I have mixed feelings about finding myself saluted by Bud Light. Have you heard their “Real Men of Genius” commercials on the radio? They make fun of someone who does something silly or has a weird job. One day you hear “Today we salute you, Mr. Basketball Shoe Designer” and another you hear about “Mr. Stadium Scoreboard Marriage Proposal Guy.” Well, I finally heard, “Today we salute you, Mr. Cell Phone Holster Wearer… Even though cell phones are small enough to fit in your pocket, you still wear yours on your belt, telling everyone, ‘I have a cell phone.'” I have occasionally wondered if I should be that guy, and now I know I should be ashamed.

You can hear some of the commercials on the Bud Light website.

attitudinatively

I’m still waiting to learn what this means; a technical philosophical term. “..there is no satisfactory justification for supposing that the factual is, by definition, attitudinatively and motivationally neutral.” John McDowell, “Values and Secondary Qualities,” 1985.

barrel-assing

Driving dangerously fast. “The boys who go barrel-assing down my dirt road have a big white decal they blazon on their windshields that says NO FEAR.” Garrett Keizer, Harper’s, 2003.

beigelander

One who focuses on neutral colors and Safari themes in interior design. Reported to me by a friend.

cellardamp

The dampness or smell of a cellar. Coined by James Joyce in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, 1916.

concretize

To organize ideas and make information clear. Merriam-Webster OnLine notes its first use in 1884.

freezation

A state of having been frozen; cold. A friend spontaneously coined this and Google can find several occurrences on the Web.

outstate

The region of a state in the U.S. outside of the state’s largest metroplitan area. The implication is that the residents of the largest metro area see themselves as the center of the state and need a term to describe the rest, such as “outstate Minnesota.” Perhaps this is more accurate than confusing terms such as “upstate New York,” where it sounds like it may refer to northern regions but often refers to the whole area outside of New York City, and “south Georgia,” that sounds like it may refer to the southern half of the state but is often used to describe any place south of Atlanta, including Macon, which is north of the geographic center.

paper street

A publicly owned right-of-way that has not been improved for access. Paper is often enclosed in quotation marks.

unexistable

Not able to realize; fictional.

I have spread
my dreams under
your feet
tread sorftly
because you
on my dreams

It seems like back in middle school we were pencil technicians. I was geeky, so my friends and I used mechanical pencils. We could basically field strip them and did so often when we were bored. I knew about different lead sizes (0.5, 0.7, 1.0 mm) and different models from popular brands. When shopping for school supplies I had to match up the right eraser refills, the right lead, etc. At three or four dollars each, a pencil seemed like an investment, so you just didn’t “borrow” my pencil. I had loaner pencils on hand.

The Pentel Quicker Clicker was the workhorse. It was durable enough to be useful and complicated enough to keep me entertained during boring classes. It had an eraser seated in a metal clamp and a cap over the eraser, so there were all kinds of pieces to take apart. I think I remember a sort of needle in the bottom of the eraser for cleaning out lead, but I’m not sure.

A school supply tinkerer in probably fifth grade developed an entertaining activity with a normal wooden pencil. He discovered that you can take the end of a notebook spiral, bend it in parts so you had something like a hand-operated drill, and literally drill a hole through the pencil with the blunt broken end of the wire.

Words that are interesting for various and sundry reasons