Word Gnome

SPERMOPHILE

2009-04-13T13:30:00.000-07:00

n. member of family of seed-loving rodents

QUERULOUS

2009-02-12T15:15:00.000-08:00

adj. full of complaints, complaining

"GOD! I hate it when you take a dump in the waste paper basket!"
"You know, it really bothers me when you wipe your asshole on the bedspread!"
"Do you have to blow snot rockets in the baby's face?"
"Every time I ask you if something makes me look fat, you tell me I look like David Bowie!"
"How many times do I have to tell you to rinse my bloody underpants out in the bathroom sink, not the kitchen sink?!"
"OOOOH! This baby foreskin eye cream is too cold!"
"I'm sick and tired of hermaphrodites being underrepresented in professional cagefighting."
"If I have to ask you one more time to stop dipping your balls in my oatmeal before serving me breakfast, I'm going to cane you silly."
"When are you going to get it through your thick skull that Down's Syndrome is not caused by drinking fabric softener?!"
"If you're going to get a tattoo of my face on your scrotum, the least you can do is get the color of my eyes right!"

TRYPANOSOMIASIS

2008-12-15T14:56:00.000-08:00

n. African sleeping sickness. "Trypano-" is African for "lazy" and "-somiasis" is South African for "bastard."

Weekend at Vinny's

Saturday afternoons in some homes in America are dominated by college football. In some homes, light DIY projects are planned, executed and completed. In my home, there was no Saturday afternoon past time more sacred than the two and a half to four hour nap. It was a special time for my sister and me. We used this time of weekly reflection and rejuvenation to bond and do some of our best work as up and coming performance artists.

My father always lay flat on his back with his chin in the air and his bulbous nose pointed skyward. You would almost laugh out loud and wake him up if you looked at him straight on because he always looked as though one of the Three Stooges had set him up for a wallop to the throat by pulling his nostrils up from behind his head.

He slept with his eyes half open like some sort of semi-amphibious jungle animal that only needed to moisten its eyes once every half hour, but kept them open continuously so as to better detect predators. Naturally this animal's deviated septum would have necessitated the evolution of half-open eyelids, due to its impaired sense of smell.

We often made sport of this somnolent quirk of his; waiting until his eyes were as open as they could be, such that he appeared to be awake, and then giving him the finger. With clenched teeth, we vigorously pumped our upturned middle fingers right in his face until the terror-filled consequences of him actually being awake made us laugh so hard that we had to leave the room. Eventually this grew to be passe, however, and we would get so used to it that we would have to stop ourselves from giving him the finger to his face while he was awake.

At other times, my sister and I put on plays with him as the main character. He would either be the beautiful sleeping princess over whom we would faun like Snow White, or he would be a hairy evil passed out ogre who had had too much mead. I would hold my sister back with one arm and slay the demonic suspended ogre with my sword. Hand gestures demonstrated his curly stinking guts spilling onto the floor. The fluttering of my sister's tiny fingers would indicate a light rain falling on his now pathetic deanimated corpse. We would pity him. I would then revive him with great surges of my extended fingers and we silently rejoiced and hugged each other as his breathing returned. My sister would run into her room and fetch a fake flower from one of her dolls and put it on his chest, indicating that he was now a good ogre who could be trusted. I would then gingerly put it behind his ear to indicate that he was now a coquettish and dainty Hawaiian ogress who was looking for a big strong Hawaiian ogreman.

Sometimes we put on a variety show. We would enter the living room from different sides waving lime green plastic top hats from St. Patrick's Day and executing a well coordinated number involving high leg-kicks, jazz hands and sometimes a knee-spin or two. The routine would always end with the presentation of the star of the show, The Entertainer of All Entertainers, The Human Firecracker, That Real Go-getter, Mr. Bright-eyed and Bushy Tailed, The Hardest Working Man in Show Business, THE IRISH LIBERACE! He WALKS! He TALKS! He SLIDES ON HIS BELLY LIKE A REPTILE! With our brightest show-biz smiles and shiny Paddy's Day hats we directed the invisible crowd's attention to the star of the show, who once let out a towering snore right at the moment of his curtain call, causing my sister and me to double over and knock heads. We had to go to the other end of the house and scream our heads off from fright and laughter.

