Word of the Day: vecordious

vecordious (adj)

Mad, crazy, senseless.

"He is frustrated, so he strikes out at me. He persists in thinking I'm some vecordious husband with no wife to his name sitting here alone at the top of the city in the midst of music...."
--James David Landis, Lying in Bed

Much could be said about the vecordious Congressional machinations recently displayed in Washington, DC, but I prefer to comment on events closer to home.

I was in a fast-food restaurant the other day (yes, I do patronize such places at times, especially if in a hurry) when an elderly crazy lady walked in and started yelling at another woman, who was sitting, alone, at a table enjoying her lunch. They seemed to know each other. The crazy lady wasn't angry; she was just talking much too loud for a public place. And she was full of advice, telling the other woman to be sure to bring her own toilet paper when using a public restroom, to do background checks on her neighbors, to always be sure to carry enough money for bus fare, and so on.

The other woman replied minimally, in a soft voice, I suppose to encourage the crazy lady to pipe down, and tried to continue eating her lunch. The whole restaurant was staring. But the harangue continued, until the other woman finally got up and hurried out of the restaurant. I felt sorry for her, and worried that the crazy lady would turn to me next. But instead she went into the restroom and stayed there until someone started banging on the door. "I'll be out in a minute!" she screamed, adding that everyone should bring their own toilet paper. She didn't sound angry, just LOUD. And vecordious. And that's my pointless story for today.

Photo of the Week

Dirty Dick's is a noir specialty store for all your private-dick (private-eye) paraphernalia: magnifying glasses, deer-stalker caps, fingerprinting powder, evidence containers, disguises, Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler novels, wrinkled trench coats, gun moll pin-ups, snub-nosed revolvers, etc.

Actually, I just made that up. This is a pub I passed by in London while on one of the walking tours. I didn't go inside (I did patronize a few other pubs), but I couldn't resist photographing this facade, which has so much character and such a charmingly alliterative name. Click it for a close up. It'll make you want a pint.

~~~

Meanwhile....

Danger! High Voltage!

Much Ado about NOTHING

Among the cast of characters I encounter while wandering around the neighborhood, there's a guy I think of as "the bum". I don't think he's actually homeless, but he could be, with his long gray hair, ZZ Topp beard, and ratty clothes, including his omnipresent cut-off jeans (even in cold weather), which are so short you might well call them, in a different era and on a different gender, hot pants. The reason I don't think he's actually homeless is that I occasionally see him coming out of a store with a bag, having obviously purchased something. So he has an income, though it's hard to imagine where he would be employed.

The other reason I don't think he's homeless is that most homeless folk are in pretty bad shape, physically as well as mentally. And this guy has a pair of the most muscular, tanned, toned male legs I've ever seen walking down the streets of Real Life. So no long pants for him! He clearly takes care of himself, which requires the wherewithal to do so and implies the absence of excessive booze, drugs, or dementia -- and, most likely, a roof over one's head. Still, he looks like a bum (or maybe a superannuated hippie?) from the waist up. I once was able to snap a picture of him, though unfortunately from behind and at a distance -- he walks very fast. You can see it here. It was a cold, rainy day in October, but that didn't put the cut-offs back in the bureau.

~~~

Meanwhile....

Brilliantly smart-ass responses to completely well-meaning signs

The T&T List

Sifteo cubes
Heijiao Valley
coconut water
Emaciated Siddhartha
Ljubljana
Perry Resources
Hyderabad Heroes
The Ghost Writer
Kyrgyzstan Airlines
Black Mask
The Bad Samaritans
Mayboom
Spy or Hipster?

Head Rattle

I.
Somebody today made me promise to be a Philadelphia Phillies fan, which apparently involves signing up at some website, if they win the next... Superbowl? I agreed, just to be amiable, because I really don't care. At first I thought he was asking me to sign up for the team, and I was, like, "huh?"

II.
I don't like those men's rooms where you never touch anything except.... What I mean is, I don't like all the hand waving you have to do to make the soap squirter and faucet and paper-tower dispenser work, as if you have magic telekinetic powers. And that hurricane-force "air blade" hand dryer that sounds like a jet engine at full throtle is just disconcerting. It's all about avoiding germs, I suppose, but you still have to pull the door handle when you leave, right?

Word of the Day: oikofugic

oikofugic (adj)

Marked by the urge to wander or travel away from home.

