Wordfuse (Political Edition)

A new version of the iGovernment is available now.
Would you like to download it (even though it's pointless)?

o download iGovernment        o WTF?   

We Canadians are having yet another election, our third in five years. *shakes head* Our current government seems to be prompting us to download what they promise will be a newer, better version of what we all know will actually be the same old same old.

Zoetic

Image from here.

Zoetic. I stumbled upon this word seeking the perfect adjective to describe that sensation when the sun feels like a blanket instead of a stare. Like it did today.

Zoetic. So poetic. The word apparently derives from science, from biology in particular: "pertaining to life."

It's a cell. The "smallest unit of life classified as a living thing" is zoetic. Any type of cell really. Any composition. Like bacteria. Or the soft hair of a newborn. Or the seed hidden, protected and waiting inside the pine tree's cone. It's potential. It's life.

Yet sometimes life, numbed by fatigue, can feel anything but alive.

But today made me pay attention to the zoetic.

Isn't it surprising what makes us feel most alive? It can be something as simple as the much-longed for life-sustaining sunlight on a belated spring day. Or even the opposite.

I think I was nine years old and my heart banged around in my chest like a rabbit trying to escape its cage. That day, along with my cousins and my friend Edwina (who really was my family too), we were fishing at Tobin Lake. Standing on a summer day in still water up to our waists, we weren't going to catch anything there. We were really only pretending. Our parents were on the beach, chatting, relaxing. I think Edwina let go of her fishing rod and started splashing us. We dodged her but remained where we were. Her splashing seemed half-hearted, silly but not really playful. Somehow strange. I remember thinking, she looks drunk like my Uncle Murray does when he wants to dance with my Mom. And then her head went under like being wiped off the counter top. I also remember thinking I should be doing something but what was I supposed to do with my fishing rod? My Dad told me never to let go of my fishing rod. Surfacing, Edwina coughed and laughed and spit and flapped and then I wondered if she had caught a fish. Or if she was becoming a fish? Some woozy mermaid. I turned to look at my parents. No one was coming. I felt blood rush to my head. I looked around. Stricken, my cousin Laurel stared back. Her eyes told me Edwina was drowning. Finally someone yelled and Edwina's father sauntered into the water. I still don't know what took him so long.

A juvenile diabetic, Edwina was having a seizure. The first of many which I would witness several times over the next decade.

And watching her struggle that day, I had never really felt more alive.

Zoetic. Paralyzed and watching near loss of life is oddly zoetic. I understand why now. I think I do. I think fear makes our cells rage. Adrenalin surges. Survival starts throwing punches. And the struggle, our own or others' reminds us to grasp the zoetic. And hold on. And live. Instead of just exist.

Wordfuse (Deny, Deny, Deny Edition)

pacifibs (noun): pacify + fibs = the lies we tell ourselves and others to cope, to placate, to smooth over, to take the edge off but mostly because the truth is just too scary. 




Comments indicative of this behavior range from the mild/moderate:
~"Pshaw. It can wait until tomorrow."
~"I don't weigh that much."
~"I can pay for this next month."

More extreme cases make remarks such as the following:
~"I'm not a hoarder; I'm a collector."
~"I can so rock this Speedo."
~Or if you're OJ Simpson, "I'm still looking for the killer, seriously."
~Or pretty much anything Lindsay Lohan says.
~Or all those enablers/parents of American Idol wannabes.
~Or especially those trying to justify their participation in this train-wreck.
~Or if you're me, "I totally look like Russell Crowe."

This is where I was yesterday.

This is where I will be today. Again.
*imagines you having a green-eyed monster moment
of jealous rage until I reveal that this happened yesterday as well.*

Wordfuse (Emergency Edition)

See this example: egads!

emerciful (adjective): emergency + merciful = a word used to describe the medical staff* who kindly helped a teenager I know after he crashed his snowboard today. Riveted, I watched them yank the teen's wrist back from its perverse "S" shape back to normal. *dry-heaves*


*Medical staff who are not so emerciful might be described as emerciless.

