Much Ado about NOTHING

Labor

I thought I was on my way home from a simple errand. We were in the car when my wyfe got a text from a friend, a young woman who was moving from one apartment in our neighborhood to another, via U-Haul. "I'm all packed and ready to go," the text said. "Can you help unload?"

My wyfe read the text to me and gave me "the look." What was I supposed to say? No?

A few minutes later I found myself standing inside a truck staring at a small mountain of cardboard and plastic boxes, and various pieces of mismatched furniture. Just when I thought I was going to be emptying this truck myself, several more of the woman's friends showed up. Salvation.

When it comes to moving stuff, gender roles revert, more or less of necessity, to stereotype: The males started unloading boxes, bureaus and bookcases, and lugging them up the stairs to the second-floor walk-up apartment; the females supervised and arranged the "chowder" at the top of the stairs. (I discovered during my own move several years ago that professional movers refer to boxes and such as "chowder".) They also ordered pizza for when this ordeal was over -- yes, moving someone's home, no matter how small, is always an ordeal.

So, I got a slice of pizza, a beer, some party talk, and a sore back out of this little episode.

That how my Labor Day weekend went -- my manual Labor Day weekend.

Search Party

Once again, here are a few recent search queries that brought seekers to this temple of scribomania. More surreal inquiries, more attempts at interpretation.

sweating and shivering clip art

Sweating and shivering in the same clip art? That's sick. You must be writing a newsletter about flu season. Or are you looking for two clip arts, hot and cold: one for sweating and one for shivering? Is your class studying about the weather, kid?

chevrolet elvis presley

As far as I know, he never drove a Chevy; he drove Cadillacs, as I found out when I visited Graceland several years ago. I took a picture of one:



Chicken without skin line art

Nude chickens are hard to draw. Not that I've spent a lot of time trying....

shattering roses

Interesting phrase. Clearly you don't mean real roses? They wilt; they don't shatter. Oh, unless you dip them in liquid nitrogen and then drop them. Is that what you're into? That's... special.

world nightmare incarnate

Dubya, in other words, according to Google. Bad as he was, that might be a bit over the top. Hitler? Stalin? Lindsay Lohan?

Word of the Day x3

jaculate (verb)

To throw or hurl

"I found the ball," Kevin said. "Hey, let's go out back and jaculate!"
"Uh, no.... I, uh, have a girlfriend, Dude," said Jerry.

klangfarbe (noun)

Instrumental timbre or tone

Chloe lived to play the flugelhorn. "Nice klangfarbe you have there," Charles said after she played a trill. "No!" Chloe exclaimed. "I keep telling everyone -- it's a flugelhorn!"

usufruct (noun)

The right to use and enjoy something belonging to someone else without it being destroyed or injured

"Do you mind if I have usufruct with your jacket?" Winnie asked. "Yes!" said Jane. "For heaven's sake. I just had it dry-cleaned."

~~~

Thanks to Leahcim Setag for the above quotations.

Head Rattle

I.
It occurs to me that the best way to watch the right-wing Republican National Convention is on left-wing MSNBC. Nevertheless, I don't intend to watch it.

II.
While cleaning the basement, I came upon a cardboard box that contained, among other items, a package of "Magic Rocks" that I bought years ago. These are multicolored sodium silicate crystals that grow into funky little stalagmite formations when you put them in water with a "Magic Solution". I can't remember why I bought such a childish thing and then never let them perform their alchemy. It might be that I thought I would put them in my aquarium but then realized that, because they are (according to the packaging) a "severe eye irritant" and "harmful if swallowed", they would hurt the fish. I think I'll find a jar this weekend and see what happens. I could use a little magic right now.

III.
Some things just pop out at you when you're reading a new novel, such as passages like this: "I need to eat, I feel so weak and my head feels like the crusty anus of a sloth." I wonder... how, exactly, did this author conduct her research on sloths?

Random Acts of Poetry

Behind Shut Lids

I see her old
low hills running,
snake river's
silvered pools,
deep maple shade
under blue blazes.

Then
Sunday in the car,
their plowed furrows
ratcheting,
patches of cows,
a stick barn's tilt.

Then that house,
charcoal mist
of booming clouds;
I can almost
hear the rain hiss,
eaves drip.

I'm safe, dry
among her heavy
glass globules,
tiny worlds,
memory's paperweights.
Then as now.

Random Sequence

[random phrases (from here) worked into a story]

Parabolic Avocation

"You're a soprano warbler," I see, said Ed. "I mean... I hear."

"This again? That's just farcical perverseness", said Enid. "You know I'm alto."

"Nope, soprano," said Ed. "No needful capitulation from me."

"Pugnacious imbecility," Enid warbled.

"Wiggly grayness," Ed said.

"What?" said Enid.

"Test phrase. Try singing that phrase in your highest register."

"Wigglyyy graaaynesssss," Enid sang. "Oh this is barefaced imbecility," she said.

"No, soprano," Ed insisted. "You can do better than that."

"Now we're wandering into sterotypical happenstance," Enid said. "We've been all through this before."

"You could break a glass with that voice," said Ed, with circumscribed garrulousness.

Enid laughed. "I could try. My Baccarat crystal stemware? Would you drop this if I can't do it? Or fix it if I can?

"Cohesive epoxy, right here," said Ed, opening a drawer.

"Your obsession with always being right is a parabolic avocation," Enid sighed, raising the nearest glass.

It was the one Ed had already sabotaged with a hairline crack.

[not to be continued]

Word of the Day x3

yegg (noun)

A safecracker

Arthur had forgotten the combination. "We need a yegg," he said with a sigh. "Huh? Scrambled or over easy?" Mack snickered.

yonderly (adjective)

Mentally or emotionally distant, morose, gloomy or aloof

"I don't think I would be much fun today," Anna said when she finally took Stan's call. "I'm yonderly." "Where's that?" Stan asked.

xylology (noun)

The study of wood

Dale was impressed by the lumber mill. "I see you're a real expert in xylology," he said after the tour. "Nah, I just know a lot about wood," Pete said.

