Wonderful Words Wednesday

Good morning and Happy Wednesday! I am on the west coast this week on business, so I am getting a rather late start on this today, at least compared to a lot of you. It's been hard to squeeze in some personal time, but since I missed the Teaser yesterday, I didn't want to miss sharing some new words!

This week, my words are all from As Meat Loves Salt by Maria McCann. My friend Ari has been pestering me to read this one for a while, and although it got off to a slow start, I am very interested in how it turns out: "A dark, erotic tale of passion and obsession, As Meat Loves Salt is a gripping portrait of England beset by war and the harrowing tale of a man on the edge of madness." So far, that's a pretty good summary.

Most of these words are pretty archaic, but I found some of them interesting. Since one of the main characters runs a printing press, we'll get to learn some terms for its parts and operation.

1. "She blew her nose and I heard the catarrh rattle in her head."

Inflammation of mucous membranes, especially of the nose and throat.

2. "This is what you call your frisket. It keeps ink from getting where you don't want it."

A thin frame in a printing press that holds the sheet of paper in position and acts as a mask.

3. "That thick thing is called a tympanum - it evens the pressure."

In a printing press, frame for equalizing pressure; it is also the medical term for the external ear drum, the part that vibrates.

4. "Was this always the way of it, that a man climbed towards the angels only to drop into the midden?"

A dunghill or refuse heap.

That will have to do for today - my first conference call is in 30 minutes and it's going to be another long afternoon in a freezing cold conference room, without even a new word to keep me company.

Review: Tattoo Machine: Tall Tales, True Stories and My Life in Ink by Jeff Johnson

I live in a college town and we have our fair share of tattoo parlors. There are 2 shops almost next door to each other on the main drag through town and a tattoo and body piercing place down at the end of a row of bars, near where I turn onto my street. That one has an interesting crew that hangs around outside — both people and animals — and Tattoo Machine made me want to stop in and hang out with these guys a little. It’s full of great stories (and you know a busy, urban tattoo shop has to have a million of them), inside jokes, and even some talk about the art of tattoos. Johnson makes it a wild and entertaining ride.

Johnson is at his best telling stories — and believe me, he has got some great stories. Lots of the stories involve drugs and, fortunately, some of the stories are about Johnson getting himself cleaned up. But when a story starts out…

I’m racing toward the Oregon border in some kind of bright red Japanese sports car. I have no shoes and no driver’s license, and I’ve been smoking gooey Mexican heroin and snorting piles of coke off a switchblade for three days straight.

…you know things are about to get interesting. If you’ve watched any of TLC’s reality shows on tattoo artists, Miami Ink and its spinoff, LA Ink, then you’ve got an idea what to expect, but Tattoo Machine is the wild, uncensored, NC-17 version. There are stories about the assorted ways that he made a mess of his life, the crazy people he worked with and the crazy people he worked on. I found the stories about the people he tattooed especially interesting; as he says in the book, there is no distancing yourself when you’re working on someone’s skin. He gets his introduction to working with oddities at the Sea Tramp Tattoo Company, when a woman comes in and wants a tattoo of her husband’s name and a heart on her flipper. Now, that’s not the sort of thing I see everyday at my office and I probably would have failed that test, as Johnson did the first time around. He was working with veterans, though, and he learned from his early mistakes. It’s apparently not uncommon for folks to want to decorate the very thing that you’d expect them to hide.

An obese woman came in years ago and got a portrait of herself as a little girl on her pale, bulging stomach. She insisted that there be no mouth in the portrait. She lumbered out with a tattoo of a young, pigtailed girl with smiling eyes and a flat expanse below the nose, a harrowing image when seated in its context. Every artist there that day had nightmares for months…

His stories are part of what I find fascinating about memoirs: they are a glimpse into a secret world. Whether the topic is tatoo parlors or politics or Arctic exploration, these worlds have their own language, their own traditions, and their own legends. After reading the chapter on Shop Talk, I will know that if a guy with a tattoo gun calls me a Swamp Panther, it’s meant as a compliment. I will also be able to snicker like an insider if I hear the guys talk about a Time Fighter that just pulled up in a Pee Pee Truck, who will probably turn out to be a Bonus Hole, with their luck. I’ve spent some time Googling the names that Johnson tosses out periodically, like they are people I should be familiar with…and I suppose that in his business, they are familiar names. Artists who laid the groundwork, like Bert Grimm, as well as those who are carrying the art form forward, like Guy Aitchison. And I have decided that if I ever want my worst nightmare tattooed somewhere on my flesh, I’m calling Paul Booth. Whoa.

