Monday, November 29, 2004

GO-DEVIL-GETTER

A new addition to the Big Book of Bunkum:

go-devil-getter (n.) one who rejuvenates a flagging spirit by walking on bed of hot coals, sleeping on a bed of nails, and wearing a red sequined, sparkly spandex body suit with little horns

e.g. After taking his guinea pig named Lord Ha Ha for a brief sunrise stroll around a cul-de-sac in the Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, the timorous go-devil-getter brushed and gnashed his sensitive pearly-white incisors, molars and bicuspids with 0.4% stannous fluoride gel USP (before digging into a healthy, nutritional, vitamin-enriched, low-cholesterol, microwave safe, frozen breakfast food cereal of jiggle, wiggle, and plop).

Contributed by: Nancy Yellingbo, a certified Hatha-Metta-Stretch Yoga, Fitness Kickboxing & Submission Wrestling Instructor and part-time mystic Santa Shopping Tarot Card Reader from Pugwash, Nova Scotia by way of Tallygaroopna, Australia and Gnaw Bone, Indiana

Sunday, November 28, 2004

WHIZBEAN

A new addition to the Big Book of Bunkum:

whizbean (n.) an entry-level payroll clerk whose fabulous feats include moving the boss's cheese with alacrity, but moving mountains, well that's another story requiring a different skill set that this individual regrettably does not possess

e.g. "This feels so good it must be fattening, unhealthy or illegal" said the warbling whizbean; but then he remembered what the genie in the bottle told him -- “trust everyone but tether your camel” -- so, he decided to return the crumpled garrishly-wrapped package of fragrant-smelling weeds to their rightful owner, a delusional desert-dwelling, sweaty but smiling soul eagerly sporting a spanking new buzzard black and magenta-colored neck tie with matching ear muffs and a pair of mighty fine spurs attached to his floppy leather thongs.

Contributed by: Jock Fishlove, whose favorite book in the Zanzibar Public Library is Frans Masreel’s 1952 classic cliff-hanging, weepfest thriller entitled, Geschichete Ohne Worte -- a sad love story without words but oodles of heavy-breathing woodcuts for those with an abiding interest in minimalism and, some might even venture to say, a rather passionate obsession with simple black and white plot lines

Friday, November 26, 2004

CLIMACTERIANIST

A new addition to the Big Book of Bunkum:

climacterianist (n.) one who enjoys spending an evening lost in reverie with Big Foot, Sasquatch and the Abominable Person of Snow

e.g. Fortunately for the climacterianist, there was a gripping PBS special documentary on television that Thursday mushy pees with steak and kidney pie evening entitled, An Illustrated Inventory of Famous Dismembered Works of Art; otherwise, he would have been obliged to engage in his favorite hobby -- looking for non-existent bones, elusive scat, and hidden hair samples of hoary mammalian bi-peds that most people would prefer not to encounter on a romantic stroll through the tulips in the moonlit woods or a quick midnight pit-stop at the local gas bar and convenience store.

Contributed by: James B. Luffenham-Sotterly, a retired bill collector, dual duty bag-pipe/glockenspiel musician in the "Bare Essentials Glee Club" and collector of miniature hermaphrodite brigs

KOOKAMONGUS

A new addition to the Big Book of Bunkum:

kookamongus (n.) the sort of person who derives a great deal of pleasure from telling family, friends and even complete strangers that he resides on a prickly patch of property in Satan's Kingdom (Vermont) during the summer blackfly season and an air-conditioned shoebox in Hellhole Palms (California) to get away from four wretched calling birds, three noisy French hens, two twittering turtle doves and a frigging partridge in a pear tree

e.g., When I last saw him, the kookamongus piano-player was looking for lost sharps and flats that dropped off his page of sheet music shortly after becoming mesmerized by the whimsical appearance of a rather fetching, fleet-of-foot, female Fed-Ex courier with her color-coordinated clip-board and matching nails.

Contributed by: Harold P. Berriwillock, a rather fine if not fanciful fallen angel seeking repose of the soul somewhere in the fullness of time between Climax and Purgatory (Colorado)

Tuesday, November 23, 2004

VAPID STOMATITIS

A new addition to the Big Book of Bunkum:


vapid stomatitis (n.) an acute viral disease of gift horses rendering them speechless, their mouth-watering owners toothless, while turning nosey-poking jockeys into jackasses in a jiffy

e.g. The brown box arrived by courier (with a tiny but discretely placed warning label affixed that read -- "Vapid Stomatitis - Handle With Care") -- so I promptly took it along to our weekly management meeting and asked which one of the magnificent mastadons on the team wanted to munch on the goodies inside; needless to say, one hungry hypochondriac volunteered and fortunately we've never heard a word from him since.

Contributed by: Henrietta Kaffeklubben, a prize-winning spelling bee contestant known for her probity and colorful half-time performances at the annual Snakes and Ladders Tournament in Weeping Water, Nebraska

Sunday, November 21, 2004

DINGLEWORT

A new addition to the Big Book of Bunkum:

dinglewort (n.) one whose deepmusing and swooning days are over


e.g. Having committed a major faux-pas with the wicked wenches from the Castle of Kerfuffle, and trifled with the off-beat affections of one too many truculent hand-maidens from The Minxy Menagerie, the disquixotted, dansey-headed dinglewort sipped on a pint of dew-drink...(after jotting down the outline of his autobiography, The Life and Times of a Cabobbled Carpet Knight, and before visiting Lazor Lil's to permanently remove his laugh lines and well-worn wrinkles, all of which are in the wrong place).


