This article

Its creator, Peter Mark Roget, was a 19th century Englishman and apparently compulsive list-maker who pursued his life’s work with an Enlightenment-inspired religiosity. Lapham writes:

“His efforts to create order out of linguistic chaos harks back to the story of Adam in the Garden of Eden, who was charged with naming all that was around him, thereby creating a perfectly transparent language. It was, according to the theology of St. Augustine, a language that would lose its perfection with the Fall of Man, and then irreparably shatter following construction of the Tower of Babel. By Roget’s time, Enlightenment ideals had taken hold, suggesting that scientific pursuits and rational inquiry could discover antidotes to Babel, if not a return to the perfect language of Adam.”

Roget ordered the unruly language into 1,ooo categories of meaning.  “The synonyms that we find gathered together in a thesaurus are typically … like siblings that share a striking resemblance,” Lapham writes.

I was surprised to learn that Roget’s index was an afterthought. I’ve turned to that index with greater or lesser frequency since I received a thesaurus for my bar mitzvah in 1972. It may be my most-loved and most-used present that I received that day. It sits near my computer, much closer than “up on a high shelf,” where poet Billy Collins describes his as resting in the poem “Thesaurus,” an indication, writes Lapham, that Collins believes the best place for the book is at arm’s length.

Because if Roget sought to tame the language, he is often undone by the wild humans who use the thesaurus.

“To be sure, the potential for abuse is a constant danger, especially for eager students who may go overboard when hunting for impressive words,” according to Lapham.

Lapham was thinking of college students, eager to express their intellectual bona fides. In my case, the thesaurus was like a ticket to the circus midway.

In a short story I wrote in 1973 called “A Clash With Death,” two high school friends, Eric and Jim, must overcome Death in an ordeal to save their lives (I had just learned about “The Seventh Seal“). Jim, as I wrote him, never went anywhere without his thesaurus.

“I’ve come to get you, Eric,” said Death.

“You won’t take me without a fight!”

“That’s right!” said Jim. “OK, well, I’ll be seeing you guys later.

“Wait a minute,” said Eric. “You can’t leave me in my hour of need.”

“I have to. I’m one who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.”

“You mean a coward?”

“Gritless would be a better word,” said Jim.

This was the exuberance of discovering the rhythms and colors of language. I was learning the humor of the unexpected and the freedom in an unwieldy accumulation of words. Far from wanting to sound impressive, I reveled in a chaotic  derangement of the senses.

When “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” came to America a couple of years later, I recognized the same exuberant impulse, particularly in the Dead Parrot sketch:

Mr. Praline: VOOM?!? Mate, this bird wouldn’t voom if you put four million volts through it! He’s bleedin’ demised!

Owner: No no. He’s pining.

Mr. Praline:  He’s not pining. He’s passed on. This parrot is no more. He has ceased to be. He’s expired and gone to meet his maker. He’s a stiff. Bereft of life, he rests in peace. If you hadn’t nailed him to the perch he’d be pushing up the daisies. His metabolic processes are now history. He’s off the twig. He’s kicked the bucket, he’s shuffled off his mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleeding choir invisible! THIS IS AN EX-PARROT!

Yes, and Death is The Pale Priest of the Mute People, That Grim Ferryman, The Old Floorer.

]]> http://thestorydoctor.wordpress.com/2012/03/21/vocabulary-3d/ Wed, 21 Mar 2012 14:52:36 +0000 wildhope116 http://thestorydoctor.wordpress.com/2012/03/21/vocabulary-3d/ This morning was wet, drippy, and I TRUDGED, yes, TRUDGED, to the cafeteria for breakfast. My backpack, fully loaded with books for an eight-hour shift, pulled me backward while 2.5 heels tipped me forward. There was no other way to walk up the sidewalk, except click, click, TRUDGE, click, click, TRUDGE. Hunched over like the misfit from Notre Dam, I was the epitome of “trudge,” a modern-day 3D business women, TRUDGING to breakfast.

Two weeks ago, I experienced a similar revelation. The school’s spring musical showcased a gray-haired boarding house matron, who walked on stage, halfbent over, with her elbows AKIMBO, her face lined with years and worry. In a small town musical, AKIMBO appeared before my eyes, completely personified by the skilled actress. It was AKIMBO in the flesh.

Sometimes, some days, vocabulary leaps out of Roget’s Thesaurus and just happens.

1). “Where did you come up with the idea for your book?”

I guess I love this question for a variety of reasons, but the uppermost in my mind is that since I was a young teen, poring through writers’ magazines, I have seen this question asked only of published authors, and more times than I can count. It’s the cherry-on-the-curly-pointing-peek-of-the-whipped-cream-on-top-of-the-ice-cream-sundae kind of question to me!!  :D  First time I heard it, I didn’t know the person asking it was addressing me! It’s a question for an author and I didn’t see myself as an author yet. In some ways I still don’t–I am a writer and I’ve always been a writer. Strange that the designation of “author” doesn’t change that in the least.

Does being asked the question, “Where did you come up with the idea for your book?” mean I’ve ARRIVED? Nope. Definitely not. And, as far as the world is concerned, not at all. But it does mean I’ve arrived in my own personal little corner of the room, and I think that’s worth celebrating! 

2). “Have you always wanted to be a writer?”

A question that will cause the unsuspecting questioner’s eyes to glaze over as I tell my tale, neglecting nary a detail of my early days: lugging books around with me wherever I went; hiding in quiet corners of the house, reading; hunkering down in closets with pillows under my behind, a cup of hot tea by my side, and my pencil flashing across notebook paper as fantastical worlds opened up in my imagination and the real world fell away outside the door.

But I am learning to answer this question with, “Yes, I’ve known since I was a young child that I wanted to be a writer.” It saves me the disappointment of looking into a non-writer’s eyes and realizing that  something I’ve said has made me appear obsessive to them for some strange reason)! 

3). “My brother’s wife’s sister’s friend has a manuscript. Can you read it over and give her tips on how to improve it?”

You have to watch out for this question. It’s surprised me how often I’ve been asked this question (or, actually, variations on the theme) since people found out that my book was to be published. I have been asked by mere acquaintances, and even by strangers, if I will read their manuscripts. Your best bet is to say something like, ”No, I’m so sorry. I wish I could help, but I am so busy now I barely have time for all the things I need to get done in a day.” Which is undeniably true.

However, one thing I have done, I’ll admit, is to encourage YOUNG people in their writing, even to the point of looking over their work and making suggestions if I have time. But that’s different. Young people are green buds, easily crushed. If a child possesses the seed to write well, it will take some time for the seed to poke its head from the soil–that’s why the child who writes should be nurtured through all the poorly developed storylines and contrived characters, and never snickered at or dismissed as “no good.”  The child who is interested in the art of writing should be encouraged to read well-written stories, and be guided away from the writing mistakes and plot excesses common to youth  but always with a gentle hand. I don’t feel the least bit reluctant in doing this.

