A Journal of My Mid-Life Crisis

11 January 1998 - All Right-Thinking People vs. Xylophagous Troglodytes

Part 1: A Brief Glossary of Miriam-speak

When I was telling my mother about Antarctica, I described the scenery as "splendid" and she said that I must be picking up Britishisms from Robert. I don't think "splendid" is a particularly British word (not like "brilliant" which Brits use as a general appreciation and not as a comment on extreme and rare intelligence) but this got me thinking about words and phrases that I use that other people don't.

Hence, this brief glossary of "Miriam-speak":

"in the known universe" - a phrase I use a lot to describe something unusual. For example, I am the last person in the known universe who doesn't own a microwave oven. Robert is the sexiest man in the known universe. And so on. I think I used to use "in North America" in more or less the same context but I am better traveled now :)

"the source of all evil in the universe" - the New York Yankees. Note that this includes the unknown universe. The logic behind this is explained in My Grand Unified Theory of Politics, Economics and the American League East.

"truly evil" - amusing in a weird and corny way, often involving puns, trivia and/or bad 70's pop music. My latest truly evil idea was a Sonny Bono memorial singalong hour.

"umpty ump" - a large number. I have no idea where I got this from but I've noticed I use it a lot. For example, at work I might say "we could spend umpty ump more hours on this, but it wouldn't get us anywhere." Outside of work I might refer to somebody spending umpty ump dollars on a frivolous purchase.

"pibs" - A term coined by Eric McColm which came from an acronym for "people in black". Nowadays they usually have several piercings, too, and they hang out being pretentious in coffeehouses. I have a number of friends with pibbish tendencies and it's fun to run into one of them in a public place (e.g. the supermarket) while I'm dressed in my most business like attire.

"wardrobe schizophrenia" - suffered by pibs with respectable jobs.

"all right-thinking people" - those who agree with me.

"neanderthals" - people who disagree with me. Usually used in the context of "political neanderthals." Also often used to describe the behavior of people in shopping mall parking lots.

"power-shopping" - the ultimate form of female bonding. It generally involves cities with real downtowns (e.g. New York, San Francisco) rather than malls and actual purchases are rare. Lunches with lots of chocolate are also usually part of the experience.

"the ur-Nordstrom's" - the original Nordstrom's store in Seattle, home to the shoe department of the gods. Or the best shoe department in the known universe.

"food pornography" - graphic descriptions of great meals. A writing form that I am quite fond of, as regular readers might notice.

"all the intelligence of a giant sea tortoise" - an insult, usually applied to neighbors who do things like flooding my apartment by not turning off the faucets when they go out for the day.

"xylophagous troglodytes" - literally means "wood-eating cave dwellers" but was coined as an insult by some of my college roommates as we labored over some vocabulary developing self-improvement plan. It's not really a phrase I use all that often but it is definitely one that other people use less.

Part 2: My Friends are the Greatest!

All right-thinking people know that I have the greatest friends in the known universe! I was at Community Storytellers for what will be the last time in several months on Thursday night. Penny emceed and there were lots of great stories - a new piece from Greg about the origin of the Gator Bowl, a sort of Cinderella story from Leonard, Barry's "muscles" story (which triggered a weight-lifting story from Hank). I told a Chelm story, which went over well, but I think the ending is weak. (I know what to do with it, though, which I needed to tell it to figure out.) Anyway, at the end of the evening, Katy got up and said that it's a tradition that before ocean liners set off on long voyages they are decorated with streamers and it was only fair to give me a similar send-off. She had a basket full of paper streamers and everyone took some and threw them on me, so I was quite garlanded at the end. It was tremendously silly and lots of fun! Leonard said I looked like a Christmas tree from Chelm and Penny dared me to wear all the streamers on the first plane flight. I might just do that - it would be pretty amusing to, though I admit it's hard to imagine what the effect on airport security people would be.

Part 3: Things That Actually Happened This Week, Including Some Minor Food Pornography

I took advantage of a meeting in Sunnyvale not starting until 10 a.m. to have breakfast at Hobee's after flying up instead of eating at 5 a.m. or trying to stay awake to eat Reno Air's usual granola bar. The thing I like about Hobee's (a Bay Area chain that I really really wish would open up a branch down here) is that it's a place where you can actually order just hash browns. Not really just hash browns, but hash browns mixed with interesting things. In this case mushrooms, onions and cheese. I suppose you can just think of it as a potato casserole but it always feels so decadent. Breakfast out feels decadent in general, of course - I am usually of the fruit and toast or cereal school at home - but it's even better when you can get just the junk food part.

And while I am extolling junk food, the best junk food in the world is found in Los Angeles. I speak specifically of Benita's Frites in Santa Monica. I had some errands to run Sunday that could have been done in any of several parts of town. (Specifically, I was buying guidebooks for Africa, a housewarming present for a friend who bought a place in December, and a birthday present for my mother. All of this can be done at any decently supplied bookstore.) There is a Border's closer to where I live but Santa Monica isn't all that far and it gave me an excuse to go over to the Third Street Promenade and have lunch at Benita's. All they sell is pommes frites - french fries - with various dipping sauces. The frites are fried twice so they have this amazing texture and then there are the sauces. The style is Belgian and what Belgians normally eat on frites is mayonnaise so several of the sauces are mayonnaise based. But this is not Best Food's/Hellman's mayonnaise. This is homemade garlicky mayonnaise, mixed with all sorts of lucious and savory things. In this case, I had the ancho chile sauce, just a bit fiery but hot enough you know they used the real stuff. They do also have non-mayonnaise based sauces - e.g. warm peanut sauce, like the stuff that comes with sate. Okay, so it's not exactly the most nutritionally balanced meal in the universe and I'm sure my arteries scream just at the thought. But it tastes pretty damn good!

Among the other errand running was getting more book boxes. I've got over 1700 books catalogued and boxed and ready to be stored. And far too many still to go, but I do feel that I'm making progress. I also needed another photo album, since I got my Antarctica pictures back, some of which came out quite nice. The albatrosses and petrels didn't work very well, though. I did get a lot of good penguin pictures, as well as some nice general scenery ones. The best of the pictures in Argentina was one I took in La Boca of a woman dressed rather colorfully and carrying an umbrella sitting against a colored wall. At least, I thought it was the best.

Anyway, what I wanted to say about buying another photo album is that this is not as simple as it sounds because I am very particular about photo albums. I've settled on using Gibson's 3-ring albums, and specifically the ones with 2 photos per page. Mostly I like them because the pages have a place on the side to write caption information. What is tricky about this is that a lot of places sell only the "libromount" albums which use the so-called magnetic pages and are bound, rather than the 3-ring format with pockets for the photos. What is even trickier is that there are places which sell the albums and places that sell the photo page refills - and they are almost never the same places. This frustrates me to no end. I mean it's not something I really get worked up over but it strikes me as ridiculously short sighted on the part of the people who sell albums but not refills - do they really think someone will buy a whole new album after using the 10 or so pages it initially comes with? I have more sympathy with the places that sell the refills but not the albums. At least they are filling a market void.