’21 A To Z Challenge – B

Back in the old days, you young whippersnappers, I occasionally published ‘Remember When’ posts, to pump up my older readers’ nostalgia, and show the younger ones what they may be fortunate to have missed.

This year, for the letter B, I’ve decided to rant and rave about the

BANDERSNATCH

an imaginary wild animal of fierce disposition.

a person of uncouth or unconventional habits, attitudes, etc., especially one considered a menace, nuisance, or the like.

The word was coined, with the first meaning, about 1855 by the Anglican Deacon, the Reverend Charles Dodgson, hiding his identity as the author Lewis Carroll.  Hide he should!  He wrote about fantastical, imaginary creatures, and strange words that didn’t exist.  In his Alice in Wonderland books, he has poor Alice eating magic mushrooms, and drinking absinth-like liquids which distort her perceptions and cause hallucinations, making her to seem to shrink and grow.  The good pastor was a drug fiend.

From the original meaning has come the more recent value, and much of it may be due to recreational drug use.  Nostalgiac and déjà vu terms for these people might include miscreant, or ruffian.  Today’s paper printed three Op-Ed letters, and they were all about people who litter, especially the community trails.

One woman says that she and her husband go out (properly masked) for walks together.  Each of them takes a store-issued plastic bag.  They don’t get a block away, before both are stuffed full of picked-up trash.  There are garbage pails each block, where the trail crosses a street, yet these lazy swine can’t wait even that long.  Some clean up after their dogs…. and then toss the compostable bags into the undergrowth.  Some of them hang up on bushes, making them look like Bizarro Christmas trees.

Forty years ago, one of the city’s mottos was, Kitchener – Klean As A Kitchen.  More recently, one of the local newspaper wags has suggested, Kitchener – Klean As A Kow-shed.  Spanking unruly children is no longer allowed, but I’d like to take a few of these Bandersnatches out behind the woodpile, and introduce their posteriors to a good length of flat maple.  Would you like to watch the YouTube video?  👿

Flash Fiction #225

PHOTO PROMPT © C.E.Ayr

ONE-WAY STREET

He gave his life to the company, or would have, if they’d let him. He joined when he was 45, and planned to retire with a full 20-year pension, just as he turned 65. Things didn’t work out.

Once upon a time, manufacturing companies made things. Nowadays, corporations made PROFITS, at all costs. 2-1/2 years before his official retirement, his plant was declared –not unprofitable – merely superfluous.

He and 450 of his co-workers were unceremoniously dumped, like so much trash, desperately searching for employment, while the Vice-President in Charge of Expense-Cutting took a two million-dollar bonus. So much for loyalty. 😦 😯

***

Go to Rochelle’s Addicted to Purple site and use her Wednesday photo as a prompt to write a complete 100 word story

WOW #5

The Word Of this Week is;
Shivoo

Look out! There’s been a mudslide.  The mundane mumble-tongues couldn’t understand, remember or pronounce the EYEtalian word Charivari, so it slid down the linguistic hill, and entered the English language as

shivaree

noun (US & Canadian)
a discordant mock serenade to newlyweds, made with pans, kettles, etc.
a confused noise; din

Also (esp. dialect) charivari  

Then it made its way by tramp steamer to Australia, land of kangaroos, platypuses, and Diggers who can’t handle three-syllable words, where it ended its ignominious tumble, as the Abo word

shivoo

noun, plural shivoos. Australian.
a boisterous party or celebration.

Origin of shivoo – origin uncertain

This is like the story from several years ago, where a Florida woman had been brain-dead from an accident for five years. Her husband wanted to pull the plug on the life-support machine and achieve closure, but her Catholic parents fought him in the courts.

His/their family name was Chiavo, and even the more intelligent of the TV talking heads insisted on pronouncing it Shy-voe, when any good Italian made three syllables of it, and pronounced it Shee-ah-voe.

Out among the street trash, one could get kicked in the nuts, or the balls. Some tried to describe being mugged with a more upscale word.  Whether it was too intellectual, or simply too long to say, gonads quickly shrank to ‘nads.  The mud has slud even further.  Now, ‘nad’ is (mis)pronounced nard, a word which used to mean ‘an ointment used by the ancients.’

Jimmy Cliff sang I Can See Clearly Now. If we could get more of the great unwashed to hear and pronounce clearly, communication and comprehension would benefit greatly.   😯