Monthly Archives: March 2011

Nature makes teens and the elderly mean. Otherwise, we would never let them go.

–a grandmother

Words are falling out of popular use all the time. When was the last time you went pace egging or used a cudgel? The editor of this journal considers it a service to the language to periodically rescue some of these terms from obscurity by recycling them with new meanings.

In this age of video games, we note that no one plays kittly benders any more. Thoreau mentions this 19th century parlor game, but I doubt there is a kittly bender set left in all of Concord or Lexington either for that matter.

So we offer the following new definition for this playful sounding term:

Kittly Benders

The practice of torturing your girlfriend’s cat by twisting it into ballon pretzel shapes and then twisting it back before she gets home.

We read that the most frequently used search term for searching the online version of Seattle’s largest newspaper is “horse sex.” The term refers to the sad tale of a Washington man and horse lover who learned the same lesson as Catherine the Great in becoming too friendly with old Sea Biscuit.

However, in this age of search engine optimization and Google Adsense driven media, with newspapers floundering everywhere, there is clearly a message here — perhaps even a way of preventing the newspaper’s seemingly inevitable demise. So here, humbly, are my suggested leads for morning papers around the country that truly want to thrive in the 21st century:

“Sex with Elephants: Do’s, Dont’s and Oh. My. Gods.”

“Kim Kardassian and the Midget Rugby Team: a Lost Weekend Gone Very Wrong”

“Erotic Topiary: Turn Your Tired Shrubs into Big Time Turn Ons”

“How to Score Big in the Barnyard–Hint, Bring a Good Ladder”

“Ok, so you stole fire but you lack two things, justice and reverence. Without justice and reverence your stealing fire will be your undoing.”

–Zeus to Prometheus.

Pinetop Perkins, one of the last original Delta bluesmen, is dead at 97. So long, Pinetop. I was fortunate enough to see you perform before you left. You showed me and the world the gut bucket joy and low down sexual drive that makes the blues a universal art form. You didn’t clean up the blues, but left them in their raw, electric, visceral glory.

Another big wave surfer, Sion Miloski, is drowned at Mavericks. He left two young children. Someone, maybe them, wrote “we love you Daddy” in the sand at the beach where they found his body. One could say, how self-centered and foolish to surf 60 foot waves, especially with little kids at home. However, moralizing is a poor container for what will not be contained. There is a fierce and terrible beauty when young men tempt fate. They would agree with you if you called them fools.

How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child.

Shakespeare, King Lear

On my evening commute in a brutal downpour of hail and rain—I see a guy in the bike lane, totally nonchalant, heading home on a big, four foot wheel, fat tire unicycle. Ah, fair Portlandia!