Saturday, December 31, 2005

New Year's with Friends

Right, an example of Pasadena area architecture.

Story #25 (Lordy, what an ego!,) or, A Night of Wine and Roses. In which Doug rings in a new year and learns the importance of old friends and new.

To hear the story, click on the Rose Bowl banner.











To read the story, point to the Soggy Bottom Boys.

Happy, healthy and prosperous New Year to you all.

Friday, December 30, 2005

Distillery

Distillery, n. An institution for the facture and dissemination of the scarlet snout. It is to the distillery, also, that we owe that precious inheritance, the talking teetotaler.

2005 Update: A refinery which once served in opposition to the Church and its promotion of purity. The Church having entered politics, the distillery now has both refinement and purity of spirit to itself. Results can be seen here.

Thursday, December 29, 2005

Reckless

Reckless, adj. Asking a San Francisco girl to take ice cream.

2005 Update: Driving sixty in the central city or eighty in the suburbs, over one hundred miles per hour across the desert or stopping in Nevada.

By the way, Tom's first mass media enterprise is up on Doug Drones On.

Wednesday, December 28, 2005

Special Guest Wednesday

This week it's my pleasure to introduce Kay Richardson, who defines for us:
Emote? v.i.?

Emote.

Right.

I know what an emotor is. It's a kind of car run exclusively on electricity. Emotor.

But 'emote'? It's all about expressing emotion. And what kind of person doesn't emote at least once a day? We all emote. Be it furiously in the bedroom, or calmly in the bath. That said, I once knew a girl who wouldn't emote. That wasn't necessarily a bad thing. We wouldn't get bogged down in conversations about how she felt/how I was a bastard etc ... but it did lead to her death eventually.

As an actor, I often emote on stage. Tip - to look angry, quiver your eyebrows. To look happy, open your eyes wider than you'd do usually. These are acting tips, Reader. Use them well.

Emoticons are rubbish, aren't they? :-) I hate them. They're contributing to the destruction of the English language. English is great too - you're reading it now. Imagine how great that is. Revel in your knowledge of the language. Hey, we can even laugh together at those stupid people that don't know English for we are brothers in tongue. Those others might be trying to read this now - not knowing that I'm dissing them. Stupid non-English speaking losers.

Emote.- to communicate emotion. I think poetry does this best. I'll end with one of my favourite poems. It's by Adrian Henri and its called 'Poem for a Motorway Girl':

I wanted your soft verges,
But you gave me the hard shoulder.

About Kay: Kay is an actor, director, writer, Brit, inspiration and apparently some sort of cad. He writes the darkly entertaining blog, Soul-thoughts of a Troubled Actor in which he shares the highs and lows of professional acting, cat-owning and ant-hating. Most of his posts express a bitterness I can only admire and applaud. He will be listed among my links in the section with the language advisory, not whimsically.

Kay reports recently having spent two unjust weeks in a detention facility as the result of a performance improvisation that injured a crowd of schoolchildren and is currently serving a one-week sentence with his family in the countryside. I feel applause and sympathy are warranted. He wants us to know that he was born on the coast and once sat on a bus next to Kelly Brook. I recommend his site as an entertaining read for those over 18 who like trouble and don't mind being offended. Considering that he was born and raised overseas in Great Britain, his English is remarkably comprehensible as well.

Thanks to Kay for his command performance and to Miz Bohemia who commanded it.

How to be a future guest on this site: Just send an email to dpascover at mac dot com. On a future Wednesday, after posting that week's guest, I'll send you an email with a word to define. You'll be expected to return your definition along with a graphic representing either your definition or yourself by the following Saturday. The only rules are no profanity and no novels, please. And whatever I make up at the last minute.

Tuesday, December 27, 2005

Rogue

Rogue, n. A species of vermin which is always plentiful where there is a good crop of fools, on which plant it feeds.

2005 Update: The aspiration of all the world's gentlemen.

Monday, December 26, 2005

Magic

Magic, n. An art of converting superstition into coin. There are other arts serving the same high purpose, but the discreet lexicographer does not name them.

2005 Update: The evidence of the impossible, trusted by a child hearing a fairy tale or an adult voting their conscience.

Saturday, December 24, 2005

The Lost Holiday

Story #24, A Christmas story taking place on New Year's Eve.

