Psychiatric nosology frequently ignores the cultural determinants of so-called mental illnesses.
2. fulminate — to flash like lightning; to explode; to thunder forth condemnation(s); to inveigh violently
Though the board has fulminated numberless edicts, motions, and denunciations against the developer, the situation remains exactly as it was one year ago.
3. peach — to inform against; to divulge
We stayed out of the ambit of Veronica James as much as possible, as she was known as a narc, having peached her parents to the cops for growing marijuana in their garage.
4. inconscient — unconscious
Try as you might to appeal to their reason, this mob is under the sway of inconscient passions and forces that cannot be negated by logic.
5. facetious — waggish, not meant to be taken seriously; humorous
I was on the very verge of calling my banker when I realized that Tomas was being merely facetious in making his ill-advised remarks about a run on the Central Bibb Trust & Bank.
6. ebrious — intoxicated; addicted to drink; of or related to intoxication
I certainly hope that these words were penned about me by some ebrious cad for I’m damned if I’ll allow a sober person to call me such names.
7. micturate — to urinate
The unrepentant miscreant was discovered micturating upon the very slippers that had sent him packing to the back yard only the day before.
8. harrow — to break up (as with a harrow); to crush, tear, lacerate; to despoil
He protested that he only wished me well, but Jeremy had so harrowed my deepest feelings in our previous encounter that I shied away from any more of his supposedly helpful verbal depredations.
9. fecund — capable of giving birth or of producing fruit; fruitful, prolific
Perhaps the story of my mistakes may provide fecund material from which true creative works may arise, just as delicious mushrooms may sprout forth from the most feculent manure.
10. excurrent — exiting, running out
Fighting against the excurrent high schoolers bursting their bonds on this the last day of school, the maudlin detective meditated as best he could in the noise and shoving upon the vicissitudes of life and just what percentage of these quondam students would come under his purview.
One of the reasons (among many) that I despair of ever pulling together mix CDs for my cousins, is the occasionally wondrous serendipity of random play choices by iTunes on my phone whilst driving to and fro. Recently the last two days of July saw just such fortuitous track listings pulled out of the algorithmic æther as I went to and from work. The song choices are not perfect (the Latin selections, in particular, could have been better, but the fault is more likely with the paucity of my collection than the Brownian Motion behind my phone’s choices), but I have to ask myself if I could have sequenced better even given weeks of planning.
Here is the listing for the songs heard going and coming, on July 30 2020:
July 30, 2020
Going (side A)
time: 28:35
“Leben heisst Leben” – Laibach
“Brothers In Arms” – Dire Straits
“Here You Come Again” – Dolly Parton
“Come Rain Or Come Shine” – Billie Holiday
“In The Light” – Led Zeppelin
Coming home (side B)
time: 29:53
“I Am A Rock” – Simon & Garfunkel
“Man Or Animal” – Audioslave
“Dónde Están” – Siempre Así
“Driving Your Girlfriend Home” – Morrisey
“Bongo Festeris” – Jack Costanzo
“World On A String” – Neil Young
[live version from Roxy: Tonight’s The Night Live]
“Pifa” (pastoral symphony) – from Handel’s Messiah
Karl Richter w/ The London Philharmonic Choir
Perhaps even better than the day before, the next set of music made me doubt my ability to curate a mix CD for friends and family; it also made my commute much more enjoyable that it would have been otherwise. Not all random mixes from iTunes are this good—I’ve been told that my car music is mostly unlistenable—but I like it. I do not stream, and see no reason to do so as long as I get music like this.
That said, here is the listing for the following day, July 31, 2020:
July 31, 2020
Going (side C)
time: 25:50
“Haitian Divorce” – Steely Dan
“I’m Bound For That Promised Land” – Hank Williams
“Prelude” – Joe Gallant & Illuminati
“Your Latest Trick” – Dire Straits
“Close The Door Richard” – Burl Ives
“Let The Bass Go” – The D.O.C.
