young, hip, fresh—-and apparently phonetically codependent—Youf-O’-Todayz, that’s their problem, but I’ll have none of it) Channel’s hit series Ghost Hunters. I am somewhat less enamored of the spinoff series Ghost Hunters International, but that doesn’t mean I don’t DVR a nd watch it every week. I continue to watch in the hope that the show will mature into itself and become the compelling program I find its progenitor to be. Hasn’t happened yet, but what the fuck; it’s only the precious and fleeting gift of life, right? 😀

One of the things I find really vexing about GHI is the tendency of the investigators to jump to really ridiculous conclusions with seemingly no evidence whatsoever. Where a member of The Atlantic Paranormal Society (the group around which Ghost Hunters revolves) might describe an experience as “I felt a sensation of pressure against my back”, an investigator from GHI would instead say “I felt a hand on my back”. GHI seems to find “voices” with shocking regularity in their EVP sessions where the viewer at home can only hear faint sibilants or scratching noises, and “shadowy figures” in photographs that resemble nothing so much as crappy photographs. And time after time, the team from Ghost Hunter International will take their rag-tag aggregation of spooky noises, eerie sensations and blurry video and use it as the basis to proclaim that yes, indeed, the place is haunted.

But beyond the seemingly unwarranted presumption of the existence of supernatural beings in certain locales and situations, Ghost Hunters International sometimes displays a ludicrous tendency to claim to understand the feelings and motivations of the spirits they uncover.

This week’s episode was a classic in that vein. A woman who curates a castle in Austria that was allegedly the site of some of the most horrific witch trials in Europe is afraid to be alone at work, and in fact won’t even enter some of the rooms in the castle. GHI comes in to help her find answers and assuage her fears. After wandering around the grounds all night, experiencing knocks, creaks and some other phenomena that might actually be unexplained in a 13th-century building made of stone and wood, they return to let her know their findings. Lead investigator Rob wraps the whole experience up by telling her that the spirits in the castle “just want recognition.” He suggest that she call out a greeting when entering rooms where she feels an otherwordly presence may lie.

Huh. An ancient building that would seem to be imprinted with the negative energy of dozens or even hundreds of torture victims, a presence that is suspected to be the head torturer himself, not to mention the admittedly-minuscule possibility that some of those mordered actually were witches….ya know, he’s right; whatever roams those halls probably just wants a hug. 🙄

Which brings me to this installment’s neologism: parapsychobabble. The practice of assigning touchy-feely psychological motives to paranormal phenomena.

This one requires a little backstory.

I was standing in front of the bathroom mirror yesterday evening, preparing to shave my upper beard (you know, the one that goes around the top of the head rather than the bottom), and the can of shaving cream was on its last legs. Anyone who uses store-bought shaving cream—as opposed to shaving cream preserves you can yourself at home, I suppose—knows the sound of a can about to slough its mortal coil: that signature”CHHHHHHRRAAAA-A-A-A-A-CKKKKK” noise, like a barista trying to steam-froth a dog turd. This wretched, phlegmy clamor is invariably accompanied by a stuttering and popping expulsion of foam, sometimes in many different directions. Come to think of it, the whole experience is like some bizarr surfactant-centric analogue to a bad case of the green apple splatters.

(Okay, that grossed out even me. I promise there will be no more poop references in this post. Pinky swear.)

A-a-aaanyway, there I was with my handful of foam, preparing to slather it on, when it occurred to me to wonder: why is it that the thickest, most luxuriously rich shaving cream comes from the absolute dregs, that very last gasp of the can? Without question, that has been the case for every can of shaving cream I have ever operated.

It then occurred to me that, given that I was fortunate enough to be living in the free-falling apogee of the Information Age, I could go and look it up on the prestigious Interwebs. Ask.com, howstuffworks.com, shavingcreamfacts.com (stunningly, this last domain name is not yet taken)….there must be a multitude of legitimate online sources for just this sort of shaving-cream-related data.

