When the dad of a dear friend gave me a copy of Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in 5th grade — for me, obviously, not for him — I’m sure I didn’t think of the cosmically resonant number of 42 in terms of the age I’d be over three decades hence.
And yet here we are. I don’t know if reaching, in human years, the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything will impact my existence in any positive way but it’d sure be nice.
I’m not feeling particularly grumpy, nor am I going to wax philosophical about the passage of time here like I did in my last birthday post. Really the title is just to keep up the usual conceit of my word-verification definition offerings. For those not familiar with the phenomenon, I’ve explained it on the dedicated page that collects accumulated entries to date.
• antick — [an tik] n. 1. Ye olde foolish behaviour. 2. Half ant, half tick.
• bledlump — [bled lump] n. A smidge of clotted exsanguination.
• botica — [bah tih kuh] n. The study of ’droids and other ’tomatons.
• Clola™ — [cloh luh] Clam-flavored cola. (Don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it.)
(Uh... But don’t try it.)
• derbsaly — [durb suh lee] adv. About or referring to a horse race, or a sporting contest in general. “Derbsaly speaking, Kentucky is my favorite.”
Grover and I share a birthday, according to the 1972 Sesame Street calendar — Oct. 14th.
Image from Sesame Street 711 © 1975 CTW.
A prototype of Grover called Gleep appeared as early as 1967 on an episode of The Ed Sullivan Show. I get that info from the Muppet Wiki link at the beginning of this post, which is not to be confused with The Monster at the End of This Book (on which more quite soon). Nearly all proper nouns seen in blue hypertext during Muppet Mondays, if not otherwise specified, head over to that expansive and entertainingly informative resource.
a self-portrait of the artist
approaching middle age
I turned 40 yesterday — at midnight legally, but literally at around 7 p.m., and yesterday only in the sense that I’ve been trying to get this up since the header date although you will probably be are definitely reading this some time later.
Yes, I’m still having trouble connecting to the Interwebs with any longevity or reliability. For that reason among others, I haven’t published here in almost a month; due to the substandard WiFi, my own lack of energy, and the fact that dealing with the first makes the second all the more aggravating (or vice versa) when there’s a post fully written ready to go online, I attempt to live by a version of Reinhold Niebuhr’s “Serenity Prayer”:
Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.
