Essential

ESSENTIAL, adj. Pertaining to the essence, or that which determines the distinctive character of a thing. People, who, because they do not know the English language, are driven to the unprofitable vocation of writing for American newspapers, commonly use this word in the sense of necessary, as

April rains are essential to June harvests.

W.C. Bartlett

2010 Update: That thing inside a thing without which that thing would be an entirely other thing, or, in fact, not a thing at all but a philosophy.

Estoppel

ESTOPPEL, n. In law, the kind of stopple with which a man is corked up with his plea inside him.

2010 Update: A legal assumption that what a man has said he can be presumed to have meant, providing unamendable evidence that justice is blind.

Etiquette

ETIQUETTE, n. A code of social rites, ceremonies and observances, constituting a vulgarian's claim to toleration. The fool's credentials.

When first society was founded,

It was discovered as time sped,

That men of sense and taste abounded,

But they were mostly dead.

While, of the women fitted to adorn

The social circle, few had yet been born.

Those, then, that met were rather lonely

And scarce could call themselves "our set";

So they, to swell their numbers only,

Invented etiquette,

And said "Such fools as will observe these rules

May meet us, though they're all the greater fools."

Straightaway the fools then fell to study

The laws of conduct a la mode,

And though their minds were somewhat muddy

They soon had learned the code.

Then seeing its authors hadn't, plainly told them

They'd make society too hot to hold them.

2010 Update: The cultural approach to sequestration by which every human and dog can be elite. The great smallness.

Eucalyptus

EUCALYPTUS, n. A tree holding, in the animal kingdom, the high and honored distinction enjoyed in the animal kingdom by the blue skunk. The variety most in favor is the E. disgustifolium. The medicinal value of its foliage is very great-it cures happiness.

2010 Update: The only ingredient in the recipe for koala.

Euchre

EUCHRE, n. A game of cards in which the highest cards and the best players are knaves.

2010 Update: Farming in the rain.

Exception

EXCEPTION, n. A thing which takes the liberty to differ from other things of its class, as an honest man, a truthful woman, etc. "The exception proves the rule" is an expression constantly upon the lips of the ignorant, who parrot it from one another with never a thought of its absurdity. In the Latin, "Exceptio probat regulam" means that the exception tests the rule, puts it to the proof, not confirms it. The malefactor who drew the meaning from this excellent dictum and substituted a contrary one of his own exerted an evil power which appears to be immortal.

2010 Update: A burglar among thieves.

Elope

ELOPE, v.i. To exchange the perils and inconveniences of a fixed residence for the security and comfort of travel.

2010 Update: To forsake tradition for the sake of ritual in a marriage alliance.

Elephant

ELEPHANT, n. A joker of the animal kingdom, having a flexible nose and limited warehouse accomodation for his teeth.

2010 Update: Man, were he his own creator. The elephant features great ears for slapping flies or acquiring gossip from outside his sphere of interest, the appetite of a child, a peerless snout for snorting derision, sufficient strength to drag a host of anecdotes into the distant future and the enormous capacity to carry with him his own impression of himself including that he is hummingbird.

Err

ERR, v.i. To believe or act in a way contrary to my beliefs and actions.

2010 Update: To plan.

Happy birthday to maiden errent Karma, wherever she may be.

Epitaph

EPITAPH, n. A monumental inscription designed to remind the deceased of what he might have been if he had had the will ans opportunity. The following epitaphs were copied by a prophet from the headstones of the future:

Here lies the remains of great Senator Vrooman,

Whose head was as hard as the heart of a woman-

Whose heart was as soft as the head of a hammer.

Dame Fortune advanced him to eminence d--- her.

We mourn the loss

of Senator Cross,

If he'd perished later

Our grief had been greater

If he never had died

We should always have cried.

As he died and decayed

His corruption was stayed.

Beneath this mound Charles Crocker now reposes;

Step lightly, strangers- also hold your noses.

The doctors they tried to hold William Stow back, but

We played at his graveside the sham and the sackbut.

2010 Update: A carved remembrance of a deceased loved one, meant to outlast the mourner as the departed would have wished.

Old Cheney's gone, his fate his here

And those who loved him need not fear

His disposition nor shed a tear

Unless he gets the devil's ear.

Regarding yesterday: Again, my apologies for hijacking this blog for analog purposes. At Weirsdo's kind request, here is a little more about Jan, who passed on Monday, and a partial explanation of the poem and post. (This is long and not reading or not reading it all will bring no offense.)