On the other hand (and I very much doubt that I am the first person to make this observation) just because you can look something up on the Web, does not necessarily mean that you should. Information—and more to the point, information gleaned online—is like a Dorito for your mind. Three might be a tasty munch, fifteen will make a satisfying snack. But indulgence begets indulgence, and by the time you’ve gorged yourself on dozens (or hundreds) of seemingly innocuous info-krill strained from the stream-of-consciousness-turned-ocean that is the World Wide Web, you’re suffering from the intellectual equivalent of bloat, diabetes, gout, heart disease and eventual stroke. Also you have nacho cheese dust all over your brain.

All of which is to say that some questions are better left unanswered, because the very act of pursuing enlightenment will likely leave you dumber and more slow-witted than you were before.

Such an inquest shall heretorfore be known as a retardical question.

This week Margaret and I are burning off a few vacation hours that we would otherwise not have the time to use. We spent all of our travel budget this year on home improvements, so if we want to take a trip to an exotic locale we have to go sit in our new shower. No biggie: while we love going places other than our home, we also love just sitting around enjoying each other’s company, reading books, watching movies, and serving as slow-moving jungle gyms for our new kittens as they carom throughout the house. Anyway, so if posts are kind of thin, it’s because I’m not turning on the computer quite so much this week. Now on to the festivities.

While we were down in Olympia last week Margaret and I stopped in at Bagel Brothers, a quite-respectable bagel joint in the area, for lunch. Bagel Brothers isn’t a hard-core Jewish deli style bagel place—any comestabulary that offers Cheesy Jalapeno bagels is a bit too goy for that—but they also do not offer, in the parlance of my father-in-law, “round bread”. You know; those puffy, fluffy counterfeit bagels you get at the majority of the chain places or at the grocery store. And they’re a local business, which of course we prefer to support.

This particular Bagel Brothers—okay, the only Bagel Brothers—sits next to one of Washington’s state-run liquor stores. The relevance of this will become apparent in a moment.

As we sat munching our lunches—Margaret a roast beef and pesto and me a bagel with a schmear—an older, overweight man with a red face walked through the door. He sauntered over to the soda fountain, grabbed one of the paper cups used for water, filled it with ice from the fountain, and walked back out the door.

It took perhaps thirty seconds for the scenario to truly register with me….right around the time I remembered the flattish, rectangular brown-paper-bag-wrapped package tucked in the crook of his flabby arm.

This human hemorrhoid had just picked up a fifth of some form of liquor at the package store, then walked into the mom ‘n pop eatery next door to steal a cup of ice so he could go enjoy his refreshing beverage on the rocks. After which, no doubt, he would return via car to his job as a Kindergarten bus driver.

I got up and headed out the door, intending to perhaps confront the man, to at least use my phone to take pictures of his license plate and report him to the police. Sadly my logy neurological pathways had kept me in my seat long enough for him to make his getaway, either on foot or in that presumptive motor vehicle that had now become a loaded weapon.

At that moment I truly hated, hated this man. From the callous inconsideration of his petty theft, through the crushing personal and public burden of his obvious addiction, to the potentially life-endangering felony of his driving under the influence, I wanted nothing more than for him to be obliterated, flensed from the Earth. His hopes, his fears, his sicknesses—none of it mattered; excise him whole and cast him into the void like so much infectious waste. Quickly, before he metastasizes, further jeopardizing the health of the whole.

Of course this was as much a statement of my feelings of impotence and inadequacy for failing to react in time as it was anything about him; I’m not blind to that. But the feeling, much reduced but still potent, endures.

In reflecting on it later, I was forced to come to the somewhat exasperating conclusion that the reason I hated him so much was due to his obvious and all-encompassing lack of consideration for his fellow human beings.

Let’s go over that again, shall we? I hated this man for not loving his fellow Man.

Philosophical and epistemological musings on the subject aside, what I really needed was a term for this sort of sentiment. It took a good half a week to come up with one I thought fit the bill, a kind of doubling-up and folding-over of the concept of hatred of hatred: misanthropistpy.

Better still, a person who practices misanthropistpy is….drumroll please….a misanthropistpist.

I’m particularly pleased with that aspect of the neologism, with its double helping of “pist”. Double-pist is exactly how I felt that day.

Growing up in Hawaii in the late 70’s/early 80’s gave me an interesting childhood relationship with sushi. Sushi in Hawaii does not embody the magic and mystery of the Orient that it does in much of the rest of the nation. Many things that seem exotic in other environs are commonplace in the 50th state, due to the crucible of interacting cultures there.

