|k| clippings: 2016-02-25 — stick your frammis up

Joseph Hutchison let me know that the title of his poem featured in my last issue should have been “Belief” (not “Belife”). I duplicated the typo—what I took at the time to be an intentional play on words—from his site. It’s a good excuse to go and read more of Hutchison’s wonderful poems.

WORK

“There is something in us, as storytellers and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive act, that demands that what falls at least be offered the chance to be restored. The reader of today looks for this motion, and rightly so, but what he has forgotten is the cost of it. His sense of evil is diluted or lacking altogether, and so he has forgotten the price of restoration. When he reads a novel, he wants either his sense tormented or his spirits raised. He wants to be transported, instantly, either to mock damnation or a mock innocence.”

—Flannery O’Connor
—from Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose

WORD(S)

frammis /FRAM-əs/. noun. A generic term for a thing that someone can’t name, similar to thingamabob or gizmo. A common invented surname in comics and invented company name in technical writing. More generally, nonsense or jargon, commotion or confusion. Origin unknown, perhaps derived from a family name.

“It [the comic strip ‘Silly Milly’] has its pet vocabulary—all names are Frammis, laughter is Yuk Yuk, and the language of animals is Coo.” (M. Farber)

“I could not write most science-fiction films, especially the kind where there is all that lunatic ‘Captain, the frammis on the right engine is flummaging’–type dialogue.” (William Goldman)

“We didn’t have a flangella voltometer with us. Very important during electrical work, otherwise you can fry the frammistat.” (Tom Piccirilli)

“The kook really meant it. He wanted to go find that uppity creepy cemetery where Ginny’s blue-blood parents had stuck her body, and blow trumpet for the dead. It was all at once laughable and pitiable and creepy. Like a double-talker giving you the business with the frammis on the fortestan, and you standing there wondering what the hell is happening.” (Harlan Ellison)

WEB

1. Some good entries…but I think the Clamor could come up with a much better list. → 29 Amazing Literary Magazines You Need To Be Reading.

2. The first rule of grammar club: there are and aren’t rules. → The totes amazesh way millennials are changing the English language

3. Another great entry in the “Every Frame a Painting” series. → Joel & Ethan Coen - Shot | Reverse Shot

4. I have 17 birth month words including control freak, mind-blow, pigging and two more that are destined to be future WORD entries. How about you? → How to find your birthday word

5. Today in 1981, a 9-year-old later (inevitably) dubbed “Billy the Kid” robs a Rockefeller Center bank with a cap gun. Three days later, having spent most of his $118 haul on “hamburgers, a movie, and a wrist watch that plays music,” the 4’–5" surrendered himself to police. I can find no record of the verdict in his case or what the young entrepreneur did in his later life. Presumably he ended up working on Wall Street.

WATCH/WITNESS

Another entry in my growing tardigrade (AKA water bear) obsession: a 3D printed model “in Full Color Sandstone: Fully colored material with a coarse finish and a delicate feel.” Also available as a wireframe, a stainless steel bottle opener and more. Thanks, Reader J.!

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Regardless of the title, Reader T. enjoyed Hutchison’s poem: “Great poem! Found many more on his site, all leading to a slightly lighter wallet. Thanks. I think.”

• Reader B. on ‘Ten Great Writers Nobody Reads Anymore’ and the earlier ‘Ten Great Writers Nobody Reads’: “Those two Lithub pieces are heartbreaking: because of undeserved obscurity, and my sense of seeing the amount of books I can read before death or brain collapse dwindling each year. ¶ I did, and do, love reading Olaf Stapledon, though.”

• Reader T. responds to the unhappy unsubscribers: “I get that Katexic might be too much, too erudite, too time-consuming, too whatever. But to flame you on the way out the door? They can bite my Clamorite Butt.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORD(S) section? Check out my other little project: concīs » http://concis.io/

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