Sunday, October 31, 1999
HAPPY
HALLOWEEN!
Yes, at long last, the big day has finally arrived! I've been up for over 35 hours straight now, weaving a picnic basket, waxing my legs, and doing all those other little things that a middle-aged male must do once he's decided to spend a night roaming the countryside dressed up as Little Red Ridinghood. Had I known that the simple act of notifying my parole officer of this slight and temporary change in my persona was going to take 6 full days and a ton of paperwork, I would have started preparing weeks ago!
But no time to dwell on that now. I still need to use my home electrolysis kit on the ol' beard and underarms, perform a quick self-castration, and... oh, yeah - find a red riding hood! Seems all the stores have packed away their winter wear and are already displaying the red riding bikinis no Ohioan in his right mind will need until next February at the earliest. I swear, retail store managers don't have the common sense they were born with!
Well, no matter. Even if every single employee of my local JC Penny's was a card-carrying genius, the sad bottom line would still be that holiday activities prevent me from writing a real entry today.
Sorry! I promise to do better tomorrow, if not before.
In the meantime, I'm leaving a special basket of treats here on the side porch of this entry for all those trick-or-readers who might stop by while I'm out living it up for once in my life.
If you're one of them, enjoy!
And if you happen to see anyone taking more than a single treat, "Feel Free To Tattle" (as our new county motto so wisely recommends).
Ok, so the edible treats in this particular basket might be a little stale. Nestled in among them are a few of my all-time favorite vocabulary words which I've not only spent the last few seconds tossing in with my very own hands but am now freely offering to every ghost and goblin that comes knocking on my journal.
If you think you can get a better deal somewhere else online today, be sure to tell me where!
But there goes the dinger on the timer - gotta go rinse the Nair off my heinie lest I end up with a nasty irritation for the third time this year.
Have fun picking out ONE word from the following delicious choices to make your own.
And remember to go home and wash your mouth out before popping it into your conversation!
Adirondack - Of or relating to a pretty cute mountain range in northeastern New York state
Aestivate - To pass the summer in a state of torpor
Anodyne - Serving to assuage pain
Animadversion - A critical and censorious remark; adverse, ill-natured, and unfair criticism
Bathos - The sudden appearance of the commonplace in an otherwise elevated matter or style; anticlimax, letdown; exceptional commonplaceness or triteness; insincere or overdone pathos or sentimentalism
Champollion - Frenchman who figured out the riddle of the Rosetta Stone
Coxcomb - 1. A conceited dandy; a fop 2. A jester's cap
Coxcombry - Behavior that is characteristic of a coxcomb
Cumquat - Variation of kumquat
Ctenosphere - Any of various marine animals of the phylum Ctenophora, having transparent gelatinous bodies bearing eight rows of comblike cilia used for swimming and pickpocketing
Ectomorph - Scientific name for a thin, high-strung, intellectual person who usually stays up late, winds up overtired, sleeps in late whenever possible, and wakes up slowly and reluctantly
Eldritch - Weird, eerie
Iatrogenic - Illness induced by a doctor or his treatment
Gymnosophist - One of a sect of naked ascetics of ancient India
Lexiphanicism - Pretentious phraseology
Madagascar - Large island off the southeast coast of mainland Africa which is home to many unique species of haberdashers
Mascon - One of the concentrations of large mass under the surface of the moon in the maria held to cause perturbations of the paths of spacecraft orbiting the moon
Myoclonus - Scientific name for the sudden jerk occasionally experienced while falling asleep; cause unknown
Orchestrion - A mechanical device provided with different stops capable of imitating a variety of musical instruments
Orchestrelle - A reed organ of the late 19th century constructed on the principle of the mechanical player piano and designed to imitate the effect of an orchestra
Paramnesia - A disorder of memory in which the proper meaning of words cannot be recalled
Psychosclerosis - Hardening of the mind. Sufferers are unable to see or embrace new ideas. They mistake their prejudices for the laws of nature and the more light you admit to the pupil of their brain, the narrower it grows
Quidnunc - Busybody
Roman à clef - A novel in which real people or actual events figure under disguise
Schadenfreude - Pleasure derived from watching misfortune befall others
Thaumaturgist - A performer of miracles; a magician
Trepanning - The process of making a hole in the skull of an ill person so that the disease or evil spirit responsible can escape
Trephining - Trepanning performed by someone with at least a master's degree from The Black & Decker School of Hospital Administration
Weltschmerz - Mental depression or apathy caused by comparison of the actual state of the world with an ideal state
©1999 by Tiny Crimson Travelsmock
(a.k.a. Little Red Ridinghood prior to being told
in no uncertain terms exactly what it means to copyright something - DOH!)
