Immoderate Musings;
Quibblesome Quarrels;
Risible Rhapsodies on
Music and Morals
by
David Van Alstyne
PAGE 2
Verses 49 - 104
Verses:
60 /
70 /
80 /
90 /
100
GLOSSARY
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But Eureka!, the
49)
refulgent recrudescence of orchidaceous elan;
the
painstaking, irradicably robust recalibration of
long since sidelined, now
swimmily unswaddled,
youthfully eudaemonistic self-congratulation,
once so
50)
gratingly giddy; so
roguishly raffish; so
rankly randy; so
callous and callow; so
blastedly bland and
blithely oblivious to
simple concerns like shame and humiliation,
like a
51)
fiery, feisty phoenix, having once
lily-liveredly
flounced and faltered in a Fabian frivolity of
dullardly dalliance in flat-footed defalcation,
now, in a
tardy little driblet of compensation,
finally
52)
rises up as in a blinding firebolt of lightning with
commandeering crashes and thunderous fulguration; a
galvanizing blaze; a
brashly bellicose craze of
intractable tenacity in proud protestation
against the
53)
way we
wanly wangle, wilt, whinge, whimper and whine,
wimpishly woebegone
in a
woozy welter of weltschmerz while
trying not to blubber as we hasten to hedge our bets by
lubriciously wallowing in
venal vizards of vacillation
in a
54)
slumped over, soul-shrinking
torpor of dulcet dupery; being
lost in the
sequela of confusion and dislocation where we
complacently fall into and freely follow a
fallow rut; a
rigorously rocky road of regressive resignation
to a
55)
bad bill of hokum; a
hallucinatory confection of
reactionary rubbish for eremitic abdication: an
over-the-top nostrum for bogus restoration through
erethically misoneistic stasis and hibernation;
to the
56)
pursuit of liberation through artless nidification in a
flocculent cocoon of neuroleptic capitulation to a
punctilious plot of claustrophobic reclusion in
stiff-necked, pallidly parochial insulation
from the
57)
peanut gallery of motor-mouths,
cackling hacks and gasbags;
persnickety old criticasters,
cretins, all crabbily crowing their
grumpy little gravamens of
contumelious animadversion in
wide, wicked wisecracks of unwarranted exultation;
from their
58)
meanly over-bloated gloats of cryptogenic invective
making
spiteful spittle for the transgressive irrigation of their
churlishly canorous canards, their
mordacious epithets and their
tawdry taunts, tizzies of inculpatory excoriation
for our
59)
daring to collogue, in any socratic affiliation, with
people who would ever think to
nurture the conceptualization of
neighborly outreach and further mutual cooperation in the
unrushable protraction of our temporal maturation,
and for
60)
quite candidly querying the drift, the quotidian quiddity of the
evolution of reclamation and quantum regeneration,
by the
quickening quintessence of our shared commiseration and
communal comity in concordant self-desquamation
so
61)
typically,
efficaciously partitive and appendant to the
attainment of convincing coherence in
conventionalization of that
comely colloquiality which
uncorks the convalescence of
more
cogent ways of consultation and deliberation
which
62)
draw from the source of
truly trenchant excogitation: to be
specific, the
higher wisdom of most lowly supplication for the
assuasively softening succor of supernatural distillation in the
aiding of the consortium for suprarational consideration
unto
63)
advancing a
demulcently observational estimation of the
volatile vicissitudes and
variously vagrant velleities in our
restive repose; verily indeed, a wildly rose-colored
travesty of divesting into self-neutralization;
in our
64)
insidiously debasing and vitiating zeitgeist of
obsessive, if gustatorily pliant, avidities and a
quasi-sacred science of flimsy gimcrackery in the
support of
omnivorously voracious commercialization;
that
65)
entanglingly tentacular umbrage of tinge; that
tenebrous, ominously omnibus adumbration of a
catalytically cleaving reclassification; just a
colossal mass of wholesale disintegration
which is
66)
liable to smoke out and drive the most impressionable,
inexperienced and inculpable parts of the population into a
rumpled, crumpled slump, like a hump or a bleeding lump in
sapless lassitude of dismay and devitalization,
while
67)
speedily
dispatching, with embarrassing promptitude and
unseemly celerity, into a
downward modulation, many
hosts of anxiety-ridden, abundantly snootier
caste, rank, image, esteem, tier, standing and station,
even
68)
erstwhile breviloquent Grand High Pooh-bahs of
tranquilly taciturn,
laconically saturnine,
serenely irenic and
sanguinely sapient (if
only perhaps a bit straitlaced) equilibration
into
69)
serpentine sequences of sinfully silly sallies
suffused with signs of sinister signification; into the
staging of screamingly solecistic spectacles and
sundry sorry sights and scenes of supercilious elation
by
70)
sulking and skulking; by sneaking and slinking with
ophidian skills of serpentiform stealth; by
sashaying into sudorifically strenuous forays,
(incursions and sorties of sanguineous recreation);
and into
71)
puzzling impieties of impetuosity and
earthy acts of utterly imbecilic irrationality, and as
pugnacious punks who are impertinently unimpressed by
procedurally edentulous legal reprobation,
into
72)
rakish enterprises full of polychotomous botcheries;
side shows of temerariously atavistic abstrusities; a
repertoire of other abhorrently ungainly gaucheries of
unrepeatable, inenarrably inelegant confrontation;
all the while
73)
caddishly caballing in clubby cliques
conducive to
cozily chummy, cravenly scummy capers of clownery, to
cowardly cavorts of intramural crunching and punching in
pugilistic donnybrooks of non-comical aggravation
which
74)
comprise unpardonably puerile poltrooneries like
people-pounding and pummeling
under the characterization of
peripatetic prowls for pinching, purloining and pilfering in the
unjustifiably light-fingered lifting and expropriation
of
75)
portable private property (say,
"Egad! and Forsooth!