4). “Can you give me advice on how to get published?”

I have wanted to write books all my life, and I have written just about all my life (from the time I was seven or eight to this day). I wasn’t thinking of becoming an author so I could  be a guest on a talk show (never saw an author on a talk show anyway), I just wanted to write because I adored writing and wanted to know that some day other people might enjoy reading what I wrote. It wasn’t a passing thing for me, it wasn’t a hobby, and I have never ever had to “get motivated” to do it.

I also read books from an early age, tons of books, many of them fiction, but many also on manuscript formatting, publishing, the ins-and-outs of attracting agents—and I read those and took notes on those, for years and years, from the time I was a pre-teen right into my thirties. I still love reading books on the writing process, subscribe to and purchase magazines written specifically for writers, and am a sucker for word games and books on grammar and usage. I note that many of the people who have asked me about helping them get published have never sought that knowledge themselves. I used to walk 11 city blocks to get to the library as a young girl, to check out books on grammar and style, proof reading, literary agents—and I’d drag all those books 11 blocks home with me too, read them from cover to cover, and go back for more the next week. I wanted not only to write well, but to be professional when I approached an agent or a publisher.

These days, people have the Internet and it’s easier than ever to find the answers. If a person is truly a writer–truly a writer—he will be driven to seek out the answers to these questions himself. Not to say he can’t ask someone who has done it, who has gotten published, but if he hasn’t done anything at all to find out for himself, I have to question how serious he is about being published, and wonder if he is ready for all the work that being published entails.

So there they are, questions that I have found to be samples of the good, the bad, and the ugly.

by Jean Foster Akin

1. Foundations of Knowledge

2. Living Things

3. Social Structure

4. Human Relations

5. Belief Systems

6. Provisions

7. Health and Well-Being

8. Occupation and Crafts

9. The Arts

10. Sports and Enjoyments

11. Communications

12. The Senses

13. Feelings

14. Intellect and Ideas

15. Will and Behavior

16. Negotiations and Fiscal Relations

17. Power

18. Material Characteristics

19. Spatial Relations

20. Shape

21. Motion

22. Abstract Relations

23. Condition

It’s Thesaurus Day
Should we celebrate, revel,
Proclaim, or extol?

There’s a synonym
For thesaurus: lexicon
“Glossary” comes close

Peter Mark Roget
Doctor, inventor, researched
TB, laughing gas

Made log-log slide rule,
Tried to make calculator
More powers to him!

Studied optics, liked
Kaleidoscopes, but we know
What he’s famous for

“Roget’s Thesaurus
“Of English Words and Phrases”
Stuffed with synonyms

Of him we’re in awe
(Or reverential wonder)
And don’t lack for words

Like · · Share · 8 hours ago

These are my most used, most referred to books in my writing.  All are pretty well read and re-read, and there are many folded corners.  I have others to hand but these are my favourites, including The Writer’s Guide to Crime Writing (with excellent contributions from Minette Walters, Val McDermid and Ian Rankin)  and a very old Roget’s Thesaurus.  The Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook is the most recently thumbed, as I await that elusive three book deal.

As my father always says, what’s another word for thesaurus?

Dante And Virgil In Hell - Image via Wikipedia

I’m pulling one from the archive, today.  Given the way my past couple days has gone this seemed like an appropriate post, and I’ve always loved the way this article came out.  Enjoy, and please feel free to leave comments.

[Originally posted Apr. 13, 2008 3:50am]

I woke up around 9:30am on Saturday. It is now 1:50am Monday morning and I have yet to see the inside of my eyelids for more than a few minutes. There are two things I can think of that suck more than their names hint at: Insomnia and Migraines.

Insomnia – Latin, from insomnis sleepless, from in- + somnus sleep.
This word is weak when it comes to giving one a proper understanding of just how infuriating the passage of time can be to an insomnious person. The adjective form doesn’t even look like it’s spelled correctly. I think a more fitting word would have a sharper sound. Perhaps Exsomnia? A nice jagged word for the piercing irritation cause by watching a clock tick by hour by excruciating hour. Roget’s Thesaurus lists vigilance as a synonym. That comes closer, but fails to confer the sheer lack of energy and motivation you get once your fifth wind has passed you by. In the end I’m forced to recognize once again the complete idiocy and impotence of the English language. Insomnia translates into German as Schlaflosigkeit – a word that I think does a much better job conveying the pain and torment of sleepless nights. Hell, the word even gives a great mental image of an insomniac’s thought process after hour 30. It looks like a random compilation of letters, much the way my mind feels like an unsorted conglomeration of 2 days worth of thoughts. Schlaflosigkeit is going to be my word for insomnia from now on, never mind the fact that I can’t pronounce it.

Migraine – Middle English mygreyn, from Middle French migraine, modification of Late Latin hemicrania pain in one side of the head, from Greek hēmikrania, from hēmi- hemi- + kranion cranium.
This word is such a complete failure in expressing the idea of chronic head pain that it makes the previous example seem simple. It seems ludicrous that they would use such a plain, boring word to describe the feeling of three-inch pieces of rusty iron being driven into the center of your brain by ten-pound sledgehammers. It doesn’t even begin to carry the image of the very light conspiring with those nails to stab at your eyes with tiny photonic spears. Add in the buffeting sound waves assaulting your eardrums like acidic waves crashing against a foreign shore and you have a wonderful start. Can you see the wave/particles of light marching endlessly into your eyes, a tiny Spartan phalanx invading the windows of the soul to crush, burn and pillage the sanctity of your mind? I see that every time my migraine starts pulsing in all the nerve clusters of my brain. Despite medical anatomy lessons I am forced to believe that my brain is composed of nothing but clusters of nerves for the world to assail. No other languages have a suitable translation for migraines because it is such a new word. However, Roget’s Thesaurus does offer cephalalgia, a synonym that I think does my pain more justice. Once you translate it into German you get Kopfschmerzen, with such ecstatic combinations of mind-numbing syllables that we begin to see a word truly capable of expressing the pain a good migraine can inflict.

… I’m going to bed now. Comment and let me know what you think.

~Until whenever,
Mark

Related Articles

• Understanding What a Person With Migraine Is Going Through (everydayhealth.com)
• Newspaper Clipping of the Week: The Mystery of Migraines. (earlybirdcatchestheworm.wordpress.com)

G.P. Putnam’s Sons 2008 297 pp. ISBN 978-0-399-15462-1

Jackie makes lots of lists too, but most of them are for grocery shopping.

