Monkey's Dad's definitions

Love in the Time of Callera

The era when a phone call may be your only means of connecting with a loved one.

... with a hat tip to Colombian Nobel-prize-winning author Gabriel García Márquez for his 1985 novel Love In the Time of Cholera.

She wondered how long it would be until they could touch each other, see each other, breathe the same air. But he could call, she could hear his voice, and that was love in the time of callera.

by Monkey's Dad March 18, 2020

Pandemonium

The capital of Hell in John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost: "Pandemonium, the High Capital, of Satan and his Peers".
Humanity collapsing into chaos from a rampant and uncontrollable pandemic.

Almost broken by another 12-hour nursing shift, she could foresee a world devastated by the pandemic, ungoverned civilization - what was left of it - thrown into Pandemonium.

by Monkey's Dad April 10, 2020

Botocracy

A society in which women are enslaved by artificial notions of physical perfection.

At 23, she was tormented by her reflection. She was getting old. Under the new Botocracy, with President Kardashian setting the pace, she would need to get some work done, fast.

by Monkey's Dad October 5, 2021

postemptive

After the fact. A measure taken in response to something which has already happened. Shutting the barn door after the horse has escaped. The opposite of preemptive.

"Would it seem postemptive if I wrote a letter of resignation?"
"They fired you last week."
"Yeah, well..."

by Monkey's Dad March 11, 2020

I can't do two things at once

A fact known to all men and universally discredited by women.

"The dog needs to go out, right away" she said, as he was balancing on the top of rung the ladder, not only changing the bulb but cradling the fragile glass globe. "And please take the towels out of the dryer, before they start to smell moldy."

"I can't do two things at once" he replied, but she could not hear him, polishing her nails, talking to her mother on the phone and finalizing the Etsy order for Kleenex box holders, reminding him... "I need you to tell me which of these patterns you prefer".

by Monkey's Dad August 30, 2023

vacuutemporal

The experience of life without time. The absence of a temporal dimension, an extension of the simultemporal state.

Accustomed to the simultemporal experience, in which past, present and future are simultaneous rather than sequential or linear, effectively living time all at once, he was increasingly subject to vacuutemporal states in which the delusion of time dissolved.

by Monkey's Dad August 22, 2021

Bewilderness

An emotional space in which you become hopelessly tangled, unable to see the trees, blind to the forest, wandering in circles, lost.

How had the relationship gone wrong? Could she have just trashed him? No, she must have meant... something else... because... words are only words, he can't be all of those things she called him... or any of them. After so many good times... and why was it getting dark so fast? He'd find his way out of the Bewilderness, in a day or a year. Maybe.

by Monkey's Dad September 10, 2022