Such
pluck in
transpicuously Tartarean usurpation!") in
not exactly the least ludicrously lurid of lunes in this
meteoric crisis; even the
loony escalation
of
76)
such
moronic moxie in the most
errantly purposive,
out to lunch, mini-mindedly impractical perpetuation of
myriad trespasses and miscellaneous misdemeanors of
curmudgeonly cheek in barefaced non-cooperation,
and those
77)
throat-clutching dramas of such cloying pathos
(merely ploys plying potent precatory manipulation); that
puny Punic posing; those
stage-front theatrics of
such
canny connivance in careful calculation
as to,
78)
showcase the whole categorically seedy spectrum of
no-no's in the conduct of multifarious misfeasance (of
comportment, decorum, constraint, probity and politesse, it
certainly seems at least a somewhat serious
abnegation
which
79)
simply serves to prove the point of how
incredibly insular,
impossibly preliminary,
dissuasively delusional,
preposterously presumptuous and
deplorably Promethean are their
revoltingly ruffian rites of self-idolization
in the
80)
ingenuous,
naively nutty,
nonchalantly narcissistic,
bafflingly idiopathic, yea, even
insupportably
pretentious and
pathetically precritical
prolepsis of their
own self-worship on a vector of deification)
as they
81)
merrily rove and rave, ravage, pillage, puke and plunder like
old marauding bands of highly pixilated blunderbusses;
die-hard delinquents doing
dreadfully drastic deeds of
deleterious demerit and
distinctly demential indignation
as if
82)
in a froth, flung frenzied, fitfully fumbling and fuming, into
fugacious fandangos,
frenetic fugues and
frissons of
fastuous fanfaronade:
fantods and fiascos of
fully unfurled madly manic disorientation;
like
83)
gaggles of goofuses, goofy goose-stepping galoots,
gladiatorial guerillas and
implausibly pinheaded palookas all
eclamptically accreting their suppletory certification of a
well-earned rap and roundly regrettable reputation
for
84)
clumsily galumphing into
grievous garboils (like
wild chthonian uproars of
terpsichorean bedlam), and for
gallivanting through gigantic gyres of callithumpian chaos in
three-ring circuses of
nearly simian agitation;
like
85)
pie-eyed picaroons and
bozos all bouncing about,
bibulously bound up in graceless confederation; like
bedraggled deadbeats,
perennially blasted, gassed and hammered,
thoroughly lit up and smashed from lavishly lusty libation
as if
86)
well-oiled and potted; plastered three sheets to the wind in an
uproariously dipsomaniacal phantasmagoria; like
flunkies falling down in a fescennine fantasyland, an
engulfing insanity of epicurean degeneration;
like
87)
ungrateful vagabonds;
ne'er-do-wells wasting their weal in a
jadedly subfusc, limpid limbo of leisure; like a
touring carnival of shiftless jackanapes
dawdling in a
desultory drift of Cyrenaic misappropriation;
like a
88)
monolithic school of expressionless ichthyoids
insensibly free-floating downstream through
Erebus in a
darned cussed complicity of reproachable convention; a
catastrophic shtick of cataleptic conformation
until
89)
straitly stopped and stuck, stalled, stayed, stilled, stymied and stifled,
strapped, stranded, sorely stricken, stinted, stunned and startled,
stirred up and starkly stung, soundly slammed, well slapped and
painfully pinched, pricked and pierced by the
sudden scintillation
of
90)
successive sockdolagers of Solomonic sobriety,
each followed,
anon, by a
prompting undulation of
heartwarming waftures of reluctant intuition and
zephyrs of inscrutably sagacious mentation
(which
91)
subsequently spark
imperceptible stutters, then
spasmodic shocks along with
ataxic shudders of
unsettling chagrin
based on
newly slowing savvy: all
momentous muscular memos of clearly sanative incitation
to
92)
contract in singularly excruciating cauterization through
peremptory remorse and implacable self-commination;
beyond and below bemusement,
bent into a destitution of
self-abasing abashment and abject prostration),
they
93)
rise and reconnoiter for reinventive recantation; they
reorder, retrench and regroup in radical recuperation to
resolutely resound, without so much as a soupçon, or the
slightest rudimentary remnant, of any reservation,
by
94)
screeching and squealing; by squalling and squawking in
calamitous counterpoint through
deliberate dilatation; by
stentorian anathema and
moiling exhibition of
ungodly commotion in aleatoric ululation;
by
95)
tornadic furor in redoubtable detonation of
ear-shredding shrieks in stridulous harmonization; by
swirling saturnalia of shrill, sharply strident shouts and
unsavory salvos not fit for publication;
by the
96)
ceaseless cascading of bloodcurdling caterwauls; by a
searing torrent of clattering grunts, croaks and cries; by the
abrasive brandishing of
discordant concatenations of
rabid rants and acidly acrimonious exclamation
at the
97)
wrong-headedly rowdy, ribald, raucous and raunchy; the
battering and butcherly,
unboundedly bad, brusque and bawdy; the
moodily lewd, crudely miscued, and just plain laconically rude,
clodhoppingly indelicate excuse for mannerly conversation
which,
98)
worse than the usual
bandying of empty-headed codswallop or
bewilderingly ambiguous apothegmatic badinage, is a
brazen blazonry of bald brainless balderdash; such
belching banter, a
badly misbegotten encapsulation
of the
99)
maddeningly
deceptive tenure and gradual acceptation of a
common but
inexcusably unscrupulous customization; a
chicly offensive, scabrously foul negotiation; an
artifice of ruthlessly unprincipled adulteration:
(alas) the
100)
utilitarian and suspiciously Faustian
aesthetic of
misread rights and paradigmatic victimization, of
adrenergic angst, anger and
self-abandoning acquiescence to
Pavlovian pawnship and
distractive dehumanization;
that
101)
despicable finesse in the arts of malefic flimflam,
irreformably fly flab and
flatly flagrant flatulence; that
deceitfully forgetive,
strongly astringent asperity of
steely Spartan zeal in
theoretical sanitization
which
102)
ironically seems to belie all the brackish banality of its
own particular forms of poverty-stricken petrification, being
calmly copacetic in the
scurrilously scrofulous and
sordid sterility in the
seamy evocation
of
103)
poison so sheeny and putatively appealing yet so
puissantly paralyzing to what precious little remains of
conscience in the venerable old bastions of conservation, of
traditional good taste and
puristic delineation;
so
104)
nocent to the plexus, so
bedimming to the nexus of our
quondam concentered and shared righteous notions that our
watchfulness weakly wanes now from wide-eyed waking to
nearly comatose in
indiscriminate toleration.
