Word Power, Heliculture

Word Power

Building Your Vocabulary, One Word at a Time

Heliculture

heliculture (hell ih cult yer) n the art, science, practice and folklore of raising snails

Simon and Garfunkle as Adolescents (Helix Aspersa)

About a year and a half ago, we adopted a snail we found on a plant at Sylvandale’s Garden Supply here in Redway. They were going to kill it, so we decided to give it another lease on life, and took it home as a pet. For a while, we kept it in a big jar with cheesecloth over the lid, and fed it lettuce leaves.

Garfunkle, aka Snail Friend, shortly after he joined our family

Amy misted it with a squirt bottle every day, which usually motivated it to come out of its shell and climb around for a while. After a while, it seemed lonely. I don’t exactly know why it seemed that way to us, but we went back to Sylvandale’s to see if we could find another one. We did, and they hit it off immediately. We often found them resting right next to each other, shell to shell.

Simon whispering to Garfunkle

When we just had one snail, we called it “Snail Friend”, but when we added the new one, we named them Simon and Garfunkle. We chose those names because of how quiet our new pets are, which reminded us of Simon and Garfunkle’s hit song “The Sounds of Silence”. At first Garfunkle, aka “Snail Friend”, the one we had the longest, was much larger than Simon, but they both grew rapidly.

Simon and Garfunkle (Simon is the little one on top in this photo)

Eventually we found a nice little aquarium with a fitted lid and transferred the snails into it. They really seemed to like the new digs, which had a nice layer of soil on the bottom, a couple rocks, and a piece of bark to create a diagonal ramp from the bottom corner to the top corner of their enclosure. They continued to grow, and Simon eventually grew to be the larger of the two.

Simon and Garfunkle in their Mason Jar Home

One evening, about two months ago, we noticed them necking rather enthusiastically. We knew they liked each other, but this got to be embarrassing to watch, so we put their aquarium away and gave them some privacy. About a week or so ago, we discovered dozens of tiny gray ovoid shaped masses about an eighth of an inch long, all over the inside of the aquarium. Baby snails! We have dozens of baby snails. Now what?

Baby Snails!

We checked out a book from the library about raising snails for food, titled, cryptically enough, Raising Snails for Food by Jacques Baratou, subtitled, “How to Make Friends With Garden Pests and Develop Them Into The Darlings of the Gourmet’s Table. We’ve done pretty well at the “making friends with garden pests” part, but I’m not sure we’re ready to “develop the darlings”, so to speak. However, I did discover this great word, heliculture.

Tiny snails in Amy’s palm

So, as we weigh our options at this critical juncture, and decide whether or not to join the distinguished ranks of the world’s heliculturalists, let me share a few photos of the proud new parents, and their babies, as well as a few facts I’ve learned about snail ranching:

Garfunkle with offspring

Snails have the most complicated sexual apparatus in the animal kingdom, and they are all hermaphroditic

Simon with baby

Snail ranchers ride specially bred horses that don’t run very fast, but are very careful about where they put their hooves down.

Baby Snails!

In France, snails have the right-of-way. Occasionally, french snail herders will have to cross a major road with their herd. This can tie up traffic for hours.

Proud Parents Simon and Garfunkle

Snail rodeos, where snail ranchers show off their snail-handling skills, and compete for prizes, have become high-stakes sporting events that draw competitors from all over the world. However, few spectators have the patience to sit through a snail rodeo, and as a result, the sport remains extremely obscure, outside of helicultural circles.

Simon with two babies

Word Power, Anthropophagous

Word Power

Building Your Vocabulary One Word At A Time

Anthropophagous

 

anthropophagous (ant threh ‘poff eh gus) adj. Feeding on human flesh

…not to be confused with another word that’s pronounced the same way, but has a slightly different spelling…

anthropophagus (ant threh ‘poff eh gus) n. Man-eater

 

So, an anthropophagus is by definition anthropophagous, and anything that is anthropophagous must be an anthropophagus. If that’s not confusing enough, an anthropophogologist studying this phenomena, and those that practice it, might title his book on the subject, Anthropophagy of the World’s Anthropophagi.

 

While anthropophogology may seem like a very narrow field of study, limited to only a very few indigenous tribes, some extreme survival situations, and the occasional unfortunate encounter with one of the remaining non-human large predators, consider the future.