“Suite In A: Allemande” – from Book II of Marin Marais’s Pièces de Viole
performed by Jérôme Hantaï & Alix Verzier on bass viols and Pierre Hantaï on harpsichord
Coming home (side D)
time: 28:11 (not including bonus track)
“Think It Over” – B. B. King
“Bees” – Laura Cantrell
“Der Letzte Countdown” – The Heimatdamisch
“Talisman” – Air
“Sunshine And Clouds And Everything” – Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!
“Mockingbird” – Eminem
“Du-Tam” – [Serbian folk song from old 78 collection (not mine)]
“Hip Length” – Ursula 1000
Bonus Track: Lowell Thomas 6:30 PM [Eastern War Time] broadcast for NBC News on D-Day
The songs offered by my phone come from a panoply of playlists both smart and otherwise which I maintain in iTunes (and which I fear may leave me—as massive amounts of hand-picked album art left some early adopters—if I ever “up”grade to the latest MacOS*) and have crafted with both attentiveness and negligence over the past decade or so. Thus, for example, track numbers A2, A5, B6, B11, C1, C4, C6, and D13 come from heavy rotation playlists, while numbers A3, B14, D7, D10, and D15 derive from lists of most recently added tracks. The remainder bubbled up from semi-random rules meant to capture stuff I haven’t heard in a long while, stuff I liked a while back, and stuff I’ve never heard. I should also point out—as if it were not painfully obvious to most of y’all who perused the tracks listed above—that I am hopelessly stale bourgeois boring person who has ‘taste’ only in the same way that a person who eats nothing but donuts can be said to have a ‘diet’.
* I plan to write in more detail about my woes with the Apple ecosystem later, so please strive to hold back your knee-jerk responses of “You should use Linux!” or “Serves you write for not just buying a PC!” until then, if ever.
1. forfend — to protect by precautionary measures; to prevent, to fend off
Try as they might to forfend from her everything likely to bring Clarence back to mind, they were powerless to stop the lawyers with their evil videotaped depositions.
2. glabella — line of flat space on forehead between and above eyebrows; central part of the cephalic shield of a trilobite
Anthropologists and gentlemen scientists (if I am not being tautological) early noted that the glabella of most men and women is smooth and devoid of hair (hence the name), though there have always been exceptions to this rule (v. Kahlo).
3. borage — herbaceous plant with blue flowers, thought to have medicinal properties
Though in the English-speaking world it has been relegated to a mere garnish in a Pimm’s Cup (and often cucumber supplants it even in that role), the ancient Greek author Pliny identified borage as the ‘Nepenthe’ of Homer, which caused forgetfulness and erased trouble from the drinker’s mind when it was mixed with wine.
4. contemn — to treat as worth little, to view with contempt; to disdain, to scorn
Perhaps in his public words he does not contemn those craven sycophants or the deluded masses who have granted his every whim, but be sure that he despises both groups for their mean and base toadyism.
5. lantern — (architecture) open structure atop a roof permitting light to enter and smoke to leave
The beautiful lantern atop the imposing dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral has long held a fascination for tourists with strong thighs.
6. docetism — doctrine which holds that Jesus had no material existence, rendering his bodily suffering only apparent
Though some have argued that Philippians 2:7 (wherein it states that Jesus “was made in the likeness of men”) gives Biblical support for the heresy of doecetism, most scholars agree that the verse only refers to the fact that Jesus in his full Godly essence was much more than just a man.
7. doddle — (obsolete) to shake or nod (the head)
Aunt May finished the short letter, heaved a weary sigh, doddled her head for a long moment, and finally allowed a single hot tear to fall onto her apron before slowly placing Jack’s note back in its envelope.
8. eagre — very high tidal flood in a narrowing estuary
Either through particularly accurate planning or just dumb luck, all traces of the murderer were erased by the swollen eagre that flowed up the River Trent and washed over the crime scene at the base of the steep embankment.
9. panegyric — public oration or writing in praise of someone or something, encomium; laudation, eulogy
We were all surprised by this fervent panegyric in praise of someone for whom Señor Martí had previously expressed only disdain.