As children, our aunt and uncle got similar enjoyment from the pall of silence that was draped over the living room during our father's nap time. One afternoon, they decided to cover him with playing cards. They went through almost two decks before one got away and hit him squarely in the nose. My aunt, then a preteen character who affectionately carried cats around by their necks and knew every commercial jingle on television (and some of the jingles on the Spanish channel) almost wet her pants. My father opened his eyes for one complete second, and then rolled over, shedding the cards from his paunch and rolling over onto his side. My uncle put my aunt over the edge by grabbing her and holding her over my father, squeezing silent hissing pleas out of her to not drop her.

On some Saturdays, my sister and I would attend his funeral. We solemnly dressed in our finest church clothes and proceeded into the funeral parlor arm in arm. The grief would be unbearable. It was an open casket wake, and we always whispered to each other about how good the body looked. He looked so young. We admired the various flower arrangements sent by members of the family, Senator Ted Kennedy and Pee Wee Herman. The half-dead plants on our windowsill were the most beautiful and expensive arrangements imaginable. While I was whispering his eulogy, Celia would show up in her Annie wig and feather boa as the woman with whom Dad had had a secret affair for forty years. Brutal silent fistfights took place between Yolanda (Celia) and my mother (me). Then Yolanda and Mom would decide to make up and be friends after my mother admired her boa and they would both kneel before his sleeping corpse and pray that his soul would be taken to heaven.

On the Saturdays when Celia was away at Disney on Ice or She-ra on Ice or whatever other on-ice perversion she went to with my aunts, I was pressed for a story line. Someone who slept so much was clearly depressed and needed therapy. I pulled up a chair and decided to be my father's psychoanalyst. His innermost thoughts and conflicts were recorded on a red Transformers notepad from Chinatown. He recounted the childhood trauma of being sent to fight the Germans in a unit of child-commandos. He saw a lot of his buddies die at the hands of vicious German ninjas trained in the Phillipines. Complex nightmares about bats and the jungle kept him awake at night.

I nodded with empathy and mock took his hand when he told me about being dumped by Maria from Sesame Street because he was insecure and threatened by Gordon's raw mustachioed masculinity. I raised my eyes to the heavens in condemnation of a god who would allow the Entenmann's baked goods company to abandon my father in his time of utmost need by only producing their cherry pies when cherries were in season. As my sleeping patient, my father was Job and I was Job's psychiatrist.

He would awake on these Saturdays with prescriptions scrawled on Transformers paper that read:

Don't worry. Gordon Sucks.
Rx: Eat More Cake
The Office of
Dr. Optimus Prime

or

Its okay. Plenty of people have pee-stained underwear.
Rx: 400 CC's of Orange Juice 2x Daily
The Office of
Dr. Optimus Prime

He rightly figured this was some sort of sick game my sister and I had concocted and would immediately appeal to my mother. She would demand to know what these pieces of paper meant and what twisted mind game we were playing with our innocent father who was just trying to get a few hours of rest after his long work week. We would play it off as a goof, but would still get a stern finger and an order to "knockitoff." We retreated to our rooms and concocted even sicker games.

Revenge would be ours the following Saturday afternoon, however, when Dad would unwittingly assume the roll of the American pilot shot down over Vietnam. We had pulled him from the wreckage of his jet fighter and dragged his nearly lifeless body to our Viet Cong POW camp deep in the jungle. Our faces would transform into those of fiendish Vietnamese pinkos glistening with sweat and baring our rotten jungle teeth. We brandished our rubber hoses, which we fashioned from orange Matchbox race tracks. As our alter egos Dao Jones and Nam Penn, we would give him a savage silent beating. We rained blow after savage blow on him as he lay there helpless waiting for Chuck Norris and the Delta Force to crash through the windows with their M-16's blazing. Until that unlikely intervention, no fake blow with our rubber hoses would be spared, no matter how pathetically he snored for help.

