So here’s a new pejorative term for you

Snotwaffle.

 

Perhaps you would never have a use for a word like this, especially in reference to another human being, but bear with me.  It has a particular meaning and purpose, and it’s meant to be descriptive.

If you beheld a waffle, you might in the ordinary course of events approach it with an eye to its golden brown beauty, utility, edibility and caloric density. But if that eye fell upon a corner of the waffle which had been most callously and vilely defaced by a mighty wad of snot, you would wish to pivot and flee, as having beheld something which got your hopes up and then dashed them to the extent you went from feeling pretty darned good to wondering how the hell you could have mistaken that shine for maple syrup.

When you run across a person, of any gender representation, who appears okay and, you know, a human being, but on closer inspection appears malicious and nasty, and secondarily any person who takes something good and leaves it fucked and far from home and no longer possessing beauty or utility, and who offers neither excuse nor remedy, that person, dear friends, is a snotwaffle.

I guarantee you that an occasion to use this term of opprobrium will find its way to you soon, because this poor old world has snotwaffles in quantity.  And if someone calls you on it, you say, “‘s not awful, why, what do you think I said?”

Mass damper

There’s a 720 ton mass-damper ball in one of the tallest buildings in Taipei – check out the footage online of it moving like a kid’s soccer ball in the storm last week. It moved more than during the last earthquake.

Last night we (Alex, Imp, baby Alex, Katie, Darci, Curtis, Abbie, Jasmine, Keith, Paul, Jeff and I) went to English Bay and thanks to Alex had a picnic.  Memories stick out…

Baby Alex sprint-crawling to the water.  Baby Alex biting a lemon.  Repeatedly. Shuddering from crown to butt. Playing lemon catch with Abbie. Playing the Ukelele Song with Alex (I figured out chords on the fly, go me). Pickled eggs (SOOOO GOOD Alex home-made them). Realizing that I made eight quarts of iced tea and it almost all got drunk, which is awesome.  A fiery pink sunset. Happy eating people.  Keith giving the Imp a shoulder ride.  The Imp playing with a frisbee in a very high wind and looking very very carefully both ways before crossing the bikepath. Abbie neatly eating a sandwich.  How tenderly her parents comforted her when she took a tumble. Alex saying “before you became a parent you never thought you’d have the urge to hold someone else’s vomit in your hands” as baby Alex puked into his mom’s hands. Assorted extremely yummy olives. New potato salad so good I almost cried, or maybe that was noticing it had extremely crunchy good bacon in it.  Not eating too much, just feeling the fellowship and food.

 

Thank you Alex for putting it together.  It was really wonderful.