As time goes on, and the human population continues its explosive growth, displacing most other life forms on planet Earth, I suspect more of us will adopt an anthropophagous diet. Someday we may have a rich tradition of culinary anthropophagy to satisfy the drooling anthropophagi of the future.

 

Yes the future looks bright for anthropophagy, and for aspiring young anthropophagi, and thanks to this column, you will be prepared to discuss it, without using the “c” word, they get so sensitive about.

Word Power, Xanthochroi

Word Power

Building Your Vocabulary One Word at a Time

Xanthochroi

xan thoch roi (zan ‘thock reh why …or… zan ‘thock roy)n, white person having fair skin and light hair.

 

This word comes to us from the Greeks, who, I guess, found such people so rarely that they didn’t mind wasting the syllables on them. They combined their word for yellow, “xanthos”, with their word for pale, “ochros” to give us a three or four syllable word for blonde.

 

If you think this piece is now going to turn into a dumb blonde joke, you couldn’t be more wrong. If you think blondes are dumb, ask yourself why the Scandinavian countries routinely whip our kids asses in educational achievement, have health-care systems that work, and in general report a better quality of life than people here in the US, even though they live in a dark frozen wasteland?

 

The real reason we call blondes, “dumb” is the simple rhythm of it. It’s like bass and snare… boom-chick. Dumb brunette, dumb redhead, these variations on the triplet beat are just don’t have the same hook. So, this monosyllabic moniker, “Blonde” has victimized xanthochroid people everywhere for decades. They’ve suffered enough.

 

Maybe we need this big word for blonde, to help make up for all of the unfair “dumb blonde” jokes they’ve had to endure. Personally, I like the four syllable pronunciation best. It exercises parts of your mouth that don’t used much, so it feels a little weird, but its fun to say. I can think of another good four-syllable word to pair with it, “intelligent”.

 

“Intelligent xanthochroi” sounds smart, doesn’t it? Though not exactly an economical expression, linguistically speaking, it has a certain music about it. Try it out. Say it a few times out loud. “Intelligent xanthochroi”, “intelligent xanthochroi”, “intelligent xanthochroi”. Wasn’t that fun? Did it elicit any stares? …smiles? Say it again, louder this time. Intelligent xanthochroi! That’s enough.

 

Don’t get too carried away. White people in general can be kind of full of themselves in this way. I’m not saying that pale skinned, light haired people are smarter than anyone else. I’m just saying that xanthochroid people are no stupider than other people.

 

So, to you, the intelligent xanthochroid people of the world, by virtue of the fact that you are no dumber than the rest of us, I dedicate unto you, this ridiculous piece.

Word Power, Dementian

Word Power

Building Your Vocabulary by Inventing New Words

Dementian

de ment ian (pronounce like dimension)n, an inhabitant of dementia.

 

I coined this term after listening to the Friday morning talk show on our dear little community radio station, KMUD, called, embarrassingly enough, Thank Jah Its Friday. Older, boomer-aged host Al “Owl” Cerulo had just shouted down his younger partner, Tanner Spea’s concerns about the environmental crisis, with the statement “We’re gonna move into another dimension.”

 

Cerulo often airs these psychotic notions on this show. While the world, and our local community face real issues that deserve discussion, the kinds of discussion Tanner usually initiates, Cerulo cannot stop talking about UFOs, mysterious black boxes, or the awesome power of the pyramids, …or dimensions.

 

Ever since Carl Sagan tried to explain astrophysics on PBS, lunatics like Cerulo have latched onto the idea that we can somehow inhabit theoretical mathematical constructs. People who laughed at the rapture day retards, chuckled at the castrated comet cult, and just stared in disbelief at Jim Jones’ Koolaid kill-off, somehow take this “other dimension” shit seriously.

 

Some people simply can no longer look reality in the face. They pray for salvation. They become born again Christians. They seek Nirvana. They believe in UFOs or lapse into some other dementia. Rather than seeing this tendency as yet another symptom of a failed culture, people cling to these salvation fantasies while they lose their grip on reality. Rather than living in the real world, they begin to inhabit their own dementia. In other words, they become dementians.

 

Dementians see our complete failure as a culture as a kind of achievement. As though only by destroying the natural systems that support life on Earth, can we prove to the aliens, or Jesus or whatever, that we deserve a better place to live. Or, maybe they think that through the process of destroying the planet, we will gain so much knowledge that the aliens will finally find us interesting enough to want to talk to.

