Some Meanings of Made-up Words

From "Merry Andrew" (1958). Not everyone got the memo about driving on the left.

 You could of course argue all words are "made-up", but I wouldn't. I know too little about it, but I'm pretty sure the first language was a form of accounting, hence "subject verbs object". Language's first purpose was to describe interactions, not transmit the experience of solitude, which might explain why we're so often having to resort to the word "weird" when describing our current isolation. In other words, don't feel too bad about it. 

 Anyway, yes, made-up words: In today's episode of A Journal of the Plague Year posted below, Defoe's narrator fulminates against the selling of charms bearing the word "Abracadabra", which led me to investigate whether or not this was the word's earliest appearance in literature. In fact, its first recorded appearance is in the second century during the reign of Nero. However, nobody knew even then what it meant, only that one should tie it in a ribbon, and hang it round one's neck, preferably using the "lard of a lion".

 Which brings me, naturally, to the Steve Miller Band. 

 "Abra... Abra...cadabra... I wanna reach out and grab ya," they sang in 1982, so I don't know, maybe Rock 'n' Roll will die, but certainly, it gives no further clue as to what the word meant (although there is a lot going on in the video), but I remembered that the Steve Miller Band had quite a history with made-up words: Their 1973 hit The Joker sung of "the pompatus of love", so I decided to research the origin of that word instead and, uh, yeah, I hit gold. Horrible gold. According to Jon Cryer, star of the 1995 comedy The Pompatus of Love, the word is actually a corruption of a misheard Vernon Green lyric: "puppetutes of love", and puppetutes are... well, they're puppet prostitutes. So I learnt that today. Defoe talks however of the disappearance of "merry andrews" from the streets of London, and that's allowed me to sweeten today's post with the song at the top. I love Danny Kaye. Subject verbs object. Hope you're all tickety-boo. Here's episode 3:

TIMESPANNER BONUS MATERIAL: Trouser Bar Rabbit Hole

 The Dan In the High Castle was repeated today on Radio 4 Extra, so here's a fun game you can play that's vaguely related. I enjoyed playing it anyway. Above is the Radio Times review from when the show made Pick of the Day, and I'm fine with David McGillivray's reservations; it was only the second episode of anything I'd ever written, and there aren't that many ways to interpret the commissioning of a second pilot two years after the first. I'm very grateful though to those who stood up for it, including the fair Finnemore:

 But it was the following comment from David Cairns that set me on the path from which there could be no turning: "An indifferent review from the author of FRIGHTMARE. Praise from Caesar!" Now I hadn't heard of FRIGHTMARE but that wasn't too surprising; David C has a knowledge of film bordering on the Forbidden, having made it his mission to watch every single film illustrated in Denis Giffiord's Pictorial History of the Horror Movie. So here's the trailer...

 That's a hell of a font. I went and looked up McGillivray's wikipedia entry (which I'd like to think he had a hand in writing himself) and was instantly enamoured to find a stalwart who'd worked at the coalface of British smut. Living, breathing history: "House of Whipcord", "Satan's Slave", "I'm Not Feeling Myself Tonight", "The Hot Girls" (Not "Hot Girls", mind... "The Hot Girls".) These titles seemed almost specifically designed to wind up on a list. So I drew John's attention to the man's achievements, and John in turn drew my attention to this...

 It was not Kofi Annan. And I was not disappointed. But it was a surprisingly uneasy thing to google. So that's the game. Happy hunting!

LETTER TO MY 40-YEAR-OLD-SELF

Dear me, here are some things I wish I knew when I was the age I am now. Hope they help: 

Christmas Trees aren't just for Christmas...
Nor are Christmas decorations. I know you were planning on leaving them up until February 2nd because of something you saw on QI, but why take them down even now? If anything, it's actually more Wintery now than at Christmas. That tree will die. Keep it all up for ever.

Don't let what you like now make you forget what you liked ten years ago...
There's this great new channel called "London Live" which recreates, pretty much around the clock, exactly what it was like watching television after midnight back when you first stopped living with your parents. They've got "Black Books", and "Smack the Pony", and a documentary about a chip shop. It's brilliant.

One day you'll find yourself asking to speak to the manager of your local Sainsbury's...
And you'll be right to want to speak to him. They've stopped doing milk bags. The bottled milk costs nine pence more. You bought a jug from Sainsbury's specifically for the milk bags. Putting milk bags into the jug is fun, and it's good for the environment. They can't just stop selling milk bags because nobody's buying them. They should have marketed them better. It's crazy nobody's buying milk bags. 

Contactless Payment...
I know! It's absolutely crazy: Lose your card and literally anyone can use it to get anything. And they say "Don't keep it in your wallet," but what do they think wallets are for? Why even make them card-shaped if you're not supposed to keep them together, why not just have a cluster of little payment dolls you hang round your neck? And the local Sainsbury's doesn't even use it! They should actually, it would be a lot quicker.

Jill...
That sound engineer's name is Jill. You've known her for ten years now. Jill.

Netflix is like HMV...
Remember how you never used to be able to pass an HMV without popping in and wandering the DVD aisles for anything up to an hour, staring at the same titles over and over again within your own very narrow range of interests, never choosing anything, or even really meaning to choose anything, just checking for incremental changes in the selection? You can still do that now. At home! At 4am!