GLOSSARY
Eureka! - a term used to express triumph upon a great discovery (it's more dignified and suitable for historical accounts than the more probable things that were said such as, "Holy Cow!" or "Hubba Hubba!")
refulgent recrudescence of orchidaceous elan - the radiant return of highly conspicuous personal energy
painstaking, irradicably robust recalibration - the obsessively careful resetting of vigorous standards
swimmily unswaddled - a feeling of freedom so intense that it makes you light-headed
youthfully eudaemonistic self-congratulation - patting yourself on the back in your belief that, since the highest right-minded goal in life is your own happiness and well-being, you might as well encourage yourself
(back to verse 49)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
gratingly giddy - so happy and silly that you are annoying people
roguishly raffish - showing contempt for what is normal, by being crude and vulgar (although these days, that's the definition of normal, so now you have to show your contempt for what is normal by being dignified and virtuous)
rankly randy - describes an adolescent male who, being in very inappropriate proximity to certain members of the opposite gender, should be slapped for what he is thinking
callous and callow - when it comes to judging other people, you are utterly immature and without the normal feelings that should guide you in wisdom
blastedly bland - where your refusal to get angry and excited makes other people angry and excited
blithely oblivious - lightheartedly unaware of what is going on
(back to verse 50)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
fiery, feisty phoenix - a big legendary bird which once burned itself to ashes and rose from those ashes to live again; or someone compared to a phoenix, who also happens to be very frisky and spunky
lily-liveredly - the way yellow-bellied folks do things
flounced and faltered in a Fabian frivolity - where you've made a huge mess of things in your fight against the enemy because you were goofing around, which you may have thought looked like, but didn't turn out as well as, the time when the Roman general Quintus Fabius Maximus defeated Hannibal in the Second Punic War by strategically choosing not to fight him head-on
ca
dullardly dalliance in flat-footed defalcation - where you certainly don't fool around when it comes to fooling around, meaning you really do fool around as if you want to look fully stupid when you fail to meet expectations
tardy little driblet of compensation - only a tiny part, and coming late besides, of what it would take to truly repay you for all the wonderful things you've done
(back to verse 51)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
commandeering crashes and thunderous fulguration - like very loud thunder and flashes of lightning that rattle your brains; or how some children feel when their piano teacher rings the doorbell
galvanizing blaze - any outburst that stimulates or excites you like a shock of electricity,
brashly bellicose craze - your aggressive enthusiasm for starting fights, which doesn't last long once you throw the first punch and see what the response is
intractable tenacity in proud protestation - where there is no way you are going to stop saying no
(back to verse 52)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
wanly wangle, wilt, whinge, whimper and whine - acting like an exhausted two-year-old who doesn't want to take a much needed (mostly by the parents) nap
wimpishly woebegone - taking great pleasure in the safety of being a useless coward
woozy welter of weltschmerz - a confused jumble of depressed feelings
lubriciously wallowing - indulging in lust
venal vizards of vacillation - the protective mask of money and worldly pleasures behind which you perfer to hide than to take a stand on moral principles
(back to verse 53)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
torpor of dulcet dupery - being hypnotized by the bliss of ignorance
sequela of confusion and dislocation - the after-effects of mental disturbance (this explains why some people drive home after a hard day at work like drunken fighter pilots, and why others, having survived another harrowing trip home dodging these guys, just want to crawl under the kitchen sink and spend a few hours in the fetal position, and why others simply go back to work the next day with a machine gun)
complacently - when you think you're in pretty good shape with nothing to worry about, but that's only because you don't know what a mess you are in
fallow rut - a monotonous routine that gets you nowhere
rigorously rocky road of regressive resignation - where giving up puts you on a very rough road of reverse evolution
(back to verse 54)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
bad bill of hokum - a big pile of harmfully stupid nonsense; also most political speeches
hallucinatory confection - even though an idea is completely delusional, you have to admit it's a fine piece of imaginary craftsmanship
reactionary rubbish of eremitic abdication - somebody makes you angry, so you get the dumb yet understandibly common idea of walking away from all the seemingly crushing responsibities that constitute your life, and becoming a hermit - which will really each "them" a lesson
over-the-top nostrum for bogus restoration - a theory which exceeds the limits of sanity, on how to rebuild something which will continue falling apart the minute you try to use it
erethically misoneistic stasis and hibernation - where, being one of those people who can't stand any kind of change, even to the extent of hating whenever anything near them moves at all, (like air, for example), you take on the semi-comatose persona of a zombie
(back to verse 55)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
pursuit of liberation through artless nidification - your attempt to escape from everything in your life by building a new home that looks like it was designed by the same committee that tried to design the Arabian horse and produced the camel
flocculent cocoon of neuroleptic capitulation - the soft, woolly, protective shell you are hiding in, which you created in your own mind under the powerfully tranquilizing effects of giving up
punctilious plot of claustrophobic reclusion - a carefully laid plan for withdrawing so far from everyone that eventually you feel sealed up in a packing crate
stiff-necked, pallidly parochial insulation - where, in the traditional spirit of intellectually weak-kneed narrow-mindedness, you stubbornly keep your brain from being polluting by any thoughts that originate outside of itself