 

It’s really hard to know what dememtians think, because they are crazy. Crazy people don’t think rationally. That’s why we call them crazy. Once they buy into Jesus or UFOs or quantum theory, every subsequent fantasy gets easier to swallow. In this way, one silly idea leads to another until soon they inhabit a world of their own construction, built entirely from demented ideas. They become dementians.

 

Dementians, like zombies, try to eat the brains of the people around them, like “Owl” tried to do to Tanner on Thank Jah Its Friday last week. Dementians, like zombies have lost the capacity for reason, so there’s no point talking to them. Like zombies, dementians continue blindly consuming everything they can get their grasping clutches on, because they believe that a better world awaits them just on the other side of reality.

 

Dementians act like zombies in many ways, and every day, the world looks more like a zombie apocalypse because of them. This drives more people crazy, who then become new dementains. The more crazy people surround you, the more likely you are to crack yourself. Don’t let them suck you into their dementia. We have plenty of dementians as it is.

Word Power, Autochthon

Word Power

Building Your Vocabulary One word at a Time

Autochthon

au toch thon (au ‘tock then) n, an indigenous plant, animal or person. One who springs from the ground they inhabit.

Around here, Redwoods, Douglas Fir, Tan Oaks and Madrones are autochthonous trees.

Mountain lions, elk, and black bear are among the surviving autochthonous mammals,

and the Waillaki, and Sinkyone people are among the autochthonous inhabitants of this little piece of heaven, now called Southern Humboldt County,

though most of them were killed by white settlers.

Word Power, Ixodid

Word Power

Building Your Vocabulary One Word at a Time

Ixodid

ixodid (‘ik se did) adj. Of or relating to ticks.

 

It’s tick season again here in Humboldt Co. So, watch out!

 

Check every little itch, and don’t be bashful about getting naked in front of strangers.

 

You want to find these little bastards and get rid of them ASAP. They often carry Lyme disease. That can fuck you up for years. The quicker you find and remove those little blood-suckers, the lower your chances of contracting the disease.

 

If you spend any time at all in the woods, or outside, for that matter, you’re bound to come across them sooner or later. While Lyme disease can be debilitating, any tick bite can cause achy joints and flu-like symptoms, not to mention itch like hell and take forever to heal.

 

If you find a tick on you, grasp it by the head with a pair of tweezers that you carry with you everywhere you go, specifically for that purpose. Gently pull the tick straight out. Make sure that no part of the tick is left in the bite.

 

Then, I usually incinerate the tick with my lighter. If I could think of a crueler way to kill them I would do it, but burning them alive while I chant “Burn in hell you blood-sucking bastard” seems both effective and satisfying.

Word Power, Misericord

Word Power

Building Your Vocabulary One Word at a Time

Misericord

mi sir i cord (meh ‘zer eh kard) n, a small projection on a hinged church seat that gives support to a standing worshiper when the seat is turned up.

 

Or, if you don’t go to church, a misericord is the thing you lean your butt against, on a spring loaded stadium, or theater seat, when you stand for the national anthem.

Word Power, Myrmecophagous

Word Power

Building Your Vocabulary One Word at a Time

Myrmecophagous

myr me coph a gous (myrrh meh ‘cough eh gus) adj, feeding on ants

 

With ants in my esophagus

They called me myrmecophagous

I really didn’t know what to say

My mouth was full then anyway

I just think its kind of neat

To be described by what I eat

Word Power, Jeroboam

Word Power

Building Your Vocabulary One Word at a Time

Jeroboam

jer o bo am (jer eh bow em) n, an oversize wine bottle that holds about a gallon. Named for King Jeroboam I, who ruled the Northern Kingdom of Israel at about 912bc. I don’t know anything else about this king, but I like him already. Obviously the guy knew how to party.

 

Think about it, when you see a comically oversize joint, you call it a “Cheech and Chong” joint. King Jeroboam I must have been the “Chech and Chong” of the ancient world.

 

Word Power, Zymurgy

Word Power

Building Your Vocabulary One Word at a Time

Zymurgy

 zy mur gy (‘zi mer gee) n, the branch of organic chemistry dealing with the study of fermentation.

I propose a toast:

To fermentation, the science of zymurgy, and to the yeast who make it all possible.

For without them, we’d have no toast at all. Cheers!