more mirth while awaiting birth

The Washington Post's Mensa Invitational asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.


1. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.


2. Ignoranus: A person who's both stupid and an asshole.

3. Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.

4. Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.

5. Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.


6. Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.

7. Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high

8. Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.

9. Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

10. Hipatitis: Terminal coolness.

11. Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit ) .

12. Karmageddon: It's when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, and then the Earth explodes and it's a serious bummer.


13. Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you

14. Glibido: All talk and no action.

15. Dopeler effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

16. Arachnoleptic fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.

17. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.


18. Caterpallor (n.): The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you're eating.

The Washington Post has also published the winning submissions to its
yearly contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternate meanings for common words.

And the winners are:

1. coffee, n. the person upon whom one coughs.

2. flabbergasted, adj. appalled by discovering how much weight one has gained.

3. abdicate, v. to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.

4. esplanade, v. to attempt an explanation while drunk.

5. willy-nilly, adj. impotent.

6. negligent, adj. absentmindedly answering the door when wearing only a nightgown.

7. lymph, v. to walk with a lisp.

8. gargoyle, n. olive-flavored mouthwash.

9. flatulence, n. emergency vehicle that picks up someone who has been run over by a steamroller.

10. balderdash, n. a rapidly receding hairline.

11. testicle, n. a humorous question on an exam.

12. rectitude, n. the formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.

13. pokemon, n. a Rastafarian proctologist.

14. oyster, n. a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.

15. Frisbeetarianism, n. the belief that, after death, the soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.

16. circumvent, n. an opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men.

Hey bloggerissimo, you do it too! Add one in the comments box, ifen you think o one! Here's mine off the top of my heading-for-postpartum:

Waistlie, n. the visual effect of a girdle

The Erotics of Expansive Pantses

Yes, pregnancy is a time of extreme girth.
Here's some related poetic mirth.

PAT

by John Hegley
(for audio, click here)

I said Pat
you are fat
and you are cataclysmically desirable
and to think I used to think
that slim was where it's at
well not any more Pat
you've changed that
you love yourself
you flatter yourself
you shatter their narrow image of the erotic
and Pat said
what do you mean FAT?

venue revue

If you're looking to go on a poetry listening or reading tour, you might find this site with poetry venue reviews useful. Are there other sites listing venues nation-wide along with contact addresses? Wouldn't that be useful? Better yet, what about an international poetry venue site listing venues worldwide open to English-speakers? Ah, don'tchu be looking at me to compile--I just like to dream up the ideas.

out of heiding in a big weigh

Whale, my bloggerissimo, as you can see, I've been busy.

For poetry thing, I don't think I never did tell ye that I've a poem, "A Soup on the Tray," in the Spring issue of Ploughshares, edited by Kevin Young. Ye can read it here. Or get the whole issue. Young's poetics comes through in his editorial choices. Many poems employing repetition, for example, evoke the blues in a way not dissimilar to some of Young's work.

And a few poems in the latest Chicago Review, a special issue devoted to Kenneth Rexroth and to the magazine's sixtieth year. Some great Rexroth correspondence in the issue, for one of many thing. Plus a happy accident of a long Fanny Howe poem set in Ireland just preceding this blogger's poems.

So, here I doth grow into two become one equals three. I'm 38.5 weeks preggers and living in Ireland. So, have been watching what sing my body morph and reading Irish poets, particularly Paul Durcan .and Eavan Boland. For my recent birthday, I did get Paul Muldoon's Oxford Lectures, so I'm now diving into those what hears. Anyone else reading these?