hackronyms

sorry, excuse me

no, you're fine

yeah, no

you're good

thanks, yeah, thank you

you're fine

sorry, no, I thought . . .

no, yeah, you're good

appreciate that

like, why wouldn't you be good?

yeah, no

it's all good, life is good

I hear ya

so . . .

"fine"

so fine; there was a song

before my time

c'mon, you've heard it, catchy

"doo-lang, doo-lang"

that's it!

"he's so fine"

the Chiffons

yes! yes!

sexy

catchy

so fine

FINE

hunh?

frustrated insecure needy enraged

hunh, what?

F-I-N-E

oh, I get it, clever

like fucked-up insolvent neurotic effete

two can play this game

fine

fraudulent intolerant nasty excoriating

oooh

friendly innocent naive enthusiastic

pshaw

no, yeah

yeah, no

yeah

yeah

yeah, yeah, yeah

skinship

She is Japanese but was in Paris. She is Japanese and speaks some French and some English. In a note to me, she used the word "skinship." We were talking about loneliness. The need for human contact. The need for human touch. When children are undernourished and underweight, not growing according to accepted benchmarks, pediatricians talk of "failure to thrive." Many factors are typically at play. Might emotional starvation via lack of touch be a candidate for causality?

How about adults and their failure to thrive? Many factors are typically at play. The presence of absence. The absence of touch. Skin on skin. Skin to skin.

Skinship.

At first, I thought she had coined this portmanteau word herself by a lovely accident owing to language hybrids and differences. I had thought she had stumbled upon it unconsciously. She said, no, it's a thing; it's a term in Japan; a mash-up of two languages that catches on. Nevertheless, I was arrested, taken by the word and what it evoked, in me. I was, and am, excited by the possibilities the word incites.

Skinship.

Is it the kinship of those who possess skin, or of those who indulge in skinness, in subtle skin-drenched tactility, ("I couldn't feel, so I learned to touch..." Leonard Cohen), or is it the kinship of those parched from touchlessness, arid and brittle, perhaps the kinship of those who ache for skin kinship but have lost the thread of emotional genealogy? Is it a skinny vessel sailing to unseen horizons, a ship with no cargo except the heavy burden of empty skinship?

We don't know.

Reports are sketchy.

Rumors abound.

The Premier President Prince of Skindinavia will be making an official statement on these matters presently.
 

stock phrase

if you recall

our stock

phrase

such as it was

three ancient words

wrapped around

our twisted veins

mad crazy

seared

 into a Tuesday

moon

bright blood

bloomed in the cut

one too many moorings

ripped from our secret heart

a black pearl

labeled

‘love’

word of the day

Today, Merriam-Webster selected "youthquake" as its Word of the Day:

(Is "Word of the Day" a proprietary term?)

Here's what Merriam-Webster posted:

youthquake

June 08, 2015

noun

\YOOTH-kwayk\

Definition

: a shift in cultural norms influenced by the values, tastes, and mores of young people

. . . which prompts these from me:

oldquake: Baby Boomers' anxiety over their retirement accounts 

slimquake: distress over the amount of one's caloric intake

heftquake: Ibid.

sexquake: performance anxiety

WASPquake: can you wear white pants after Labor Day?

cakequake: Op. cit.  

alcquake: the morning after

billquake: You got this? No? Really? 

agnostiquake: OMG. What if there really is a hell?

datequake: What if she/he/? doesn't like me, or vice versa?

ratequake: The Federal Reserve -- and Wall Street's biggest fear

votequake: The seismic shock to American democracy if more than 80% of eligible voters actually, well, voted

selfies, belfies, and soulfies

One of the great virtues of American English is that it has served as a lovely, anarchic breeding ground for new words, for all sorts of coinages and neologisms. Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses of slang. We're not like the French, waiting for an academy to grant approval to our local, handcrafted, artisanal, non-GMO, and ferociously democratic wordsmithing.

"Selfie" is but one example, illustrating the modern solipsistic passion for pictures of one's self, or of one's orbit of selfdom. By extension, the New York Times tells us this week, "belfies" are self-administered photos of one's behind. Posterior selfies. Who knew? (Not me.)