~~~

Thanks to Leahcim Setag for the above quotations.

Much Ado about NOTHING

Hot Wheels

I've seen a lot of people tooling around in electric wheelchairs recently. Just today, I saw two on a short walk to the post office. It's almost enough to make me think a convention might be going on somewhere nearby, but this isn't any sort of convention town. I wonder if the prices for these machines have dropped recently, as I don't see all that many people on crutches anymore.

All these whirring wheelchairs make me think of my late uncle, a paraplegic, who used an electic model when I was a kid, at a time when such things weren't so common. He also had an elevator in his house, the first one I remember riding on, and all sorts of other gadgets. In my childish way, I didn't think of him as handicapped -- he had a very full life, which included owning and running a restaurant -- just "different" and rather fascinating. A trip to see him was a treat.

I suppose in times past, people who couldn't walk were pretty much house-bound. Today they're tearing down the sidewalk with kids and shopping bags on their laps.

The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Way I Feel

Accomplished. I'm on a "staycation", so I spent part of the day today doing yardwork. For a while, I was amputating weeds around the apple tree out back with some hand clippers, but a huge green bug starting buzzing around me, so I decided to postpone that and pick up the weed whacker. A couple of hours later, I had denuded not only the weed colony in the backyard, but the grasslands sprouting in front of the abandoned house next door. Chop, chop. I'm mean to the green.

Self-conscious. Copyediting a 140-page book that you wrote yourself is a somewhat different experience from editing the words of others. It's a little like watching yourself in a video -- you cringe. But the difference is that you can still do something about all of your little imperfections.

Mystified. My car key has disappeared. (I have to use my wyfe's.) So has one of my crucial USB cables. Could it have something to do with the micro black holes that scientists have theorized about?... People I don't know keep sending me friend requests on Facebook. We don't even have any friends in common. (I wouldn't mind friending them if they would explain what the connection is -- maybe they read this blog? -- and why they want to be "friends". But they don't.)... What's the deal with my neighbors, a couple of senior citizens who sit on their front porch all day every day and stare at me whenever I walk down the street? Don't they have a TV? Have they heard of the internets?

Photo of the Week

I guess it's time to paint my house.

My dilemma: what color to paint it. White is too boring; all the other houses on the street are white. Beige is dull, too. Blue is too cold, for a house, in my opinion. Yellow or pink? Too feminine. Red? Too flashy. I never wanted to live in a green house -- the grass and trees are green, and a house should stand out. Gray? It's already 50 shades of gray. Maybe I'll just leave it as is, and continue to endure all the "haunted house" jokes. At least it makes a cool setting for our annual Halloween party.

Actually, I just made that up. This is a house I saw during a recent excursion to upstate New York, where Victorian manses abound, in various states of repair and coloration. If this was my house, I think I might paint it... papaya whip.

Click the pic for a creepy close-up view. If you look carefully, you'll see moss growing on this place.

Word of the Day x3

ultracrepidarian (noun or adjective)

Someone who expresses an opinion or offers advice about a subject they know nothing about

"The labor? It was a breeze! Right, Honey?" said new dad Matt. "Ultracrepidarian," new mom Sandra replied. "Told ya," Matt added.

xanthodont (noun)

A person with yellow teeth

"The next patient is a xanthodont, doctor," the hygienist said. "What? I only treat humans!" the dentist exclaimed.

yapness (noun)

Hunger

"Let's find a restaurant," Sheila suggested. "I'm feeling some yapness." "Why do we need a restaurant?" said Arnold. "You can yell at me right here."

~~~

Thanks to Leahcim Setag for the above quotations.

Quote of the Day

Reading

"The thing that makes reading and writing suspect in the eyes of the market economy is that it's not corrupted. It's a threat to the GNP, to the gene engineer. It's an invisible, sedate, almost inert process. Reading is the last act of secular prayer. Even if you're reading in an airport, you're making a womb unto yourself--you're blocking the end results of information and communication long enough to be in a kind of stationary, meditative aspect. A book is a done deal and nothing you do is going to alter the content, and that's antithetical to the idea that drives our society right now, which is about changing the future, being an agent, getting and taking charge of your destiny and altering it. The destiny of a written narrative is outside the realm of the time. For so long as you are reading, you are also outside the realm of the time."
--Richard Powers