HELLA

2008-10-30T17:20:00.000-07:00

adv.: really

West Coast Word Gnome has immersed himself in the rich and deep culture of the Bay Area and has begun to learn the language of the indigenous population. I have attended lectures at the Bay Area's finest university and have even managed to start a grass roots organization to ban the sale of burritos with beans. UC Berkeley scientists have determined that a total ban on the sale of beans (both pinto and "African American") will reduce total human assmissions by 42% in the Bay Area by 2026. Now if we could just get the super sexy hot windbags over at Code Pink to be seen and not heard and know their place, we could really make some progress. Anyway, back to this 'hella' bull$hit.

Here are some popular uses of the term 'hella', which will help you fit right in at any sunrise yoga session, wicca leadership conference or neo-troskyite transgender intra-uterine cambodian tupperware party:

1) "There are hella mixed-race couples around here!"
2) "This is a hella good conference on the hydroponics technology gap."
3) "Yo dude, that statement was hella gender normative. Now apologize."
4) "God DAMN! This burrito is so HELLA! WTF! Why are there hella hellacious hellacopters over my house?! HELLA!"
5) "$heee-it. These middle aged women really need to dye the hella out of their hair! Give them the right to vote and they really let themselves go!"

HIATUS

2008-06-16T04:43:00.000-07:00

n. a break or interruption in the continuity of a work, series, action, etc.

WordGnome is moving to a new wordhovel (see video and replace "Beverly" with "Berkeley"). See you in August.

DOPPELGANGER

2008-05-28T14:07:00.000-07:00

n. a ghostly double of a living person.

Hillary has a point here. America's presumptive First Black Nerd President does strongly resemble Steve Urkel, ironically America's First Black Nerd. But you, gentle reader, should be the judge.

Does Barack Obama resemble A) Steve Urkel, B) N!xau, the bush man from The Gods Must Be Crazy, or C) Frankenstein?

BAFFONA

2008-05-12T12:11:00.001-07:00

n. a woman with a slight mustache

BLASPHEMY

2008-04-16T09:15:00.000-07:00

JESUS VS. SATANBOT

Episode 1: Basso Profundo

Episode 2: Rocky Road

n. the disrespectful use of the name of one or more gods.

COLOSTRUM

2008-04-03T14:22:00.000-07:00

n. a form of milk produced by the mammary glands of mammals in late pregnancy and the few days after giving birth.

BASOREXIA

2008-03-24T08:46:00.001-07:00

n. a strong craving or hunger for kissing

RHINOTILLEXOMANIA

2008-03-21T12:39:00.000-07:00

n. obsessive picking of one's nose.

Looks like Dr. Ira Fingerman, Proctologist, has picked a winner in more ways than one. Lucky bastard. I just hope Sphincterina doesn't find out. She'll $hit all over him. Either way, Amy Winehouse sure knows how to party.

SPECIESISM

2008-03-18T14:17:00.000-07:00

n. the assumption of superiority of humans over other animal species, especially to justify their exploitation.

HIBERNIAN

2008-03-17T05:39:00.000-07:00

n. the Classical Latin name for the Irish.

Lovingly referred to by the Reverend Ian Paisley as "the Puerto Ricans of the 19th Century," the Irish came to America in massive waves after the British outlawed Gaelic and enforced The Cleanliness and Enlightenment Act of 1849, which forcibly bathed and educated every man, woman and child in Ireland. This Act was violently resisted by the aboriginal population and resulted in mass migration to more sympathetic climes like Boston and New York, where ignorance and filth were not only tolerated, but encouraged.

The Irish thrived in their new surroundings. They rose to great fame and prestige as public servants. They established professional sports franchises. They also went into the restaurant business. Many even learned to read and bathe more than once a week. Not bad for sad castoffs of a decaying empire!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

BOWDLERIZE

2008-03-12T15:41:00.000-07:00

v. to expurgate (a written work) by removing or modifying passages considered vulgar or objectionable.

