Peripatetic

Peripatetic

"Peripatetic barroom"
Now we just call them "people who don't want to buy
the license to be in the gates of the venue." (And
undoubtedly at the time they were called "the guy
with the donkey and the over-priced hooch.") 

Really? 'Peripatetic'? 'Extravagate' is gone but 'peripatetic' is still going strong? (Or at least as strong as a word like 'peripatetic' can in our modern lexicon.) I hate that word! You know what I think it is? Do you? I think it's peripathetic! HA!!!

Does that make me odd that I love and hate words so much? No? Oh, good. I can sleep tonight.

I think I have an aversion to it because all the consonants are hard. If the word was 'periphathetic' I'd be much more inclined to like it.*

Actually, I'll admit - I can't hear peripatetic without thinking the person doing the roaming is doing so all on fours. Wait, that's not right. Maybe I could buy into this word if we said that, instead of crawling, we described an infant's movements as 'quadripatetic.' And when you hopped, you were 'unipatetic.' But I hate the '-tetic' part at the end. It's ugly. How much cooler is 'quadrivagate' and 'univagate'? Completely, right? I knew you'd agree.

Or perhaps I'll use 'peripatetic' to explain my grey matter.

"Oh, you think Aristotelian about things?"
"No, it just wanders a lot."

Even ask the 'sband. It doesn't happen as much now (thank goodness for modern meds), but we'd be out for dinner and all of a sudden I'd be in a completely different realm thinking about...something. Then I'd blink and be back.

"Go on a little trip?" He'd quoth.
Damn, caught again!!

*"Why I'd have to be on an incline is anyone's guess!"

Stravage

Stravage

Forget 'stravage,' how about that 'extravagate'? Wow, that's my new favorite word that I will promptly forget upon releasing this entry! I just wanna use it all the time!!

Extravagate

It brings a touch of class to any hike:

"Oh, it matters not, we were extravagating the man-made ponds on our way here."

Translation:

"The stupid moron made me walk by the sewage treatment plant to get here."

Now I know what you're saying, you're saying:

"But Briedank, you changed the entire sentence, not just 'walk' to 'extravagate.'"

Are you kidding?? Of course I did! Who could use a great word like 'extravagate' and not change the other words in the sentence? You wouldn't put a real Faberge' egg on the shelf next to a Precious Moments tchotchke, would you? You wouldn't follow up a Beethoven piano Concerto by playing Chariots of Fire would you? Well, would you? The answer is no, you wouldn't. And you're not going to pollute a sentence with 'extravagate' in it with common everyday words like 'sewage' and 'treatment' and 'plant.' Which is why I'll promptly forget 'extravagate' by the end of the morning...cuz I talk using common everyday words, like, well, like 'sewage' and 'treatment' and 'plant.'

OK, I'll talk a bit about 'stravage.' You know why no one uses 'stravage'? Cuz the accent is on the second syllable. What do they think we are, French? Alright, fine, I am part French, but I'm not...Français. I mean, the only way I could get Français properly written is to copy it over from Translate. And if you were to use stravage in a poem, the only word you could rhyme with it is garage.* (And Lord knows why we of the USA have the accent on the second syllable of garage - everyone else says "GAY-rajh.") So, don't look for me to be using stravage in any future entries. I don't like it. Besides, I'll forget it by the time I go to bed tonight.

*Fine, so I don't get into trouble...

Nuance

Nuance

You know who/what I think is nuanced? Hold your britches on this one. It's me/my humor. I know, right? Me? Nuanced? When I write, the difference between real and bull caca is nuanced? Crazy! But I/it must be because people don't seem to pick up on what I feel is banging them over the head with my Big Iron Skillet of Humor (BISH). On Facebook today I wrote:

After peeling tomatoes just now I have to say I don't care WHAT the recruiter from NAU says, I'd make a terrible surgeon! (Besides, "one day, one night" - can you imagine how many years that would take?)

And there were two people who suggested I boil the tomatoes in water for easier peeling. Really? I talk about going to become a surgeon at National American University, taking one class each semester, but everyone completely misses the humor and only thinks I'm incapable of peeling tomatoes. Of course I should excuse people because very few people know that I have the nerves of a surgeon alright...a surgeon on the morning after s/he went on an all-night bender (you can imagine what I was like back in the day when I actually went on all night benders...). Anyway, I had way too much coffee and peeling those tomatoes was...well, it was something.

A few years ago I put on FB, I can't quite remember it all, but it was about how a double-stuffed burrito blew up in the microwave and we left for the weekend before I could clean it out; and then later wrote that I put the microwave outside right before a storm came (it was winter, obviously); and then a couple days later added that I brought it back in and there was an electrical smell when I plugged it in and it was frozen shut and how can I clean it, blah blah blah. Well, I started getting suggestions on how best to clean out a microwave in which stuff was encrusted. Maybe, if any of those people are still even my friends, some of the people who believed those posts are reading this, and if so, I apologize for this, but how could anyone believe that? I put a microwave in the snow, left it there during a storm, but then bring it back in? Doesn't that seem like over-the-head BISH bashing? Obviously I have to watch what I say because my humor is so nuanced, people don't know I'm joking.

I think at the next ice breaker I'm at where we have to introduce and describe ourselves to others, I'm going to say:

"My name is Briedank. I love learning about film and pop-culture history. I like '20s jazz, Blondie, Trance and many other types of music. My favorite TV shows of all time are LOST, Green Acres, and The Honeymooners. My humor is nuanced."

Oooh, you know, if I was single, that would make a great personal ad.

