WORK

“Wedding Bell Blues”

I was invited to a wedding in an abandoned storefront. A serial killer with a pleasant demeanor checked invitations at the door. “Keep moving, keep moving,” the cops ordered the gawkers clogging the sidewalk. The elderly bride wore long sleeves to hid the tattoos of sunning mermaids and leaping dolphins on her arms. Some of the guests still couldn’t sleep that night for fear of drowning in bed. Others of us felt more surprise than fear, like when you slice your finger on a piece of broken glass. You just hold your hand above heart level until the bleeding stops.

—Howie Good
—from Blotterature (Vol. 1, No. 2)

WORD(S)

demonym. noun. The name given for an inhabitant of a place based on that place, such as midwesterner; an adjective for a residence, such as Swedish. From Ancient Greek dēmos (country/people) + onuma (name). Coined—as a backformation of demonymic—in 1997 by Paul Dickson of Merriam-Webster.

“My word is demonym. The word was created to fill a void in the language for those common terms which define a person geographically—for example, Angeleno for a person from Los Angeles.” (Paul Dickson)

“Let’s find out if you can tell the difference between a Cestrian (a resident of Chester, England) and a Cytherean (a hypothetical inhabitant of the planet Venus). Test your familiarity with demonyms…” (Richard Nordquist)

“Germans typically come from Germany and speak German, Italians come from Italy and speak Italian, and so forth. It’s only nominally more complicated in the case of, say, the French and Spanish, with demonyms like French(wo)men and Spaniards, but the words are still clearly related. Then there’s the Dutch, some of whom say they come from Holland, others who fiercely deny that they’re from Holland but rather the Netherlands…” (Kristen de Joseph)

WEB

1. Alex John Beck explores symmetrical portraiture. A name I just made up for something easier for you to just look at than for me to explain…

2. Grownups Read Things They Wrote as Kids. An open-mic series.

3. The etymological fallacy is the idea that the true meaning of a word is whatever it “originally” meant. James Harbeck illustrates with a story.

4. For funsies, ►_The Princess Bride_ recut as a horror trailer.

5. Today in 1848, an accident left Phineas Gage with an iron rod through his brain and skull. Much of the story about the changes in Gage as a result of this turn out to be untrue, but that arguably only makes things more fascinating. Poet Jesse Glass wrote a compelling book of concrete and experimental (three adjectives you won’t see me use very often together) poetry about Gage.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader G. follows up on the recent entries from The Book of Duels: “Samurai trilogy is one of my favorite movie series, in fact I own the three disc set. If you don’t know it, it depicts the life of Mushashi Miyamoto and closes with the duel between him and Sasaki Kojiro.” — In fact, I didn’t know of the trilogy, though I have seen a lot Toshiro Mifune’s work in Kurosawa films. More for the “to watch” list…

• My heartfelt thanks to Readers A., G., T. and V. for their thoughtful personal notes yesterday.

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