According to Roget’s Thesaurus (yes, I have one on hand.  It didn’t seem to get returned to high school, all those years ago.  I still consider it theirs) determined can also be resolute (makes me think of someone doing something they would rather not with a sort of look on their face, don’t you?) or more aptly for me perchance, obstinate.  Obstinate just makes me think of pig headed, but surprisingly this is not listed in Roget’s book under that word.  Instead we have things like unyielding, volitional or disobedient. (Volitional? I have never heard that word before! /goes to look it up….)

Anyway, none of these could be mistaken with disciplined, as the many commenced but never maintained exercise programs can attest.

So, my discovery this week is that I am not disciplined (restrained at many times,) but determined.  How did this confirmation of character come about, you may wonder? (You may not too.  You may be wondering about what to do for dinner tonight, or is there enough fuel in the car to get you to <insert destination here>.  Or is that just me?)

I have this slight interest in paper at this time.  It has not gone away yet.  A few weeks ago I came across this photo in a magazine of these origami pieces that had been made from old book pages.  Ah! I like that! i thought.  As the magazine had so thoughtfully printed what the origami was called, I went and looked it up.

Now I  have (as if I didn’t before) a better understanding of  ‘lesson/s in frustration’.

The origami ball is called kusudama, and indeed it does look very good.  When someone else makes it.

After you have made it, there is a sense of relief that you don’t have to do it anymore, along with a sense of wonder (bewilderment?) as to what motivated you to keep doing it, so much so that even people around you that are well known for not ever ever EVER giving up (think undiagnosed OCD) has said that they would have given it up ages ago.

What was I thinking?  (Yes. That was rhetorical)

There was a three page instructional for doing this part.  This gives you the sense that folding these bits of paper is the hard part. ha ha! It’s not.  But because you are missing the rest of the instructions (which would easily have had to run to 50 pages, at least) you don’t know this.  Add that the mind is a funny thing and has convinced you that this is the hard bit it takes a while for the realisation that assembling the ball is impossible.  Really.  It is.  But you don’t know that, and thinking that well here, someone before me has done one, and look, the hard part was folding the papers, right?  So you keep going.  And going.  And going.  By this time you are pretty heavily invested in these bits of folded paper and you can not do it.  Truly, its obsessive making.  Eventually, after hours watching the same YouTube clip, metres of double sided tape, after madness and all that it entails you may end up with this.

I don’t know what to do with it now.

Princess Hibbie

/listening to the birds flick the newly placed mulch out of the garden beds. I didn’t want it there anyway.

Ever wondered why one flavour in your cooking works so well with another? Well Niki Segnit did and three years ago she set out on a mission to examine which flavour combinations work and why. The result is the impressive “Flavour Thesaurus”. Following the form of Roget’s Thesaurus, this guide helpfully lists alphabetically, 99 popular ingredients, and suggests classic and less well known flavour matches for each.  The thesaurus also groups flavours into categories such as: spicy, earthy, sulphurous, etc. There are 980 entries in all and 200 recipes or suggestions are embedded in the text. It covers classic pairings such as pork & apple, lamb & apricot, and cucumber & dill; contemporary favourites like chocolate & chilli, lobster & vanilla, and goat’s cheese & beetroot; and interesting but unlikely-sounding couples including black pudding & chocolate, lemon & beef, blueberry & mushroom, and watermelon & oyster.

In an interview Niki says she wrote the book for herself.  ”I’m a bit too conservative when it comes to cooking so writing it made me more palate conscious; it made me more aware of what something tastes like. As a recipe slave, I was disengaged from what I was doing – just going through the motions, doing what I’m told. I’m good at that, but not necessarily being immersed in the sensual side of cooking.”

The Flavour Thesaurus: Pairings, recipes and ideas for the creative cook by Niki Segnit (Bloomsbury) is available on Amazon.

Perfect partners?

• Coffee & Beef

Caffeinated red meat. Something to serve your most militantly health-conscious friends. Coffee is used in the American south as a marinade or rub for meat. It’s also been spotted in fancier restaurants, perhaps because there’s a well-reported flavour overlap between roasted coffee and cooked beef. But my experience suggests it’s a shotgun wedding. I tried a coffee marinade on a steak and found it gave the meat an overpoweringly gamey flavour. Best to keep these at least one course apart at dinner.

• Black Pudding & Chocolate

A mixture of chocolate and cream is combined with blood to make the Italian black pudding, sanguinaccio. If that doesn’t sound rich enough to begin with, it’s often embellished with sugar, candied fruit, cinnamon or vanilla. Sanguinaccio is sometimes made into a sausage form, like other black puddings, but is also eaten (or drunk) while still in its creamier liquid state.

•  Strawberry & Cinnamon

Strawberries have a hint of candyfloss about them. Cinnamon loves sugar and fruit. Warmed together, the pair gives off a seductively seedy fug of the fairground. For an irresistible sweet snack, dig out the sandwich toaster, butter 2 slices of white bread, spread one slice (on its unbuttered side) generously with strawberry jam, and the other with more butter and a good shake of ground cinnamon. Sandwich together, with the just-butter sides facing out, and press in the toaster till the bread is crisp, golden and, essentially having been fried rather than toasted, more like a doughnut than plain old jam on toast.

Memory dwells in the past; perception dotes on the here and now; what do we call that portion of consciousness devoted to the future? Expectancy? Anticipation? Planning? Hope? Dread? Worry? Anxiety? Fear? Confidence? Waiting? Probability? Prediction? Prophecy? Fate? Whatever we call it, this cursory list suggests the human mind’s preoccupation with unknowable yet inevitable times ahead.

When you play a video on YouTube, a little slider on the bottom shows where you are on the timescale of that particular microworld. Think what it would be like to have a similar slider showing your position relative to your lifespan. Birth is well behind you; death is approaching. Whoee! Now’s the time to get moving—or drunk.

Fortunately, with life expectancies now seen as a matter of statistical probability, no such little slider exists for any one individual. Which doesn’t get us off the hook. Rather, it puts us in the murky realm of probabilities, where we could be here today, gone tomorrow—or the day after, or ten years from now. The uncertainty of it all is why consciousness spends so much of the brain’s resources trying to get a grasp on the future in so many different ways.

Matthew Arnold paints life as one’s journey on the river of Time, which rises in a snowy mountainous pass as a clear-flowing stream, and draws to the Ocean, ending with:

As the pale waste widens around him,

As the banks fade dimmer away,

As the stars come out, and the night-wind

Brings up the stream

Murmurs and scents of the infinite sea.