Much like raw fish (enjoyed most commonly as poke’), sushi in Hawaii inhabits a couple of different culinary and cultural strata; a more commonly accessible niche as well as that of more traditional haute cuisine. It is considered much more of a casual snack—surfer food, even—than it is elsewhere. Sushi is sold in grocery stores and okazuya in a couple of basic forms. None of the highfalutin’ cuisine with its delicate slices of otoro or glistening drapery of uni. The sushi of the proletariat in the islands is available in either maki (roll) or inari (cone) form. There is no raw fish involved, nothing that might easily spoil. It is a simple delivery device for vinegared rice and a few largely shelf-stable wraps and fillers. It was not until I got to the mainland that I was introduced to the wonders of nigiri.

Now as a semi-official Northwsterner and left-coaster, I am in the midst of an intense and abiding love affair with sushi. I can sit down and polish off twenty or thirty pieces without batting an eye. There’s just something about the one-two protein/carb punch of fresh fish and rice that stimulates my yummy centers like little else. Even the protein warhead of a big ol’ rib eye steak can’t touch it. A massive slab of charred cow leaves me turgid and logy, while a party platter of sushi leaves me bright-eyed and ready for action….the primary action coming to mind being the consumption of more sushi. Maybe it’s all the dissolved antidepressants suffused throughout the fresh fish that does it….

I don’t eat sushi as much as would be my druthers; Margaret does not eat raw fish (a phobia leftover from her courses in parasitology in vet school), so I am forced to pursue my passion solo or in the company of the occasional like-minded friend (hi Curt!). As a result my encounters with sushi are relatively few and far between. And sometimes I have to find ways to palliate my cravings in between hot man-on-fish sessions.

Many high-end grocery stores in the Northwest such as Trader Joe’s sell a form of sushi substitute that will temporarily quell the longing. These are trays of mass-produced maki rolls: gluey, semi-pulverized sushi rice filled with a crabesque-salad mixture of pollock, mayonnaise and other flavorings. They bear the same relationship to bona fide sushi as a plastic-wrapped lozenge of binder-infused chopped/formed/pressed turkey meat bears to an actual ten pound tom with garlic-sage stuffing.

The product is by no means sushi, but the size and shape, coupled with the ritualized movements of chopstick and pool of wasabi and shoyu, can temporarily trick the mind into thinking that you are ingesting the real thing. Basically, this stuff is the methadone of sushi.

The other day, whilst gamely masticating a tray of the stuff, I came up with the perfect, the signature name for this product:

mocki. 💡

In light of the announcement today, might I offer a timely addition to the Neologism section of Uncle Andrew dot Net.

From this date henceforth, a person who manages to envelop the dualistic traits of diminutiveness and grandiosity, ineffectuality and megalomania, shall henceforth be known as a Nader.

Here’s to hoping that everyone’s favorite squeaky wheel will forswear his share of the grease, come to his senses and simply fall off rather than upset the applecart for everyone.

So we decided to go to the New Jersey Aquarium in Camden the other day, since we didn’t have anything else to do. What the heck, it’ll be an adventure. It’s even named the Adventure Aquarium, so how could we not? The answer, and the resulting experience, are the source and subject of today’s Neologism.

We headed up 95 North to the Walt Whitman Bridge, then switched over to 676. My Aunt told us that there were signs everywhere for the aquarium, we couldn’t miss it. As we crossed to the other side of the bridge, we saw a sign over an exit ramp reading “Camden Waterfront”.

“I think we need to get off here,” Margaret said.

“But there’s nothing saying ‘Aquarium,'” I replied. “Joan was very specific about that. I think we should stay on the highway for now, until we see signs pointing us to the aquarium.” We drove on.

Five to ten miles later, as the signs began announcing the immiment approach of Atlantic City, I capitulated, and we pulled off the freeway into some anonymous New Jersey suburb (Blacksburg? Blackfoot? Black Lung?) and called my Uncle for directions. We jumped back onto the freeway in the opposite direction. As luck would have it, the Camden Waterfront exit was in fact the one we should have taken; it’s just that every single one of the signs indicating it as the exit for the aquarium are on the southbound side of the freeway. We had plenty of indicators on the way back.