10. paregoric — camphorated tincture of opium, with anise and benzoic acid for flavoring
If you have to quiet him so that you can sleep, just give him three (or four) drops of paregoric in a teaspoon of water.
Bonus Vocabulary
(slang)
on the fiddle — of someone engaged in petty cheating
We were all shocked to learn that the school counselor Mr. Tulburne was on the fiddle and had been letting the Posey brothers store their drugs in his own office the whole time.
1. wapentake — subdivision of certain shires in Northern England and the Midlands, corresponding to the hundreds in other counties
Though an orderly appropriation was to be hoped for, in some outlying wapentakes the bailiff summarily took whatever goods were upon his list, often without payment or with payment only through tallies.
2. fog — long and thickly growing grass
In the winter, the partridge will often roost within the dead fog above the fallow fields or among the roots of trees.
3. tympanic — related to the eardrum; of or resembling a drum
Though my trap caused no harm—at least no physical harm; I am unable to speak to the psychological damage to tiny rodents from being captured in a large plastic bin—my sleep was fitful all that night, as the little jumping mouse flung himself against the clear plastic lid in a fruitless though tympanic attempt at escape.
4. mickle — (archaic) much, a large amount
Mickle cares make a weary soul if you’ve not got something to help you bear the load.
5. edema — morbid accumulation of watery fluid into serous cavities or interstices between joints, dropsy
Malnutrition had taken its toll on the poor girl, though the edema in her ankles and legs was only the most obvious sign of the damage that lack of vital proteins had wreaked upon her frail body.
6. coscinomancy — divination by use of scissors and sieve
Just as the exact details of reading portents by pawing through a dead animal’s entrails are now lost to us, nobody alive today (which exempts any summoned spirit, I suppose) can honestly be sure of just how conscinomancy was performed.
7. clough — valley or ravine with very steep sides, defile
Down the clough flew the rough rider upon a coal-black stallion whose clattering hooves somehow maintained its vicious pace across the scree and shale that littered the valley floor.
8. architrave — primary beam or lintel lying atop a series of columns, the lowest section of a classical entablature (below the frieze and cornice), epistyle; frame with mouldings around door or window
Entering the prison I felt its oppressive force weighing me down as if this should be my last sight of the outside world, condemned to fall into a black pit beneath the dank and dark architraves of that ancient building made darker still by the humid air which had turned the stones themselves a Stygian black.
9. synoptic — of or taking a comprehensive view of a subject
It is doubtful whether any such synoptic sociology could survive in the current environment of modern academia.
10. draggle — to soil by dragging through mire or wet grass; to make wet and dirty
Stephen Douglas himself warned preachers not to draggle their long robes in the foul pool of partisan politics.
Bonus Vocabulary
(Latin)
sub verbo (also abbreviated as s.v.) — “under the word”, citation form for entry in dictionary or encyclopedia
Many quotations using this abstruse term may be found in the Glossar zu Psychologie-Begriffen of Professor Helmut Birke, sub verbo.
1. reredos — decorated screen or wall behind altar in a church; brick or stone back of a fireplace
The first project of the Church Restoration Committee will be to fund the repainting of the reredos in the Saint Matthew’s Chapel, using the extensive notes of the 19th-Century antiquarian Devon Shrikeston as our guide for the colors.
2. negus — sweetened wine and hot water, with lemon and spice
“Please take the chair closest to the fire and I’ll call for some negus from the kitchen.”
3. lawn — fine linen fabric
The frill of her brocade skirt was made from cloky sheer lawn, blistered in a badger pattern, her supposed ‘spirit animal’.
4. accidie — sloth, torpor; indifference, esp. in religious duties
Though it remains on the lists of deadly sins under the rubric of ‘Sloth’, which most today interpret as mere laziness, the religious of medieval times were all too aware of the dangers of accidie, perhaps best described by George Willis as “that causeless languor and discontent with life which we call ‘the blues.'”
5. Mohock — violent aristocratic thugs who tormented London in the early 18th Century
Though some doubt has been cast upon the very existence of an organized group calling themselves Mohocks, it is a fact that attacks by ruffians plagued Londoners in 1712, and the group—fictive or not—struck a resounding chord against the class consciousness of an England wherein aristocratic thugs could engage in violent criminality with impunity while the lowest classes could be hanged for stealing bread.