Now - a little tattoo trivia! You know I like to put something special in the comments (feedback is love, after all), so here's a little something about tattoo inks. Did your grandfather have an old Army or Navy tattoo? Mine did, and by the time I was old enough to check it out, it looked pretty bad. The red had faded away and the black was an odd dark green color. There's a reason that tattoo looked green and it has to do with pelicans, the war, and Lucky Strike cigarettes. Want to know more? Check out the comments...

I won’t spoil the stories for you by telling too many of them here; I don’t want this to be like a movie trailer that shows you all the funny stuff before you get to the theater. (But I admit to a terrible curiousity about the story the test readers made him take out of the book.) Definitely check out the story of The Collector — that’s an episode of “Criminal Minds” in the making. Johnson’s introspective bits were less effective for me, but he is obviously a guy who has thought a lot about what he does for a living and a little philosophy and history never hurt anyone. Tattoo Machine: Tall Tales, True Stories, and My Life In Ink is scheduled for release on July 14th, but you can pre-order your copy at Amazon.com.

Wondrous Words Wednesday

I have missed out on Wondrous Words the last few weeks - I hate it when Real Life disrupts my online pursuits. Luckily, I just finished with The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh, which provided a ton of new words. So, prepare to learn a little about mortuary science as well as precise definitions of some more old-fashioned English words...

1. "I was always the most defatigable of hacks."

Easily tired or wearied; capable of being fatigued

2. "...his way was narrow but it was dignified and umbrageous and it led to limitless distances."

Shady: filled with shade; "the shady side of the street"

3. "Normal disposal is by inhumement, entombment, inurnment or immurement..."

Inhumement: Burial, the act of placing a person or object into the ground

Inurnment: The placing of cremated remains in an urn.

Immurement: To entomb in walls. (This also has a darker definition, referring to the execution of a prisoner by walling them up in a building - think The Cask of Amontillado.)

4. "There was no catafalque."

A decorated bier on which a coffin rests in state during a funeral.

5. "They don't sing an orison like birds."

Prayer; reverent petition to a deity.

6. "Funerals a specialty; Panegyrics in prose or poetry."

A formal speech or opus publicly praising someone.

I do love the specialized vocabulary you pick up with each book you read. That's one of the reasons I love this meme - I am always finding new words and it's a good reminder to look them up, rather than just depending on context.

What new words did YOU learn this week?

Teaser Tuesday

Good morning, folks! It's time for another Tuesday Teaser! (I always feel a bit like an old-time radio announcer doing this intro.) You know how this works: take your current book and select a couple of interesting sentences - something that will tease us into wanting to read it.

This week's Teaser comes from a book I just finished a book for my online book club, The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh. I don't believe I've read anything else by Waugh, but this was a quick read, lots of very dark humor, and I can't wait for the discussion to get underway. It also provided a lot of interesting new words related to the mortuary business, but more on that tomorrow. For today, I'll bend the rules a bit because I love this exchange between Aimee Thanatogenos and Dennis Barlow:

"But, my dear girl, you seem to have forgotten that we're engaged to be married. My theological studies are prospering. The day when I shall claim you is at hand."

"I'd rather die."

"Yes, I confess I overlooked that alternative."

So tell me, what are you reading this week?

Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest Winners

Sometimes, a book or movie is so bad that is is unintentionally funny. Well, the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest celebrates writing that is so intentionally bad that it is actually good - and very funny. From their website:

An international literary parody contest, the competition honors the memory (if not the reputation) of Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873). The goal of the contest is childishly simple: entrants are challenged to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels. Although best known for "The Last Days of Pompeii" (1834), which has been made into a movie three times, originating the expression "the pen is mightier than the sword," and phrases like "the great unwashed" and "the almighty dollar," Bulwer-Lytton opened his novel Paul Clifford (1830) with the immortal words that the "Peanuts" beagle Snoopy plagiarized for years, "It was a dark and stormy night."

