Mon., April 23, 42 A.B.With Apologies For My Little Faunchie
"Faunch" isn't a word you hear much anymore outside psychiatric conventions. I hope that changes soon because I could really use
another well-known word to rhyme with "launch" when scribbling my
poems of praise to NASA on public rest room stalls and those boxcars parked on unpatroled sidings. In hopes of bringing that time one day closer, let me say right here and now that "faunch" is defined by my Webster's Third New International Dictionary (unabridged) as a verb meaning "to display angry excitement: rant and rave." The example they give is "It was enough to make anybody faunch.""Faunchie" is my own creation. I hereby define it as the noun version of "faunch" - i.e., "an example of ranting or raving; a rant." And the specific example I would give is "My last entry was quite the little faunchie, wasn't it?"
A little faunchie for which I deeply apologized.
I don't know what came over me. Maybe it was triggered by my receiving
4 pieces of annoying spam within the space of a very few minutes.Then again, maybe it was merely an indirect way of venting all the anxiety I've been feeling about this Summit of the Americas that's being held
in Quebec City. You know - the one involving the leaders of 34 nations
who hope to create one big free trade zone from northernmost Canada
to the southernmost tip of Argentina's southernmost female. I have to admit, I dread the thought. Exactly what's going to become of me if the
US is flooded with massive amounts of unregulated balderdash muttered by unskilled child blatherers working in the slums of Rio or the cocaine dens of Colombia? Exactly how am I going to compete in the nonsense department with uneducated youngsters who don't even know English?? Will I be reduced to the status of Temporary Babbler? Emergency Chatterbox? Itinerant Illiterate? *Sigh*In my more hopeful, chocolate-infused moments, I consider alternative explanations for my little faunchie.
Maybe I was merely suffering from the devastating effects of my having listened to Bing Crosby's version of "Hey Jude" recently. Dearest Zeus! Has anything more like aural Ebola ever been recorded?? If so, please keep it to yourself! (And just so you know: Bing's version is confined to this site, so far as I know. If you want to avoid experiencing the shock, pain, and horror I felt, please avoid clicking here.)
On the other hand, maybe my mind is rather evilly blaming Bing for that which my own body is to blame....
The truth is, I woke up with chest pains Sunday morning along with the thought "So - this is how 30 years of congestive heart failure begins, eh?" My little faunchie might have been the result of the anger, tension, and fears that thought produced. It wouldn't be unprecedented, you know. In fact, before I was even fully awake and out of bed I was already engaging in certain mental acrobatics which seem in retrospect to have been little more than an attempt to flee from the dreadful future suddenly looming before me....
What did those acrobatics consist of? Mentally contorting "chest pains" into "chess paints." Suddenly, instead of worrying about the future, my mind was engaged in dreaming up a moment in which someone gave me
a set of these chess paints - pigments used to change the standard
black and white pieces of a chess game into 32 uniquely hued individuals. Suddenly, instead of two sets of 16 pieces forever trapped in two absolutely opposed kingdoms eternally at war with each other, each piece was at last free - free to be itself! Free to shine! Free to move or mingle simultaneously with all the others! Free to skeedaddle right off the damn board and go pet the Monopoly dog token if it wanted, or dance
backwards down the paths of the Game of Life board while wearing the Monopoly top hat token, or engage in some much-needed shuttle diplomacy over there on the world map of Risk. Free to even point out to those warring Risk players how foolish it is to battle over the world when there's a whole house for them to explore all around them.True, by the time I had fully awakened, my chest pains had vanished. But the worry they had engendered remained, albeit mostly subconsciously. And of course my chess paints had vanished as well, and with them most of the hope I had felt while the brush was still in my hand (so to speak)....
Anyway, when you get right down to it, it really doesn't matter what brought my little faunchie into this world. The fact is, it came, and I inflicted it upon the world instead of keeping it to myself (or saving it to give as a shower gift to someone I don't like), and I'm sorry.
I'll try to do better in the future.
Especially if I don't die of a heart attack in my sleep tonight.
(©Now by DJ Birtcher - America's Only Pro-Union,
Pro-Environment Blatherer Who Fully Supports Your Right
To Sleep With The Stuffed Animal of Your Choice!)