Upon exiting, we soon found a series of signs pointing us towards the aquarium. These signs led us further and further into Camden’s industrial waterfront area….where they suddenly disappeared. We wandered for about twenty minutes, with the city’s loin growing ever-tenderer around us, until I called another time-out and pulled into the closest parking lot to check my GPS. At that very moment, my sister called me to let me know that her flight from Albuquerque had been cancelled. Also at that very moment, a security patrol for the Harbormaster pulled up to findout why I was loitering in the Harbormaster’s lot, peering at a GPS and talking into a cell phone. I hung up on my sister, pocketed my GPS and asked the nice man with a gun if he knew where the aquarium was. “Yeah, it’s right over there,” he said, and pointed to a building some three hundred feet to our right. Oops. “Thanks very much,” I told him gratefully, “You’ve been more help than two relatives and a GPS.” We pulled out and found some parking closer to our target.

The Adventure Aquarium originally started as a showcase for the fish of New Jersey, but quickly discovered that no one was willing to pay $17.50 to see displays of bottom-feeders mutated by polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and organic solvents. So they added a bunch of colorful non-native species (including hippopotamuses [hippopotami?]) to liven the place up. As of late, the powers-that-be decided to include colorful non-native species who live in a pineapple under the sea,  in the form of the Spongebob Squarepants 4-D Adventure; a movie-like, quasi-edumacational attraction. This naturally attracted scores, shoals, and squalls of children. Couples with children. Summer-school groups of children. Children Having Children there with their chidren. Wave upon fulminating wave of thundering, drooling, squealing, screeching, pop-eyed sticky-handed klaxon-throated children. We couldn’t escape them; everywhere you turned you were run over by strollers, plowed into by ballistic toddlers and had your eardrums crenellated by the piercing shrieks of children exclaiming over the sharks, the hippos, the ice cream stands.

Margaret and I both thought the place was well-put-together, visually captivating and more than a little educational. Kudos to them. They even offered attendees a chance (for an additional fee) to help feed the sharks. I could not help but think that the aquarium could combine two of their problems–too many children, how to pay for shark food–into a single, Jonathan-Swift/A Modest Proposal-style solution. One that any voluntarily childless couple like ourselves would be delighted to spend some of their lavish extra disposable income to subsidize.

Which brings me at last to the neologism:

If adventure means, “an exciting or very unusual experience” (from the Latin future participle of advenīre, to arrive; or “what must happen”), then what we underwent at the Camden Aquarium was by any measure an abventure; an experience from which one must move away with all possible haste.

I was talking to our housemate on the phone this afternoon, about his new romantic interest. Shawn has been on a bad woman tear–or perhaps a bad-woman tear–for some time now. Abandoned by the baddest (that is to say, the worst) woman in the Universe, he then went on to date a string of women who, irrespective of whether they were or were not bad in and of themselves, were nonetheless bad for him. This new one seems like a real keeper; we wish her and Shawn the best.

Anyhowitzer, Shawn is naturally very cautious with his heart these days. Nonetheless he confessed to me that he thought he was, to quote him, “cautiously head-over-heels in love.”

That turn of phrase made me laugh. If ever there were a self-contradictory expression, “cautiously head-over-heels in love” would seem to be it. There had to be some more semantically appropriate term, something that helped to convey the same dizzy ecstasy but with a more restrained affect to it.

In five seconds I had it. “Dude,” I told him, “You’re not head-over-heels yet. You’re just neck-over-knees.” 🙂

This particular neologism has been in rattling around in Margaret’s and my vocabulary for some time, but she mentioned having recently incapacitated a colleague at work by using it in front of him, and this made me realize that I had not shared it with the rest of you.

Unlike many dogs, cats spend a lot of time at approximately eye height with their owners. They jump up onto your desk, climb up into your lap, insinuate themselves between you and your book/TV show/delicious sammich. This puts one in highly intimate contact with their various ends. Some ends are more, well, mannerly than others.

‘Round these parts (and those parts), the south-bound end of a north-bound cat is commonly referred to as a “Pink Wink”. 😀

Or, alternatively, a “Cat Ass Trophy”. Say it fast. 😯

Came up with this one after I finished my previous post:

Dilberttante: someone who merely plays at being a nerd.