6. armscye — armhole in a garment
There are no armscyes or indeed any holes at all in a true Roman tunic, which creates its effects entirely by clever drapery.
7. houppelande — medieval long-bodied outerwear, usually with full flared sleeves and sometimes trimmed with fur
Lady Alys seemed determined to impress her noble kinsman, and wore her new houppelande with its fur collar though it was wholly inappropriate for the solemn occasion.
8. adduce — to cite, to present as evidence
Not a single example of the crime can be found in the court records, nor have the proponents of the law adduced any records from the newspapers or any other source other than the wild claims of anonymous persons on Twitter, leading one to wonder what this tempest in a teapot is truly about.
9. mitosis — (biology) part of cell division cycle in which replicated chromosomes divide into separate nuclei; by extension, cell division itself
Under the influence of the sacred plants the clouds seem to fill with the figures of all his ancestors, only to undergo a hideous mitosis where each forbear split into two people, only to split again, and again, and again, in some sort of perverse vision of his family tree written across the heavens in these fevered dreams that he realized must carry deep meaning but which were only making him nauseous.
10. anuria — lack of urine, failure of kidneys to produce urine
Though the patient’s first report of anuria suggested kidney failure, his subsequent intense pain made clear that kidney stones were to blame.
1. prelapsarian — of or pertaining to the time before the Fall of Man in the Garden of Eden; innocent and pristine; supralapsarian (vide infra)
My studies in that liberal arts college in New England were an academic prelapsarian nirvana, funded by the GI Bill.
2. blacksnake — long, heavy leather whiplash
He weren’t the worst man to work for, ‘cept he loved the blacksnake a mite much for my liking.
3. hysteresis — the lag of magnetic effects behind their causes; system phenomenon in which present reaction to change is dependent upon past reactions to change
Looking back at the Great American Hysteresis the economists were able to say, as they are always able to say, that it was obvious in retrospect just where things went off the rails.
4. anosmia — loss of the olfactory sense
Like most narcissists, Jacob exhibited that selective anosmia common to many who place their own actions and needs above those of everyone else, and believed quite fervently that his shit did not, in fact, stink.
5. infralapsarian — of the Calvinist doctrine that God’s election of some to eternal life followed His foreknowledge of the Fall of Man (opposed to supralapsarian, vide infra)
The whole mess conjured up by the supralapsarian-infralapsarian controversy should be quite familiar to anyone who has been made to suffer through the worst contradictions of time travel science fiction.
6. dysgeusia — distortion of the sense of taste
Though I stopped smoking several years ago, a lingering dysgeusia remains as a permanent reminder of that choice.
7. geep — hybrid of a sheep and a goat
Though rare, the geep manages to combine the worst elements of each of its parents, with a coarse coat and a sempiternally randy nature.
8. marcel — to make waves in hair through the use of irons; such waved hair
Aunt Regina’s beautifully marcelled hair made a stark contrast with the threadbare veil she wore over it.
9. cothurnus — tragedy, tragic style, grave style of acting; buskin, thick-soled boot worn by ancient actors
So terribly has the cothurnus been abused upon our current stages, that actors who should know better now declaim when they should soliloquize, shout when they should declaim, and make faces when they should emote.
10. supralapsarian — of the Calvinist doctrine that God’s predestination of some to eternal life and His condemnation of others to eternal damnation preceded (in some way) God’s decree of the Creation and the Fall of Man (opposed to infralapsarian, vide supra)
Eventually the entire synod found itself wrecked upon the minutest of treacherous rocks, the tiny difference between the supralapsarian predestination of the elect which implied the sacrifice of Christ only for those selfsame elect and the infralapsarian notion of the sinful nature of man which implied that God chose just whom he would save.
Journey To The Impossible: Designing an Extraordinary Life, by Scott Jeffrey
This is perhaps the worst book I have ever read in my life.