First, basic history: In 1983, a 15-year-old pre-onset curmudgeon was working in a gas station, where cacophonous Jan and his well named first wife, Glori were customers. Jan owned a flower store and hired me away the next year. When I left for Deep Springs, he hired my younger brother, then my sister, my friend Eric, and when my friend Anton set up a computer consulting business, I think Jan bought a computer so he could hire Anton. He hired Anton's younger brother (oneandre in yesterday's comments) and, I think, Anton and Andre's younger brother, Arturo. By the time my youngest brother was old enough to work, I think Jan had lost his shop, but I'm pretty sure MacLean would have had a shift otherwise. As we grew up and did other things, Jan was always there to treat us like kings, leer at our girlfriends (my sister excepted) and mentor us in corruption, dissolution and how to break the law not for greed or malice but out of sheer, catastrophic carelessness.

Note to Pia: As you might have guessed, I was Jan's delivery driver in 1984 or 1985 and while I might wish to revise the truth and certainly did at the time, I'm confident I troubled no marriages. In my defense, this was not due to any lack of bad intent.

About Jan: There are three things that I think are most important in explaining Jan. First, he was a manic mad genius. His medium was floral design and at one time he owned one of the 20 largest flower shops in LA County, did the flowers for the NBA's L.A. Clippers, decorated celebrity homes for Christmas (for Jan, I have lain garland in Dolly Parton's bedroom, a dream come true, most certainly.)

Second, Jan was a thorough mess. He lost his shop, and earned a loss on almost every big decorating contract. He was generous with his time, advice and money far beyond his assets. If someone paid him $20,000 for an event, he would feel guilty until he'd spent $20,000 on flowers and overpaid 5 young people and all their friends to work with him, then thrown a party to celebrate the successful completion. His parties were legendary. I would not be surprised if at the Los Angeles County Tax Assessor's office, they have an actor to play Jan at trainings.

Third, Jan was the salt of the Earth. I have heard it said that in this life, people can so debauch themselves that their own parents won't accept them and even then, God loves them. Jan, too. From antisocial teenage cowboys, to alcoholic baseball players, to thieves who had stolen from Jan himself to the sick, addicted, immoral, needy, broke, lazy and doc, there was nothing wrong with anyone that Jan wouldn't greet them as a best friend and equal. As a result, he had some famous friends (sports stars, hollywood types) and some that would have been completely disreputable had they not been entirely anonymous. One measure of the affection people had for Jan is that almost my entire circle of Los Angeles friends and family is a subset of Jan's and every time three or more gather around Jan, at least one is a perfect stranger to me.

A few jokes from yesterday's verse partially explained: There were three restaurants where Jan would often entertain twenty or so of his closest friends at a time. Two of them were famous with Jan and his friends for mixing mai-tais. Many of the jokes were meant to gay bait. Homosexuality was not excluded from the traits that Jan wouldn't hold against anyone, but he got ribbed a lot because, as he often put it, "I have a girl's name and I'm a florist." He started balding early in life. One time, on a visit, I helped Jan all night decorating a massive tent for a party and the tent was to be used one night which astonished me. Jan had pot and at some point we had a twenty foot ladder set and bending to reach the top brace and Jan kept sending me up with buckets of water and flowers so that I made my peace with the Lord, then he changed his mind about how those decorations should look and went up himself, working with a single toe on the ladder. At one point I pointed out that he only had one toe on the ladder and he replied "Oh, yeah. I could fall, huh?" I told him that when he smoked pot he was "dumb as a box of rocks." and we both laughed, he nearly plummeted to his death, and he never could quite remember the phrase. Any time after that I found him stoned he would announce "I have rockses in my boxes!"

One last personal note: I very much appreciate all the condolences offered in the post below. Jan was given six months to live in, I think, 2003. I don't think the doctors overestimated the cancer or even underestimated Jan as much as they'd underestimated how much Jan could die and still not be dead. The night before he passed he asked me to move him on his bed and, meaning to shift him a few inches, I accidentally lifted his entire body (the exact kind of oafish hillbilly calamity Jan's mocked me for nigh on thirty years.) Those of us who saw him a fair bit in these last years are all very glad to see the end come and no condolences are necessary.

Now, ladies and gentlemen meet the late, great Jan Mueller: (if you don't see a video, click here)

Efferous

EFFEROUS, EFFIGATE, EFFLAGITATE, EFFODIENT, EFFOSSIAN. See some other dictionary.

2010 Update: EFFEROUS, adj. Beastlike, undomesticated, as anyone who expects a blend of unfamiliar phonemes to sound cultivated. See also: ERUDITE.

Eat

EAT, v.i. To perform successively (and successfully) the functions of mastication, humectation, and deglutition.

"I was in the drawing-room, enjoying my dinner," said Brillat-Savarin, beginning an anecdote. "What!" interrupted Rochebriant; "eating dinner in a drawing-room?" "I must beg you to observe, monsieur," explained the great gastronome, "that I did not say I was eating my dinner, but enjoying it. I had dined an hour before."