Which gets me thinking. Try these on for size. And feel free to chime in with your own inventions.

soulfies -- Snapshots of the current state of your soul.

barfies -- Instagrams of pub crawling. Can be used for calling in sick the next day.

aarfies -- Adorable dog images.

rolfies -- Photos of successful holistic soft-tissue release. (Cf. rolfing. Replaces old-fashioned smiley-face emoji.)

nullfies -- Blanks. Nothing. Zilch. Nothing on the screen, but takes up memory anyway. (A sly comment on nihilism. Then again, maybe not.)

oughties -- The pictures you really should have displayed, instead of the ones you regrettably did display.

Your turn, dear reader.


 

aerial yoga

A local billboard boasts the availability of "aerial yoga." The accompanying photo looks uncannily (or cannily) like someone performing pole-dancing.

I'm not a prude.

Go for it.

This has been an exercise option in the U.K. for years.

Aerial yoga. I wish I had coined that.

nonversation

Good word. Especially as a riposte.

Nonversation.

"Mr. Boehner, your attempts at leadership so far are a nonversation, a nonstarter, a nominal nod to nihilism."

Thanks to Merriam-Webster for links like this demonstrating the dynamic and organic growth of English.

interrogastory

Speaking of "interrogastories," does my neologism interrogastory vaguely define a question asked while eating something delicious?

Just asking. Don't tell.

twenty interrogastories

1. How would you like to die?
2. What is it like to be alive?
3. Where would you want to sing?
4. Why do you want to know?
5. Whom will you embrace as the sky is rent?
6. Has the burnt sienna cooled yet?
7. Do the words echo in your veins?
8. Have you questioned having?
9. Am I blue (a muted cobalt just south of Antwerp)?
10. Would you if you could without getting caught or punished?
11. With whom will you dive, sail, skim, [note serial comma] or float?
12. Against what odds or flesh will you melt?
13. Who remembers that nameless electric thrill?
14. If not here and now, where and when?
15. Should there be a law, any law?
16. That being said, what is silence?
17. Could the waves just stop?
18. Which inaugural color will you wear, and what language will ban it?
19. Is keeping score against the rules?
20. In the end, can you call it a day or something else, i.e., some unit of time or space or imagination or pendulum-swinging suggestion or somnambulism?
    

resolutionaries

Are you a resolutionary?

(Got the neologism from the Washington Post.)

I tend not to be a resolutionary.

But we've gone over this.

Resolutely.

de-anonymization

Have you been de-anonymized? You probably have been de-anonymized, a victim of de-anonymization. I too have probably been de-anonymized. No, this has nothing to do with having one's anonymity broken in Alcoholics Anonymous or another 12 Step anonymity program. As reported this past week in The Wall Street Journal, this is about what They know about us. We learn that only 33 "bits" of information are needed to identify someone. stuff like ZIP codes, gender, birthdates, income. The WSJ article tells us how a data-mining company called [x+1] in a fifth of second, one click, tells Capital One a whole bunch of information from your computer so that Capital One offers you a credit card tailored to that data.

So, if [x+1] does this we can only imagine what Blogger, Yahoo, Google, the Department of Homeland Security, Tiffany & Co., ESPN, HSBC, ABC, MSN, Apple, USPS, Facebook, et alia can discern, ascertain, intuit, estimate, suggest, guess, or retain.

Identity theft?

How about the theft of anonymity, the loss of the loss of identity? How about the loss of the illusion of privacy?

Surprised, anyone?

Dear Anyone,

We know who you are.

p.s. "De-anonymization" is one of those nouninization words that tend to annoy me; one of those words carrying a freight-train's worth of syllables, Germanic-like, trudging along and running over a bunch of crisp and simple verbs.

nocturnal chronognosia

I wake up nightly to perform human-wastewater-relief duties (HWRD). (With that acronym, you can tell I do a lot of technical editing in the environmental field.) Typically two to three times per night. Could be more, could be less. Rare not to obey nature's mandates at least once nightly. But here's the strange thing. I walk into the bathroom with a guess in my head as to what time it is. Then I look up at the clock. (If I am extremely tired or have retired very late, I just don't look at the clock. It would freak me out too much to see how little I have slept.) Get this: invariably my guess of the time is accurate to within a few minutes! Oh, sometimes I'm off, maybe even by as much as an hour, but that's rare.