I was sorely tempted just to let the above sentence be my entire report upon this piece of garbage, much as the original version of a sophomoric poem I wrote to entertain my fans in high school once consisted of only the words: “Dead. Damn.” However, a somewhat decent respect to the opinions of others compels me to provide proofs of my assertion, lest you too end up poleaxed by the pure inanity of this so-called book. Socrates credited his daimonion with warning him often, and the Roman genius later became a similar ‘divine something’ which looks over and after a person in their journey through life. But neither ‘genius’ nor ‘demon’, nor ‘angel’ nor ‘devil’, no divine force nor powerful spirit drives this work of trash into the ground of senseless, useless self-help experiential ‘up yourself’ crap-claptrap stream of unconsciousness and extreme Dunning-Kruger diseased and morbid stupid. No, the ‘force’—if such it can be called—behind this saddening refuse can only be all too human, alas, so very human, in the sense which makes us neither gods nor beasts, but in some way much, much worse than either. An insensate lack of self-awareness in the midst of professing powers of self beyond normal ken permeates the 200 pages (thankfully with wide margins and wide line spacing, typeset by someone who knew how to pad that essay into the required length for the professor) of this terrible, terrible example of English words placed upon paper.
Hmm. I’ve already said much more about this book than it deserves, so let me make the basic case quickly, and then give you an extended extract to show you what I am gassing on about.
Mr. Jeffrey’s Journey To The Impossible is only the worst example of the corporate meaningless speech that once was kept in its place at the yearly (or at worst quarterly) company meeting where the ‘leadership team’ performed their leadership act for the rank-and-file. At some point in the past twenty years, however, executives in every organization became convinced that speaking the buzziest of words and mouthing the most clichéd business platitudes what what being an executive was all about. Indeed, entire companies were founded around this supposed skill, devoted to helping other executive types uncover such nebulous items as ‘actionable intelligence’. A case in point:
Why indeed?
Such meaningless nonsense abounds all over the Web, in the soi-disant ‘Tech’ industry, in boardrooms and country club locker rooms. The example I show here is only one of hundreds, perhaps only more successful up to this point than most. If you go to this company’s website, you’ll find more of this ilk, including this fabulous ‘Convergence Expertise’ Wheel of Bullshit:
Scott Jeffrey made his mark as one of the self-actualizing gurus to this executive suite, trying to sell them his brand of Babel in a crowded marketplace of similar Kool-Aid. This book is the distillation of his lessons learned as he—wait for it—journeyed to the impossible. The lessons are as you’d expect: Nothing Is Impossible, Be The Best You You Can Be, Be Creative, so forth and so on. I will now give you just a small sample of the ideas for ‘designing an extraordinary life’ that are contained in this book. What follows is an extract of Mr. Jeffrey’s idea for writing a bio for the ‘lead role’ in your life, based on his personal experience doing just that for himself. He worked and pulled together “a fantastic character that got me juiced …. I didn’t take myself too seriously, there was no judgment, and I was proud of what I had created.” I can easily believe he used no judgment, but here, you can judge for yourself:
Both a warrior and a fighter, eh?
But wait, we’re not done yet ….
I doubt we will all win multiple Oscar’s
This is so sad on so very many levels. One of the reasons I can identify losers is because I can identify with them, have been and are a loser. Which means that I’ve played D&D and related games wherein slobs like me sit around with weirdly shaped dice and pencils and sheets of paper pretending to be a misogynistic half-breed elven communist mage wielding a magic custard pie with deadly accuracy. Only the misogyny had any basis in reality. I mention this only to say that I have ‘rolled’ many characters in such pursuits, have seen many other characters ‘rolled’, and I have never seen, heard, or imagined a more banal, more buffoonish, cartoonish, and pointless character biography than the passage quoted above. And one of my ‘characters’ had a pet bear with constant intestinal distress, named Wambler.
Scott Jeffrey still runs a business consulting firm, or rather, a “transformational leadership agency and resource for self-actualizing individuals read by over 2 million people”. He still has not hired a copyeditor, though Journey To The Impossible had good production values, which is perhaps the biggest difference in the current After Times; where once we could detect the Crazy by the blurry mimeograph streaks on the crumpled pages stapled lovingly to telephone poles around campus, now even the stupidest of ideas are shiny and chrome.