Here’s how Emily Dickinson puts it in less flowing, more telegraphic terms:

The Future – never spoke –

Nor will He – like the Dumb –

Reveal by sign – a syllable –

Of His Profound To Come –

But when the News be ripe –

Presents it – in the Act –

Forestalling Preparation –

Escape – or Substitute –

Indifferent to Him –

The Dower – as the Doom –

His Office – but to execute

Fate’s – Telegram – to Him –

Peter Mark Roget was no poet. He remained stodgily prosaic to the end. His goal was reasoned and literal clarity, not some ineffable tone or mood. Under heading 124 Futurity: prospective time, he included these adjectives and adjectival phrases:

Adj. future, not in the present, to be, to come; about to be, coming, nearing  289n. approaching; nigh, near in time, close at hand  200adj. near; due, destined, fated, threatening, imminent, overhanging 155adj. impending; in the future, ahead, yet to come, waiting, millennial  154adj. eventual; prospective, designate, earmarked  605adj. chosen; promised, looked for  507adj. expected,  471adj. probable; predicted, predictable, foreseeable, sure  473adj. certain; ready to, rising, getting on for; potential, on, maturing, ripening  469adj. possible; later, ulterior, posterior  120adj. subsequent.

My point being that conscious largely looks ahead to how the current situation might develop in order to figure out what to do next, and then next after that—that is, how to make the self happen in the world in a manner appropriate to the situation as it might evolve or lead to a different situation altogether. All informed by what we’ve done in the past, our current state of being, and the goals we’ve set for the future. Think of the long-term projects we commit ourselves to. Going to school. Getting a job. Getting married. Having a baby. Developing a career. Building a house. Taking a trip or vacation. Writing a book. Going on a diet. Giving up smoking, drugs, or alcohol. Going to prison. Cutting credit-card debt. Learning tai chi, Spanish, to play tennis or the guitar. The mission of consciousness is to enable us to do these things—to learn to be ourselves as we imagine ourselves being in the future on the basis of what we know now. And then to revise the plan as we move through uncharted regions ahead.

What part of consciousness is devoted to the future? I’d say the whole thing, including memory, including perception. As everyone knows, the future is in our heads, always has been, always will be. Right up there with gods, demons, fears, desires, Mr. Right, Dream Girl, the Na’vi, and Jaba the Hutt.

I write this post to my blog because for three years now I’ve been waiting for a mature spruce tree on the shore of Thompson Island Picnic Area in Acadia National Park to blow down and die. That’s where the idea of a death watch comes from. I knew in 2006 it was going to happen; I didn’t know when. So I’ve been watching that tree, looking to see if it’s still standing every time I drive across Thompson Island in leaving Mount Desert Island where I live. I’ve taken pictures of it from time to time to see if I can catch it listing to port more than it did the last time I looked. After every big storm I’d make a point of checking that tree, which I’m using as a crude gauge to sea-level rise in Hancock County, Maine. When that tree falls, it’s another milestone passed as the sea encroaches on my personal turf.

Over the years, I’ve devoted a fair portion of my mental concentration to that particular tree. I’ve made a project of watching it head into its death. We had a strong wind on the night of February 25, the wind gusting from the northeast at 45 or 50 miles an hour. On the morning of February 26, I looked through my usual gap in the trees for that spruce on the shore—and it wasn’t there. The gate to the picnic area was locked, so I pulled over, took my camera, and walked in. I came back in another storm during daylight on March 1 at high tide—which is when I figured the great tree had fallen at either dusk on February 25th or dawn on the 26th. Here are a few of the photos my consciousness directed me to take showing the final days of that spruce.

(Note: The most dramatic way to illustrate sea-level rise is to take photos of crashing waves at high tide during a storm at full or new moon. The rusty metal rings along the shore are fire rings for barbecuing hot dogs and hamburgers.)

The upshot of consciousness is a course of action appropriate to various life situations as characterized by one individual or another. Put more briefly, the point of consciousness is effective interaction with the world. Which makes it possible to track the workings of consciousness by following the trace it leaves in the works we strew across the landscape of our lives. Dante’s Divine Comedy presents one such landscape. The plays of Shakespeare portray another. The consciousness of Pablo Picasso is clearly evident in his collected paintings, drawings, sculptures, and studies. In the musical idioms of their times, Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven have annotated their respective streams of consciousness in forms we can still respond to today. Frank Lloyd Wright lives on in his buildings: to visit the Guggenheim Museum in New York is to enter his mind.

I am not speaking in fanciful metaphors here. Just as deer can be tracked by following their prints in the snow, the pellets and stains they deposit, the branches they chew off, the hollows they leave when they sleep—so can the structure and workings of the human mind be pursued by paying close attention to the spoor it leaves in interacting with its world. There for all to see are the doings of consciousness. Whatever form they take, here are traces generated by the human brain as both enabler  and substrate of extended, conscious behavior.

Personal libraries speak volumes of the minds that have collected—and actually read—them. My thirteen bookcases hold a record of my engagement with Hancock County, Maine, since 1986. Photographs, maps, notes, books, magazines—collectively, they tell what I have concerned myself with for the past twenty-four years. If they were put in chronological order (rather than the hodgepodge they are now), there would be a diary of my consciousness. Somewhere in my travels I picked up a copy of Thesaurus of Book Digests: Digests of the World’s Permanent Writings from the Ancient Classics to Current Literature, edited by Hiram Haydn & Edmund Fuller (Crown Publishers, 1949). I have dipped into it only once or twice, but this will be the first time I have put it to use by quoting the following paragraph excerpted from the entry under “WALDEN (1854), by Henry David Thoreau”:

This is the spiritual autobiography of a rebel wearied by the machine age, but too much of a practical Yankee to escape into the fog of mysticism. Thoreau gave up his trade of pencil maker and set up house at Walden Pond, outside Concord, Massachusetts. He hoped to prove to the world that the tyranny of many things is necessary, that man can live with very little and find contentment. At Walden the author lived in elegant simplicity. He was wonderfully able with his hands—an excellent carpenter, mason, surveyor and mechanic. For two years he stayed at his hermitage. His book is a record (in the form of eighteen essays) of his life, his painstaking observations of nature, and his reflections about the world’s troubles.

What strikes me about that capsule description is how little it captures the style of Thoreau’s mind as it makes its rounds through the days he actually lived on the shore of Walden Pond. That is, how little it invites me to engage such a mind by reading this particular text. I don’t generally seek out “painstaking observations of nature” and “reflections about the world’s troubles.” I want personal challenge and adventure told in readable English, and I certainly find them in Walden, but not even hinted at in this categorization of the book. The best parts—the meat of Thoreau—are left out. A direct quote of Thoreau’s own words—say, the paragraph depicting his digging his cellar hole—would make a better advertisement.

