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Applicosinox
Today’s New Word is: Applicosinox. Applicosinox made its debut about five years ago in a song recorded by Taro and I in his old juku (cram school). I made it up to fill a particular line in the song and it fit perfectly. Applicosinox is spiced wine made from apples that makes your nose itch and causes sneezing if you drink too much. On the plus side, your eyes start glowing like Dune if you drink more than a cup a day. A search for this word on Google used to return a lot more hits than it does now. In particular, I remember it being researched on a linguistics…
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Meat Conspiracy
Do you realize how hard it is to keep up with a no-carb diet right now in Japan? There are problems with all four of my food groups! Beef: Australian is the only beef available in quantity but the grade of meat they are importing has the texture of reconstituted beef jerky. Pork: Pork has always suffered a stigma here, and it sounds like they are going to stop the import of American pork due to the mad cow scare. (I was going to write a joke about increased imports of Canadian pork here but I got engrossed in this page instead. Too bad.) Chicken: Goddamn avian flu coupled with…
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Mudgrubber
On the way home from field archery a few months ago, I spotted this bad boy about to get squished on the road. We took him home for lack of a good place to release him, and I snapped this shot with the Nikon in one hand and steering wheel in the other. (On a scale of difficulty, it was somewhere between eating a Big Mac and changing a CD while driving.) Anyway, Mr. Turtle got to play in my bathtub for a few hours and he surprised us all by screeching the entire time. Yes, it’s true. Turtles screech. Eeek eeeeek eeeeeeeek. So the next time some hippie starts…
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New Word Primer
Well I thought of a new pursuit and went ahead with it before it escaped my memory (volatile). Now I should explain: When learning a new language, I often experience meltdown trying to think of the English equivalent of a particular word or phrase. Since I am a product of American public schools (K-12) and Japanese university, I am pretty much the stupidest, laziest, least-inclined-to-use-a-dictionary fool you will ever meet. Hence, my need to create new words, even if they already exist. OK? FAQ: Q. Can your New Words be used for free? A. No. Every spoken usage costs a beer. Every written usage costs a car (scaled to wealth…
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Scalpulation
The new word for today is “scalpulation.” Scalpulation is an answer or calculation derived by much head-scratching, chin-fondling, and mutterings of the word “Um”.
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Unmarked Helicopters
Yellow helicopter. Landed. In my parking lot.