(back to verse 56)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
peanut gallery - unqualified critics and commentators with big noses (so to speak) who try to make everyone think about you the same way as they do
cackling hacks and gasbags - critics and commentators who are nothing more than blowhard blabbermouths with no ideas of their own besides those fed to them by their equally feeble-minded employers, who are liable to explode if they get near an open flame
persnickety old criticasters - see definition above, then add stupid, vulgar, insensitive, snobbish and overly fussy about small details (even though it's still a good bet their mothers love them)
cretins, all crabbily crowing - human buzzards gloating over how much they benefit from other people's troubles
grumpy little gravamens - calling them small-minded complaints is the way thieves, lawyers, murderers, judges, drunk drivers, and members of congress would outwardly dismiss any legal or moral charges that might be brought against them
contumelious animadversion - criticism of your work that offers you the extra bonus of being personally insulting
wide, wicked wisecracks of unwarranted exultation - rotten things you say when your head gets too big for your hat
(back to verse 57)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
meanly over-bloated gloats of cryptogenic invective - inexplicable expressions of triumphant satisfaction made by pompous windbags over someone else's misfortune
spiteful spittle for the transgressive irrigation - words maliciously spit out of your mouth as if to water the ground for your evil intentions
churlishly canorous canards - the sweet sounding lies of a two-faced hypocrit
mordacious epithets - the kind of insults that really bite
tawdry taunts, tizzies of inculpatory excoriation - a storm of sarcasm which makes it easy to put the blame for everything on someone else who now feels so small that they could walk under a closed door
(back to verse 58)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
daring to collogue, in any socratic affiliation - getting up the nerve to meet with friends in order to plan your filthy deeds under the pretense of scholarlty discussion (as in a congressional committee meeting)
nurture the conceptualization - Cheering the odd cases when evidence of organized thinking is about to pop out
unrushable protraction of our temporal maturation - growing up through the natural processes of time without trying to force things
(back to verse 59)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
quite candidly querying the drift, the quotidian quiddity - when you sincerely want to know the real essence of something (not the wildly esoteric, unfathomable, convolutedly philosophical essence, but just the ordinary, everyday, low-fat vanilla essence, thank you)
evolution of reclamation and quantum regeneration - huge development in those aspects of rebuilding which can be discussed in polite company, or without resulting in a fist fight
quickening quintessence of our shared commiseration - inspiration that grows out of the sympathy we express to each other
communal comity in concordant self-desquamation - the warm fuzzies we get when we finally decide to peel off our artificial identity masks, our transitory personas, and show who we really are
(back to verse 60)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
efficaciously partitive and appendant - when something belongs with something else, to the benefit of all
attainment of convincing coherence - when you finally seem to get your story straight
conventionalization of that comely colloquiality - making polite, friendly conversation a normal occurrence (thus rendering some people mute)
uncorks the convalescence - allows the gradual recovery to begin (Doctor to patient: "This medicine ought to uncork your convalescence")
cogent ways of consultation and deliberation - sensible methods (considering you're in a group) for figuring things out
(back to verse 61)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
truly trenchant excogitation - thoughts that are so sharp and penetrating, they could dig a ditch, or a trench
higher wisdom of most lowly supplication - the lofty judgment of lowering yourself to ask for help (like when men sacrifice their manhood by stooping to ask for directions when they are lost)
assuasively softening succor of supernatural distillation - the soothing relief you feel when a much needed idea seems to waft into your mind out of nowhere
aiding of the consortium for suprarational consideration - magnifying the united nature of agreement among those opinions which seem based on intuition and faith
(back to verse 62)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
demulcently observational estimation - your judgement of something soothingly based on what you have actually seen
volatile vicissitudes - the wildly unpredictable ups and downs of life which tend to lend an air of verisimilitude to otherwise bald and unconvincing narratives
variously vagrant velleities - shallow desires that can be changed by anything from a light breeze to a gun to the head
restive repose - the nap you're trying to take when you're just a fidgety bag of nerves
travesty of divesting into self-neutralization - the utter pretense of giving up certain things in order to render yourself powerless (like rogue nations supposedly complying with disarmament treaties)
(back to verse 63)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
insidiously debasing and vitiating zeitgeist - the moral and cultural climate of our times, which entices, traps and pulls us down to a common level of depravity
obsessive, if gustatorily pliant, avidities - the overpowering greed for various, ever-changing objects of lust and longing
quasi-sacred science of flimsy gimcrackery - where you attach the highest possible value, almost to the point of holiness, to the concept of style over substance (as in the office, where some people focus more on trying to look good in their job than on actually doing their job)
omnivorously voracious commercialization - where you stop at nothing in order to lower the quality of goods and services just to increase your own profits
(back to verse 64)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
entanglingly tentacular umbrage of tinge - the threat of stinking, infectious disease, that seems to wrap itself around your mind like an octopus
tenebrous, ominously omnibus adumbration - a dark and gloomy foreshadowing of many things at once