2010 Update: To replenish for oneself the energy exhausted complaining.

Eulogy

EULOGY, n. Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth and power, or the consideration to be dead.

2009 Update: A brief review of the virtues from a life well and fully lived.

Epigram

EPIGRAM, n. A short, sharp saying in prose or verse, frequently characterize by acidity or acerbity and sometimes by wisdom. Following are some of the more notable epigrams of the learned and ingenious Dr. Jamrach Holobom:

We know better the needs of ourselves than of others. To serve oneself is economy of administration.

In each human heart are a tiger, a pig, an ass and a nightingale. Diversity of character is due to their unequal activity.

There are three sexes; males, females and girls.

Beauty in women and distinction in men are alike in this: they seem to the unthinking a kind of credibility.

Women in love are less ashamed than men. They have less to be ashamed of.

While your friend holds you affectionately by both your hands you are safe, for you can watch both his.

2009 Update: Refined babble.

Those who seek shall surely find what they who lie unsought express in rhyme.

-Anonymous

Excursion

EXCURSION, n. An expedition of so disagreeable a character that steamboat and railroad fares are compassionately mitigated to the miserable sufferers.

2009 Update: A brief circular journey for the satisfaction of curiosity and the broadening of the mind. In the American midwest, a visit to the casino.

Experience

EXPERIENCE, n. The wisdom that enables us to recognize as an undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced.

To one who, journeying through night and fog,
Is mired neck-deep in an unwholesome bog,
Experience, like the rising of the dawn,
Reveals the path that he should not have gone.
—Joel Frad Bink

2009 Update: The sensory engine that pulls us from mistaken to misunderstanding.

"What is the price of experience? Do men buy it for a song or wisdom for a dance in the street? No! But a pamphlet can be had for mutterings or a slow limp!"

-Blake

Happy Birthday to Eamon!

Advice to my nephew, Eamon, before his second birthday

Monday's your birthday, make of it the most.

Pull a toy under Murphy and feed him your toast

Bite your mom's ankle, spill your dad's beer,

Frustrate your brother til I hear him scream from here.

Put Bapu's camera into your juice.

Grab Ganny's flowers and pull each petal loose.

Some days are good and some days are bad.

The best days are days you make everyone mad!

EXPEDITION, n. A long and demanding mission, such as the journey from infancy to propriety or from the cradle to a vase.

The Taxonomy of Glory

The King of badgers, I suppose,

Is chosen for the dampest nose.

The Duke of fleas, I would suggest,

Must be the very peskiest.

The speaker of the rodent house

Is nervous like no other mouse.

The most august of household roaches

Disgusts each neighbor she approaches,

While the mold that regulates its kin,

Is slimiest against the skin.

And the Marquis ruling over mildew

Stinks of sulfured sin mixed with you.

So it shouldn't take you by surprise,

The narrowness of pundits' eyes-

Man magnifies by praise and bribe

The pettiest among his tribe.

-Linneaus

ELITE, adj. First among the countless.

Esophagus

ESOPHAGUS, n. That portion of the alimentary canal that lies between pleasure and business.

2009 Update: The umbilicus joining predator and prey.

Editor

EDITOR, n. A person who combines the judicial functions of Minos, Rhadamanthus and Aeacus, but is placable with an obolus; a severely virtuous censor, but so charitable withal that he tolerates the virtues of others and the vices of himself; who flings about him the splintering lightning and sturdy thunders of admonition till he resembles a bunch of firecrackers petulantly uttering his mind at the tail of a dog; then straightway murmurs a mild, melodious lay, soft as the cooing of a donkey intoning its prayer to the evening star. Master of mysteries and lord of law, high-pinnacled upon the throne of thought, his face suffused with the dim splendors of the Transfiguration, his legs intertwisted and his tongue a-cheek, the editor spills his will along the paper and cuts it off in lengths to suit. And at intervals from behind the veil of the temple is heard the voice of the foreman demanding three inches of wit and six lines of religious meditation, or bidding him turn off the wisdom and whack up some pathos.

O, the Lord of Law on the Throne of Thought,
A gilded impostor is he.
Of shreds and patches his robes are wrought,
His crown is brass,
Himself an ass,
And his power is fiddle-dee-dee.
Prankily, crankily prating of naught,
Silly old quilly old Monarch of Thought.
Public opinion's camp-follower he,
Thundering, blundering, plundering free.
Affected,
Ungracious,
Suspected,
Mendacious,
Respected contemporaree!
—J.H. Bumbleshook

2009 Update: A subsidiary grouch employed to moderate writers with sobriety, solemnity, circumspection, brevity and britches. For these vices, the editor would be exiled if he did not delete.