The Affair (A Fable)

George Royal saw himself as a steadfast, faithful, and loyal husband. But in the private recesses of his fantasies, he planned an affair. A lurid affair. The Affair. He did not see The Affair as an act of infidelity, or as a betrayal to those whom he professed to love. It was all a matter of honor. He imagined that his family had been slighted. He had to defend their honor, whether they had been slighted by the other family or not.

As with all deceits, Royal plotted the rubrics, the lubricious machinations, the secrets of The Affair long before it took shape. But he knew the object of his lust long before he sought to capture her heart and mind. Or at least her land and riches. He even gave the object of his fantasy righteous and idealistic names, and clothed her in swirling flags of beauty.

Tragically, The Affair turned out to be more sordid than Royal had fantasized. It got messy. Affairs often do. And yet, the messier The Affair got the more Royal defended his entering the realms of his soon-tired and frightened tired lover. Royal enlisted legions of sycophants to defend his military march to those realms, and they repeated his pavid patter in the public square.

Before long, those in the public square and beyond developed severe earaches from the bellicose bellowings put out by Royal's minions. Many could no longer distinguish one sound from the other. It was difficult to discern a church bell from a cowbell. Moreover, one could no longer tell whether Royal's unctuous urgings were amorous acts toward his beloved or toward the object of his fantasy.

Scribes now debate and dissect The Affair -- its origins, its history, its success, its failure, its future. Alas, The Affair sadly lingers on, a venture whose currency is costly but painfully incalculable.

Many in the land wonder (including some who formerly only whispered about The Affair): will The Affair ever end? And how?

Until then, the sounds in the public square are mournful, when not drowned out by the blare of strident discourse or by the sound of the high priests and priestesses chanting:

Miserere nobis, Domine.

Banausic Baragouin

Not being especially original or innovative, I borrow. Don't we all? We see or hear an offbeat news story, and it becomes fodder for blogging. No harm in that. So, not being particularly inventive tonight, I turn to the work of a friend, David Grambs. I met Dave on the sixteenth floor of 201 East 50th Street, Manhattan, in the late 1980's. He's a lexicographer, and he was working for Random House, on one of their dictionaries. I was working in the School Division -- get this -- marketing filmstrips (!) as well as read-alongs and some then-new products called videos. Sounds like the 1880's now.

David Grambs has a wonderful book called The Endangered English Dictionary, subtitled Bodacious Words Your Dictionary Forgot. Published by W.W. Norton in paperback in 1997, it is truly fun to read (at a party, a long trip, or in the bathroom, if you really must know). Words were often culled from the aforeblogged OED as well as from other sources. Of course, this entertaining volume is available through Amazon.com, Alibris, and others. (Disclaimer: He did not put me up to this; doesn't even know I am doing this; we haven't even chatted in several years).

Here's a random sampling from The Endangered English Dictionary (the former English teacher in me says, "Allrighty, Blogosphere populace: Use all of these words now in one paragraph"; the entrepreneur in me says, "Do that and win a prize from The Laughorist Store"; but the Friday-night-tired-guy-in-me says, "Naw!"):

paulopast -- just completed or finished

footle -- to talk or behave foolishly

frigorific -- cooling

mollescent -- becoming soft

cohonestation -- honoring another with one's company

collop -- a small piece or slice

pilpulistic -- hairsplitting

suaviation -- kissing

jobation -- tedious criticism or scolding

erethism -- morbid overactivity [note to self: good topic for later blogging)

balneal -- pertaining to warm baths

aeolistic -- long-winded (of course,from Aeolus, the god of the winds) (parenthetically a good place to stop) (hey, we bloggers are surely not only Ephemerists, but some of us are The Aeolistic Ephemerists; who knew?)

Laugh. Or....
Else.

Oh. Sure. I wouldn't leave you hanging like that:

banausic -- practical, functional, or utilitarian

baragouin -- gibberish

Hand Jive

According to wire service reports, a doctor pleaded not guilty to stealing a hand [full stop, as the Brits say]. From a medical school cadaver. In, where else, New Jersey.