catalytically cleaving reclassification - where your re-evaluating, redefining, and regrouping of things causes them to make even less sense
colossal mass of wholesale disintegration - where everything falls apart on an incredibly stupendous level (like the whole world blowing up)
(back to verse 65)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
inculpable - not culpable, didn't do it, innocent
sapless lassitude of dismay and devitalization - where, having spent all your spunk, you fall into a funk (a spunkless funk)
(back to verse 66)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
dispatching, with embarrassing promptitude and unseemly celerity - wearing a paper bag over your head because you set something into motion more quickly than you should have
downward modulation - playing the accompaniment of a song in a lower key to suit the singer's voice, or (completely unrelated) changing for the worse
hosts of anxiety-ridden, abundantly snootier caste, rank, image, esteem, tier, standing and station, - many kinds of people who once looked less ridiculous than they do now (results of downward modulation)
(back to verse 67)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
erstwhile breviloquent Grand High Pooh-bahs - formerly self-imagined big shots; arrogant muckity-mucks who had the wisdom, or the great good luck, never to reveal how brainless they were by saying very much
tranquilly taciturn
- between screaming rampages, very calm and quiet
laconically saturnine - a clinical classification for cold-hearted pickle-suckers
serenely irenic - people who sit around with goofy smiles on their faces; often describes honeymoon couples at breakfast
sanguinely sapient (if only perhaps a bit straitlaced) equilibration - other than being obnoxiously opinionated and tyrannically self-righteous, you are mentally well-balanced and full of wisdom
(back to verse 68)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
serpentine sequences of sinfully silly sallies - the wildly naughty little trips you keep taking off the beaten path
suffused with signs of sinister signification - filled with hidden meanings that shouldn't be there (like when you sign for a bank loan and don't realize you have just offered your right leg as collateral)
staging of screamingly solecistic spectacles - performing huge public exhibitions of bad manners (like if a newly elected President of the United States were to begin his inaugural address with a loud belch and not say "excuse me")
sundry sorry sights and scenes of supercilious elation - various times when, for no good reason except that you are certifiably wild and crazy, you suddenly break into hysterical celebration of nothing at all
(back to verse 69)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
sulking and skulking; by sneaking and slinking - expressing your grumpiness by sneaking around in wierd movements designed to arouse improper feelings in others (like perhaps the police)
ophidian skills of serpentiform stealth - depending on your profession, the possibly useful ability to move around unseen like a snake
sashaying into sudorifically strenuous forays - ostentatiously strutting around, invading and attacking so vigorously that you work up a good sweat
incursions and sorties of sanguineous recreation - brief little episodes of ransacking, pillaging and plundering, all in the spirit of good, clean, blood-thirsty fun
(back to verse 70)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
puzzling impieties of impetuosity - your inexplicable habit of jumping head first into things you wouldn't want your mother to know about
earthy acts of utterly imbecilic irrationality - behaviors of depravity possibly excused by such feeblemindness that you need supervision even in the performance of routine daily tasks such as wiping the drool off your chin
pugnacious punks who are impertinently unimpressed by procedurally edentulous legal reprobation - self-importantly delusional little hoodlums (or hoodla if they are female) who love to fight and would just as soon put a bullet between your eyes as look at you because they have no fear of the law since it has no teeth and can't come to bite them
(back to verse 71)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
rakish enterprises full of polychotomous botcheries - immoral activities, being fouled up in any number of different ways (it's just as well)
side shows of temerariously atavistic abstrusities - where you choose out-moded and unnecessarily dangerous ways of doing things
repertoire of other abhorrently ungainly gaucheries - the list of other things you do which are sufficiently tactless and clumsy for people to want to hide when they see you coming
unrepeatable, inenarrably inelegant confrontation - a nose to nose shouting match with eyeballs and veins popping out, so lacking in grace and good manners that you wish it wasn't a nationally televised ecumenical religious discussion
(back to verse 72)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
conducive to cozily chummy, cravenly scummy capers of clownery
caddishly caballing in clubby cliques - terrorists meeting together to have some fun while planning their next attempt at destroying Western civilization
conducive to cozily chummy, cravenly scummy capers of clownery - provides an easy way for decadent goof-balls to get together and see how far they can go in pulling down our traditional moral values and our fundamental system of laws
cowardly cavorts of intramural crunching and punching - when you go around beating up on poor defenseless people just like yourself
pugilistic donnybrooks of non-comical aggravation - brawls, free-for-alls and fist-fights that don't seem very funny at the time
(back to verse 73)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
comprise unpardonably puerile poltrooneries like people-pounding and pummeling - made up of unforgivably childish and silly, even cowardly, variations of assault and battery
under the characterization - the activity given a label that doesn't resemble what it really is; like calling the Viet Nam War a misunderstanding, or the American Civil War a civil protest
peripatetic prowls for pinching, purloining and pilfering in the unjustifiably light-fingered lifting and expropriation - sneaking around, or casing, people's homes so you can find the best time to break in and relieve them of all their treasured possessions
(back to verse 74)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
portable private property
- possessions you can carry away without an industrial crane
Egad! and Forsooth! - Shakespearean for "Whoa! and Wow!"
