I Made This

Well, to be correct it was started by Aimee Morgan and contributed to by Mark Gipson, and the image made by Gordon Mac Promish. I added the rest of the words and arranged it.

Yeet is a versatile word. It is an excited shout; it also means "to throw something at something else". For example, if a basketball player were to shoot a three-pointer that they are sure will go in the hoop, they will yeet (shout) while yeeting (throwing the ball). Others watching the shot may also yeet if they wish, although they should be careful not to yeet and spoil the shot. However, the yeeter's opponents may also try to yeet (while yeeting) the yote before it yites the yute.

This reminds me of something I wrote back in January.

For those who don't speak the lingo:

• To be "fleek" or "on fleek" is to be impeccably groomed; stylish; fashionable. 
• To "skeet" is to ejaculate.
• We've already covered "yeet". 

You may now hate me if you must. 

"Youthy Drift-By"

Seen on Der Lederhosen:

For those who aren't familiar with familia sermo, it means "household word" -- the specific bits of jargon created by a family based in shared experience, in-jokes, and the like.

The Scrabble Bag of Inclusion

For the past year I have been wracking my brain in an attempt to come up with a better term than LGBTQ. We need a better term because the current one is a mouthful and there's a creeping tendency for new letters to be added to it; the last time I checked, the "full and proper" version is LGBTQQIAAP (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning, Intersex, Asexual, Allies and Pansexual).

Look, I don't care how politically correct you are, you aren't going to say that name more than once a conversation, if that. LGBTQ is practically a full name by itself -- I once made a joke that you pronounce it like a Star Wars character, "Elgee Beeteeque" -- and so trying to pronounce Elgee Beeteecue Cueaiayaypee in standard conversation just isn't going to happen.

(This, by the by, is why I love the word "queer". It's short, it's easy to say, it encompasses everyone, and it's us reclaiming a word that was once offensive. Sadly, not everyone sees things my way.)

So I've been trying to brainstorm a new word for all us non-heterosexual and/or non-cisgender folks. It's more difficult than you'd think, because the  ideal replacement word is inclusive, evocative, memorable, easy to pronounce, and - most importantly - NOT SILLY.

I present to you as means of illustration two counter-examples that weren't made by me:

• QUILTBAG: Queer/Questioning, Undecided, Intersex, Lesbian, Transgender/Transsexual, Bisexual, Allied/Asexual, Gay/Genderqueer.  
• Inclusive - yes. This word salad includes everyone. 
• Evocative - kind of, but not in a good way. 
• Memorable - sadly, yes. 
• Easy to pronounce - absolutely. 
• Not silly - OH HELL NO.
• SAGA: Sexual And Gender Acceptance
• Inclusive - no. Mainly because "acceptance" is an action and not a demographic. SAGA would be a great name for an initiative, but not a group. 
• Evocative - absolutely. 
• Memorable - sort of. I expect some humorous confusion where someone would mis-remember the name and try to make an acronym out of EPIC. 
• Easy to pronounce - enviously so. 
• Not silly - well, it's a bit camp in its pretension, but the word itself isn't silly. 

Not easy, is it? 

The best I've managed to come up with -- and I give you all blanket permission to laugh at it, because I know full well how silly it sounds -- is LABGASM (Law Abiding Gender and Sexual Minorities). 

• Inclusive? Yes. Its strength is that instead of trying to pin everyone down, it just spreads an umbrella. 
• Evocative? Yes. Unfortunately so. As a friend of mine remarked, "Sounds sterile, but with mice running in wheels running vibrators or something."
• Memorable? Yes, but again, not in a good way. 
• Easy to pronounce? I'm pretty sure people would be laughing too much to get past the "LAB" part. 
• Not Silly?  Silly, campy, and straight-up ridiculous. 

Now one of you smart cookies will no doubt ask "Why not just use GSM, Gender and Sexual Minorities?" And that's a damn good question. The unfortunate answer is that, taken on its face, "sexual minority" could also be interpreted as encompassing illegal (non-consenting) sexual attractions. This is something to be avoided with extreme prejudice, because there are already people in the world who equate homosexuality with perversion and moral turpitude, and already one step away from bestiality, pedophilia and necrophilia. Why should I make it easy for them to say "Look! By their own words, they include such perversion! (point, hiss, shudder)"

I'm not really sure what to do at this point. We desperately need a new, abstractly inclusive, non-silly word, and I'm not sure if such a thing can be created. 