It's getting cold...
You probably shouldn't stay up just because you're curious to see how cold the flat can get. You should probably go to bed at the same time as your girlfriend. The one with the job. Go to bed.

Try wearing a hoodie...
You've gone forty years without every trying on a hoodie. Go on. You might as well try your girlfriend's on. There. See how much younger you look? Green suits you. Why don't you have any green clothes? You're a redhead. Put the coat on over it. There! Now you're a superhero in hiding!

Stop talking to yourself...
Or don't.
Remember it's your life to life any way you want, within rapidly shrinking financial constraints. Be well x

That Perfect Romcom Playlist in Full

Angelina Banjolina "These Clouds Are Made of Bedrooms"

Pope Of Snooze "Tocatta In Ping"

Lyle Litler "Anyone Gotta Pen?"

Futi "I Will/Won't"

The Hoops "You and Me and You and Me and Me and Me and Hey Where'd You Go"

Frape "I Like Poo"

Same Thing "Corridors and Hallways"

Orson "Wells"

The Counters "Song 9"

Fake Native "Don't Do The Voice"

Uncle Mom "(We Both Look A Bit) Like Lena Heady"

Singing Detective "Christ On A Bike"

Cat Screidle "Song To a Fucking Tree"

APpphex Twin "Voink"

Tocatta In Ping "Pope Of  Snooze"

Monsters' Ball #34-48

Continuing the drawing-a-monster-a-day project (I think there may be one or two gods here as well). With one exception – the naramoeba – they don't have names now, let alone descriptions. But, like that judge in those things, I want to see where this is going.

This post is dedicated to Videogum, the much loved, and now much missed popular culture blog, often mentioned here, whose commenters provided the warmest internet community I've yet encountered. They called themselves monsters. Long may they monst.

A Monster a Day, #27-33

 The Sob

 Teether

 Red Rainedupon

 Spookyguts

Jawjo the Producing AKA Jawjo Arm-many 

Goochy 

Medusa Toothkind

Ten more monsters

Taking a break from the 2013 clear-out, to catch-up with the ghastly, hurried, compulsory monster-a-day "project", now with - eucch - puns. I don't make the rules.

 Dead Lion

Tin Ninja

Placeholder

P. Somerset Monkeyking

Jaggerfly

Richard the Bird

The Faceless Five

Unsmith

Coat Wight

Blue Lin (T.)

"One of them is a plain fish, and no doubt marketable." - Doctors

May 2013 - Remnants

May - Nunhead. After the moving, the unboxing. 

 This is four years' worth of shoes - every shoe I bought or was given since the fire of 2009.  When a pair became unwearable I would chuck them under the bed. (I seldom own more than one pair of wearable shoes, never more than two). When I moved to Nunhead, I found out how many that came to. It's this many:

Eat your heart out, Imelda Marcos. All now occupy a pile in the house's Nightmare Room... I do wonder sometimes how good a housemate I really am.

No, seriously, a monster a day

L'Immeubleu

"A bit too Flanimaly for the purposes of this blog"? Did I really write that?* Like this blog has purposes. But see, I've kept my word. A monster a day. Where then are January 17th and 18th, Simon? Hahaha, shush. I'll make these posts more frequent too. The usual promised things.

Chimneycheeks

Christ Kong

Now... For the 4th I cheated a bit, and used an old monster from an early draft of a thing, which is why it's so wordy. (I also considered the problem of the colour bleeding.)

Fathom the Starbat

Another possible solution to the colour bleeding: Draw nothing...

Your friends between the lines

.

Just one of those Things

On Tuesday evening  I finally got round to watching The London Nobody Knows. Hence this. (Marie Lloyd was the Queen of the Music Hall. It's pronounced Marry though, so this doesn't work. I highly recommend the documentary by the way. You can learn a lot watching James Mason. I wish he was still around to stalk the Trocadero, and point at rubble with his cane, and sniff.)

Miss Hairy Lloyd

Centaurotaur

Half centaur. Twit. Now, this bleeding. What if the previous monster is the shadow of it successor?

Creeping Dorfish/Dangling Dorfish

Yuck. The word you can't read is "kennel". Or maybe "discarder"...

The Discarder

Dr. Uttoxeter

Sorry, doc. I had to make room for a collage. That might solve the colour bleeding...

Zappa

Or charcoal...

The Strained

Remember to fix it with hairspray!

Brother Bossmonster

 And be sure to use just the right amount.

Stumpy

This last monster was based on a woman I saw in the "Troll 2" documentary The Worst Best Film simply because I couldn't think of anything to draw and then remembered her face. I'm not convinced it's an entirely honest documentary, by which I mean: By golly, it's going to tell a story, so everyone is forced to find a presentable face to be filtered through their appearance in a terrible film made fifteen years ago. Really it's a documentary about itself. But this woman isn't in it much. She looks after her mother. She surrounds her house with signs warding off visitors. She claims she still works on her acting by watching the television and remembering things she likes. Well, good. Me too. (See above.)

 

The Nonono

* No.