So, the winners have been announced for 2009 and some of them are hilarious! You'll have to check out their website to read the winner, but here are some of my favorites from the runners-up:

The dame sauntered silently into Rocco's office, but she didn't need to speak; the blood-soaked gown hugging her ample curves said it all: "I am a shipping heiress whose second husband was just murdered by Albanian assassins trying to blackmail me for my rare opal collection," or maybe, "Do you know a good dry cleaner?" (Tony Alfieri, Los Angeles, CA)

---------------

Detective Pierson mentally reviewed the group of suspects milling around the recent crime scene-two young siblings eating gingerbread, a young girl in a red hoodie, a beautiful girl with narcolepsy, and seven little people with the profession of miners-then gave his statement of "It's a grim tale" to the press. (Shannon Gray, Wichita, KS)

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It was a quarter 'til eight in the ninth precinct when I got the call of a possible two-eleven at a nearby Seven-Eleven that turned out to be just a four-fifteen--that is until my number two from the ninth discovered the one-eight-seven under the Tenth Street Bridge, some two-bit mob soldier with a blossom of five .357's right in the ten-ring. (Jeff Riley, Fort Worth, TX)

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George scratched his head in abject puzzlement as he tried to figure out where he'd parked the rocket this time in the 100-acre parking lot of Nallmart 75B, but then he remembered that a ship-boy had taken his DNA key-but which one, the kelly toned humanoid or the atmosphere-of-Rylak-hued android; scanning the horizon, he at last turned to Babs and asked "how green was my valet"? (Leigh A. Smith, New Douglas, IL)

Congratulations to all the winners!

Review: Rubies in the Orchard by Lynda Resnick

If you work in an office, you have probably watched the bigwig's desks to see which management self-help books are in vogue. Whether it's The One Minute Manager or Who Moved My Cheese or First, Break All the Rules, managers like to look like they are up to date on the latest management theories. Rubies in the Orchard is a bit of a departure from these titles - it's about one woman's career and the companies and opportunities that shaped it. In it, there are lessons that we all can use in our daily work lives.

Lynda Resnick's companies are names that you know: Teleflora, the Franklin Mint, POM pomegranate juice, Fiji water. It's interesting to read the details behind these products, the behind-the-scenes story of how POM ended up in my refrigerator. She's a good storyteller, and there are definitely nuggets of wisdom you can put to use.

I have one particular favorite nugget, probably because it runs so counter to the current thinking and that is: think inside the box - that's where your answers are:

"I know that it's become a fashionable cliche in recent years, but it's just about always wrong. The answers are not outside the box - they're inside. They're inherent in whatever task you've undertaken, whatever product you want to market."

There is a place for outside-the-box thinking, often when it comes to methods and procedures. We get stuck in a rut, doing things the way they have always been done. But when it comes to the product, you have to know its tiniest detail and that is where you'll find your answers.

Resnick is also big on truth; honesty and authenticity are important to her and should be important to your business. Two stories illustrate this beautifully.

First, she tells the story of Country Time Lemonade. Remember those commercials? Wilford Brimley sitting on the porch in his rocking chair drinking lemonade - nice and nostalgic. Except it was a fraud. There isn't one single lemon in Country Time lemonade. One negative ad from Minute Maid and Grandpa was out of a job. People don't like to be lied to.

Now, I tend to think of Franklin Mint products as cheesy collector plates and knick-knacks, so I was impressed with the research and dedication that went into producing them. A perfect example is Jackie Kennedy's pearls. (And there's a little factoid about Jackie's pearls that I never knew - you'll find it in the comments.) When Sotheby's announced that they were auctioning off Jackie Kennedy's estate, Resnick was determined to buy them for the Franklin Mint. They were listed in the auction catalog at a conservative $200-$300...but the Mint paid $211,000 for them! Why? So that they could create a replica necklace that was accurate to the smallest detail. If you are going to sell these replicas, owning the real thing gives you gravitas that cannot be matched. The Franklin Mint sold more than 130,000 copies of the pearls at $200 each - that's quite a return on their investment!