Andrew has asked me to be a permanent guest blogger since he says “I need the content” (to which I say phoo! But I’m happy to keep blogging) and Zeus alone knows that my every day professional life is certainly content-ful so here we go.

For those, including myself, who worry that my blog entries may be nothing more than a long series of work rants, I would ask that you calm your worries. I’ll make every attempt to bore the pants off y’all every so often with long rambling discourses on how my garden grows. I may even figure out how to post photos! 🙂

And with that odd introduction I begin my preliminary rant.

Case The First:

Why on EARTH would an adult woman name her dog a 6 letter name starting with “C” that is a common slang term for female genitalia? Now granted, she was a young and somewhat dumb adult, but that just seems to prove my point all the more. This girl, ponytail sprouting from the top of her head, “Hello Kitty” clutch purse, cell phone semi-permanently glued to her ear and the word “PINK” boldy blazoned across her butt (or the seat of her shorts, but you at least get the picture) wasn’t the little old lady type who you might expect to come up with this sort of semi-cutesy name with hideous slang undertones. For the record this “C” word is one section of a three word combo, something that grandma types could potentially be expected to coo out when tickling their grandchildren. But, as I said, this wasn’t a grandma type. She was young enough to have only heard this word in its slang/genitalia disguise and we had to try REAL hard not to laugh when talking to her about her dog.

Especially since the dog, poor thing, was having problems associated with having puppies.

Case The Second:

Why, oh why, oh why do people bring me their pets, pay for my opinion about what needs to be done with their pets and then not take my advice? The case in point involves a 10 month old puppy whose owner is feeding him nothing but people food. “He used to eat dog food, but we kind of got in the habit of feeding him people food and now he doesn’t want to eat anything else!” So she feeds him (eek) bacon. And tater tots. And meat if the family is having it, but otherwise she just cooks him up some eggs. And he really likes pizza.

I’m sure, even though most of you haven’t had much exposure to the back workings of a veterinary hospital (and the lunacy so involved), you can get the idea. Young woman, maybe mid to late 20s, lower income, and it’s obvious that her diet isn’t of the best. Intact male puppy who should have been neutered months ago, no compliance on the part of the owner with our reccomendations about vaccines even though “We love him so much he’s just like part of the family!”. Puppy is allowed to jump and scratch the owner’s legs and he was aggressively demanding to chew on the owner (her hands, her clothing, her purse) while I was talking to her.

I spent half an hour or more explaining to her what needs to be done with her dog so he doesn’t continue these behaviors that are, the owner is now beginning to realize, pretty damned annoying. I spent at least another half an hour explaining to her how she was killing her dog by feeding it (shudder) three pieces of bacon and a scrambled egg for breakfast.

She sat and listened to me in between fending off her creature’s advances.

And then responded with……..

“Okay, I’ll think about it.”

Y’know there are other, wildly more productive things I could have spent that hour doing.

Case The Third:

Involves an article I read in a recent People magazine. No, we don’t subscribe, it was in the staff john at work and it was much more interesting to read than the AAHA magazine that was also there.

Woman in Connecticut (I believe) owns a cat that has viciously and unprovokedly attacked two neighbors and her Avon lady, putting at least one of them in the hospital. In accordance with local statues the owner was charged with felony reckless endangerment (oh how I wish that owners of dangerous animals in King county could be charged with a felony!). The prosecutor’s office offered to drop all the charges if she has the cat euthanized to which she, of course said “NO” and promptly started a stink about it. She claims the cat is, well, a pussy cat, but there’s ample evidence to the contrary.

There’s now a PayPal site set up to take donations for this cat’s (and, one presumes the owner’s) legal defense.

Now WDF is up with that? Granted she loves her cat so she doesn’t want him euthanized. Okay, that’s easy, keep the vicious little shit inside. And if you can’t do that then suck it up, take your lumps and get prosecuted for owning a dangerous animal. And when you’re convicted, take your punishment.

If you’re a grown up, being a grown up means that sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to do. Quit with the national sob story just because someone is making you take responsibility for your (or your pet’s) actions.