pluck - spunk
transpicuously Tartarean usurpation - the kind of theft for which you belong in Tartarus, a place where people like you get what's coming to them
not exactly the least ludicrously lurid of lunes - not just the calm and quiet fits of madness that other people throw, but the kind you throw instead
meteoric crisis - a big problem suddenly shooting into your awareness (like your alarm clock going off in the morning, or a piece of astroid smashing into your swimming pool)
loony escalation - when things get increasingly crazy (like the moment you get out of bed)
(back to verse 75)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
moronic moxie - showing that one's little brain is several eggs short of a dozen
errantly purposive, out to lunch, mini-mindedly impractical perpetuation of myriad trespasses and miscellaneous misdemeanors - one's self-defeating committment to continuing a huge number of various little crimes
curmudgeonly cheek in barefaced non-cooperation - cantankerously unapologetic about being so disrespectfully unhelpful
(back to verse 76)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
throat-clutching dramas of such cloying pathos - the embarrassing but highly effective scenes of manipulation through uncontrolled emotions
merely ploys plying potent precatory manipulation - when logic and reason fail, these are nothing more than maneuvers toward the next level of persuasive options (like holding your breath until you turn blue and pass out, or setting yourself on fire)
puny Punic posing - where, as an odiferous good-for-nothing wimp, you pretend to be a fragrant good-for-something tower of strength
stage-front theatrics - where things that ought to remain private are played out in the public eye; or where during a play, one of the actors gets carried away and performs his dramatic speech right at the very front edge of the stage causing the other actors to hope he falls into the orchestra pit
canny connivance in careful calculation - where, for some selfish purpose, you've figured out a clever way to trick people into doing things that they would never do in their right minds
(back to verse 77)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
showcase the whole categorically seedy spectrum - where you really get down to business by performing all the horrible aspects of what is clearly a disgusting mess
no-no's in the conduct of multifarious misfeasance - in the fun spirit of moral retardation, these are all kinds of things you can do that won't quite get you thrown into jail
comportment, decorum, constraint, probity and politesse - stuff that comes under the heading of "behaving yourself"
abnegation - self-denial (as when, with noble humility, you choose not to make others feel inferior from having to see all the praise and adoration that would be heaped upon you if you behaved yourself, so therefore you choose the high road, which now is to not behave yourself)
(back to verse 78)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
incredibly insular - so uninterested in anything beyond your own experience that you remain beyond anyone else's experience
impossibly preliminary - way too soon, like opening the show before you've even had the first rehearsal, and hoping for the best
dissuasively delusional - just too goofy to be taken seriously
preposterously presumptuous - having more willingness than a sane person to make a fool of yourself
deplorably Promethean -personal originality so titanic that no one can stand being near you
revoltingly ruffian rites of self-idolization - when tough guys, in order to remind themselves of how tough they are, ceremoniously sucker-punch people and then beat them up
(back to verse 79)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
ingenuous - the opposite of disingenuous; showing childlike simplicity
naively nutty - someone who is certifiably cuckoo, but no different from anybody else, which would mean the whole world is certifiably cuckoo (which, in fact, doesn't even begin to describe it)
nonchalantly narcissistic - quite comfortable being the center of the universe
bafflingly idiopathic - coming from who knows where
insupportably pretentious - where you have no reason to think you're important, but you do anyway
pathetically precritical - it may be a long time before you'll ever develop the capacity to make rational judgments, but that doesn't stop you from trying
prolepsis of their own self-worship on a vector of deification - where some people think it's time to start bowing down before themselves in the mirror because they are almost gods already, and somebody has to do it
(back to verse 80)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
merrily rove and rave, ravage, pillage, puke and plunder - what babies do in the house as soon as they learn to walk, including throwing up a lot
old marauding bands of highly pixilated blunderbusses - gangs of mentally unbalanced fools who are up to no good (like legislative fact-finding committees)
dreadfully drastic deeds - things you have to do when the final straw has broken the camel's back, when the final boobie has hatched, when too many cooks have spoiled a bird in the bush, and when the last drop of spilled milk has gone under the bridge because it was crossed before you came to it already
deleterious demerit - a fault or shortcoming that will prove to be very harmful later (as when a young teenager makes the career decision to become an ax murderer, or a musician)
distinctly demential indignation - you are angry only because you can't think things out rationally
(back to verse 81)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
in a froth, flung frenzied, fitfully fumbling and fuming - suddenly thrown into something when you're already upset and confused (how you'd probably feel if a flight attendant threw you out of the airplane simply because you wouldn't stop asking for more peanuts)
fugacious fandangos - stupid games that don't last very long
frenetic fugues - doing things in a frantic state of mind, and when you finally get better you can't remember what you did (like buying a house, or selling your children)
frissons of fastuous fanfaronade - emotional fits of arrogant bluster
fantods and fiascos of fully unfurled madly manic disorientation - emotional outbursts and other embarrassments where you let yourself go in wild abandon (like when you start screaming in the destist's office, and you're still in the waiting room)
(back to verse 82)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
gaggles of goofy goose-stepping galoots - describes a military parade which is the exact opposite of what the fearsomely high-stepping soldiers hope they look like
gladiatorial guerillas - terrorists who think they are pretty hot stuff (which they actually become when they blow themselves up)
implausibly pinheaded palookas - persons of significant size who are (although it's hard to even imagine) distinguished by a remarkable paucity of physical grace and intellectual prowess
eclamptically accreting their suppletory certification of a well-earned rap and really regrettable reputation - where, looking after the moral well-being of others, you continue to give your enemies more bad things to say about you so they don't have to tell lies
(back to verse 83)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
clumsily galumphing - stumbling as if your shoes are too big for your feet
grievous garboils - horrible situations of confusion and turmoil (like when half the orchestra is playing the wrong piece)
wild chthonian uproars - infernal, as if demonic, upheavals (the aesthetic standard for most "serious" modern music)
