Incurable Itch, Phantom Limbs, and Mirror Therapy

If you have not read this article, The Itch, from the New Yorker online, give it a read. It's all about perspective and how much our brains actually perceive versus how much our brains reconstruct from experience. I like the idea that the human brain can have a malfunctioning safety switch, like a "check engine" light that leads to $$$$$$$ repair work when the only thing wrong is the check engine function itself.

Who has not read what?

Someone at Britain's Telegraph newspaper hit on the bright idea to visit the Ways With Words Festival and accost people with the question, "Which great books are you embarrassed to admit you have never read?" I recall a recent discussion, with Jorge and Dan the Camel Cricket Man and D.J., about just this topic. The Telegraph link is here; it includes a video clip (my computer has no sound, so I have no idea what all those people are saying).

Let's see what great books I have that I have not read:

Gulliver's Travels (Jonathan Swift)
Slaughterhouse-five (Kurt Vonnegut)
Moby Dick (Herman Melville)
One-Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
Light in August (William Faulkner)
Finnegan's Wake (James Joyce)
Macbeth (William Shakespeare)
Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brontë)

Also I own a copy of Milton: The Complete Poems (so complete that it includes even those written in Latin). I'll never read it. Anyhow, who has time to read everything? And why would this be embarrassing to admit? I'm not embarrassed to say what I have not read. If I do ever get around to reading Finnegan's Wake, by the way, I doubt I'll ever finish it.

Great Obsolete Words That Should be Resurrected for Use in Modern English

spleck: n. A speck, a spot.

vulpeculated: past ppl. Robbed by a fox.

busk: I. intransitive verb. 1. To prepare onself, get ready. b. spec. To attire or deck oneself; to dress. c. transf. To essay, attempt. 2. To set out, go (chiefly with notion of speed); to hie, hurry, haste. 3. To busk up: to get up, rise. II. transitive verb. 4. To prepare, make, or get ready; to set in order, fit out. (Still in Scottish, sometimes with up.) 5. To dress, attire, accoutre, adorn, dress up; = ‘to dress’ in its widest sense. (Still in Scottish.) b. spec. To dress a fishing-hook. c. fig. 6. To dispatch, hurry, hasten. III. reflexive verb. 7. To prepare or equip (oneself), get ready; now esp. Scottish. to dress, clothe, or deck (oneself). 8. To betake oneself, to hie one.

Addition. Here are some more words we should be using nowadays.

crooken: v. Obs. 1.transitive. To make crooked; fig. to pervert. 2.intransitive. To be or become crooked; to bend.

crowl: v. Obs. intransitive. To rumble or make a sound in the stomach and bowels.

crump: v. Obs. 1.intransitive To draw itself into a curve, curl, curl up. 2.transitive (and reflexive) To bend (a thing) into a curve, crook, curl up. 3.fig.? To ruffle, disturb.

crispisulcant: a. rare Undulating or serpentine. [From the Latin.]

[Source: Oxford English Dictionary Online.]

Today's Post: WORDS THAT SOUND FUNNY BECAUSE THE WRITER IS TIRED

Impetigo
Gnaw
Moist
Crevice
Inveigle
Hoot
Floater
Vacation
Bifurcate
Tonsilectomy
Atwitter
Aquiver
Aflutter
Afluvium
Curlicue
Splatter
Prenarrative
Wag
Bigwig
Appendages


And, as an added bonus, here is some weird shit written some time ago in the writing journal I carry everywhere.

"There is this giant squid in my coffee. I can't see it, the squid. No one can. I can't taste it either, or smell it. No one can. But I hear it swimming around, jetting, propulsing itself in circles against the wall of the cup. I sip my coffee carefully, and never drink more than half of it, because I can't fathom the thought of drinking in the squid down the tube of my throat. But worse is the thought of seeing the squid not against the wall of the cup, but at the bottom, squirming in the little puddle of coffee that you can never seem to drink, no matter how many times you sip."

I don't know what that was, but it is slightly disgusting.

Addition. Some of the above words, defined (source: Oxford English Dictionary Online).

impetigo: n. A name given to various pustular diseases of the skin, and in pl. to such diseases in general. From the Latin, to assail, attack.

gnaw: v. 1. trans. To bite (something) persistently so as to injure it or remove portions of it; to wear away by a continued biting or nibbling. b. With adverbial or other complement, expressing the result of the action, as to gnaw away, off, out, up; asunder, in two. 2. Of destructive agents: to corrode, waste away, consume. Said also of internal pains. 3. fig. Said esp. of passion, remorse, etc. b. Absol. and intr.; esp. with prepositions to gnaw at, into; also in indirect passive. From the Old English, gnaðan.

crevice: n. 1. A crack producing an opening in a surface or through the thickness of anything solid; a cleft, rift, chink, fissure. b. Spec. in Mining. A fissure in which a deposit of ore or metal is found. Also attrib. c. Rarely = crevasse n., in a glacier. From the Middle English, Old French, to creak, rattle, crack.

atwitter: advb. phr. In a twitter, twittering.

aflutter: advb., prop. phr. In a flutter, agitated.

splatter: n. A spatula. Obsolete. 1. A heavy or loud splash or spatter. 2. An irregular assemblage.