I have termed this phenomenon nocturnal chronognosia.

(Do I have the same uncanny ability during the day? Do I have diurnal chronognosia? I'd have to forgo the wearing or consulting of wristwatches, etc. to find out. Somehow diurnal chronognosia just does not seem as interesting.)

Hmmmmmmmmmmm.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

20 neologisms, defined

orghastly -- dreadfully unerotic
trangible -- the ability to change roles or identity tangibly
furtastic -- hairy
simiantic -- playful, like a monkey
spellucid -- clearly misspelled
aboriginull -- a big zero, from start to finish
boysterous -- noisy male
zenophobic -- fear of silence
creolelicious-- tasty, mixed
wombididous -- comfy
dentulated -- smiley-faced
thorid -- hot and horrible
eerian -- scary but manly
sinducantatorian -- of or relating to terrible singing
feculoresque -- musty
rentorvid -- late
guntible -- evocative
quancate -- shortened
harrowgant -- annoying and condescending
pawline -- witty

20 adjectives, so-called

orghastly, trangible, furtastic, simiantic, spellucid, aboriginull, boysterous, zenophobic, creolelicious, wombididous, dentulated, thorid, eerian, sinducantatorian, feculoresque, rentorvid, guntible, quancate, harrowgant, pawline.

My hope is that this broke your spellchecker.

Yeah, definitions sought, or forthcoming from The Laughorist, a.k.a. Pawlie Kokonuts.

Snowmageddon

Now that we've seen the term "Snowmageddon" for the snowstorm hitting the likes of Maryland, Virginia, DC, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey (am I missing anyone?), what next?

Snowcalypse Now?

snowcalypso? [the steady rhythm of apocalyptic snows]

snowschatology?

snowkarma?

snowincarnation?

And why or how is it that the term "Snowmageddon" has not been applied to a snowstorm heretofore?

Or has it?

Operation ElimComm

I hear that parents who wish to eschew the environmental pile-up (P-U) of diapers embrace elimination communication, or EC.

Elimination communication, which The Laughorist hereby paraphrases as "phew you," relies on parental discernment of various cues and signals of the infant or child to discover that an elimination of bodily waste is imminent, threatening, or -- oops! too late!

I guess it works. I can understand the theory. Maggie, our dog, walks and sniffs in identifiable patterns before peeing or pooping. not that my observation changes location, frequency, or tidiness. (That's two sentences now where I have applied use of my friendly little serial comma.)

Part of me applauds this elimination communication thing. (Environmental stewardship, etc.)

Part of me scoffs at the whiff of Operation ElimComm. (Elitist, naive sentimentality toward all things "natural.")

Then again, to each his own. To each her own.

Sui generis.

Speaking of phrases, in Latin or other lingua franca, elimination communication as a term offers rich possibilities:

"All due respect, get used to these concrete underwater hiking boots, pal." (The Sopranos version)

"This casket will cost you $12,999." (Unctuous funeral director version)

"Children, seven minus seven equals zero." (Elementary-school teacher version)

"And with that loss our playoff hopes were dashed like so many broken bulbs on a Times Square marquee." (Sportscaster cliche version)

hygienic errata, et cetera

Call me Neologist-Come-Lately (not Ishmael), but I am just learning a term dating back to 2001 or earlier:

data hygiene

I learned of a former colleague, now apparently very successful in a mercantile pursuit, who declares that she is "passionate about data hygiene and consistency."

Although you will charge me with non-data-related snickering (NDRS), I myself declare my affection for the term data hygiene. (I'm too lazy to care whether it should be italics or quotes or neither.)

Data hygiene is a bright and shiny, if slightly self-important, neologism. Apparently data hygiene refers to updating names and addresses of databases used for direct-mail.

Why, of course!

I'm sure it has branched out metaphorically into other meanings, its tendrils of connotation creeping like a verbal vine. (Stop vining! It's like kvetching!) (Who'd be interested in data hygiene? Well, accountants, bankers, the CIA, political spinmeisters, and pornographers, who would more likely lean toward unhygienic, or dirty data [UODD].)