To hear the story, wake up Santa. To read it, talk to the old man.
santa_sleeping_on_moon_md_clr

father_time_with_clock_at_midnight_md_clr








Yeah, yeah, Doug Drones On, blah blah blah!

Happy Holidays to all of you!

Friday, December 23, 2005

Christmas

Christmas, n. A day set apart and consecrated to gluttony, drunkenness, maudlin sentiment, gift-taking, public dullness and domestic behavior.
What! not religious? You should see, my pet,
On every Christmas day how drunk I get!
O, I'm a Christian- not a pious monk
Honors the Master with so dead a drunk.
2005 Update: The last opportunity of the calendar year to prove one's wholesomeness and generosity before the New Year's bacchanal is followed by the season of tax fraud.

Thursday, December 22, 2005

Joy

Joy, n. An emotion variously excited, but in its highest degree arising from the contemplation of grief in another.

2005 Update: The sensation of having avoided detection. Often wished on that or those we could stand to hear less from.

Wednesday, December 21, 2005

Special Guest Maven

You know her, you love her, she loves you. My guest this week is the lovely and fashionable, Mireille.

In honor of the holiday season, Mireille has written this definition:

Mistletoe, n. A semi-sanctioned means of snagging some unsanctioned snog.


Mireille also offers the following Mistletoe history:
Mistletoe lore (with many thanks to Jonathan Briggs and The Mistletoe Pages):

• Hanging mistletoe and kissing loved ones, or complete strangers, beneath it is the pervasive Christmas custom defined above
• "The Ballad of the Mistletoe Bride" in which a Christmas bride plays hide and seek and gets suffocated in a trunk. *festive!*
• The 1948 Alfred Hitchcock film classic Rope uses the ballad as a plot base.
• Catching 'em and kissing 'em may be a remnant of an ancient fertility tradition: "European mistletoe, a parasitic plant growing on deciduous trees, can be seen as a symbol of the continuing 'life-force' -- vitality/fertility -- of the tree through the winter ... a fertility image completed by mistletoe’s shape and form: forking paired branches, paired leaves and berries full of white sticky juice hint of sexual imagery." *Have a Christmas cookie under that one*
• Druidic priesthood valued mistletoe as a peace symbol and in medicine. They harvested it with a golden sickle, never letting it touch the ground. Mistletoe on oak, the druids sacred tree, was especially valued.
• In Greek myth, Aeneas must search for his father Anchises in the abode of the dead. The Sibyl advises he must first seek and pluck the 'golden bough' (mistletoe) in the forest. Guided to the bough by doves sent by Venus, his mother, he found the branch, successfully visited his father, and returned.
• BUT WHAT DOES IT SMELL LIKE? *It's a stretch, but the word is from the Middle English mistilto, which has some relationship to basil ... so, like an herb? I doubt it.*

About Mireille: First, what's obvious- that Mireille alone is the reason that Seattle and not Saint Augustine is the warmest place in the United States. Mireille grips more people in a day on the blogs than the flu will all winter long. Let's see how many of us can hug her back just today. Mireille can handle it.

Her blog, C'est Chic is a place for five senses in a visual medium. Filled with scents and sounds and textures and memories, every post is an embrace. I suspect I'm not alone in admiring Mireille's eloquence, elegance and enthusiasm. For a guy who has a mnemonic that reminds him to use the pointy side of the comb, the perfume and make-up are just platforms for following Mireille's message that beauty belongs everywhere. xoxo.

How to be a future guest in this site: Just send an email to dpascover at mac dot com. On a future Wednesday, after posting that week's guest, I'll send you an email with a word to define. You'll be expected to return your definition along with a graphic representing either your definition or yourself by the following Saturday. The only rules are no profanity and no novels, please. And whatever I make up at the last minute.

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Aesthetics

Aesthetics, n. The most unpleasant ticks afflicting the race. Worse than wood-ticks.

2005 Update: A meticulously designed lens through which to view disorder.

Monday, December 19, 2005

Fraud

Fraud, n. The life of commerce, the soul of religion, the bait of courtship and the basis of political power.

2005 Update: The substitution of perfume on the neck for a head.

Saturday, December 17, 2005

Sleigh The Course

Or, Of Ice and Men. Story #23, in which three magi survive a Pennsylvania blizzard only to confront the rigid social norms of New Jersey.*

To hear the story, ask Santa for directions.












