Post  #2638.   More wurds.      This blog has always attempted to bring along new things about words and language that readers may not have discovered elsewhere. The word tonight is Xacuabš. It is from the Lushootseed language and means "great amount of water." It makes a good name for a large lake. This is a geographic reference and would not be used for a flood or personal accident. Interesting how native peoples were able to form in a single word an expression which takes an entire phrase for us.

Happy New Year y'all. Rick Macherat Rick M. In the day. RMacherat
posted by Rick at 10:52 PM

Post  #2637.   Small town.      Only a few people were in the coffee shop that day. It was a bit early, but the place would fill up shortly with the usual lunch crowd. Jessica had decided on an early lunch for her mother’s birthday. Mrs. Elaine Davis was 79 and had insisted that any celebration be modest, in favor of a big vacation or cruise next year.

Just about the last thing anyone would have expected was for the door to bang open loudly and a young, scruffy, zitty man to rush in, shouting, “Everybody get down and give it up!” or some variation of that as remembered by the several witnesses. The very last thing anyone would have expected was for Mrs. Davis to pull out her Smith and Wesson BODYGUARD® 38 Special handgun and put a hole right between his squinty eyes.

At least one other person in the coffee shop was not all that shocked. Everett Knuth had been a young assistant in his father’s mortuary forty-some years earlier when he accompanied him to a job out on Long Drive. He remembered the sheriff saying, “Yup. Too bad. Looks like a massive heart attack all right,” as they all .. the sheriff, the deputy, Mrs. Davis, Jessica and the two EMT guys .. looked down at the extremely dead Mr. Davis and his extremely prominent middle-of-the-forehead bullet hole. As it turned out, that put an end to his brief unfortunate habit of sneaking into Jessica’s room late at night and molesting her. Rick Macherat Rick M. In the day. RMacherat
posted by Rick at 2:19 AM

Post  #2636.   Late night habits.     I've become a creature of habit, and one of these is doing the dishes at 1:45 in the morning. I'm not the only one around here fixed at that time.

Our long-surviving rat gets up and takes a dump at that exact time as well. He is amazingly regular. Stinks up the whole house for about half an hour. You wouldn't think something so tiny .. anyway .. eventually I'll get him. I've dispatched two of his relatives in as many days. The second one is dead, electrocuted, in the box with the blinking red light next to the dining room wall. I'm just not up to dealing with it tonight. I'd rather type. The one I caught yesterday was stuck on a glue board. Unsettling. He screamed constantly as I put him in a bag for disposal.

The third character in our 1:45am confluence is the old lady who lives in the house behind me, She gets up, goes outside, lights a cigarette and coughs her guts out non-stop until it's smoked. It's one of those awful, long, wet, old lady coughs like nails on a chalkboard. I've seen her. She's a hag. Looks just like she sounds. She does this every night, even when it's far befow freezing with feet of snow on the ground. I know that some night, eventually, I won't hear her. Wonder who'll go first?Rick Macherat Rick M. In the day. RMacherat
posted by Rick at 1:52 AM

Post  #2635.   Sweatin' like a prize hog.     Wonder what rich people do? I mean when they buy a small appliance which is, of course, made in China and broken down so it can be shipped within rectangular constraints. Do they have people for that too? I'm too ingravescent to type out the whole thing. Besides, it's been done. What I want to know is how we got to this point and why we continue to put up with it. Most of the vaunted productivity gains of the past quarter century have been achieved simply by transferring the grunt work to the consumer, and we're thrilled with all the money we save. Some thrill. I'd throw open the window and do a howardbeale if it would make any difference.

On the upside, the small appliance was a fan.

All that was just a distraction. What I wanted to type about was my new book. I have a couple of beginnings begun:

Upon landing on the promising planet, the space survey team quickly discovered a race of sentient beings who typed into their television sets too.

Only you have to be in the right mood for sci-fi, so that's as far as I got with Space Bureaucrats. Then,

The dominatrix was cross and impatient tonight. This could spell trouble. The lovingly creepy smile which had so enchanted him before seemed more ominous as he struggled to remember the safe word.

Again, going nowhere. They say write what you know, but 260 pages on shrubbery? I know, a shrubbery mystery! I'll get back to you.Rick Macherat Rick M. In the day. RMacherat
posted by Rick at 12:19 AM