I have another book, though, that is a perfect digest of a man’s living consciousness in being a nineteenth-century site map of his mind at work on a particular project. Peter Mark Roget could be characterized many ways, such as living in England from 1779 to 1869, being a scholar and perennial student, physician, lecturer, founding member of many institutions, and so on. But the work I call a site map of his mind is his masterwork,

Thesaurus of English Words & Phrases

classified and arranged so as to

facilitate the expression of Ideas and

assist in Literary Composition

issued in 1852 when he was 73 years old, and, updated, is still in print 158 years later in 2010. In his twenties, Roget had worked out a system of verbal classification to aid his own speaking and writing. Well into his retirement, he expanded that system for broader use by the public.

The system is based on the classification of ideas divided into or embedded within four distinct levels of analysis. The broadest level is that of six classes somewhat similar to Aristotle’s categories (in two cases split into divisions):

I—ABSTRACT RELATIONS

II—SPACE

III—MATTER

IV—INTELLECT, including Division (I) Formation of Ideas, and Division (II) Communication of Ideas

V—VOLITION, including Division (I) Individual Volition, and Division (II) Intersocial Volition, and

VI—AFFECTIONS.

Each class is further divided into sections, and each section into headings which include the individual words and phrases Roget intends us to distinguish between and choose among to suit our individual projects.

To take one example, Class III MATTER is broken into three sections: 1) Matter in General, 2) Inorganic Matter, and 3) Organic Matter. Section 3) Organic Matter is further subdivided into 1—Vitality, and 2—Sensation. Subsection 1—Vitality contains 16 headings:

358 Organization

359 Mineral

360 Life

361 Death

362 Killing

363 Corpse

364 Interment

365 Animality

366 Vegetability

367 Zoology

368 Botany

369 Animal Husbandry

370 Agriculture

371 Mankind

372 Male

373 Female

Here we begin to see Roget’s genius in distinguishing polar, intermediate, and related aspects of meaning (life-death-killing-corpse-interment-animality) as reflected in his systematized associations between concepts and words. Heading 371 Mankind includes, among 155 other terms under six other subheadings:

person, individual, human being, everyman, everywoman; creature, fellow creature, mortal, body; a being, soul, living soul; God’s image; one, somebody, someone, so and so, such a one; party, customer, character, type, element; chap, guy, bloke, fellow, cove, johnny 372n. male; personage, figure, person of note, VIP 638n. bigwig; star  890n. favorite; dramatis personae, all those concerned  686n. personnel; unit, head, hand, nose.

And that is only a small part of one heading out of the 990 in my edition. In keeping with the then current rage for reason, Roget’s original scheme contained an even 1000 headings. Clearly, Peter Mark Roget was a systematic thinker, a quality of mind credited to his mother (his father died when he was a child). At over 770 pages, the index of words and phrases in my 1966 Dell edition takes up over half the entire book (I can’t tell the exact length of the index because the back cover came off years ago, and with it an unknown number of pages).

In his introduction to the original 1852 edition, Roget wrote:

The present Work is intended to supply, with respect to the English language, . . . a collection of the words it contains and of the idiomatic combinations peculiar to it, arranged, not in alphabetical order as they are in a Dictionary, but according to the ideas which they express. The purpose of an ordinary dictionary is simply to explain the meaning of the words; and the problem of which it professes to furnish the solution may be stated thus:—The word being given, to find its signification, or the idea it is intended to convey. The object aimed at in the present undertaking is exactly the converse of this: namely,—The idea being given, to find the word, or words, by which that idea may be most fitly and aptly expressed. For this purpose, the words and phrases of the language are here classed, not according to their sound or their orthography [spelling], but strictly according to their signification.

Imagine having the mind and discipline to create such a work. Roget’s Thesaurus is aimed at improving expressive language, not language as received by eye or ear. It facilitates converting concepts and feelings into meaningful sounds—one of the basic requirements of speaking or writing in English. When the right word for a particular audience does not spring readily to mind, the word search becomes conscious, and one word or phrase from a number of options must be chosen as the most appropriate. The Thesaurus, then, is a tool for converting conscious intentions into overt speech acts suitable to the writer-speaker’s specific situation at the time.

The challenge of such situations is to achieve order among the many elements that bear on a speaker in a given situation so that her vocabulary, categorizations, meanings, and intended emphases are fulfilled by an utterance whose word choice, syntax, and intonation are all of a piece in keeping with the situation she is engaged with insofar as she can anticipate the role she is about to play in the lives of her audience. Which is a tall order because the only way to learn to do that is through trial and error, alternating with self-correction, study, and further rehearsal.

After taking a writing workshop in 2001, I was consumed by the question, Where do words come from? They seem to be just there on the tip of our tongues when we need them, but how do they get there? It is now clear to me that meanings and categorizations are primary, and the words used to express them arise from a sense of the situation and the urge to make a fitting verbal response. I see that now as being essentially an aesthetic (rather than a strictly rational) problem. In getting our speech acts together, we have to be clear which valence we mean to express—positive, negative, or neutral—and where on the gradients of emphasis, clarity, and detail we wish to position ourselves. Will easy, broad, general terms suffice, or do we have to exert ourselves to become more discriminating than that? How specific must we be? How experientially detailed or conceptually inclusive? These complex decisions are rooted in the sense we have of our own experience in relation to the situation we are engaged with—that is, with what we are asking of ourselves on that occasion under those particular circumstances as we construe them.

This is essentially the problem Peter Roget faced when he compiled his original system for putting meanings into words. And that compels us today to take his Thesaurus off the shelf when we’re not sure what to say because the words aren’t there on our tongues where we need them to be. I would hazard that Roget’s drive to systematic thinking originated from just such uncertainty during his formative years as a speaker of English (his father was born in Geneva and was not a native speaker). Fortunately for us, young Roget faced into the problem and produced a masterly system for turning incipient categorizations into speech acts through word choices appropriate to various situations as he understood them. He was exceptionally well-schooled by his mother and early teachers.

Having a site map of Roget’s mind at our elbows, we are direct beneficiaries of his nineteenth-century consciousness. Bloggers and twitterers probably don’t devote that much time to diagnosing their situations or choices of words—which is why they are bloggers and twitterers. They prefer to speak from the hip, as it were. But spontaneity isn’t everything, particularly in touchy situations or when dealing with complex issues. Which is when having wide ranges of both meanings and terms to select from is a definite advantage in achieving an appropriate subtlety of expression. If the world is seen in black and white, then perhaps bold or brazen speech might be deemed appropriate—as in war or clashes between street gangs. But there’s usually more to a situation than is readily apparent, and a simplistic approach is apt to stir up more trouble than it can deal with. I truly believe that suiting our behavior to the various situations we find or place ourselves in calls for aesthetic judgments unimagined in the OK Corral. Aesthetics is a matter of putting every aspect of consciousness into play, attending to the subtleties as well as the overall landscape, acknowledging the role of every part in creating the whole, the integrity and dignity of the whole in relation to every part—and acting only when the full dynamic richness and complexity of the experience have been savored. Then the appropriate words appear on the tongue as called up by the fullness of the experience, and the speaker effectively matches outward words to the inner occasion.