Like me, this former colleague is a former copy editor, so who better for scrubbing data?

You might say that editors are verbal hygienists. Or hygienic redactors. Logocentric hygienists. Syntactical parers.

Mark Murphy said, "I myself brush my megabytes three times a day."

This a good one for Wordie.

Words. We'd be almost speechless without them. Or at least at a loss for words.

Or-chasm

or - chasm - n. The immeasurable distance between one choice and another.

Or, with its grammar of gestation. Or, with its suggestive reservoir of participles of posing; its gerunds of guessing; its infinitives of "to do this" or "to do that." Or, the signature nomenclature of choice and mystery.

But is it possible for the divide between "either" and "or" to be exciting? I don't know. Anxiety-producing, yes, but exciting? Anyway, ask Soren Kierkegaard, author of "Either/Or." (Kierkegaard didn't seem to be that big on pleasure, though, did he?)


For or-chasm, picture Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken," a paean to the possibilities of choice.


Or William Carlos Williams's "The Red Wheelbarrow," with its potently resonating phrase "so much depends." (Of course, when pondering either or-chasms so much depends on lots and lots of things, eh?)

Play nice now. You're on your own.
Copyright © 2007 The Laughorist and Pawlie Kokonuts

Boozerangs and Other Hangovers

Boozerang, n. The boomeranglike negative effects of alcohol consumption.

Of course, that's what a hangover is, isn't it? A fatal-feeling slice back into the orbital lobe of one's consciousness:
what did I do, what did I say? whom did I offend? Except that the boozerang's path sometimes sweeps far and wide, swirling into the paths of other memories, other psyches, other souls. There's no known quick cure for this. Time, wishful thinking, and the hope that one's boozerang-flooded memory errs -- those are some of the healing ingredients. And add a dash of resolve that this will never happen again.

Maybe it's a cheap shot to launch such a headache-inducing post on the day after St. Patrick's Day, so let's cast a much wider net:

No doubt, there are other hangovers besides my newly coined boozerang. We all tend to contend with these on The Day After The Day Before:

• the hangover of sober memory (did I really do that? how could I have said that?)

• the regret of squandered opportunity (if I only had spent my time and energy doing...)

• the fatalism of loss (I didn't then, so I can't ever)

• the corrosion of resentment (the parenthetical, if not hypothetical, prison of past poison)

• the return to one's senses (I thought it was so great, now I'm not so sure...)

And the cure for all these?


Exalt in the day;

surrender to the moment, awash in gratitude,

celebrating the is-ness of it all,

sung with the cardinal and the finch,

the silent cat and the snoozing dog,

the meandering cloud and lazy sun,

the melting ice and budding branch.


(The term "boozerang" and its definition, © copyright 2007 by The Laughorist.)

The Says-pool

I heard a radio commercial this morning referring to the Internet as the "information superhighway."

Whew, I hadn't heard that one in a long time.

I never felt that metaphor worked. It is typically invoked by advertisers promising high-speed Internet service, allowing users to drive up the information ramp quickly, yadda-yadda.

I'm reminded of something Henry David Thoreau wrote:

"We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate."

What is a good metaphor for the Internet?

I think it's more like a river, stream, or ocean.

Or maybe a gigantic pool. Yeah, that's it.

*The says-pool.

(Of course, you might argue for sees-pool, seize-pool, or cease-and-desist-pool. But I like the fact that says-pool captures two elements of the Internet: our wading in (or diving in) to a great sea of Something-or-other interlinked like that old game of Telephone, driven by "he said-she said-he said-she said-they said-it said" ad infinitum. That said, let me note that in real life a Google search of my real name nets thousands upon thousands of entries, and maybe as many as 90% are wrong in their attribution. Almost right, but not quite. And it's all a matter of the rippling effects of misinformation upon misinformation, which can never be corrected or amended.)

Laugh. Or....

Else.

* The coinage "says-pool" is copyright 2007 by The Laughorist, Pawlie Kokonuts, and his antecedents, precedents, and malcontents.