To read the story, check Santa's list.

*Preceding telic clause dedicated to Monika.

This story is cross-posted on Doug Drones On,

At Alice's request

Here is the van before we painted it red.
And, below, from the Deep Springs 1986-1987 Yearbook.




Top to bottom, Doug, Robert and Neal

Friday, December 16, 2005

Mercy

Mercy, n. An attribute beloved of detected offenders.

2005 Update: The appreciation of the strong for the simplicity of the eager.

Thursday, December 15, 2005

A Curmudgeonly Christmas

T’was the night before Christmas and there at his blog
A misanthropist sat, just him and his dogs.
The houselights were dim with no sounds of labor
And a bucket of acid awaited the neighbor

The children nearby were locked up in their rooms,
To keep the old rascal from shouting their dooms.
And he sat by his keyboard putting out his seditions
Mocking all that was wholesome with new definitions.

Suddenly what in the sky did appear?
But a jolly old elf and eight flying reindeer.
The dogs caught the scent and ran outside barking
While the man inside shouted “A roof’s for hanging not parking!”

The intruder just laughed and took out a list.
“No whiskey, no laughter no women you’ve kissed,
No dancing nor prancing, no payments were late.
And your victims won’t read you ‘til they reach heaven’s gate”

“Your intent notwithstanding you’ve done little harm
And I brought you a present, here under my arm.”
But the sour homeowner stood up and protested,
“Reach into that bag and I’ll have you arrested!”

“I write for satire and mangle the words
And darkly imply that religion’s for turds!
I mock the well-meaning and demean them their stations
And make grammar complicit in great obfuscations!”

Gift is a noun that refers to the taking
of toys from the store shelves for children for breaking.
And while we’re on the topic one more thing I would say:
Jolly, the adjective, simply means 'Gay.'

“I’m pretentious, sarcastic and delphic in fact!
Self-righteous, self-centered and stingy with tact!”

But a present was left for the man with the glare,
Brightly colored with bows and a soft teddy-bear.
If ever it’s opened, here’s what is inside:
A Radio Flyer that's stable to ride.

Saint Nicholas shouted getting back in his sleigh
“Merry Christmas I bid you but have it your way!”

-Ambrose Bierce, appearing in a vision as The Ghost of Cynics Past.

Wednesday, December 14, 2005

Avoids Definition No More

This week, it's my pleasure to feature my friend, the beautifully miscegenated, generally elevated and reliably opinionated Miz Bohemia as guest. Miz Bohemia offers the following definition:

Multi-cultural, adj. 1. The creative interchange of numerous ethnic and racial subcultures. e.g. Grandpa BoheMia is Danish-Icelandic and he falls in love with Granny BoheMia who is Iranian with some ancient African-Iranian blood in her. They get married and have babies. One baby grows up to be Mama BoheMia who falls in love with Daddy BoheMia. Mama and Daddy BoheMia get married and have two babies, the first one being Miz BoheMia. What a true creative interchange of numerous ethnic and racial subcultures! Well done Grandpa and Granny BoheMia!
2. Strongly influenced by or having prominent characteristics of several cultural groups or peoples. e.g. Mama BoheMia leaves Daddy BoheMia as well as Iran when Miz BoheMia is all but 2-years-old. They move a lot. Miz BoheMia lives in Spain, Denmark and several US cities, travels extensively and attends Spanish, British, Danish and American schools. In her first high school, her closest friends are Armenian, Zimbwabwian and Vietnamese. She is accepted with open arms into the African American Community at her second high school and her closest friends are Slovenian and Mexican. By college, Miz BoheMia hangs out with Tibetan Buddhist Monks, dances her Sundays away at the local Hare Krishna temple, meditates with New Age Group Hippies, attends animals rights rallies with the likes of Def Leppard's Phil Collen, starts a chapter of Amnesty International at the college where she makes Muslim, Catholic, Buddhist, Christian, Jewish and even Republican (gasp!!!) friends. Mama BoheMia! You have allowed Miz BoheMia to be strongly influenced by or have prominent characteristics of several cultural groups or peoples! Kudos to you!
3. Personal Definition: A term attempting to capture a cultural phenomenon born out of the mixing and intermingling of different ethnic and racial subcultures but that falls short of capturing the emotional, social and educational complexities that arise as a direct result of this phenomenon. e.g. Miz BoheMia is Iranian-Danish and raised between Spain and the US. She leaves out the Icelandic. Simplifying the long intro is best and she has had no Icelandic influences in her life.

