Monkey's Dad's definitions

toll

A cost in lives.

Damage resulting from an event or practice.

Charge for a service or permission.

The sound of a bell rung at a steady interval.

The tolls from coronavirus will be great, many and enduring, and the bells will toll for the dead.

by Monkey's Dad April 5, 2020

Apptitude

The reflexive belief that "there is an app for everything", eclipsing the experience of simply being alive in the world.

They were in the woods on a sunny spring day. He was looking at the light streaming through the branches. She, having apptitude, was staring at her phone.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"I want to know where we are" she answered.

"We are here" he sighed.

by Monkey's Dad April 28, 2021

Isolationship

Long- or short-distance relationship between two people kept apart due to shelter-in-place constraints.

Their hot and heavy isolationship was getting weird, the limits of cyber romance coming clear. She lived three blocks away from him, they hadn't been able to see the other for two weeks, each of them trapped in their apartments.

by Monkey's Dad April 9, 2020

Sifty

When fifty is the new sixty. When recently healthy and vital people, so exhausted and worn down from Covid, from politics, from the craziness of masks, vaccines, the Big Lie, feel they have lost not just a year but a decade.

Yesterday she was 49. Today was - big whoop - her birthday, and whatever the balloons spelled out, she was sure she must be turning Sifty.

by Monkey's Dad September 16, 2021

verisimehlitude

The quality in a work of art so enslaved to the reality of its source that it elicits no response.

The sculptor had worked very hard to do this. His sculpture was exactly life-sized, colored and textured to precisely replicate the thing it was imitating, and, standing in the gallery, it looked like a living, breathing security guard. Except that it was not breathing, nor was it living, nor did anyone recognize it as a work of art. Or feel anything about it. Or pay it any mind. An example of craft for craft's sake, it had achieved a state of verisimehlitude.

by Monkey's Dad June 22, 2021

criminally negligent humor

Slipped into conversation like a stiletto between the ribs, an unintended yet nearly lethal joke.

She looked innocent, her blue eyes wide, and he never saw it coming, another taste of her criminally negligent humor. Sliding from the bed and falling to the floor, he begged, "Don't make me laugh! Please!" It was too late.

by Monkey's Dad March 26, 2023

Coughkaesque

An unsettling, nightmare story of existence in the coronaviral age, redolent of Franz Kafka.

Empty streets, silent cities, people under legal edict to avoid others, with no sound more ominous than a simple cough, the world swiftly felt Coughkaesque.

by Monkey's Dad April 2, 2020