There is a lot more to hate in this book. Heck, I’ll send it to you if you want to see how much worse it can get. Mr. Jeffrey wrote this appalling waste of time and ink over 18 years ago, using a author portrait that makes him look like Kahlil Gibran in a turtleneck.
He grew older, however, as did we all, and now reminds me more of the (fictional) author of The Profit, which is a much better book than Mr. Jeffrey’s, and is even shorter. Maybe we’ll read that one next time.
Over 93 days after my last thousand songs were heard, I have just listened to my 116,000th unique iTunes track, a likable enough country number from Rosanne Cash, “Green, Yellow, and Red”, from her 1987 album King’s Record Shop. I am reliably informed (well, yes, I read it on the Interwebs) that Ms. Cash was not actually present in the doorway of the iconic record store for the album cover, but that’s neither here nor there.
The Stats
116,000 unique tracks takes up 766.61 GB of data (↑ 9.36 GB), which would take 507 days, 2 hours, 10 minutes, and 5 seconds to listen to altogether (↑ 6 days and 21-1/2 hours). Remaining unplayed in my iTunes library of files are 75,783 tracks, 716 fewer than my last report (thus 284 tracks have been added to my library since I hit 115,000 songs heard). The unplayed files occupy 511.18 GB of data space (↓ 6.5 GB) and 262 days, 9 hours, 58 minutes and 49 seconds of time (↓ 7 days & 1 hour). The decline in total time ‘consumed’ by the last thousand tracks heard (I dropped well over 10 days worth of sound files in the last tranche of 1,000) can be attributed to a significant change in my consumptive habits, which in itself is due to changes in my means of production (of wages).
To reach the 116,000th unique track, I listened to 1254 songs since track #115,000, starting this latest tranche with Warren Zevon’s “Interlude No. 1” from Bad Luck Streak In Dancing School. These 1246 songs occupy 10.98 GB of data, and 8 days, 15 hours, and 13-1/2 minutes of time. Much less total time was taken up—though almost the same number of tracks—due to the drastic change in my listening habits caused by my new work situation starting in May of this year.
It took 93 days to listen to the last thousand songs, meaning just over 10.25 new songs per day were heard.
10.25 New Tracks Heard per Day
If we include the previously heard songs, we find that I heard 13.48 tracks per day, a drastic drop of about eight-and-a-half songs fewer per day than the last set of one thousand songs. This is due to the aforementioned change in my job situation, which means I no longer listen to old radio shows during the middle of the night and the ungodly hours of the morning.
13.48 Tracks Heard per Day
I never did do any analysis of the last five thousand songs, as I sort of promised and sort of hinted at in my last report to you, so I will now make the rash promise of making such an analysis of the last six thousand songs heard, for your comparison with my last deep scan of the data, though of course 6,000 doesn’t seem to have the gravitas of half a myriad. (In addition, the math won’t be quite as obvious, and the comparisons will also require a ‘fudge factor’ of 1.2 (or 0.83333 (repeating, of course) depending).) We shall see, or, as Doris Day said, “Que sera, sera”.
I am also beginning to wonder if my analysis of my listened-to songs will survive the transition to a new MacOS and its ‘updated’ Music software (or are we supposed to call it an ‘app’ now?). Usually I would go into an Apple store and poke around in it, but I guess I’ll just have to write a blog post about it, though I fear the inevitable responses about going to Windows (or Linux, from the weirdos)—which I suppose would be better than the actual response, which is to say, none at all. Besides, I have to write up my history of why it took me five days to set up my wife’s new iPhone, and before that I really do owe Bill an explanation of why I asked for a handful of Lego pieces for Christmas a few years back. *Sigh* Maybe next time I have to do taxes I’ll procrastinate in such a way. Until then …
1. nastic — (biology) (of plant movement) caused by external stimulus which does not determine direction of response
A strong flick of the finger against the leaf of a mimosa plant creates a strong nastic response, with the leaf quickly and visibly folding up in a striking example of thigmonasty.