Danish and Iranian... yes.

Spanish and American... yes.

Miz BoheMia has curly hair, hazel eyes, a normal stature, skinny frame and an olive complexion. She looks Iranian, Mediterranean in a petite Scandinavian frame, minus the height.

Looking the part of her Middle Eastern heritage, she speaks the language, albeit in an accented Farsi, and is mistaken many a time for the "real thing". This gets her in hot water friends for she does not cook, is not crazy about serving men, or anyone else for that matter, does not like boisterous family reunions nor decorum and ettiquette attached to words such as "tradition" and "obligation" and does not believe virginity to be a virtue. Yes, she looks the part of an Iranian girl but after that there is not much common ground for our Miz BoheMia.

She is liberal, mostly a loner unless the company she keeps is her choice, likes her space, her privacy, her activities, her schedule, her territory and her boundaries. Her actions and her petite frame are truly Scandinavian as are her liberal sexual views but the olive in her skin, the curl set against the backdrop of brown hair are typically met with resistance and her claims of Danish blood in her veins with skepticism.

Her looks and her accent fit right into the heart of her Spanish province but before there is a beginning we come to the end. With heavily pierced ears, a pierced nose, non-smoking, juice-drinking, veggie eating and yogic habits Miz BoheMia is out of her element in this smoker's, meat eater's, bullfighter's, heavy drinker's, non-exerciser's South.

Multicultural... often viewed as exotic, enriching, unique... all true. However, there is a reality of pain attached to being multicultural as it entails a constant need, by society, for a neat and tidy definition of what cannot truly be boxed into one word and set in stone. The multicultural individual is one who learns that nothing is 100%, that fitting in ain't gonna happen... multicultural... you know what, perhaps we should take another look at the word...

4. A term coined out of a need created by the cultural phenomenon born out of the mixing and intermingling of different ethnic and racial subcultures in order to create a much-needed and broad niche for those individuals that fall short of a definition. Multicultural... that's me.

About Miz Bohemia: See Multi-cultural. A mother of two, poet essayist, yoga instructor and purveyor of fine fashion accessories, Miz Bohemia has been a generous new contributor to the blogosphere. She is the author of Miz Bohemia's Rhapsody a site as well-traveled as its creator. Miz Bohemia excels at bringing an adventuresome spirit to an electronic medium, something not easy to do. Miz Bohemia also offers two fashion-sales blogs, BoheMian Funk, and BoHo BouTIQue on which she describes the purses and bags she sells, an ancient and honored tradition in the Persian-Danish-Icelandic-Spanish-Californian community. I very much enjoy her writing and think the products she sells are cool-looking. I admit, though, your humble editor is as fashion-backward as Miz Bohemia is fashion forward so judge for yourselves. Thanks to Miz Bohemia for being a guest here and for inventing Autobiographical Lexicography. Remember, friends, it happened here first.

How to be a future guest in this site: Just send an email to dpascover at mac dot com. On a future Wednesday, after posting that week's guest, I'll send you an email with a word to define. You'll be expected to return your definition along with a graphic representing either your definition or yourself by the following Saturday. The only rules are no profanity and no novels, please. And whatever I make up at the last minute.

Tuesday, December 13, 2005

Haughty

Haughty, adj. Proud and disdainful, like a waiter.

2005 Update: Holding one's head catlike except in plummet.

Monday, December 12, 2005

Noise

Noise, n. A stench in the ear. Undomesticated music. The chief product and authenticating sign of civilization.

2005 Update: An incoherent buzzing caused by research, reflection or a mosquito's wings. Any interruption of spin.

Saturday, December 10, 2005

Before the Fall

Story #22, in which an evangelist offers his pitch for the bosom of Abraham.

To hear the story, interrupt the wedding before someone makes a big mistake.











If you want to read the appropriate passage, talk to my sister (right).

After great consideration, I have chosen to cross-post this story at Doug Drones On.