Lugubrious

Lugubrious

Fun story: back in the day when I was hanging out in The Bars, I knew two guys that would sometimes write weird crap about each other in the toilet. One day one of them wrote:

"Richard makes me lugubrious."

Under which some unknown guy wrote:

"10w-30 or 40 weight?"

I'm sometimes so proud of my gay brethren.

But I love the word "lugubrious." It's right up there with "odious" and "ignominious." Hmmm, maybe I have a thing for little-used adjectives. Maybe I should start a club: People who Have a Thing for Under-Utilized Adjectives Group. Or PHTUUAG. I'm sure we could come up with something better, but once the dues started rolling in we could hire a PR firm to come up with a proper slogan and design. Sort of like when Kraft spent their millions of dollars on their new look, because evidently they didn't think they looked enough like Yoplait. Or when NBC thought it would be a good idea to get rid of the peacock. Oops! Or when Holiday Gas stations...oh my, that looks just like NBC, doesn't it? Or when Microsoft came out with Bing and they did their world-wide market research to make sure Bing wasn't slang for "I wanna sleep with your mother" in some country. What they didn't look into was that it's an acronym for "But It's Not Google."

Cripes. Maybe I'll do it myself.

Wow, and now for something completely different. The lead singer from the "goregrind" band Haemorrhage goes by the name Lugubrious. I love this - lookit their homepage. If you listen to the songs they've posted, you'll hear Lugubrious uttering guttural belches, which maybe it's cuz he's singing in Spanish (though* probably not), but I can't understand a thing he's singing. Why doesn't he enunciate better? Luckily there's a link to the lyrics so if you want to sing along but can't understand, you can sing along while reading. That Haemorrhage, always thinking of their fans.

Note to the 'sband: once again, aren't you glad I'm into Trance?

*So "though" is pronounce "tho," but if you take the first 'h' away...?

Unknown

As you may/may not know, neither the 'sband nor I ever seem to get the Word in our email. Don't know what's going on with that, and when I went to the website to check on this morning's, it said "unknown." Everything else said unknown, too. And then I noticed the date was December 31, 1969.

OMG it's Y2K all over!!!

So I'm taking the day off. In fact, I'm always taking Friday off from now on. I'm nervous that trying to come up with something five days a week is gonna lead to burn out, so I'm cutting back a day. My apologies to the reader who reads it everyday at lunch. But hey, try, TRY to have a good day without it, OK?

Stay calm and know it'll be back on Monday...

Inimitable

Inimitable

You know who I think is inimitable? That's right!*

So anyway, here's a few more things I think are inimitable:

• The first sentence of Bellefleur by Joyce Carol Oates. 
• The 3D effects in Hugo. (Thank you, Martin Scorsese!)
• Glen or Glenda directed by Ed Wood. Some bad movies are so bad they're funny (Plan Nine from Outer Space), some are embarrassing (Sextette with Mae West), but Glen/Glenda is so bad it's...just bad. Although the word "baffling" does come to mind.
• The Marx Brothers - 'nough said. 
• The Ryugyong Hotel - not because of the design, but because, who gets that far along in building something and then just stops? Oh wait, North Korean Communists - answered my own question.
• The great Boston Molasses Disaster - at least I hope it's inimitable. I was trashing on the Commies, it's only fair to trash on the capitalists - at least the ones that are stupid and flagrantly negligent.

Ok, this is sort of short, but I have to look for a job...I promised the 'sband...

*To my long-term reader: HA! I'm not THAT completely predictable!

Wend

Wend

So the 'sband is watching Hell's Kitchen and they're picking teams for the final challenge - that is, the top two contenders are choosing.* I mention it cuz the last person to get picked felt like I felt when I was the last to get picked for kickball or baseball or basketball or football or whatever the hell ball we were suffering through - I mean "playing" - that day in phy ed. Luckily in my later high school years sections of phy ed turned co-ed** and there was tennis and curling*** involved.

But I was just thinking that how lovely it would've been if wending a winding trail had been a course in phy ed. Of course that woulda meant that the coach woulda had to actually join in, and well, those who can't do, teach. And those who can't teach, teach phy ed.**** But man, I would have loved phy ed if we had to go out walking in the woods.

So what exactly is the theory behind phy ed? Obviously getting physical exercise is really important, but is it purposely set up to make the non-physical feel bad about themselves? Do the idiots - er, people - that set up the class think that jocks suck at academics and this is their way of evening out the psyche field? The jocks get beat up in academics so now is their chance to beat up the smart people. But we all know that's crap cuz the jocks beat up people all the time - they don't need phy ed for that.******

But I have to say that I was never beat up by the jocks. I got harassed by the dirts. Until we got into our senior year of high school and I ended up hanging out with them. Strange bed fellows for sure. Yep, I lost my virginity to this totally hot n dirty guy with a motorcycle. Oh wait, that wasn't me, that was the sister on Roseanne. Never mind. Man, I am all over today! What is my point? Hmmm, tune in tomorrow, maybe I'll have one.

*If you don't know what I'm talking about, it doesn't matter. But I have to say, every one of those people swears more than I could ever even try to.
**When my father and older brother found out I was in co-ed phy ed, they acted like I single-handedly got women the vote or something (in a negative way).
***Hey, it was small-town Wisconsin - curling was, and still is, HUGE.
****Woody Allen*****
*****Ever notice how Woody Allen movies roll the credits "in alphabetical order"? I wonder if they would roll as such if his name was Woody Zimmerschied?
******Yes, this is a gross generalization of stereotypes, but hey, I'm not the one that set up phy ed the way it is.*******
*******Sorry for all the footnotes.