Named after this bitch. It is something Ned Flanders would do to a copy of On the Banks of Plum Creek with a black magic marker if Rod and Todd were going to read it.

Also, congratulations to WordGnerd Heather for her winning comment! She has won an all expense paid trip to the Milky Way! Thanks for playing, everyone. No really, only one person commented! LAME!

TRANSUBSTANTIATION

2008-03-10T14:15:00.001-07:00

n. the change of the substance of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ occurring during some Christian masses. It does not taste like bread OR chicken! Take my word for it! I know its definitely not supposed to burn when you eat it, though. That really hurt that time. Does that mean I'm going to hell? Does it?

Comments are turned on for the first time, so please feel free to express your outrage. Also, I will send a delicious candy bar to the virtuous reader who can come up with the most hilarious sentence using today's word.

Hillary eats babies.

DACTYLOMEGALY

2008-03-06T14:28:00.000-08:00

n. abnormal largeness of fingers or toes.

MYRMIDON

2008-03-04T17:15:00.000-08:00

n. a subordinate who executes orders unquestioningly or unscrupulously

Those of you who have had a halfway decent education will remember that, in the Iliad, "Myrmidons" was the name of Achilles' soldiers. From the Greek word "murmekes" meaning ~~"bitches"~~ "ants," these soldiers were bad asses who did everything they were told, no matter how absurd, not unlike your recently married humble author these days (minus the bad ass part).

Doze of yous hoo r bearlee litrit nuff to reed diss blugh and halve no idear what dee f*ck I'm sayin 'bout wil probally enjoy this. Eye shur did!

CHIMERA

2008-02-29T14:33:00.000-08:00

n. an individual, organ, or part consisting of tissues of diverse genetic constitution

SESQUIPEDALIAN

2008-02-28T18:40:00.000-08:00

adj. given to or characterized by the use of long words ("sesqui" Latin "one and a half" + "ped" Latin "foot"...so it literally means "using words that are a foot and a half long," like my gnomewang)

After having endured a good bastinadoing by the Jesus Monkeys for sixteen hours, McCane managed to free himself from his bonds, cage up the Jesus Monkeys and overpower Gimp W. Butch, just as the freak's master arrived. Gimp W. quivered with Anglo-Saxon excitement as his master slammed the door to the dungeon. William F. Buckleytron sized up McCane, picked up his giant, studded oak paddle and gave him a wink. "I'll deal with this monkey man for you, squid! Assume the position, bitch!" Gimp W. bent over and squealed "JUST LIKE BACK IN THE TOMB!!! JOY!!!" Buckleytron then let loose an effusive stream of twenty-five dollar words, the likes of which McCane never managed to learn while doing push-ups at Annapolis. Angered by all this "smart talk," McCane raised his cane-hand to smite the lovers, but was distracted by the lavender mask of his idiot sidekick, Bloomjob, who was still looking in through the window with his mouth agape. Useless effeminate billionaire sidekick ! Now that he was free, McCane would have to dole out some of his own "Christian understanding" on his non-believing henchperson. But first he needed to escape the basement of this Bank of America ATM...

SOLIPSISTIC

2008-02-24T09:48:00.000-08:00

adj. extremely egocentric (n. solipsism; "sol" Latin "only", "ipsos" Klingon "self")

"The Gay Super Bowl is an exercise in solipsistic self-congratulation."

MISNOMER

2008-02-22T10:55:00.000-08:00

n. an error in naming a person or thing.

TOOTHSOME

2008-02-19T18:41:00.000-08:00

adj. sexually attractive - "Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Eleanor Roosevelt are some seriously toothsome wenches!"

RECRUDESCENCE

2008-02-17T20:12:00.000-08:00

n. the state of becoming raw or sore again

“George Washington’s thoughts about his time in Sing Sing prison for robbing a WAMU (ironic) caused a recrudescence of feeling that was difficult to suppress.”

