Category: Word of the Day….Thelmese Fictionary

Lumber. Included in slumber. “Sawing logs” as the old saying goes. (Logs is included in blogs, but that is irrelevant). Time to lumber up the stairs to slumber and to saw lumber. I could mention plumber here, but it seems plumb dumber…

A digit can be a numeral, a finger, or a toe.   Digit rhymes with fidget, which your digits can do.  And it also rhymes with idjit (a Thelmism) which you might be if, for example,  you use your central digit to “flip” an avian symbol at another idjit, perhaps one who is driving erratically.

Today’s world tends to be digital — on/off, yes/no, us/them — with checkboxes purporting to cover all the areas.  But they seldom do.

Analog is better.  Analog allows for nuance, for interpretation, for the infinite number of possible circumstances and responses in the realm of humanity.  Take clocks, for a basic example.  An analog clock shows me how much “space” I have to go between where I am now and where I need to be. Glance at a digital clock, and it announces, “Surprise!  You’re late!”  No, no, no.  Not okay.

“One-size-fits-all” seldom fits all.  “Zero tolerance” does not allow for choices, reasoning, weighing extenuating circumstances, and the natural and meaningful consequences that follow.  If we respond only to someone else’s set of checkboxes, we will never stretch, grow, calculate, learn from our mistakes.  Even in mathematics, although our society tends to use the decimal system, there are many possible ways to solve problems –for example, the binary system, the duodecimal system, “new math”, set notation.  Why should we limit our possibilities?  We could not have come so far in society without exploring, testing, developing new theories, discovering.  And yet, despite the vastness of our universe, our current society keeps trying to box us in.  Advertising tells us what products we “must have”.  Government strives to limit our freedoms.  Schools want to corral students into a narrow curriculum.  Technology is often valued over the arts.

We need to stay on our toes.  We need to count using not only ten fingers and ten toes but also elbows and ears and eyes and grains of sand and a myriad stars.  (Those stars are out there, you know, along with a yet-to-be-known number of other constellations, worlds, solar systems, planets, societies.)

In other words, let’s not be idjits.

It is a pronoun that can replace any noun and perhaps the occasional gerund.  But don’t take my word for it.

I am at a loss for today’s word. Has anyone found a word? Maybe it’s hiding — glossed over (what some folks do to spiffy up the truth, which happens a lot lately). Or in blossoms (those hints of spring we long to see – hang on Punxsutawney Phil and Buckeye Chuck; we’re comin’ for ya!) Maybe it wriggled into c’lossus, like Colossus of Rhodes (reference “rhoda”, word of the day awhile back).

Even if it’s sometimes hard to find the right words to express it, we all have experienced a loss at one time or another. We may have lost a pet or a parent or a friend or an election. Loss is loss, no matter what the specific loss. And it hurts. Even loss of time is painful. We look into the mirror one day, and that child is gone. And loss of self, loss of integrity, loss of principle — all things to grieve, especially in current times.

But, though we mourn our losses, what can we find to fill the void? What is an alternative word? Hope? Resilience? Discovery? Invention? Love?

There is so much that is possible. What’s your word?

Congress — the opposite of progress…

Mo’, with an apostrophe, can be short for “more”. It also means a short period of time (I think like a moment). And it is the abbreviation for Missouri, the “show me” state. (My human son used to refer to Missouri as “Misery” because he hated driving through it on the way to the southwest when travelling the motorcycle racing circuit.) And, mo’ importantly, Mo was the name of my third child (the second monkey kid; you can read about him in the blog category on Monkeys, Motorcycles, Mischief, and My Life). Mo was a nickname for Mojam (pronounced moyum), the Hungarian word for monkey.  Bet you didn’t know that!!

Mo can be part of Mojo (similar to juju), and your Mojo can be working!  You can stretch out mo as in moment and turn it into momentum and really get your Mojo working strong.

And momentum is often a good thing as it propels us ahead toward our goals (although it can be a bad thing if we are trying to avoid, say, a cliff).  Momentous is impressive when we really achieve an important goal.  Mo comprises half of moto (as in motocross…which my son didn’t care for due to its affinity for mud) and two-thirds of Mom…which is almost always a really good thing.

But it’s late tonight, so no mo’ about mo.

Geo — sometimes short for George — for example, Geo (pronounced Joe) Roeder of Grand National motorcycle dirt track racing fame, who carried national number 66 and, along with brother Jess, followed in the footsteps of their also-famous dad, George Roeder, Sr., (national number 94) in his career with “rolling thunder”. Go straight, turn left — but at 100 or so miles per hour on a dirt half mile.  (More to come on dirt track racing in the Monkeys, Motorcycles…category on the blog.)

Geo has also been the name of a car model (a small vehicle which probably could not keep up with Geo Roeder’s 750 Harley).

Geo also means “earth” as in geology, study of earth.  Animal-vegetable-mineral — everything on the planet is some form of those.  Geology deals with rocks (minerals), and rocks can be igneous such as granite (formed through the cooling and solidification of magma or lava) , sedimentary such as limestone and shale (formed by the deposition of material at the Earth’s surface and within bodies of water), or metamorphic such as marble and quartzite (pre-existing rock mass in which new minerals or textures are formed at higher temperatures and greater pressures than those present on the Earth’s surface).   Take a loupe (that little jeweler’s magnifying tool) and examine a rock.  Find the pockets of druzy, the veins of minerals, the layers amassed from years of evolution.  Fascinating!!

Rhoda can mean “rose” or “from Rhodes”. Rhodadendron, not to be confused with Rhoda Morganstern (google it, youngsters!) — a rose short-branched extension of a nerve cell from Rhodes? Rhodachrosite — a pink, red, grey, or brown mineral that consists of manganese carbonate in hexagonal crystalline form and occurs in ore veins. Rhodachrosite is a stone purported to inspire cheerfuness and lift depression. Or perhaps a road in Italy (roada?)

A blog is defined as a regularly updated web page……Blah blah blah!! The “g” is silent, like in “bologna” . Maybe a blog is baloney. Hmmmmm…..

Imp….a little creature that creates mischief wherever it goes. For example…I am impressed at the impassioned implications of the “impartial” impeachment.  To impatiently impinge upon important time and importune taxpayer dollars to impose an implacable imprecation of an impervious imperious official seems impractical, imprudent, and not impartial or impartisan (which isn’t a real word but perhaps should be).