But damn, do I love the word "queer". 

Special Thanks to my friend Erin Smith, who coined the term "Scrabble Bag" to describe the collection of letters you get when you try to explicitly include everyone. 

Because I don't like leaving good material on Facebook

"Racist, Bush's fault" has been replaced with "Racist, Trump's fault." Please update your self-flagellexicon accordingly.

(Yes, I coined the term "flagellexicon". You may use it in your personal dealings; just credit me if asked.)

This is just a friendly reminder that it's not politically correct to misgender people while insulting them. The proper terms of deploring are:

• Shitlord (male)
• Shitlady (female)
• Shitperson (gender neutral)

If you wish to indicate a teenager/young adult, you may use

• Shitlad (male)
• Shitlass (female)
• Shitteen & Shittwenty (neutral)

Thank you for your cooperation.

Sincerely,
Shitlady Erin Palette

Last Night I Invented a Word

A German word, no less.



English has no such word, but one of my friends suggested I try German. Unfortunately, not even the complex language of Teutonic Cruelty has such a word -- but German is marvelously modular in that you can put words together like Legos to create complex concepts.

For example, here are just some of the compound words you can create with everyone's favorite little fecal swear:

die Scheiße	([Das ist mir] scheißegal	I don't give a shit
	Scheißding	shitty thing
	scheißfaul	goddamn lazy
	scheißhöflich	obsequious

By the way, the ß in German has a double-S sound, so Scheiße (all Nouns in German are capitalized) is actually pronounced Scheisse.

So I consulted my dictionary and came up with two words that fit how I felt and smashed them together to create a new but utterly proper German word:

Angstfreude

It's a combination of angst, which means fearful anxiety, and freude, which means happiness. Thus, angstfreude means "fearfully happy."

I think it fits how I feel right now:  "Dear Hollywood, I've loved these books for decades. It will be wonderful if you do them properly but I'm almost certain you're going to ruin them."

For those keeping track, this is the third word I've invented. The others are dalqué and mediabation.

Dalqué

Sometime early Thursday morning, my brain invented a new word.

I was having one of those dreams that occurs just at the fringe of wakefulness, when my mind seems particularly unhinged but I am still able to recall what happened with a large amount of clarity.

In this dream, I was observing what looked like a dungeon or underground laboratory, and there was a living.. something... on a slab. It was restrained, and some kind of chemical was being pumped into it, and as I watched the flesh of the thing changed from a healthy pink to a sickly gray. I knew it was dying.

Superimposed over all of this, in some manner of Gothic font, was this word:  

Dalqué

It was evident that this scene was supposed to be illustrating the definition of the word.

(Incidentally, this dream also answered a question I've had since watching an old episode of Batman: the Animated Series, which is "Can you read inside of a dream?"  Clearly the answer is yes. Myth busted!)

So as I watched the thing on the table expire, I began to understand what dalqué meant. Based on the name and the surroundings, I got the impression that I was watching something being embalmed alive, and that I was in a place suggestive of the Spanish Inquisition.  Clearly, Doctor Dalqué was a mortician who subdued his victims (perhaps with drugs), took them back to his workshop of horrors, chained them up and watched them struggle as they slowly died from the embalming process. It felt very 19th century, very Edgar Allen Poe-ish.

Therefore, dalqué represents a creeping, paralytic fear, usually with some kind of body horror attached to it. Specifically, it is the fear you feel when you know something bad is going to happen to you (or a loved one), and the anticipation of that horror makes the fear that much worse.

Good example: Sitting in a dentist's chair, waiting for a root canal.
Better example: Waiting for the surgeon to tell you if your child survived.
Archetypal example: "You have cancer."
Dalqué is a noun that can be used as an adjective. Therefore you can say "I was consumed with dalqué " or "A dalqué feeling consumed me."

So now you have a new word to use this Halloween.


(The Google says that Dalqué is also the name of a Code Geass character. This is amusing because I've never played the game, nor do I know anything about it. I truly have no idea from whence my brain derived this word.)

The word of the day is...

MEDIABATORY
(adverb, from mediabation, root to mediabate)

Of, or relating to, the media's tendency to report the same damn thing over and over again when a story is breaking but there is nothing truly new to report. Generally used to suggest that the situation has shifted from reporting the news to masturbation of same.

Example: "The constant barrage of non-information regarding Caylee Anthony has become mediabatory."


Special thanks to Chris Bridges who coined the term at my insistence, as I was never particularly fond of "Newswanking."