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“We are in the bottom of the ninth.

“Much like the 1969 ‘Miracle Mets,’ Barack Obama stands on the precipice of history. Barring an error of Bill Buckneresque proportions, Senator Obama will very likely be the winner of the seemingly perpetual 2008 presidential election. The Senator from Illinois- home of the Cubs, the White Sox and ‘Da Bears- could not have run a more efficient campaign had Tony LaRussa been at the helm.

“That being said, it may have been Senator McCain’s Boog Powellian selection of Sarah Palin that put the runners in scoring position. And like Ron Swoboda in the year of Woodstock and Broadway Joe, Senator Obama used that error, one in a long line long of errors by the McCain campaign, to drive the message home.

“Finally, to paraphrase a line from Paul Dickson’s 1991 book “Baseball’s Greatest Quotations,” ‘If the Mets can win the World Series, the US can get out of Iraq’.

“Good night and good luck.”

-MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann during a recent ‘Campaign Comment.’

When teased by an MSNBC intern that the Mets were, in fact, not in this year’s World Series, Mr. Olbermann shattered a New York Yankees souvenir bat over the head of the intern and stormed out of the MSNBC studios muttering about Tom Seaver and Willie Randolph.

Mr. Olberman, all intern clubbing aside, is not far off the mark. While lacking his ‘objectivity’, many a pundit has echoed the sentiment that Barack Obama has run an exceptional campaign and, should the polls hold true, will be the next President of the United States.

However, as Yogi Berra says, “It ain’t not over til it’s over.”

Until the fat lady sings next Tuesday, there is technically a lot of campaign left. Undecideds and soft supporters still make up a sizeable 20+% of those likely to vote on November 4th. To put it another way, this campaign is still one October Surprise from making the pundits look bad.

For the past month, GonzoGeek reporters have dug deep into the campaigns of Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama, examining what the two candidates stand for and what they propose to do if elected.

We present their work to you, as non-Olbermannly as possible.

And don’t worry, we left the bats at home.

Economy: I’m free…free falling

With the economy on its knees, the stock market in free fall, and panic running wild, Senators Obama and McCain found themselves back in Congress in early October to vote for a flawed and costly rescue effort. Ultimately named the ‘Troubled Asset Relief Program (or TARP), this plan allows the US Treasury to take bad debt off the hands of banks and transfer ownership of that debt to the United States Taxpayer. While both candidates supported the bill, they did so with a number of caveats. Senator Obama asked that CEO pay for companies accepting government assistance no longer be based upon ability, but spread around within the company based upon need. Senator McCain asked that the rescue plan be made retroactive to 1989.

However, passage of TARP does not automatically fix the problem. The beleaguered institutions that made mountains of money buying and selling debt, financed by debt and guaranteed by debt are still on the ropes, and rightly so. There is no ‘quick fix’, as a number of prominent economists have pointed out. Rep. Barney Frank (D) of the House Financial Services Committee described the current situation thusly, “It is a house of cards built on a cardboard box outside in the rain; a ramble-tangle of poor lending practices, nonexistent regulation, political cheerleading and endless finger pointing.” When asked about his role in the mortgage debacle, Mr. Frank said. “Yes, I encouraged Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac to relax their lending practices and expand the sub-prime market to include the barely literate, but that was all rhetoric. I never expected them to actually do it. I was as surprised as anyone when the roof blew off.” And he was not alone.

Senator McCain, as late as the morning of the day things fell apart claimed that the fundamentals of our economy were ‘strong’. He later amended that statement to mean ‘the American worker is strong,’ and then again to “Hoard your money, my friends. There’s a shit storm coming, and we’re all going to take it prison-style.” In contrast, Mr. Obama said nothing, choosing to revel in the political windfall that just fell into his lap.

Moving forward, Senator Obama has put forth the idea of a rather vanilla stimulus plan and a broad middle class tax cut, provided you are not a quarter of a millionaire. Senator McCain, on the other hand has proposed a plan that has been called both ‘visionarily maverickesque’ and ‘ruinous folly’. Under the McCain plan, the IRS would be abolished and tax collection would be privatized.  Taxes, on the whole, would be determined by the market.

On a recent episode of ‘Hardball’ with Chris Matthews, Air America and MSNBC commentator, Rachel Maddow, called the plan “The most addle-pated of addle-pated schemes. Letting the market decide how they’re taxed? Well, on the upside, you’ll close a lot of ‘fat cat’ corporate loopholes that no one’s going to need anymore. The market is going to start with a top rate of 0%, and work its way down from there. That sucking sound Ross Perot heard 16 years ago wasn’t jobs going to Mexico,” she added, “it was our future being flushed down the crapper.”

Conservative commentator, Pat Buchannan, countered Ms. Maddow, “Rachel, you fail to see the beauty of this plan. TARP will put indirect control of the banks and credit institutions under the wing of the US Treasury, which is a part of the executive branch. ‘The market’ will, in effect, be an extension of the office of the President. McCain is simply evolving a process already put into place by the Bush administration; the simplification of self-determination.

“In this day and time, there are just some things in a democracy that are too important to be decided by a vote. They must be put into practice on the people’s behalf by a strong, central authority. This is a reality that George W Bush and Dick Cheney understand. It will be their legacy and Americans will learn to accept it,” he concluded.

Both Ms. Maddow and Chris Matthews were stunned.

Energy: It keeps going and going and going….

The Obama campaign may have been slow to the party, but they too have jumped aboard the ‘Drill, baby, drill!’ express. Not to be outdone by his Republican counterparts, Sen. Obama has upped the ante on exploiting our natural resources. In a Facebook ‘friends only’ campaign address, the Senator from Illinois proposed that Yellowstone National Park be opened to geothermal development. “This steam is our steam,” he says, “from wooded forests to Gulf Stream waters, from California to the New York island. This steam belongs to you and me.” Mr. Obama then added, “If we do not get this steam for ourselves, we will forever be beholden to places like Iceland to fulfill our need…our need for steam.”

The candidate has also pledged up to 250 billion dollars to fund promising ‘cold steam’ technology.