Wordfuse (Sneaking Suspicion Edition)

hoodwinkling (noun): hoodwinked + inkling = that period of time where you think you're being duped but you're not absolutely sure, like when someone says, "Did you know that if you say gullible really slowly it sounds like o...r...a...n...g...e...s?" and even though you're wearing your best skeptical face, inside your little pea-brain you are totally saying it. (Like you are right now.)

I sometimes wonder.

Wonder. Woman.
Like who doesn't?

I sometimes wonder if my brothers remember that time I punched a hole through the screen door because they wouldn't let me in to eat popcorn.

I sometimes wonder if Kevin Murphy's Dad still thinks I'm an asshole.

I sometimes wonder if Lynda Carter would have instantly fallen in love with me if we had met on the set of Wonder Woman (even though I was eleven, and pudgy, and lived in Saskatchewan). In other words, I sometimes wonder woman.

I sometimes wonder if the killer whale at Marineland in Niagara Falls remembers me.

I sometimes wonder if someone with a warped sense of humour has put my Dad in charge of controlling the weather from heaven.

I sometimes wonder if Mr. Sapara, my Grade 8 music teacher, has any recollection of making us put our heads down while he played records at his desk and tried to keep the room from spinning for an entire semester before he went to rehab.

I sometimes wonder if Donald Trump has some serious as-yet-undiagnosed disorder. 

I sometimes wonder if my neighbour down the street (whom I've never met) with the plastic ghosts hanging from the tree in his front yard is just waiting until Halloween rolls around again or if he's died in there and nobody has noticed or if he's actually a lottery winner and he's trying to keep the crazies away or maybe he has like a 192 I.Q. and he laughs at the rest of us dolts who seem hell-bent on decorating for this and that and the other thing ad nauseum monotonia and now I'm wondering if he's reading this or if he has a blog and he's written about his pathetic bandwagonesque decoration-obsessed neighbours and now I'm wondering if that's actually a word and if it isn't it should be.

I sometimes wonder if my brain has a saturation point.

Wordfuse (WTH? Edition)

That moment when two or more people likewise inquire "Who?!" regarding the identity of someone currently trending who has not yet reached maximum pop culture overexposure saturation; the implied tone of this query is WTH?


For a current example (meme) see Rebecca Black. Remember when it was this dude? Dittwho's next?

Thank you to, uh, BiggBootieJudy for providing one of many examples
currently on Twitter. If you, like BiggBootieJudy, are wondering the same
thing you are currently experiencing what I call "Dittwho?" You're welcome.

A Much Needed Sigh

Sometimes Spring comes like a sigh. A much-needed sigh. A deep breath expelled quickly, after all that interminable nonsense is finally over. All that cold and dark and greyness. All that closed in-ness, closed off-ness. Spring is remedy. Spring is my open door.

There was just more light today. The second day. Another day walking home without my toque. And there was more noticing too. Looking down, I noticed sounds that I couldn't possibly hear like the imagined melt-water trickling under the ice, under the sunken snowmobile tracks across the river I cross every day. Looking up, I noticed a few billowy clouds too. Clouds that foreshadow rain. But not rainclouds. Just the promise of rain. Just promise.

I didn't know how much I needed this.

I don't kid myself. I live in Northern Canada. It's not spring yet. As the poet says, "spring is like a perhaps hand." Spring is tentative. Especially here. After winter, it's like it has to learn to walk again. It will be a while before it remembers how to run.

But there's enough for me. Today. Enough to get me through this dress rehearsal for the season I long for always most.

And Spring makes me wonder. Will my son and I still make rivers through the slush? Drain the puddles? Build damns? Play? He's probably too old this year. Yes Spring is "arranging and changing placing."

Wordfuse (St. Patrick's Day Edition)

fortunot (noun, adjective): fortunate + not 
As the phrase states, "luck of the Irish." Well historically the Irish people were actually not so lucky: invasion, exploitation, starvation, and weren't most of those who died on the Titanic of Irish heritage? Whoa. Fortunotsomuch. Thus perhaps the phrase is intended to be ironic. No matter how one interprets it, despite a history of fortunots, the Irish certainly are survivors. And they throw a good party too.

For every wound, a balm.

For every sorrow, cheer.

For every storm, a calm.

For every thirst, a beer.