"Genevieve's employment as an air hostess for Oceanic Airlines enabled her to indulge her most oikofugic fantasies, but an emergency landing in Uzbekistan was not one of them."
--Leahcim Setag, Strange Loops

I've always liked the Beatles lyric "show me that I'm everywhere and get me home for tea". That's how I feel about wandering -- whatever its pleasures, after a while it makes you appreciate your little hovel on Familiarity Street again. I enjoyed being in London last month, but I wouldn't want to be there now -- and not just because of the current riots (which I wouldn't be surprised to see on this side of the Atlantic soon). Ultimately, I need a routine, which you can't establish while traveling, to feel grounded. Although... too much routine leads to complacency and boredom. That's when it's time to pack up and perambulate again. Breathe in, breathe out.

Brain Dump

Be the narcotic. Gently, play your games with fire. Each lying area, whether a field of fallen ruins or an impassable jungle, emerges as wakefulness when sleep reverses -- like an endlessly spiral stairway. Consider: an old city of shadows still keeps track of its citizens, even when they have disappeared, subsumed by exhaustive construction, or obliterated by implacable, yet patient, nature. Time's sand reinforces all. A dreamer's fractured mirror, in which the river of desire frees the mind from reality, generates carousels of birds, even as the dreamer loses himself within their spectral penumbra. Internal acacias thrive in the synaptic breeze off the conceptual sea, as mental clouds flee in formation, weeping joyful water from the sky. Such things are possible if you will but relax, assume a mask of light and accept these directions. Illusions melt in the beauty of intention, the shaping of the third eye, of the many faceted soul.

Don't worry about it.

Photo of the Week

Not as real as it looks, this is a computer-generated 3D representation of my tortured inner psyche that I created by answering 25 multiple-choice questions on Personality-Quiz.com.

Actually, I just made that up. This is a gargoyle (or a gargoyle face) that we saw when we visited Waddesdon Manor in England last month. Click it for a profoundly disturbing close-up.

You can see more of my London and England pics, including plenty of the ultra posh Waddesdon (constructed for one of the Rothschilds as a summer weekend getaway "house" and now owned by the National Trust), here. Trust me, they will make you want to board the next plane for Heathrow.

'How Things Have Been Going'

HOW THINGS HAVE BEEN GOING from David Lynch on Vimeo.

Backing up....

Word of the Day: erinaceous

erinaceous (adj)

Like a hedgehog.

"Anomie and abulia began creeping into my skull, and my moods began sloughing erinaceous exfoliations. This was a tropical fatigue, perhaps, or perhaps it was the ineluctable avoidance of the still part of one's own mind...."
--Dale Peterson, Chimpanzee Travels

The one time I grew a little beard, I couldn't stop stroking my erinaceous chin like some evil mastermind plotting a global takeover.

Random Sequence

Ivan always looked where he was going. When walking down stairs, he would watch his feet as they descended each step, and when walking along the sidewalk, he would scan the concrete ahead, watching for cracks, curbs, and dog poop. It saved him from a lot of stumbles, he reasoned. And sometimes he found things things that people had dropped as they hurried along, yacking on their cell phones, gazing distractedly at passersby or store windows, or lost in a daydream. One time he found a $20 dollar bill, and another time a good, unbroken umbrella. But today he had found someone's drivers license.

It was in the middle of a busy street....

[story to be continued in your imagination]

The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Way I Feel

Icky: We've discovered a family of opossums living rent-free in our backyard shed. I contacted Jersey City Animal Control, but they're stonewalling me. Not sure what to do. Maybe nothing? I've always thought of 'possums as a sort of hillbilly delicacy, not a varmint that lives in the city. It could be worse, I suppose. It could be rats.

Puzzled: More animal weirdness. While traveling on mass transit today, I observed several seemingly unrelated fellow travelers with animal carriers -- those boxy plastic crates with the wire mesh on the front -- containing cats. Kitties. Pussies. What's going on? Is there a feline-owners convention occurring in the area?

Strangely entertained: This book I'm "reading" (actually listening to), The Pale King, is all about people who work for the IRS, and the narrators (I mean the characters in the book, not the voice talent reading the text) go on and on about how they came to be involved in the "Service" (i.e., the Internal Revenue Service) and, yes, about taxes. But it isn't boring. How can a book about such a seemingly dull subject -- a book largely about, in fact, tedium itself -- be interesting? The author, the late David Foster Wallace, somehow pulled that rabbit out of his hat. Talented guy he was.