He allegedly stole the hand to give to an, um, exotic dancer in, where else, L.A. They say she kept the hand in a jar of formaldehyde in her, um, bedroom. They say she called the thing "Freddy." (Why not "Cold Hand Luke?")

One wonders if she used (or planned on using) the left hand (it so happens I'm left-handed, as well as alive, so I can assure you it was not my hand. Like, I wish!) on the job, so to speak, or at home, in her bedroom. (For at least once in my life, I will resist temptation, in this case the temptation to use an obviously vulgar term that describes a certain digitally manipulated sexual act. There. I've resisted. Technically, at least.)

Maybe it was to be a prop for her cover of "I Wanna Hold Your Hand."

Or perhaps classical music grabbed her interest more (e.g., Handel).

Or it was just a ghoulish fashion accessory; it made her handsome.

I know, you were worried I was getting lax on the humor side.

Maybe I'm a bit rusty. But you can handle it.

"Only the hand that erases can write the true thing,"

Meister Eckhart

(Meister Eckhart is a favorite of mine, plus that's one of my favorite quotations, stylistically and spiritually; I know, I've got some nerve bringing "spiritual" into the discussion.)

Laugh. Or....

Else.

Seven Simple Words

"They are us, and we are them."

I found these these seven words of one syllable each in The New York Times of Saturday, September 16, 2006. They are from a quotation cited in Seth Mydans's heart-rending yet compassionate profile under the headline "Survivor Gently Adds Voices to Cambodia's Dark Tale."

The speaker, a victim of the brutalities of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge in the 1970's, was referring to a present-day encounter with a former Khmer Rouge cadre. "They are the evil side of us. Crimes are committed by human beings, by people just like me," he added.

This obviously difficult but conciliatory understanding seems to have provided a measure of liberation for Youk Chhang, the victim.

I cannot claim to have the capacity voiced by Mr. Youk Chhang. (I can pray for it.) Clearly, he comes by his views by a long and wretched path:

"With financing mostly from the United States government and from Sweden, he and a staff that has now grown to 50 people have mapped about 20,000 mass grave sites, 189 prisons and 80 memorials, and have transcribed 4,000 interviews with former members of the Khmer Rouge," according to the Times.

Let it be noted that Mr. Youk Chhang has compiled hundreds of thousands of documents to be handed over to prosecutors in a United Nations-financed trial. Fewer than a dozen are expected to actually face trial.

I have read similar stories of striking reconciliation in South Africa, after apartheid.

Seven simple words.

Without them, where am I? Who am I?

Without them, where are we? Who are we?

And with those seven simple words, what do we become?

"I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together."

I Am the Walrus (Lennon-McCartney)

Coo-coo. Ca-choo.

Achoo!

Coloring (or Parking) Within the Lines

News Item, The New York Times, September 12, 2006: Regarding Pope Benedict's visit to his hometown in Germany:

"Hans Peter Kammerer, a Bavarian police spokesman, said that at least 70,000 people attended the [Pope's] Mass. He said that 20,000 people drove there in private cars, following special parking rules and thus revealing more than a little of the nation's character....

'The rules we gave were followed so precisely that we had to tow only two cars - and those were because they weren't between the lines,' he said."

Gulp.

They weren't between the lines? Just two?

Granted, the Times rather reveled in a stereotype of a Germanic predeliction toward order and neatness ("...the [German] nation's character..." was the way reporter Ian Fisher delicately phrased it), but one could rationally argue that a certain general truth is being exhibited, correct? (You can just hear those eggshells cracking and splattering, the ones I am walking on, spilling out their albino albumen and all their gooey, mucous promise of fertility. [Hey, let me get a little Joycean on you in advance of our imminent trip to Ireland.] Speaking of breaking eggshells by trampling sensibilities, the Pontiff himself is apparently in need of some cracked-eggshell mending as a result of some Other Religion Observations he made on the same trip. I will leave that one for other emphemerists to comment on.)

