jiggling the handle

Consuming…
Seafood salad (with Imitation Crab)
The usual meds

Invitutional n: A fictitious event or contest. From the Latin in meaning not and vitu meaning alive.

I received the following this week from my forgeign* correspondent Hymie O’Phil:

The Washington Post's Mensa Invitational once again asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.

Here are this year's winners:

1. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period.

2. Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.

3. Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.

4. Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.

5. Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.

6. Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.

7. Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

8. Hipatitis: Terminal coolness.

9. Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)

10. Karmageddon: It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.

11. Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.

12. Glibido: All talk and no action.

13. Dopeler effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

14. Arachnoleptic fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.

15. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.

16. Caterpallor (n): The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you are eating.

And the pick of the literature:

17. Ignoranus: A person who's both stupid and an asshole.

*forgeign n: living far away and inclined to claim others’ work as your own.

Awesome stuff. Makes a lexicographer-wannabe’s blood boil.

I recalled, however, seeing this same proclamation some time ago (forwarded by Elvis the Obscure no doubt). Some snappy googling uncovered this has been circulating the Internet for some time. Found one blog that pegged it back in July 2003. Seemed to be covered only by second person accounts. When a search of the Washington Post’s site failed to uncover a first person source, I sent a note to my chum and co-author Gene Weingarten.

Guess he was too busy with his chat this week, since he couldn’t free up to respond to his chum (n: fish bait) and co-author JW. Unable to get to the bottom of it, I decided to hold my own one-man fictitious event. Besides, with the Letterman Top Ten Contest on vacation this week, I had lots of time on my hands.

Without further ado, here are the only entries (winners by default) from the August 25th Washington Pest Densa Invitutional:

1. Veinglorious adj: having an inflated opinion of one’s vascular system
2. Inflatulated adj: being so enamored with someone you think it’s cute when they break wind
3. Flabbergassed adj: the reaction to the same incident when not so enamored
4. Shishkeboob n: an inept grill chef
5. Perkolate n: flex time. “I took advantage of the company’s perkolate policy and came in around 10 o’clock.”
6. Shelfish adj: single-handedly eating the entire seafood buffet at Red Lobster
7. Boysterous adj: how one feels while being shelfish (really feel conchstipated, but that’s not a legal word)
8. CSPAIN n: TV station that continuously broadcasts live satellite images of the Iberian peninsula
9. Xorcism n: rite where one is relieved of the uncontrollable urge to do formal logic
10. Inebrimate v: having sex while drunk
11. Canspiracy n: when your neighbors dispose their junk using your trash removal service
12. Pawanoia n: the feeling Bugs Bunny is out to get you
13. Presidensy n: the tenure of the Commander in Chief
14. Pregurgitate: (1) n: small amount of vomit that occurs before really blowing chow, (2) v: repeating what someone says before they say it

Consuming…
Air conditioning services
David Mitchell’s Number9Dream
The usual meds

In a Jiggling the Handle exclusive, I’m pleased to announce we’re kicking off a Summer Blogbuster Event that hankers to combine the excitement of War of the Worlds with the quality of used car commercials with the mousepad mania of the Letterman Top Ten Contest!

Starting yesterday, and for the next 9 days, I will be submitting ha!kus to the poetry.com haiku contest. Not ordinary ha!kus. No siree. They will be self-referential, introspective commentary about what it’s like for a haiku to spend eternity thermally-bonded to a mousepad.

The count will progress (digress?) from 10 to 1 in true Lettermanly fashion.

Inspirations for this event included:

Confusion about which “photo above” to use for inspiration
My well-documented obsession with mousepads
The likelihood I won’t be seeing any more mousepads from the Letterman organization
Musings about the kind of haikus I’D like to see on a mousepad
Perhaps, some unconscious anticipation of the upcoming Space Shuttle launch
A desire to share my gift with poetry-lovers everywhere!

Submissions will be posted here daily and updated with news about whether any make the “21 closest entries” or (heaven forbid) win.

Seems like the perfect mid-summer night's blend of top ten lists, haiku, and tacky amateurish cowplop.

Sniff. Ahhhh, that new mousepad smell.

Quote of the Day…
“You’re like a steamed vegetable … only smarter.” – SpongeBob Squarepants, Season 2

Consuming…
Greg Egan’s Distress
New 40 GB HD
The usual meds

It’s not a glass ceiling. It’s my hermetically-sealed Comedy Writer bubble … and I’m working on soundproofing it with LATE SHOW mouse pads!

My tire~~some~~less efforts have again “paid” off by “earning” recognition from the Letterman machine. And in true WWW fashion, the news is surging across the network like shock waves from a bunker-busting constipated turd. It’s only been 3 days and already I’ve heard from Pathos the Swarthy, hereafter known as Pathos the Omniscient (and Swarthy), who scooped the hapless Woodward and Bernstein in uncovering this latest development. (If I could just talk her in to becoming my Publicist…)

As usual, I’ve reproduced my entries here. I had to reconstruct last week’s other submissions from the dregs of my brain since, for once, it proved less unreliable than my laptop’s hard drive, which made the ultimate sacrifice while idling in a 140 degree car.

That’s TWO mouse pads … but who’s counting?

Beltway Buzz…
To those who are wondering what I’ve been doing in NoVA the past month, I’ll tell you what I told Hymie: It’s NOT interning for the Clintons. I’ve had no relations with that family.

Consuming…
A Webster’s Moment
The usual meds

After rereading my March 17th post where I referred to a Schwarzenegger moment, I started pondering what other Moments might be buried in the global memeolith waiting to be mined, hankering for coinage.

The basic form has obviously been lifted from Kodak which blessed the world with its Moment, meaning, of course, that perfect photo op.

To be a good Moment, the allusion should be obvious. There should be no need to, as Ricky Ricardo would say, “’splain” it. So here's a quiz. Get your pencils out and treat yourself to a Eberhard Faber Number Two Moment. How many of the following can you match up?

Schwarzenegger Moment

Moment of intense pulse-pounding action when one is in danger of being crushed by a runaway aircraft carrier piloted by an ex-Mr Universe and/or current governor of California

Ashlee Moment

Moment when one is utterly unable to decide if kakorrhaphiophobia is to morosis as grapholagnia is to bovarism*

SAT Moment

Time when one’s compelled

To wax philosophical

In haiku format

Frito Lay Moment

Moment when something entirely unexpected happens, like when Captain Picard beams into a parallel dimension to hide from Romulan War Birds to escape vaporization by a Tera-erg sub-theta beam

Meconium Moment

Moment of extreme public humiliation where the situation is so f**ked up, the only option is to break into a spontaneous high-stepping riverdance

Geico Moment

Moment one realizes there is no hope of understanding the addled ravings of the doddering night custodian of the Klingman’s Folly Historical Society

Haiku Moment

Moment when one comes face to face with the unfathomable, like a newborn’s first bowel movement

Hymie Moment

That first instance of an addictive behavior, like the first drink for an alcoholic, first pull of a one-armed bandit for a compulsive gambler, first hit of crystal meth

*Thanks to Hymie O’Phil and Peter Bowler (The Superior Person’s Book of Words):
     kakorrhaphiophobia n: morbid fear of failure
     morosis n: imbecility
     grapholagnia n: fascination with obscene pictures
     bovarism n: magnified opinion of one’s abilities

It all feels kind of Germanic to me. You know, where a big ass compound expression is used to represent a timeless, but otherwise un-named, obscure, and ill-considered concept. If you want to be truly Germanic about it, instead of Moment, append “freude.” Schwarzeneggerfreude anyone?

Another apt byline for this site…
Hee Haw for Nerds