terpsichorean bedlam - steps that make the dancers look like they have ants in their pants
gallivanting through gigantic gyres of callithumpian chaos - like a conductor moving around just a little too much on the podium before he falls off
nearly simian agitation - almost, but not quite, like a barrel full of monkeys high on amphetamines
(back to verse 84)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
pie-eyed picaroons - drunken good-for-nothings
bozos all bouncing about, all bibulously bound in graceless confederation - a perfect description of terpsichorean bedlam, where people are falling into each other like drunken circus clowns (which is what one imagines happens each day when Congress adjourns and the members try to find their way out of the Chamber)
bedraggled dead-beats - people who sit around doing nothing, yet still manage to look like they've been dragged backwards through a hedge
perennially blasted, gassed and hammered, thoroughly lit up and smashed from lavishly lusty libation - so drunk all the time that we have to stretch our vocabulary to describe it
(back to verse 85
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
well-oiled and potted; plastered three sheets to the wind - also drunk as a skunk
uproariously dipsomaniacal phantasmagoria - the parade of scary things, both imagined and real, that pass before your eyes when you are drunk as a skunk, or well-oiled and potted
flunkies falling down in a fescennine fantasyland - vulgar people whose imaginary world is saturated with lust and depravity, and who can't make a living because everything they try to do is morally abhorrent
engulfing insanity of epicurean degeneration - the overwhelming mindlessness of spending more than you earn
(back to verse 86)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
ungrateful vagabonds - bums and hobos who never say thank you
ne'er-do-wells wasting their weal - lazy, spoiled rich kids throwing away all the advantages they were born into
jadedly subfusc, limpid limbo of leisure - where, having descended into a mind-darkening state of restless boredom, you decide your best bet is to lay around doing nothing until you are suddenly thrust into a life of joyful excitement
touring carnival of shiftless jackanapes - a roaming party of ill-mannered people who think they are too important to get stuck earning their own living
dawdling in a desultory drift of Cyrenaic misappropriation - aimlessly fooling around, wasting everything in accordance with the convenient philosophy that momentary pleasure is the only thing that matters
(back to verse 87)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
monolithic school of expressionless ichthyoids - a convenient classification for people who have as much warmth and facial expression as fish
insensibly - without feeling
Erebus - a place of darkness in the underworld through which you pass on your way down to Hades
darned cussed complicity of reproachable convention - where people do things badly because "that's the way they've always been done"
catastrophic shtick of cataleptic conformation - doing things exactly as ordered but only by shutting down your heart and your brain, even though it never turns out well, other than helping to keep you from being fired from your job
(back to verse 88)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
straitly stopped and stuck, stalled, stayed, stilled, stymied and stifled, strapped, stranded, sorely stricken, stinted, stunned and startled, stirred up and starkly stung, soundly slammed, well slapped and painfully pinched, pricked and pierced
- as if having been suddenly slapped in the face by a large halibut, or your mother-in-law's claw hammer
sudden scintillation - where, out of nowhere, you begin to feel like you are sparkling (like when you eat a whole package of Alka-Selzer in one sitting)
(back to verse 89)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
successive sockdolagers of Solomonic sobriety - odd moments, ripsnorting lollapoloozas, that come upon you like waves, when you feel so smart that you know you couldn't be drunk
anon - soon; forsooth; holdeth thy horses; busteth not a gusset; lose not thy cooleth
prompting undulation of heart warming waftures of reluctant intuition - comforting waves of awareness which you were trying to suppress, but now washing over you, quietly urging you to start doing something (like get out of bed)
zephyrs of inscrutably sagacious mentation - entering your mind as if on gentle breezes, thoughts which are so far-sighted, wise and penetrating that you can't imagine how they ever got into a brain like yours
(back to verse 90)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
subsequently - next
imperceptible stutters - when you can't quie tell, but you are starting to do things haltingly or spasmodically
spasmodic shocks - sudden, violent mental disturbances
ataxic shudders - where you are so overwhelmed by a certain realization that you suddenly lose control of all your muscles
unsettling chagrin - feelings of humiliation that make you feel like you've fallen out of an airplane
newly slowing savvy - new insight that makes you move with much less confidence, as when you discover that the house you are robbing belongs to the local Chief of Police, and there was a drunken party last night from which the floors are now littered with police officers who will be in very bad moods if you trip over them
momentous muscular memos of clearly sanative incitation - when your body forcefully urges you to save yourself by doing something different (like stop enjoying the view and pull the chord on your parachute)
(back to verse 91)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
contract in singularly excruciating cauterization - where your heart and soul implode with the most painful feelings you've ever experienced
peremptory remorse and implacable self-commination - where you are inconsolably remorseful to the point of throughly condemning youself for doing something even before you do it, presumably so you won't have to be sorry for it afterwards
beyond and below bemusement - where you sense that something is different, but you don't have enough information to even be confused
bent into a destitution of self-abasing abashment and abject prostration - when you realize you have nothing left except your own embarrassment, salf-hatred and utter helplessness
(back to verse 92)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
rise and reconnoiter for reinventive recantation; they reorder, retrench, and regroup in radical recuperation - they get themselves out of the dumps, look around for ways to creatively renounce everything they once stood for; then with new attitudes, they rearrange whatever is left and try to believe that maybe now their heads won't explode
resolutely resound, without even so much as a soupçon, or the slightest rudimentary remnant, of any reservation - saying something loudly, without being shy about it
(back to verse 93)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
screeching and squealing; by squalling and squawking - the offensive noises presented to audiences in stadiums and concert halls, not to mention complicitous media, which noises are even more offensively referred to as "music"
calamitous counterpoint - where individual melodic lines are heard at the same time, leaving us much the worse for wear
deliberate dilatation - stretching the envelope on purpose
stentorian anathema - a voice of howling enthusiasm, so loud you can't stand it