Okay, fellow bloggers, writers, pundits, and members of The International Order of Underappreciated Ephemerists (IOUE), have at it:

Give The Laughorist some other examples, albeit stereotypical:

Americans: Not only don't park between the lines but have fierce arguments about whether to park to the LEFT of the lines or the RIGHT of the lines and debate what this means for the history of civilization.

Canadians: Set up goal posts between the lines to get in some street hockey, eh?

British: Sorry, I suppose you wouldn't mind if I park here now, would you? Sorry.

Italians: Fongul. I'll park where I want. Forget the lines.

Your turn.

Send 'em in.

Just for fun.

Laugh. Or....
Else.

We the People, We the Ephemerists

Is there anything more literally ephemeral than blogging? My Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the one that came with a magnifying glass, because the Compact Edition "micrographically" squeezes so much into two volumes, illuminates this ephemeral business.

Blog readers (and blog writers) (are both blog readers and blog writers called bloggers?) typically fixate on the latest, the most recent, post. More or less. How often does anyone stretch back into the archives to explore a particular blogger's oeuvre? Relatively rare, right? I mean, like who has the time (assuming one is gainfully employed and performing one's prescribed duties; why do I suddenly sound so feckin snotty and uppercrust British? Is it the dust from the OED?)?

According to the OED, an ephemeris is (or was), among other things:

a daily diary

a table showing the predicted position of a heavenly body for every day (I'm picturing a Salma Hayek Kama Sutra Educational Desk Calendar with 365 exquisite photos)

any almanac or calendar (if you insist, yes, it could be a swimsuit calendar, cheescake or beefcake genre, to be fair and balanced)

the appointed daily order of religious services (well, no surprise here; like Leonard Cohen, I can see how sex and religion easily get intertwined, like bodies on a hot night, or like clouds of incense rising to the heavens)

So, of course, an ephemerist is one who makes use of an ephemeris (as in blogging).

And ephemera literally refers to "lasting for a day," originally describing a fever or a type of insect.

We got the fever.

We are the ephemeral, the diurnal insects of cyberworld, liable to be squashed any nanosecond by a server meltdown or cybercollapse.

We bloggers are truly The Ephemerists.

Here today. Gone tomorrow. (Unless you're into archives.)

Laugh. Or....
Else.

Pooof!

P.S. Speaking of diurnal, in browsing through my OED I discovered that a diurnalist is another word for a journalist. Makes sense. Carry on. As you were. See you tomorrow. Or another day. Cheerio.

Laughorism vs. Laughorasm

I really don't have anything to say (isn't that the point of this self-induced belly-button playing?), so let's see where this goes.

"I learn by going where I have to go."

-- Theodore Roethke, in "The Waking," one of my favorite poems

Of course, I promote laughorisms: laugh + aphorism. Without going dictionary on you, let's say I'm aiming for pithy statements that bring a laugh.

If I elicit more than a laugh, or a laugh as good as an orgasm, does one then experience a laughorasm? Can a laugh be as good as an orgasm?

Some have compared sneezing to the Big O. Not me. I mean, I sneeze with great gusto, but sneezing seems, well, different somehow than reaching sexual climax. That's just me, okay? Plus, sneezes are so public. Mine are. Not my orgasms. (Well, they obviously are public for some. Depends if the walls are thin. Plus, porn stars are pretty public about theirs.)

I may've made people chuckle or smile or maybe even laugh by a laughorism, aphorism, or witty post or comment, but I doubt anyone has ever reached the point of laughorasm. And, of course, I would never admit it if I ever unintentionally made someone laugh while trying to make them, say, aroused.

(Come to think of it, that is the tragicomic story of The Early Years.)

If a woman, or a man, pinches her, or his, nose daintily to suppress any sound of sneezing, is that an indicator of matters farther south, down in the nether world of the Erogenous Zone (more frequently for me, the Erroneous Zone)?

I can just hear the office gossip on that one.

"Man, did you hear that? I would've never guessed it! Always so shy and quiet, too."

I told you I didn't know where I was going with this. I warned you.

Laugh. Or....
Else.

Gesundheit!