Stirring

A troubled conscience robs the rest,

Pressing the pillowed heart to motion.

Fretful signs of troubled times

Pry the puffed eye open.

Bed bugs prick the mouth and skin

And bring the prone physique to life

And I have heard by muffled word

That so might do a wife.

Langor drowns in tropic sweat

Burnt baking stabs the snoring nose

But if insomnia is, once more, to score

Let a lightning storm take my repose.

INSOMNIA, n. A prerequisite for sleeping in.

Implacable

IMPLACABLE, adj. Not to be appeased without a large sum of money.

2010 Update: Indivertably committed to one's course, as a man at supper.

Impiety

IMPIETY, n. Your irreverance toward my deity.

2010 Update: A sin against the halo.

Impenitence

IMPENITENCE, n. A state of mind intermediate in point of time between sin and punishment.

2010 Update: Invisibility.

Impeccable

IMPECCABLE, adj. Not liable to detection.

2010 Update: Granted only one appraisal, unuttered.

In'ards

IN'ARDS, n. The stomach, heart, soul and other bowels. Many eminent investigators do not class the soul as an in'ard, but that acute observer and renowned authority, Dr. Gunsaulus, is persuaded that the mysterious organ known as the spleen is nothing less than our important part. To the contrary, Professor Garrett P. Servis holds that man's soul is that prolongation of his spinal marrow which forms the pith of his no tail; and for demonstration of his faith points confidently to the fact that no tailed animals have no souls. Concerning these two theories, it is best to suspend judgment by believing both.

2010 Update: The seat and source of choler, melancholy, biliousness and revulsion. The diet of the unprosperous cannibal.

Impromptu

IMPROMPTU, adv. Off-hand- said of verses that are written without confusing the legs and protruding the tongue. F'rexample.

Bulbous bangs enormous roared

And swamping pickled he,

Through beetling barbarous restored

Fuliginous and free;

For bellicose arbitrament

He on his nether ear had went!

2010 Update: Casual and unplanned, as a conspiracy just revealed or an old joke.

Impartial

IMPARTIAL, adj. Unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from espousing either side of a controversy or adopting either of two conflicting opinions.

2010 Update: Symmetrically slanted.

Inventor

INVENTOR, n. A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization.

2010 Update: A creative sort, plagiarizing ideas rather than thought. A patent lawyer's client.

Incumbent

INCUMBENT, n. A person of the liveliest interest to the outcumbents.

2010 Update: The ablest, best-qualified person in office.

Injury

INJURY, n. An offense next in degree of enormity to a slight.

2010 Update: The irritant around which forms the pearl of polity. The birth of a nation.

Impale

IMPALE, v.t. In popular usage to pierce with any weapon which remains fixed in the wound. This, however, is inaccurate; to impale is, properly, to put to death by thrusting an upright sharp stake into the body, the victim being left in a sitting position. This was a common mode of punishment among many of the nations of antiquity, and is still in high favor in China and other parts of Asia. Down to the beginning of the fifteenth century it was widely employed in "churching" heretics and schismatics. Wolecraft calls it the "stoole of repentynge," and among the common people it was jocularly known as "riding the one legged horse." Ludwig Salzmann informs us that in Thibet impalement is considered the most appropriate punishment for crimes against religion; and although in China it is sometimes awarded for secular offences, it is most frequently adjudged in cases of sacrilege. To the person in actual experience of impalement it must be a matter of minor importance by what kind of civil or religious dissent he was made acquainted with its discomforts; but doubtless he would feel a certain satisfaction if able to contemplate himself in the character of a weather-cock on the spire of the True Church.

2010 Update: To liaise subcutaneously.

Note: I'm not sure how this week got to be hallowe'en but there you are.

Immolation

IMMOLATION, n. Killing, as a sacrificial act.

The butcher knocks his victim on the head-
That's slaughter, for 'tis man who's to be fed;
The priest downs his, before the gods to set it,
That's immolation- pray do not forget it.
If I have made the difference distinct
My fingers to some purpose I have inked;
But then i stop- you'll have to ask the priest
Why gods who love the meat can't kill the beast.
Perhaps he'll give your question recognition,
Perhaps condemn your spirit to perdition.

2010 Update: The assurance of a martyr's rememberance by destruction of the souvenirs.

A St. Patrick's Day prayer

May the road rise up to meet you

And the wind be at your back

May a snort slosh in your bottle

For each other thing you lack.

May the devil employ busy hands

And leave your pair to deal;

May fish find your plate on Friday

And leave you steak for meal.

May Sunday find you fighting

And Monday watch you abed,

May you recall Tuesday through Thursday

Each lie Saturday night you said;

And if it be your part in life,

The vagabond to play,

May your friends find you a tyrant

In every other way.

IRISH, n. A variety of goat with opposable thumbs and tongues.

Happy St. Patrick's Day to any friend I have left and, in particular, the Mooneys who have no choice in the matter.

Slow news day

When I want for aught to satirize,

There's always there my ears and eyes

To focus a spell on CNN

Disarm the mute and take it all in

As they present the petty and, worse-

This morning the anchor cracked wise in verse.

INCURSION, n. A tongue lapping at the mind.

