Hamish X Goes to Providence Rhode Island (37 page)

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Sabotage
is an interesting word. It comes from France. Peasants in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries wore wooden clogs called “sabots.” When landowners began to introduce machines that threatened to put the peasants out of work, the peasants would toss their wooden sabots into the machinery to foul the works. Hence, sabotage. Goodness knows I've been tempted to do the same with my own shoes when I find machines frustrating. I have especial disdain for my computer, but it's hard to find shoes small enough to insert into a processor chip. I suppose I could go on the internet and look for molecular shoes. Perhaps at cybershoes.com or maybe virtualclogs.co.uk.

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   The idea of one fortress being more impregnable than another is a bit ridiculous. By definition, an impregnable fortress is impregnable. If it is even slightly less impregnable, then it is most certainly pregnable. The funny thing about impregnable fortresses is that people usually call them impregnable right up until the time they are stormed and taken. Just like El Arak. But I'm getting ahead of myself, here. Read on.

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Salubrious
is a word meaning beneficial to or promoting health and well-being and should not be confused with Sal Ubrious, who once played shortstop for the New York Cubans Baseball Team.

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Minuscule
is a word meaning extremely tiny and should not be confused with Minu Scule, who once played roller derby for the Dallas Wheel Machine.

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   A
primer
is a basic textbook. There have been primers for spelling, primers for languages, primers for cooking, and so on. I once saw a primer for breathing. Silly, really, because I imagine that if you couldn't breathe you wouldn't survive long enough to learn to read and then read the primer unless you were very good at holding your breath. Perhaps the book was meant for very intelligent fish who wished to migrate to land. They would need to learn to breathe air rather than water, but I still think the breathing primer would be a waste of time. Fish aren't very intelligent, though they spend a great deal of time in schools. (For that matter, many humans who spend a lot of time in schools aren't all that bright.)

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   Technically, the robot raccoon does not breathe, so it would not have a last breath, but it sounds better than “with the last charge of its battery” or “with the last electron in its circuit.” You know what I mean.

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Vampire Cat Robot
is a terrible comic book series that has since gone out of circulation. It is the saga of a cat that is a vampire and becomes a robot. It doesn't really make much sense. Obviously, cats are almost never vampires unless they are bitten by a human vampire, which is highly unlikely as a cat will sense an approaching vampire and flee long before it could be bitten. Also, once a cat becomes a vampire and desires to feast on blood, when it is made into a robot, it would no longer require blood and so it would lose its title of vampire. You know, I may have spent far too long thinking about the logic of this particular comic book.

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   There are two schools of thought as to why the hours between midnight and five a.m. are called the “wee hours.” The first theory is that in Celtic countries like Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, fairies were said to wander about in the hours after midnight. Fairies are small, so the hours after midnight were called wee hours set aside for the wee folk. The other school of thought suggests that the hours shortly after midnight are the most likely time for someone to need to use the bathroom. They usually need to go wee, hence the wee hours.

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   I love the word
thrice
. I feel it isn't used often enough, so I try to insert it wherever possible.

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Penultimate
means “next to last.” I just felt like using that word. So there.

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   The term
jump seat
comes from the Second World War. Jump seats, the folding seats in airplanes, were made for paratroopers (parachute soldiers) to sit on while waiting to jump out of an airplane. The paratroopers were chosen for their love of sitting. The seat was designed to snap against the wall out of the way when the paratrooper stood up. That way he would have nowhere to sit and therefore no option but to jump out of the plane. As a further incentive, comfortable chairs would often be thrown out of the plane first to lure the paratroopers after them. This led to a lot of people being injured by falling chairs, as the chairs were not furnished with parachutes.

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   A Space Plane is designed to leave the Earth's atmosphere and take up station just outside the planet's gravity field. The Earth rotates while the Space Plane remains stationary. The plane then re-enters the Earth's atmosphere directly over its destination. Space Planes are a very speedy means of travel indeed. They have the terrible side effect of burning a hole in the ozone layer every time they pass through it, massive rocket engines firing. The NASA Space Shuttle is an example of what is basically a Space Plane, although the Space Shuttle does not fly often enough to cause cumulative damage to the ozone layer. The ODA has very little regard for environmental concerns. They have a fondness for Styrofoam, are rumoured to enjoy massive tire fires, and are reputed to have invented the plastic shopping bag. The ODA Space Plane once belonged to the Soviet Space Program and was purchased by the Grey Agents at an auction after the fall of the Soviet regime.

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Cul de sac
is a French term for a dead end. It is literally translated as “bottom of the bag.” The French term originated in the seventeenth century, when it became fashionable to build houses at the bottom of enormous bags.

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   Doilies are common in the homes of old women throughout the world. They are meant to be placed under vases and teapots and the like. No one knows why women begin to amass supplies of doilies once they reach advanced age, but it is a fact that they do. Millions have been spent researching the phenomenon, but no solid breakthroughs have been made.

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   A
moue
is defined as a look of discontent with the lips pressed together and forward. This has nothing in common with a
moo
of discontent, which is made by cows that have not been milked properly or have been milked by farmers with cold hands.

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Malign
means evil in nature, effect, or intention. It is far worse than
bad
and slightly less nasty than
cancerous
. It is roughly twice as harmful as
odious
and one and a half times more offensive than
vile
. I like to be accurate.

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Ziggurat
is not Italian for cigarette, but rather it is a form of pyramid called a “step pyramid” favoured by ancient cultures like the Mayans and Aztecs in Central America and the Sumerians in Mesopotamia. It is basically a pyramid without smooth sides like the more famous and popular Egyptian pyramids. The Mayans, Aztecs, and Sumerians were really annoyed with the Egyptians for showing off with their smooth-sided pyramids. An ancient clay tablet was recently unearthed in the excavation of the ancient city of Ur in what is now called Iraq. The tablet, when translated, reads, “Those Egyptians think they're so fly with their highfalutin flat-sided pyramids
.
They really think they're all that, but they really aren't cool. Totally not cool at all” (or a close approximation of that, anyway).

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Recalcitrant
is a word that means stubbornly resistant to authority. It originates from the Belgian practice of coating unruly children with calcium as punishment. No one is really certain how the calcium was supposed to promote discipline in children, apart from ruining their clothing and making them intensely itchy. Belgians are renowned for being quite weird.

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   I hadn't. I'm sure you hadn't either, but one has to forgive Parveen. He had a lot on his mind.

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   A strange phrase, I think you'll agree. What is so friendly about a burning building? I don't know about you, but I tend to resent their smokiness, and their intense heat is quite stand-offish, I find.