I'm a bit of an idealist and I wish more companies today would invest in honesty and authenticity. These are some good lessons and it is good to read that consumers have responded to them. There will always be a market for cheap fake stuff, but who wants to own that market? The big bucks are in quality merchandise and people won't shell out cash for a fraud.

Rubies in the Orchard: How to Uncover the Hidden Gems in Your Business is an interesting read that delivers some excellent business advice. My copy was an Advance Reader Copy; get your copy at Amazon.com.

Teaser Tuesday

Good Morning and Happy Tuesday! I've got a short week this week, due to the holiday and some vacation, so every morning has been a good morning.

You know the drill: grab your current read and choose 2 sentences that will entice and intrigue us. (No spoilers, thank you very much.) This week, I'm reading As Meat Loves Salt by Maria McCann. It's a little slow going so far, but a friend with excellent taste in books recommended it, so I am betting it gets better. Here's a little snippet about the youngest brother in the story, Zebedee, which made me chuckle. Very well-put, I think.

"I have seen women, even women of quality, look at him as if they lacked only bread to make a meal of him there and then - and Zeb, not one whit abashed, return the look. I lack his charm."

What has been teasing YOU this week?

Review: Don't Call Me a Crook! by Bob Moore

I really wanted to like this book. After all, "A Scotsman's Tale of World Travel, Whiskey and Crime" sounds right up my alley. I love colorful memoirs, adventure stories, all that, and I thought I would really enjoy this one.

I didn't even make it through 100 pages.

There are a lot of reasons I was disappointed in the book. First off, the writing is clunky. It sounds much like you would expect a Scotsman to sound, sitting in a pub, telling you a story after a couple of pints. I didn't, in this case, find that charming.

Second, I don't care what the title says, he's a crook. Here's his explanation, given very early on:

"Though really, I am not a crook at all, because a crook is a man who steals things from people, but I have only swiped things when I needed them or when it would be wasteful to let slip an opportunity. Because I think it is very wrong for a man to waste his opportunities."

So, he's not a crook because he "swiped" things, instead of stealing them. That's perfectly logical, right? And what about his train trip to Chicago? He started drinking with a married woman, got her drunk, seduced her, asked her to spend a week in Chicago with him. When they arrived, he didn't want his friends to see her, so he convinced her to wait at the station while he went to pawn her engagement ring. He did come back for her - a week later. I suppose she was just an "opportunity" that he didn't want to "let slip." That's a load of crap, if you ask me.

Now, I don't require that every book be a morality play, but maybe I've just had enough corruption and rationalization lately. I just didn't find this charming; I found it insulting. Someone who was perfectly willing to take advantage of you if he got the chance, so as not to let an opportunity slip, is not an adventurer, he's a criminal. The rationalization just makes it worse.

There were a couple of things about this edition of the book that bothered me. First off, the cover. Looks like a dashing fellow, right? Well, it's not Bob Moore, the author. I don't know who it is - it's just some guy that the publisher and cover designer thought "conveyed the book's cheekiness and rougishness." What? I honestly can't say why that bothered me as much as it did. I was also unhapy with the editing. I understand adding footnotes to clarify certain points, but editor Pat Spry apparently thinks readers are unfamiliar with modern language, as well as Moore's more antiquated expressions. I do not need footnote definitions of fathoms, galley, fortnight, winch, squall or subway. Come on! There may be expressions that are less common today - such as "on the floor," which mean impoverished - but defining what should be basic vocabulary words was just annoying.

I think I am more annoyed by this book because I wanted so much to enjoy it. If I had no expectations, I still don't think I would have finished it, but I certainly wouldn't have been angry about it.

Tuesday Teasers!

Welcome to Teaser Tuesdays! Every Tuesday, we grab our current book, pick a couple of interesting sentences to try and entice you to read it. (Beware of spoilers!)

