July 13, 2006

I Like To Make Up Words

One of the fun things about being me is that I constantly hallucinate words and phrases that don't exist, but that offer (me, at least) great amusement. Maybe "hallucinate" is the wrong word. It's more like parallel processing of a creative nature. I see or hear what's really there, and my mind spins off tons of other parallel concepts at the same time.



Jelliments
Recently M. and I were enjoying yet another nature documentary, this one featuring the delightfully enthusiastic David Attenborough. I swear at one point he was traipsing through an Amazonian jungle, rapturous with all the biodiversity and raw beauty of the place, and described something as being adorned with "numbulous* jelliments." Of course, all the rest of the day I bounced around using this phrase with ridiculous histrionic English overtones.



Also, not long ago, M. and I found ourselves pulling into a truck stop in a somewhat rural area, and started doing insensitive, obnoxious imitations of the most extremely stereotypical inhabitant of places, say, off the beaten path. As we pulled into a parking space, she said, in a hilariously cartoony redneck cadence, something that sounded to me like "I don't give a gibble." It took us a few minutes to regain our composure so we could actually leave the car.



(*Uh-oh. "Numbulous" is in Finnegans Wake. I'm crazier than Lucia Joyce.)

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