Friday, December 09, 2005

King

King, n. A male person commonly known in America as a "crowned head," although he never wears a crown and has usually no head to speak of.
A king, in times long, long gone by,
Said to his lazy jester:
"If I were you and you were I
My moments merrily would fly --
Nor care nor grief to pester."

"The reason, Sire, that you would thrive,"
The fool said -- "if you'll hear it --
Is that of all the fools alive
Who own you for their sovereign, I've
The most forgiving spirit."
2005 Update: A male sovereign whose divine right and funny ears share a source. See Donkey.

Happy Birthday to King Stevie I of Portland

Left, Stevie Mooney, Crowned Head

Thursday, December 08, 2005

Iconoclast

Iconoclast, n. A breaker of idols, the worshipers whereof are imperfectly gratified by the performance, and most strenuously protest that he unbuildeth but doth not reedify, that he pulleth down but pileth not up. For the poor things would have other idols in place of those he thwacketh upon the mazzard and dispelleth. But the iconoclast saith: "Ye shall have none at all, for ye need them not; and if the rebuilder fooleth round hereabout, behold I will depress the head of him and sit thereon till he squawk it."

2005 Update: 1. The servant of a superior false god.
2. Tomorrow's icon.

Wednesday, December 07, 2005

Special Guest Corpse

This week, it's my profound pleasure to have the late, great Ignatius M. Dedd as my Wednesday guest. I.M. Dedd offers the following definition:

Disdain, n. Can you believe this? This is my word? Disdain? Damn blogger. Can't come up with anything better that that? Of course, I guess he has to consider his audience. They're a bunch of bloggers, too. All sitting around their computers, needlessly prattling on about their lives. Where the hell is my vicodin?

About I.M. Dedd: The author of Dead Guy Lives is one of those gems of the blogosphere, producing a cartoon strip as witty as the best you'll find in your newspaper. His humor is broad, keen and edgy with droll illustration. More or less gallows humor for the guillotine set. Not only is Ignatius skilled and clever, he's a pioneer, having invented first person toilet humor and making fun of the President.

Published every Monday except when he sneaks it in on Sunday, I strongly recommend a weekly view. When justice is finally done and Dead Guy syndicates, you'll have to pick up one of those self-righteous alternative weeklies to see his work. Here are three of my favorites: Disaster, Korky (warning, pedophile humor here,) and Monster Envy, Part II. Thanks, Ignatius, for a great guest appearance and for burnishing my street cred.

How to be a future guest in this site: Just send an email to dpascover at mac dot com. On a future Wednesday, after posting that week's guest, I'll send you an email with a word to define. You'll be expected to return your definition along with a graphic representing either your definition or yourself by the following Saturday. The only rules are no profanity and no novels, please. And whatever I make up at the last minute.

Tuesday, December 06, 2005

Desert

Desert, n. An extensive and fertile tract of land producing heavy wheat and vintage crops in colonization prospectuses.

2005 Update: A hostile country destroying the hope, ambition and vitality of youth under unrelenting heat, dessication, gambling, golf and old folk.

Monday, December 05, 2005

Monologue

Monologue, n. The activity of a tongue that has no ears.

2005 Update: An atom of political discourse which forms a salt in outrage.

Saturday, December 03, 2005

Who Framed Rabbit, Rabbit

Story #21, in which Doug doubles trouble

To hear the story, play Shave and a Haircut for Roger.







To read the story, click on Tupac Amaru, inspiration of the Sendero Luminoso revolution.

It may surprise you to know that this story is cross-posted on Doug Drones On.

Friday, December 02, 2005

Universalist

Part III in our three-part TLP celebration.

Universalist, n. One who forgoes the advantage of hell for persons of another faith.

2005 Update: A seeker of the salvation reserved for the inclusive.

And happy belated (I think) birthday to Spirit Dancer, who may share TLP's birthday. Masil, you hush up.

Thursday, December 01, 2005

Unitarian

As TLP week continues...

Unitarian, n. One who denies the divinity of a Trinitarian.

2005 Update: An empiricist pondering the great mysteries of life and faith such as how many angels can fit on the head of a pin with a coffee urn; when we die do our souls leave our bodies or continue to inhabit our remains at the Justice Committee meeting, or; how do we know Emerson wasn't gay?

Rabbit, rabbit.