moiling exhibition of ungodly commotion in aleatoric ululation - where people go into fits of wailing and howling (not unlike the British House of Commons)
(back to verse 94)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
tornadic furor in redoubtable detonation of ear-shredding shrieks and screams in stridulous harmonization - the manner in which some families sing Happy Birthday, and certain siblings run around the house closing windows
swirling saturnalia of shrill, sharply strident shouts and unsavory salvos not fit for publication - yelling and screaming and nasty name-calling from the orchestra when the conductor keeps them overtime
(back to verse 95)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
ceaseless cascading of bloodcurdling caterwauls- the way many modern operatic arias sound, on purpose
searing torrent of clattering grunts, croaks and cries - the sound of a choir that desperately needs more rehearsal
abrasive brandishing - the menacing exhibition of something, as when the rare conductor who hasn't yet lost his mind, waves his baton at the performers of a modern opera, threatening to stab the next person who tries to sing
discordant concatenation of rabid rants and acidly acrimonious exclamation - the sounds occuring in too much modern choral music
(back to verse 96)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
wrong-headedly rowdy, ribald, raucous and raunchy - just like a bunch of slaphappy cowboys in a saloon
battering and butcherly - hurtful, even savage (but otherwise harmless)
unboundedly bad, brusque and bawdy - not suitable for polite company
moodily lewd, crudely miscued, and just plain laconically rude - where you take every opportunity to be offensive, and embarrass yourself according to what mood you are in
clodhoppingly indelicate excuse for mannerly conversation - the pathetically course and uncultivated ways in which we pretend to talk meaningfully with each other
(back to verse 97)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
bandying of empty-headed codswallop - engaging in small talk
bewilderingly ambiguous apothegmatic badinage - playful banter disguised as witty sayings and thus utterly confusing
brazen blazonry of bald brainless balderdash - the shameless display you make of yourself by spreading idiotic nonsense
belching banter - eruptions of verbal pleasantries, especially after a good meal
badly misbegotten encapsulation - a brief statement that "says it all," where "it all" shouldn't be said
(back to verse 98)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
deceptive tenure and gradual acceptation - where we're fooled into thinking something is okay just because we've been holding on to it for dear life, and we're not dead yet
inexcusably unscrupulous customization - where there is no excuse for the wickedness of making certain things normal when they should not be
chicly offensive, scabrously foul negotiation - a piece of business that may look good at first because it's dirty like everything else, but you talk yourself into embracing it, and then it turns out to be an outrageously obscene scandal, which is just a bit dirtier than what you had in mind
artifice of ruthlessly unprincipled adulteration - a deceitful strategy of corruption designed to make something weaker or less effective
(back to verse 99)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
utilitarian and suspiciously Faustian - where something is useful for now, and by your using it, the devil can have the future, including your soul, just as long as your present purposes are served
aesthetic of misread rights and paradigmatic victimization - where according to your twisted mind and your overblown sense of what the world owes you, the world never pays up, and thus you are always being cheated
adrenergic angst - where feeling anxious makes you even more anxious, because you're already anxious about being anxious and, feeling you shouldn't be so anxious in the first place, you get anxious about that, and then you get even more anxious about being so anxious about being anxious (Phew!)
self-abandoning acquiescence - when you consciously give up everything you stand for in order to go along with the others
Pavlovian pawnship - where you automatically respond to the manipulation of others because you've been trained not to be able to control yourself
distractive dehumanization - where they make you feel like a sub-standard human being so you'll be too hurt to notice what they're really up to
(back to verse 100)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
despicable finesse in the arts of malefic flimflam - the distastefully skillful handling of what you think is dangerous information
irreformably fly flab - well-formed ideas that have as much intellectual substance as a Twinkie
flatly flagrant flatulence - stupid ideas that, without question, are going to make people angry; or what happens after you eat too many beans
deceitfully forgetive - something you lie about having made up all by yourself when you didn't
strongly astringent asperity of steely Spartan zeal - the rough time ahead when you set out to achieve something with perfect self-discipline and total disregard for pain
theoretical sanitization - where you only imagine removing all the bad stuff (because you would never actually do such a thing)
(back to verse 101)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
ironically seems to belie all the brackish banality of its own particular forms of poverty-stricken petrification - despite what you would expect, it hides how awful something really is and has been for so long that now it's too late to change it
calmly copacetic - describes you sitting there reading the newspaper while everyone else is running around screaming
scurrilously scrofulous and sordid sterility - describes a contaminated state of mind, ugly and vulgar in its lack of resemblance to anything supporting life (like what made the Chemistry teacher give your final project an "F" just because it blew up and set his hair on fire)
seamy evocation - suggesting ideas that are just plain disgusting
(back to verse 102)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
poison so sheeny and putatively appealing - something that seems very desirable, even though it could kill you (like an exclusive diet of triple-cheese pizza, french fries, potato chips, followed by a half-gallon of full-fat ice cream, a 6-pack of beer and a fist full of pain killers
puissantly paralyzing to what precious little remains of conscience in the venerable old bastions of conservation - tears down the final shreds of moral principle in places that were supposed to protect it
puristic delineation - recognition of what used to be right, is now right, and always will be right (as opposed to the modern definition: anything is right if it feels good)
(back to verse 103)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
nocent to the plexus - damages the place in your brain where all the elements of an idea come weaving together
bedimming to the nexus - tending to blur the focus ("Your comments are bedimming to the nexus and nocent to the plexus")
quondam concentered and shared righteous notions - ideas we used to agree on about what is right and wrong, until you started embracing the dark side (or maybe I'm the one who did that)
watchfulness weakly wanes - you gradually lose interest
nearly comatose - our emotional reactions when they start resembling those of an egg plant
indiscriminate toleration - where your mind is so open that your brains fall out
(back to verse 104)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
PAGE 3
Verses 105 - 144
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