George Washington is back in Williamsburg in his Bedford Avenue loft. There is an open bottle of chardonnay and a wine glass on the coffee table. He is using the long weekend to catch up on episodes of Lost that he missed while he was “away.” His Blackberry Pearl rings. Its Abraham Lincoln:

Washington: Yo, sup. Lincoln: Sup, man? W: I thought you went skiin’ this weekend? L: Nah. Gotta go to my mother in law's house. W: For what? L: My birthday. W: Lame. Yo, did you see my slave anywhere? L: I let him go, dude. W: Haha, funny. No, seriously, where is he? L: I let him go. I gave him my Metro Card and told him to find a job. W: In this city? He can’t even read. Where’s he gonna work, Foot Locker? What the F*CK!? I needed him to pick up my dry cleaning. L: It wasn’t right. Oh also, I took back those library books you stole. W: Dude you’re such a pu$sy! No balls. L: Your mom’s a pus$y. W: Take that back. My mom could kick your ass. L: Your mom couldn’t kick Ben Franklin’s ass. W: You leave my BF out of this. L: “My BF”? What the hell does that mean? You guys must have gotten real close on Rikers, huh? W: It was an awkward turn of phrase, and it wasn’t Rikers, it was Sing Sing. I am not gay for Ben Franklin. L: Yeah whatever, dude. Yo, can you spot me half a G? I have to pay my bookie. F*cking Patriots. W: F*ck that, go borrow 500 from my slave. Oh wait, you can’t, because he’s somewhere on the aboveground railroad taking valuable man-hours with him that could have been put to good use arranging my wigs and answering my thousands of friend requests on myspace, you douche! L: Come on, just spot me, please. Don’t make me tell Martha what you did at Sing Sing to get your wooden teeth back. W: Who the f*ck told you about that?! L: Your BF. W: That BITCH! I told that phildoodle not to say anything! I gave him ten cans of snuff to keep his pretty mouth shut, and this is how he does me? You know how many times I saved him from being raped by skinheads in the joint? Those guys were ready to tear his bifocal wearing ass up! All that kite flying $hit on the yard. I’ll kill that motherf*cker! L: Relax. Come on, let’s go get massages down on Mott St. I heard Ling is back. I know how you like that absurdly long toe of hers on your prostate! W: F*cking Franklin told you ALL my secrets, didn’t he! I’m gonna get that f*cker. (grabs his axe) L: Seriously, calm down. I’m not gonna tell anyone else. W: Who the f*ck did you tell? L: Just Jesus. He’s not gonna tell anybody. He’s too high to remember half the $hit I tell him most of the time. W: Christ, what a stoner. Does he still make you say grace when you eat at his house? F*cking weirdo. L: Nah, he’s into some eastern $hit these days, like incense and nine hour masses. I think he does so much praying on Sundays that he can’t be bothered with grace. W: Poor guy. He was never the same after he made his own foreskin grow back. That really messed him up. So what time are we meeting on Mott St.? L: Six okay? W: Yeah, fine. That will give me time to pick up some new nonsweatshop produced briefs in a variety of colors from American Apparel. You know I don’t like walking out of Pretty Lotus Intimate Time Fun Palace without a new pair of skivvies on. L: Yeah Martha can smell those sloots all over you. She’s like a goddamn she-wolf. Hey, it’s better than her smelling Franklin’s peanut butter, capers and Brut, ain’t it? W: If you mention him one more time, I’m going to bludgeon you with the business end of my axe, bitch. L: Alright. I'll take your word for it. I know you don't lie when it comes to hacking $hit up. All I have to do is ask that Columbia student whose pinky toe they think they found in Morningside Park. Six at Pretty Lotus Intimate Time Fun Palace, k? W: Yeah, later.

MALAPROPISM

2008-02-14T17:32:00.000-08:00

n. an act or habit of misusing words ridiculously, esp. by the confusion of words that are similar in sound.

DEGRINGOLADE

2008-02-13T09:51:00.002-08:00

IT'S A COOKBOOK!

n. a rapid decline or deterioration (as in stregth, position, or condition) "de-gringo-lady." This word was coined by Mexican migrant workers to refer to their favorite candidate, and it's meaning ironically signifies her primary performance of late.