The RNC has given the cold shoulder to Senator Obama’s ‘thermal agenda’, accusing Mr. Obama of looking backwards, towards the failed policies of the industrial revolution. “Reverting to steam power flies in the face of everything Big Auto and Big Oil have done to this country,” says RNC Chairman, Mike Duncan. “What are we supposed to do, go out and buy a Doble? Maybe see what Robert Fulton is doing these days? Oh that’s right, Fulton is dead. Know how? Second hand steam. Burned his lungs up. This is not the kind of change America can believe in. No thank you, Nobama.”

Lest more ground be ceded to Mr. Obama, Sen. McCain has renewed his push to put ‘…a nuclear reactor in the hands of every man woman and child in America.’ Critics of the Senator’s energy agenda have noted that handing out 300 million nuclear devices is ‘not good’. “Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light,” says Dr. Egon Spengler of the Ramis Institute, “That bad.” Undaunted, Sen. McCain thrilled supporters at a rally just outside of Ohio when he openly challenged lawmakers to meet his nuclear mandate. “Friends,” declared the Senator, “let me be perfectly clear. I will not rest until this country had been thoroughly nuked.”

Healthcare: The fundamentals of our health are sound.

In a whitepaper released last spring, the McCain campaign proposed massive changes to our current healthcare system. Hoping to duplicate the perceived successes of the financial markets at that time, the plan featured massive deregulation of the healthcare industry. The thinking went that greater competition for the healthcare dollar would result in more choices, better care and lower prices. Jeff Trewitt, spokesman for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, an industry advocacy group, applauded the plan, “By removing such barriers negotiated tiers, FDA approvals, and mandatory coverages, the healthcare industry will be able to deliver a whole range of new and innovative products to consumers, such as Probonercil, an combination erectile dysfunction/hair restoration/acne cream made by our partners as Pfizer. Welcome back, tiger!”

The Obama campaign has taken a much more ambitious approach to reforming the health care system. Under an Obama administration, low-income families unable to obtain health insurance in the United States would be made Canadian citizens and absorbed into their healthcare system. “We believe this is win-win,” says campaign spokesperson, Robert Gibbs. “By becoming Canadian, the poor instantly qualify for health benefits not available to them in this country. And once we’re finished deporting the indigent, we’ll be able to declare victory in the war on poverty. Mission accomplished!’

Should the program prove successful, America itself would formally apply for Canadian provincehood sometime in late 2011.

Running Mates: Opposites attract

Despite being declared a ‘stroke of brillancy’, Sen. McCain’s choice of running mate Sarah Palin has been seen in recent weeks as a drag on the ticket. Responding to critics through an iTunes podcast, McCain defended his choice and pointed out that ‘Governor Palin’s name was not picked out of a hat as the liberal media would have you believe. My advisors and I thoroughly discussed and debated each candidate on my short list. Then the names were put into a fishbowl, not a hat, for me to pick from.’

Insides sources have confirmed that other names in the fishbowl that day were governors Bobby Jindal and Tim Pawlenty, entertainers Sting and Carrottop, and fictional presidents Jed Bartlett and Abe Vigoda. Senator McCain also clarified his campaign’s vetting process, saying ‘You know, we made some calls.’

Senator Obama has faced criticism of his own in selecting Senator Joe Biden as his running mate. While seen as possessing the kind of foreign policy experience and credibility that Mr. Obama lacks, the two-time candidate for President also presents unique challenges, mainly keeping his mouth shut.

‘Biden’s a talker, that’s for sure,’ said ABC political correspondent, George Stephanopoulos. ‘The real key to making this selection work is keeping him on a very short leash and limit his contact with the press. This is no easy feat. Joe’s attracted to open microphones like a moth to a flame. Ideally, the Obama campaign needs to build a time machine, go back, and pick someone else. Probably a girl.’

Although not a girl, Senator Biden has defied expectations and kept the gaffes to a minimum. Sources within the campaign credit the senator’s refusal to read, watch or listen to the news as a big part of that success. As Obama advisor David Axelrod explained recently on the democratic blog ‘Probama.com’, ‘Joe took a beating back in 1988 when he plagiarized a major policy speech from British Labour leader Joe Kinnock. Since then, he has completely cut himself off from outside sources of information to prevent that from happening again. It’s amazing, really, to be so self-aware that he realizes he completely forgets where he is and what he’s talking about at any given time. That’s the kind of quality you want in a Vice President. Someone who knows they’re only important when they screw up, and by and large, they’re not that important.’

Sources in the McCain camp have been quick to point out that Sarah Palin has steered clear of most sources of information as well, although, they concede, largely due to a lack of interest. Governor Palin’s shortcomings were on full display recently when she failed to answer such ‘elitist’ questions as ‘What newspapers do you read’ and ‘How had John McCain been a maverick?’ In reviewing the interview for this article, CBS Senior Correspondent Bob Shaeffer remarked, ‘Wow. I didn’t know anyone could make Katie Couric look like a hard-hitting, big time journalist. Did she really say she reads all the newspapers? Could someone run this for me again?’

The interview in question, as well as an equally disastrous appearance with Charlie Gibson has lead to charges of ‘gotcha journalism’ by the McCain camp, and claims that the ‘media elite’ were out to destroy Ms. Palin because she was not one of them. Mike Wallace, former CBS reporter and father of Fox News’ Chris Wallace, said in response, ‘Being asked what paper you read is hardly ‘gotcha’. ‘Gotcha’ is asking Idi Amin about bar-b-que, then throwing down photos of him eating a dissident cabinet member.” Mr. Wallace then added, “Likewise, being interviewed by Sean Hannity isn’t journalism. That’s propaganda. Hannity…dear God. Did you know I once offered Chris $100 and my old spot on ’60 Minutes’ if he punched that dickhead in the mouth on camera?”

Guilt by Associates: We are known by the company we keep

Both campaigns have attempted to cast doubt on their opponents’ character by pointing out various contradictions in their personal narratives with varying degrees of success. The Obama camp has worked tirelessly to undermine John McCain’s ‘maverick’ image and paint him as ‘Bush III’. Surrogates have been quick to point that Senator McCain’s 2004 reconciliation with President Bush, a man he once described as ‘…beyond stupid, my friends. He is incompetence personified, a dark blot on human achievement’, was nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt at connecting with the far right wing of the Republican Party. And in a new Obama campaign spot, Senator McCain the maverick, can now bee seen boasting that he has voted with the Bush administration an astonishing 95% of the time, a fact easily verified through a ‘Congressional Quarterly’ review of Senatorial voting records. The same review also points out that the Senator now ‘mavericks’ a mere 2% of the time, right behind ‘phoning it in’. When confronted with these number, former McCain campaign advisor, Phil Gramm, shrugged and said, ‘Yeah, but at least John has a voting record to run on. Why don’t you whiners go ask Senator Hussein about his racist minister?’

