antisocial distancing

The misanthrope's currently-plausible excuse.

"We can't be too careful, can we?", he said, avoiding his friend's extended elbow and backing away. While everyone was doing it, he'd always done it, his antisocial distancing now conveniently disguised as responsible social distancing.

by Monkey's Dad March 14, 2020

mentia

The inverse of dementia. A state of mental incline rather than decline. Having not only all one's marbles but too many.

He could remember every almost word he had ever read, could recount conversations verbatim from several decades earlier, knew the names of minor characters, and the actors who had played them, in movies he had never seen. He could remember the name of a person he had met in passing many years ago, while some of his contemporaries searched for the names of their nearest and dearest. The diagnosis was direct: He was suffering from early onset mentia.

by Monkey's Dad July 03, 2023

Sadomaskochism

Deriving gratification, sexual or otherwise, from exposing one's naked facial orifices, flirting with the risk to self and others of suffering, pain and death. Refusing to wear a mask in public, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Sadism and Maskochism combined.

Knowing he might be infecting other people, or that he might get infected, he strode barefaced into the crowd, feeling the thrill of public nakedness, thrilled by his sadomaskochism.

by Monkey's Dad June 12, 2020

Erfolgfreude

A strangely-nonexistent German word meaning "Taking pleasure in another person's success", the theoretical opposite of 'schadenfreude' - a word which has long existed in German and has migrated into English, meaning "Taking pleasure in another person's misery and suffering ".

Hearing that his colleague had won the Nobel, Schmidt was overcome with erfolgfreude and immediately called to offer his profound and heartfelt admiration.

by Monkey's Dad February 28, 2020

Quaranteenager

A person coming of age in the coronaviral age, home-schooled, missing out on dating, beer, pot and every other rite of social passage.

Watching "Clueless", "Ladybird" and "Booksmart" while in lockdown, she yearned to experience the geeky teen years which were her birthright and hated-hated-hated being a dorky quaranteenager.

by Monkey's Dad March 28, 2020

Jiminy Crockett, Prince of the Wild Frontier

A secret project in development at the Walt Disney studio in the fall of 1956, following their massively successful Davy Crockett series. Drawn by animator Ward Kimball, sketches show Jiminy Cricket, featured in the 1940 film Pinocchio, in an oversized and skewed coonskin hat instead of his top hat, wearing a buckskin jacket and carrying a rifle in place of his umbrella.

Jiminy Crockett, Prince of the Wild Frontier, was a concept that refused to hop off the drawing board.

by Monkey's Dad September 29, 2023

Tribal Identity

The historic root of human dysfunction. The sense that each of us belongs to a group - or tribe - from which we derive our idea of who we are, what we call ourselves, what we believe, whom else is a member and who is excluded.

Whether rooting for a sports team or voting along party lines, we divide ourselves into 'us' and 'them', as humans have done for millennia. It leads us to war. At a minimum we endure a chronic state of para-warfare.

He could not fathom how she had voted for Biden! She in turn looked with speechless amazement at his mindless devotion to ... she could not bring herself to utter that reviled name! Neither could ever change the other's mind by an inch. They were exemplars of tribal identity, each believing their side was right, the other side wrong, the finding of middle ground a fantasy for Springsteen/Jeep commercials during the Super Bowl - itself a tribal enactment - and nothing more.

by Monkey's Dad July 27, 2021