2. snug — (nautical) to lash down or stow away, as in preparation for a storm
Once we had snugged down the canvas our duty was merely one of almost interminable waiting.
3. javelina — collared peccary
During the hot summer days the javelina rests in the shade, hunting and seeking water only at night.
4. marchpane — marzipan
The children loved the tarts, biscuits, and marchpane laid out on the holiday buffet, but a small glass of sweet wine sufficed for me.
5. silage — ensilage, preservation of undried green fodder in a silo or pit
In a rainy climate, alfalfa may also be preserved as silage.
6. parthenic — virgin
She had the parthenic virtue of absolute certainty in the accuracy of her judgments.
7. trapezium — irregular quadrilateral, four-sided plane rectilinear figure not a parallelogram
It was Tommaso who first noticed that the cross-section of the chamber was actually a trapezium rather than a rectangle, after which we quickly found Lindley’s hidden vault.
8. oxer — horse jumping obstacle with two rails set in various formations; cattle guard consisting of hedge with guardrail
After you clear the water obstacle you’ll have only the ascending oxer to jump before you make the goal posts.
9. corbel — (architecture) bracket of stone or brick jutting from wall to support weight above
Though not specifically decorative, the cathedral’s many corbels contend with the grotesque gargoyles for richness of architectural imagination.
10. tarpaulin — sailor
Yes, sailors are a superstitious lot, my friend, save for your English tarpaulin who believes only in his daily tot of rum and who only fears its withdrawal.
Bonus Vocabulary
(slang)
gee-gee — horse
He was taking the train to Florida because the gee-gees were running at Hialeah.
1. Desterham — Turkish minister of finance (variant of defterdar, apparently only used by Voltaire in his story Zadig)
The case was brought before the Grand Desterham, who had both parties beaten soundly with knouts so that both would know the majesty of Babylonian justice.
2. bizzie — (British slang) policeman or policewoman; (pl.) the police (also busy or bizzard)
No matter what sort of get-up he wore, you could tell right away he was just a bizzie out of uniform—something about the way he carried himself, I guess.
3. totipotent — (biology) capable of becoming anything (said of cells able to become any type of cell in an embryo)
Perhaps the first grade teacher faces a class full of totipotent human beings, but those opportunities are long gone by the time those students reach high school.
4. hard lines — (British slang) adversity, bad luck
“Hard lines Pete,” he said as they watched the golf ball stop almost at the very lip of the cup.
5. psychomanteum — darkened room with angled mirror reflecting darkness, intended for communion with the dead
Lily had never forsaken her widow’s weeds, which spoke to her laudable devotion to Chester, but when she rigged up the rear parlor as a psychomanteum we realized that we had to intervene.
6. feringhee — (Indian and Asian slang, usu. derogatory) foreigner, European, white person
Almost the entire village came out to watch the feringhee struggle to impose his will upon the recalcitrant bactrian camel.
7. yataghan — Ottoman doubly curved saber
Had it not been for his keen eye and sure trigger finger, I would have perished beneath the sharp edge of an Albanian yataghan twenty years ago.
At this rate the world economy will be munted for years to come.
9. misandry — hatred of men
After her self-realization, Paul was never allowed to stay overnight in his family home because of his mother’s misandry.
10. allopathy — treatment of disease by producing effects opposite to the disease’s symptoms; derogatory term for traditional medicine
An almost religious distrust of allopathy led him to reject any and all substances branded as ‘chemicals’, and perhaps his gluten-free diet was merely an extension of this philosophy.
11. viga — large wooden beam used in adobe construction
The shadows of the vigas jutting out from the roof made it difficult to discern the rodent hiding alongside the pathway to the door.
12. orante — (also orans or orant) prayerful posture, in which one stands with hands held out to the side with the palms up, while the elbows are held close to the body
Though the gesture was discarded when prayerful handholding became the vogue, more and more we see the orante posture returned to the modern Christian church, especially among members too weak or too tired to keep their arms over their heads for hours and hours.