Contributed by: George Buzznack, sole proprietor of “Butts-n-Sweets Shop” in Smackover, Arkansas and a quaint odds'n'ends store called “Frognot Fashions” in Toad Suck, (Arkansas naturally)

Saturday, November 13, 2004

FIBASCO SAUCE

A new addition to the Big Book of Bunkum:

Fibasco sauce (n.) what one who cooks the books inevitably uses to spice up a dicey dish or flagging flambé

e.g. She wagged her pulchritudinous pink organ of taste about as Jeeves, her devoted miscreant man-servant, presented her favorite midday meal: rubber chicken wings served on a bed of rusty nails with a generous portion of Fibasco sauce (designed to mollify the unexpected negative earnings growth results in the fourth quarter and a meaningful but unanticipated highly-leveraged outcome shift in her balanced no-load stock portfolio).

Contributed by: J.P. Fata Morgana, Esq. (born sometime in the last century to haggis-loving parents from Killiecrankie, Scotland) and now a fetching if not fly-chasing footman, an accomplished Faustian bargain hunter, and a vertiginous valet in the House of Vermouth-Swilling Vampires & Fasting Father Christmas's

Thursday, November 11, 2004

SIZZLE-STOMPING

A new addition to the Big Book of Bunkum:

sizzle-stomping (adj.) descriptive of a femme fatale with broad-shoulders, buck-teeth and a pair of mighty fine stainless-steel spurs

e.g., The sizzle-stomping hand-maiden let her bleach blonde hair down nonchalantly, only to have a gauche, out-of-practice carpet knight named "Dinglepot" ride by on a dromedary shouting various venal-sounding vulgar epithets like "Get lost you fonking fopdoodle!", "What makes you think I'm interested in a horsefeathered heanling like you?", "Take a hike you hufty-tufty hoddypeak!", "Who let you out of the whiffling wind-sucking whipperginny corral!" and the most crushing words of all, "Trust me, no one could mistake you for a Bellibone or a Poplolly".

Contributed by: Voltaire Charles Molesworth III, author of a self-help manual entitled, 25 Ways To Leverage Your Navel Gazing Talent for Fun & Profit, and part-time resident of Cat Elbow Corner, New York


Saturday, November 06, 2004

BAD-FOR-EVERYTHING

A new addition to the Big Book of Bunkum:


bad-for-everything (adj.) what every good-for-nothing has going for it


e.g. The bad-for-everything golliwog glanced left and right before leaping onto the page of cutouts, thumping his fist, and defiantly thrusting his tawdry, two-toned, torpid tongue out at a pesky kid with a honking big pair of scissors in the tow of a panic-stricken playschool administrator nicknamed, “Brownie Point”.

Contributed by: Goliath Nematode, a gonzo goober grower in the heart of Lizard Lick, North Carolina (a bodacious backwater blemish replete with a nine-hole golf course, a communal shower, and a divot museum, if you please!)

Friday, November 05, 2004

NYAU

A new addition to the Big Book of Bunkum:

NYAU -- Not-Your-Average-Universe, (n.) a waddling, wagging, walloping, warbling sort of place that’s never heard of walkie-talkies, walking papers, war whoops, wash and wear briefs, waterproof nymphs, waxed moustaches, webmasters, wet-nurses, wedding planners, wheelers and dealers, big whoppers, white elephants, windbags, withholding taxes, wordsmiths, Worshipful Masters, wrinkled wenches, or warm and fuzzies for that matter


e.g. “If NYAU is so hot”, said the brick-faced bouncer from the Happy-Go-Lucky Bar in a constipated corner of Cuddabackville, New York, “… then how come they’ve got no creative accountants, sly-boot lawyers or two-gun Texas Rangers running the place?”


Contributed by: Slink Tunkhannock, (from Goosepimple Junction, Virginia), a mild-mannered muse whose perturbations include why the cookie of life often gets completely stomped on, squished beyond recognition and obliterated by the inscrutable forces of gravity and time, but more likely by individuals of unsound mind

Thursday, November 04, 2004

BRAIN-SWIVELLER

A new addition to the Big Book of Bunkum:


brain-swiveller (n.) one who’s not sure whether one is coming or going; (not to be confused with other pretentious peewit personalities such as the "Speckled Scatterbrain", the "Boston Birdbrain", the "Belching Babbler", the "Gawking Giddy-Head", the "Raucous Rattlehead", and lesser known subcategories of "Decadent Dingbats" and "Dry Run Drivelers", all of whom live in a rather grand gallumping sort of galaxy called Zebulon)


e.g., He gazed in silence at the witchy way the pagans flew over the cuckoo’s nest, his eyes reflecting the brain-swiveller’s keen sense of wonder at the unexpected arrival of the Gormless Reaper, a notorious gadabout, (with a grimacing if not ill-fitting set of dentures --purchased at the Saturday craft market in Woonsocket, Rhode Island).


Submitted by: Sir Grimsley Gilt-Edge, former member of the British House of Lords and now gourmet watercress sandwich-maker at the popular "Glasscock" wet bar in Gun Barrel City, in the Lone Star State of course, (and happily married for fourteen frivolous years to a cute cussing cowgirl from Cut-and-Shoot, Texas)