Inauspiciously

INAUSPICIOUSLY, adv. In an unpromising manner, the auspices being unfavorable. Among the Romans it was customary before undertaking any important action or enterprise to obtain from the augurs, or state prophets, some hint of its probable outcome; and one of their favorite and most trustworthy modes of divination consisted in observing the flight of birds -- the omens thence derived being called auspices. Newspaper reporters and certain miscreant lexicographers have decided that the word -- always in the plural -- shall mean "patronage" or "management"; as, "The festivities were under the auspices of the Ancient and Honorable Order of Body-Snatchers"; or, "The hilarities were auspicated by the Knights of Hunger."

A Roman slave appeared one day
Before the Augur. "Tell me, pray,
If --" here the Augur, smiling, made
A checking gesture and displayed
His open palm, which plainly itched,
For visibly its surface twitched.
A denarius (the Latin nickel)
Successfully allayed the tickle,
And then the slave proceeded: "Please
Inform me whether Fate decrees
Success or failure in what I
To-night (if it be dark) shall try.
Its nature? Never mind -- I think
'Tis writ on this" -- and with a wink
Which darkened half the earth, he drew
Another denarius to view,
Its shining face attentive scanned,
Then slipped it into the good man's hand,
Who with great gravity said: "Wait
While I retire to question Fate."
That holy person then withdrew
His scared clay and, passing through
The temple's rearward gate, cried "Shoo!"
Waving his robe of office. Straight
Each sacred peacock and its mate
(Maintained for Juno's favor) fled
With clamor from the trees o'erhead,
Where they were perching for the night.
The temple's roof received their flight,
For thither they would always go,
When danger threatened them below.
Back to the slave the Augur went:
"My son, forecasting the event
By flight of birds, I must confess
The auspices deny success."
That slave retired, a sadder man,
Abandoning his secret plan --
Which was (as well the craft seer
Had from the first divined) to clear
The wall and fraudulently seize
On Juno's poultry in the trees.

200910 Update: As a secret plan, confided in a friend.

Happy New Year, all.

Introduction

INTRODUCTION, n. A social ceremony invented by the devil for the gratification of his servants and the plaguing of his enemies. The introduction attains its most malevolent development in this century, being, indeed, closely related to our political system. Every American being the equal of every other American, it follows that everybody has the right to know everybody else, which implies the right to introduce without request or permission. The Declaration of Independence should have read thus:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, and the right to make that of another miserable by thrusting upon him an incalculable quantity of acquaintances; liberty, particularly the liberty to introduce persons to one another without first ascertaining if they are not already acquainted as enemies; and the pursuit of another's happiness with a running pack of strangers."

2009 Update: The propagation of two new antipathies and three suspicions.

Inadmissible

INADMISSIBLE, adj. Not competent to be considered. Said of certain kinds of testimony which juries are supposed to be unfit to be entrusted with, and which judges, therefore, rule out, even of proceedings before themselves alone. Hearsay evidence is inadmissible because the person quoted was unsworn and is not before the court for examination; yet most momentous actions, military, political, commercial and of every other kind, are daily undertaken on hearsay evidence. There is no religion in the world that has any other basis than hearsay evidence. Revelation is hearsay evidence; that the Scriptures are the word of God we have only the testimony of men long dead whose identity is not clearly established and who are not known to have been sworn in any sense. Under the rules of evidence as they now exist in this country, no single assertion in the Bible has in its support any evidence admissible in a court of law. It cannot be proved that the battle of Blenheim ever was fought, that there was such as person as Julius Caesar, such an empire as Assyria.

But as records of courts of justice are admissible, it can easily be proved that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed and were a scourge to mankind. The evidence (including confession) upon which certain women were convicted of witchcraft and executed was without a flaw; it is still unimpeachable. The judges' decisions based on it were sound in logic and in law. Nothing in any existing court was ever more thoroughly proved than the charges of witchcraft and sorcery for which so many suffered death. If there were no witches, human testimony and human reason are alike destitute of value.

2009 Update: Unappealingly prejudicial.

Idol

IDOL, n. An imagine representing some object of worship. That the image is itself worshiped is probably not true any people in the world, though some idols are ugly enough to be divine. The honors paid to idols are justly deprecated by the true believer, for he knows that nothing with a head can be omniscient, nothing with a hand omnipotent and nothing with a body omnipresent. No deity could fill any of our requirements if handicapped with existence.

2009 Update: A physical representation of the profane- frequently composed with feet of clay, golden calves, the tongue of a press agent and a numbered verse.

A Fable

Once, in ancient times, two monks were walking together in the trailless Egyptian desert. As they climbed over a rise, they saw below them a vixen steal an egg from a bird's nest and scamper away into her own den, the entrance to which was in plain view.

Abba Nelson, the younger of the two monks asked his superior, "What are we to do? The egg to the bird represents her next generation, but what if this is the fox's only way to feed her young? As Christians, should we intervene to perhaps save the chick or ignore the theft and perhaps save the kits?"

"If the kits grow up will they yowl Jesus' name to sinners?" asked Abba Abercrombie, the older monk.

"Not in our language, surely, but who can tell? We do not know how God will use us."

"And if the egg should hatch, will the new dove be seen in foreign parts as a herald of the Holy Spirit?"

"If strangers don't know of the Holy Spirit, they won't receive it from the dove, I wouldn't think. But who knows how God chooses his agents?"

"Quite right," applauded Abba Abercrombie, "but we can guess that if God meant to stop a crime, he wouldn't send an old monk and a philosophical one to the scene."

INTERCEDE, v.t. To interfere in the natural order according to the creator's instruction.