Michael Gates's Blog, page 48

Word of the Day: obdormition

"Obdormition" (noun) is a word from my book, The Word I'm Thinking Of: A Devilish Dictionary of Difficult Words. TWITO is not a comic book; I'm just having some fun with stripcreator.com. The dialog, however, is from the book (slightly adapted).

Random Sequence: Entangled Covet

Book description of the day:

"Wade Crowson, a brutish and brooding playboy and veteran vivisectionist for the Parts Department, runs into more than he bargained for in new partner, Lucid Montgomery, a quirky beauty with a bizarre secret and a string of psychiatric diagnoses she tries hard to keep hidden. Loving Luce will stamp a demonic target on her back and thrust Wade into a frenzied whirlwind of hilarious misunderstandings and, quite possibly, a stripping gig for empty-nesters. Can they withstand the savagery of an exorcism (with or without the split pea soup) and come out alive and...in love?"
(Title: Parts & Wreck: Entangled Covet)

In my job, I read -- and edit -- stuff like this quite frequently.

"Nobody told me there'd be days like this."
--John Lennon

Photo of the week: Fancy Furnishings (by me)

This is the place to shop in my neighborhood when you're furnishing your palace. (Click the pic for a closer view. You know you want to.)

Link Mania: It's only an ice moon

The New Yorker has posted the full text of a new story by my favorite living author, Haruki Murakami:

"Yesterday"

"When I soak in a bath for a long time, all kinds of good ideas come to me."

Random Sequence

"When the rich midsummer trailed its affluence of splendor through the lengthened days, filling the land with the flush of blossoms and the song of birds, we wandered through the silent, odorous woods, and up the slanting hill-sides, where the wild roses trailed over the thickets, and held up their delicate pink goblets for the sunlight to pour in its golden wine -- through shady, brier-hedged lanes and sun-gilt meadows, where the yellow lilies swung their burnished bells."
--from "Unto the End", by Margaret Hunter Grant, in Godey's Lady's Book and Magazine, June 1864

(I found a bound copy of Godey's in my basement and have been flipping through the dusty pages.)

Ahem! This is a classic example of what we call "purple" writing, but it's rather amusing in its over-the-top layering on of "poetic" prose. This is just a short excerpt, though -- it goes on an on in the same vein ad nauseum. Quite "odorous", in the end, to use one of Hunter Grant's old-fashioned adjectives. Odorous, as you might guess, means "having an odor". It's not a word much used these days, except when one is being facetious.

Word of the Day: lamprophony

"Lamprophony" (noun) is a word from my book, The Word I'm Thinking Of: A Devilish Dictionary of Difficult Words. TWITO is not a comic book; I'm just having some fun with stripcreator.com. The dialog, however, is from the book (slightly adapted).

Photo of the Week (by me)

I hate clowns (though this one is technically a jester, I suppose). But they are often very photogenic, even when rendered in kitschy plastic. I snapped this pic at a local fairground, where the face was attached to a merry-go-round and was probably spooking the kiddies a bit. (Click for a closer look... unless you're scared.)

LInk Mania: Should we bring back dirty words we don't believe exist?

25 Words You Won’t Believe Exist
Well, I believe these exist: snollygoster (TWITO, page 138), omphaloskepsis (TWITO, page 101), pandiculation (TWITO, page 106), and gongoozle (TWITO, page 62) -- all on this list.

~~~

23 Obscure Dirty Words to Broaden Your Erotic Vocabulary
Just one of these is in TWITO: ecdysiast (page 44). It's a PG book.

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16 Weird Forgotten English Words We Should Bring Back
Including "mumpsimus" (TWITO, page 92), "pettifogger" (TWITO, page 112), and "pilgarlic" (TWITO, page 112). Yes, bring them back! Let's try to use these cromulent words every day.

Random Acts of Poetry

"Venus"

She stands alone,
her bare
feet reflected
in a dark pool
of polished stone.

Her hair,
untied for the night
from its impossible weave,
promises a shower
of pale spirals

from her Circe head,
while a drapery
of gauze
defines her
narcotic form

till I startle awake.
The air is hot.
Men would melt
in her killing embrace.
Acid vapors cloud her eyes.

And even as her star
rises in east,
bedecking the sky
with a crystal tear,
she burns and whispers a lie.

Random Sequence

"She sat now, by the drop light in an easy chair...reading a purple-covered pamphlet..."Sinning Sybil, or The Blotted Book." Milk-and-water as was her nature, nothing would serve her turn in literature but the thrilling tragic, the monstrously improbable. Perhaps nothing else kept her awake. She absorbed, like a greedy sponge, streams of such trash as is pronounced by stomachs of a higher tone to be turbid and nauseous, a slow poison, when it does not act as an emetic.... intrigues, robberies, poisonings, and suicides infested every page.

"She looked up placidly in the midst of a midnight adventure where the hero caught a glimpse, by a flash of lightening, of the assassin's poiniard aimed at his heart.

"What did you say, Marian, love?"
--from "Nobody to Blame", by Marion Harland, in Godey's Lady's Book and Magazine, February 1864

(I found a bound copy of Godey's in my basement and have been flipping through the dusty pages.)

"Turbid" means "not clear" or muddy, i.e., filthy.
A "poiniard" (also spelled poniard) is a dagger with a slender blade.
An "emetic" is something that causes vomiting.

This Victorian writer with the high-toned stomach really didn't like the popular novels of the day. (I detect a hint of jealousy.)