That ‘racist minister’ would be the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, former pastor for Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, where Senator Obama was a congregant for over twenty years. The same Reverend Wright quoted in Mr. Obama’s book ‘The Audacity of Hope’, the man who presided over Senator Obama’s wedding, who baptized Mr. Obama’s children and served as the Senator’s spiritual advisor until the campaign abandoned him when they could no longer control the damage. As Reverend Wright’s fiery sermons came to light, many white Americans were shocked to learn that black Americans saw the world differently than they did and did not like what they saw. This was a revelation.

“A minister should preach the truth, he should lead his congregation out of darkness and into the light,” says Pat Robertson, Baptist minister and founder of the 700 Club. “To use the altar as a personal soapbox, to damn this country and blame a specific group of people for all the evil in the world…why that’s unforgivable.” Robertson then went on to say, “But I guess that we should be glad he’s just a racist and not a homosexual.”

Added Pastor Thomas Muthee, a Kenyan bush-priest who once laid hands upon Governor Palin in preparation for her gubernatorial run, “Muggaaa, mugga bu. Buuga, muuuga, gunga la dunga, gabba gabba hey, witches.’

Unfortunately for McCain, attempts to dredge up other Obama relationships for political gain have met with far less success. Real estate swindler, Tony Rezko, struck no chords with voters and attempts to portray Senator Obama’s relationship with Bill Ayers, former Weatherman and 60’s activist, as ‘paling around with ‘terrorists’ have done marginally better. Observers believe the failure of the Ayers tactic has been due largely to the fact that Ayers was a ‘terrorist’ in the Midwest at a time when Barack was an eight year old boy living in Hawaii. Democratic strategist and Clinton friend, James Carville, has been especially harsh in his criticism of this line of attack. “Let’s get real, folks. John McCain is so old and out of touch with the real world that the only Weathermen and plumbers he knows are Willard Scott and G. Gordon Liddy.” Added Mr. Carville, “And can anyone here say ‘Keating Five’? Whoooo!! Cajun style!”

Fierce Conservative and longtime McCain supporter G. Gordon Liddy countered Mr. Carville on his radio program. “Bring it you creepy, backwater bastard. I don’t regret anything I’ve ever done. I just wish those gutless pudsuckers at Creep (Committee to Re-Elect the President) had let me do half the things I wanted to do.’ Mr. Libby added unapologetically, ‘Let me make one thing perfectly clear…I am, first and foremost, a Patriot! The crimes that I have committed; the break-ins, the character assassination, the threats and intimidation, I did those things out of love for my country and my President. John has nothing to be ashamed of in being my friend. He knows that if elected, all he has to do is say the world and I will bomb, assassinate or kill anyone he wants gone from this earth. One quick headshot and ‘POW!’ drop him like an ATF jackboot. No more troubles from that guy.”

Senator Biden, in one of the few instances he has been allowed to talk to the media uncensored, may have had the final word on these ‘guilt by association’ tactics and the campaign as a whole.

“Ladies and gentlemen, for years Mickey Mouse was directly linked to Walt Disney, a known Anti-Semitic, Communist hating, hardcore right wing FBI spyformant, and we in no way assume that Mickey is any of those things. We love Mickey Mouse. And following the election, ladies and gentlemen, Barack Obama and I are going to Disneyland.”

Parting Shots: Interesting crumbs to mark the campaign trail

- Most of the evidence that John McCain was programmed by the Chinese to be a sleeper agent during his five years in a POW camp is circumstantial.

- Before becoming a community organizer, Barack Obama founded a chain of Irish themed, casual dining restaurants called ‘O’Bamigans’.

- The RNC has spent over $150,000 on clothing to dress Sarah Palin for the campaign, an amount equivalent to the combined salaries of Joe the Plumber and two Joe Six Packs.

- Scientists have found that if someone screams ‘Yes we can!’ loud enough and long enough, light bulbs will change themselves.

- Joe Biden does not receive Botox shots in his forehead. Due to repeated brain aneurism surgeries, the front of his head has been replaced with a removable plastic shell.

- Once a month, when the moon is full, John McCain bathes in the blood of freshman Senators to keep up his youthful energy.

- ‘Obamaphiles’ is not a show about FBI agents investigating Barack Obama’s mysterious past.

- Contrary to popular belief, Roget’s and Merriam-Webster’s do not have the authority to remove words and phrases will from the English language. Therefore, ‘My Friends’, ‘Maverick’, ‘Gotcha’, ‘Main Street v. Wall Street’, ‘Joe’ and ‘You Betcha’ will remain in popular usage well into the foreseeable future.

- A number of polls released recently show Obama ahead by as much as 12% and as a little as 1%. Why the disparity? Blame the pollsters. According to Wikipedia, pollsters are:

“…once-human, slug like, gelatinous blobs, whose skin secretes an electro-sensitive slime coating that enables pollsters to plug directly into any electronic media. They are math sensitive, and experience life as reductive bar graph that they chart against a derivative of relative happiness. Their language is qualitative, spoken in a questioning lilt. Their written language has no periods. When seen in public, pollsters wear elaborate ‘Human Suits’ gifted to them by space aliens living on the other side of the stargate. They must be stopped at any cost.”

We’re GonzoGeek, and we disavow this election.

I am a writer by profession, but only write under deadline–if you don’t count the occasional dreary whines into my journal.   If one wants to improve in skill or expand one’s ouevre (love that word, ouevre – sounds so Important), one should write every day.

Since self-discipline isn’t my strong suit I had to create a ruse to make me place pen to paper (fingers to keyboard). I needed to feel that I was talking to someone outside my own skull, and that that audience (however tiny) expected me to keep my agreement to produce on deadline.

It’s said that it takes 21 days to make something a habit. For those of us with self-discipline issues, it may take longer.  For me, it took about 60 days to arrive at a point where I WANT to produce a post.  I called the blog 365Pwords, but at this point I suspect I could go on forever, because there thousands of great P-words, and many of them are worth revisiting several times.

Three side benefits of keeping my focus narrow (at least it seemed narrow when I began):

• I see the world through p-colored glasses.  P-words pop up in unexpected places like colorful toadstools after a spring rain.  Oooh. I have to write about THAT.
• Roget’s Thesaurus is my new best friend.  If something noteworthy happens and I’m plagued by a paucity of P-words to describe it, I get out Roget’s and lose myself among a plethora of word associations until I find the perfect one.  (Forget the online thesaurus, folks. Or the alphabetic ones. If you want to boost your creative thinking, you need the original Roget’s on paper.)
• I’ve discovered the dictionary. When I was little and asked the meaning of a word, my mom would say, “Go look it up in the dictionary…” which just pissed me off.   I had resisted it ever since, until the P-word Project.  What riches lie within those pages! Try it yourself sometime. Again, the paper dictionary, not the online one.