Yesterday evening was nice - the weather finally feels like summer - and I took advantage of that to sit out on my stoop with a bottle of Red Stripe and a new book. I needed to find just the right book for that moment, and I settled on The Colorado Kid by Stephen King. It's a tiny little book in an old dime-novel style and it was perfect for an evening on the stoop. Today's teaser is a little bit of truth about men and women:

"Johnny told me that night at the Breakers that he never could have done what she wanted if she hadn't been right there watchin him and countin on him to do it, and you know, I believe that's so. For a woman a man will do many things that he'd turn his back on in an instant when alone; things he'd back away from, nine times out of ten, even when drunk with a bunch of his friends egging him on."

I certainly think that's the truth. I'm enjoying the downhome style of the two main storytellers, Vince Teague and Dave Bowie. And the best part is, I should be able to finish the book (and another bottle of Red Stripe) this evening.

What's teasing you this week?

Review: Fool by Christopher Moore

"This is a bawdy tale. Herein you will find gratuitous shagging, murder, spanking, maiming, treason, and heretofore unexplored heights of vulgarity and profanity, as well as nontraditional grammar, split infinitives, and the odd wank . . . If that's the sort of thing you think you might enjoy, then you have happened upon the perfect story!"

Apparently, this is going to be my summer of “literature classics the way I wish they had been written.” First, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and now a new take on King Lear. (By the way, I just requested an ARC of Mr, Darcy, Vampire, so there could be more Mangled Classics in store.)

In Honors English, I was not terribly fond of King Lear, although I like Shakespeare in general. The play just had too many betrayals, too many people meeting bad ends when they deserved better (I know, I know, tragedy and all that) for me to really enjoy it, but I didn’t care about them enough to be really moved by it. This is a tale that would never have made it past the high school censors, but that every student would be able to recite, chapter and verse. This isn’t just a story about a king and his daughters. According to Pocket, King Lear’s jester and his apprentice, Drool, this is a story about just one thing…heinous fuckery. Indeed, heinous fuckery most foul.

There are dozens of passages I could quote, but most of them are PG-13 at best, R-rated through most of the book, and a couple of passages would garner an NC-17. There is plenty of bonking, shagging, wanking, and humping. The players are described as dog-frothing mad, flesh-tearing harpies, craven hose-beast, catch-fart and other things I couldn’t repeat in a blog tht children might read. There are buckets of bat wank, monkey spunk, camel spit and git-seed; if that sort of thing offends you, steer well clear of this book. And in case you have trouble with some of the more archaic words and phrases, Moore helpfully provides definitions:

1. Saturnalia - the celebration of the winter solstice in the Roman pantheon, paying tribute ot Saturn, the “sower of seeds.” Celebrations involved much drunkenness and indiscriminate shagging. Observed in modern times by the ritual of the “office Christmas party.”

Moore plays a little fast and loose with the Bard’s work (thank heavens), adding some intrigue, some witches, a number of bawdy songs and a lot of indiscriminate shagging. He admits to having made “a dog’s breakfast of English history, geography, King Lear, and the English language in general.” The role of the Fool is far larger in his version, Pocket being the hand behind the scenes that turns the wheels and directs the action. Of course, he doesn’t always know precisely what he’s doing, but he follows the directions he gets from the girl-ghost haunting the castle (there’s always a bloody ghost) and he has good instincts. The ending is much happier — at least for some characters — than in the original, but then, in the original, just about everybody ends up dead. Here, too, some players meet an untimely and violent end, but that’s to be expected.

I found myself quite wrapped up in the Fool’s story. Pocket has not had an easy life (although it was considerably more pleasant than that of Thalia, the anchoress who befriends him as an orphan boy). He cares deeply for his friend and apprentice, Drool, and is infuriated when Drool is mistreated. Although he shows a rough and tumble exterior, there are a few instances that reveal the soft underbelly, such as his sadness at the fate of his little horse, Rose.

All in all, this book kept me giggling all the way through. It was a quick read, as I was caught up and swept along from the very beginning. It was precisely the sort of entertainment I needed on this business trip. One thing is for certain — the next time I see King Lear, I will be stifling giggles as I watch the tragedy unfold.