If someone were to unearth the creature’s medical records from his regular veterinarian’s office, I’d bet they’d be covered with WILL BITE stickers.

Came up with this one while discussing cell phones with our housemate.

TrogLuddite: a Luddite of such drastically Ludditian depth and scope that (s)he posesses technological predilections and/or skills approaching that of a caveman.

Here’s one I’m hoping will take off, so if you like it, tell your friends.

Dot-God: An online ministry, or the Web presence of any religious organization.

Personally, I’d love to see the ICANN adopt this as a TLD. Sadly, I don’t think the organizations who would qualify for this domain would have the necessary sense of whimsy to actually use it. 😉

My darling wife came up with this one, and I love it.

Man-Deaf: the strange ability men have to utterly fail to hear something being said by a woman.

The term was born of her experiences at work, where certain male subordinates often seem physically incapable of hearing her give them instructions. They’re not ignoring her intentionally; like the frogs in the famous McCullough/Lettvin study, the sensoria of these particular men seem capable of perceiving only a limited spectrum of stimuli, the words of a woman not being among them.

Strangely enough, this neologism coincides with the recent release of the findings of a study conducted by scientists at Sheffield University in the UK that shows that men have more trouble processing the highly modulated sounds of the female voice than the simpler tones of the male voice, and in fact process female voices in the same part of the brain that processes music.

Sorry Dear, but it seems they might have a quasi-legitimate medical excuse for their inattention. My advice is not to press the issue; they might end up applying for protection under the Americans With Disabilities Act. 😀

This one came to me while thawing some dead animal parts yesterday evening.

Zipleaks: the used resealable bags that you keep around despite the fact that they are so decrepit they leak from just about everywhere but the patented handy-dandy reclosable seal.

I came up with this one yesterday, as the result of a conversation with a friend of mine during a car trip.

Madmiration: a feeling of commingled respect and resentment.

Here’s the situation that prompted the word’s genesis: my friend was telling me about his ex-father-in-law (sort of—long story). The guy is apprently a real asshole. However, one day he did something on the road for which my friend—and I—had to give him real, albeit grudging, props.

The three of them (my friend, his girlfriend, and her dad) were out on an errand, with the father driving. He was coming up to a red light, in the left of two lanes. There were two cars stopped in his lane and none in the other. He pulled up behind the second car and noticed that the driver was not paying attention to the road, the traffic, or the rest of the world. You know the type: talking on his cell phone while reading stuff off a stack of stapled laser prints while eating a bagel. Probably while adjusting the rigging on a tiny ship-in-a-bottle-model on the passenger seat, too.

Dad says, “Watch this.” He pulls into the next lane, astride the distracted motorist, leaving a car-length space between himself and the front of the line. He waits a few seconds, then begins moving forward, as if the light had changed.

Not paying any attention to the real conditions of the road, the guy on the left takes his cue from Dad’s forward motion. Without looking up from his sheaf of papers, he moves his foot from brake to gas, surging forward and smashing into the car in front of him.

Moments later, the light changes, and Dad drives off, leaving the scene of the accident he had caused.

Such behavior is dangerous, rude and really unacceptable in a civillized society. Which is why I feel so bad about admiring it so much.

Here’s one I came up with just today.

Antergy: a condition in which the total quality or effect of something is ultimately less than the sum of its parts.

Star Wars Episode 1 would be an excellent example. Thirty gajillion dollars + a star-studded cast + all the CG a person could eat = pfleh!

Addendum: Sort of on the same topic, I heard the phenomena surrounding the most recent Star Wars film referred to today as, “Nerdi Gras”. That’s just too cool. 😀

Got another one for y’all.

Ever been pouring a bowl of some healthy-type cereal—Shredded Wheat, for instance—from a box that’s nearing empty, and just before you’re about to stop pouring and add the milk, a rush of pulverized cereal bits surges forth, filling your bowl with a talus of dust-mote-sized particles of breakfast chaff?

This, dear readers, is what I refer to as brandruff.

I happen to like words that are derived from their more commonly-used opposite number. For instance: choate, meaning complete, perfectly formed, final, etc., derived from the far more common inchoate.

In this same vein, I offer you hypobole, a figure of speech in which one severely underemphasizes something for effect.

I’m still working on an example. Feel free to offer your own.