Ambushed In A Mindfield

NO!  How Many Times Do I Have To Shriek It At You -
That's not a spelling mistake.  Conrad does not make spelling mistakes, despite the peculiar South Canadian spell-checker underlining his creative achievements in squiggly red lines.  And if I say "Bloggorhea" is a word, then it is.

"Bloggorhea: an outpouring of wordy nonsense on a blog"

     "Oooh, testy today," I can hear you mutter.  "Did he just stub his toe, misplace the dungeon keys or contaminate the Oolong with a teaspoon of Assam?"
     Neither - though I shudder in horror at that hideous miscegenation of tea-leaves, that's nightmare fuel right there - is true; I am merely a smidgeon annoyed with my own mind, which has been playing it's old tricks.

Conrad's brain: a metaphor

     Regular readers* will know by now that all sorts of odd words pop up in my mind, with either very tenuous reasons for doing so or none whatsoever, and today is no exception.
     In my own trademark way of not staying on subject when I ought to, and in the interests of building up reader suspense, let us now have a look at the latest addition to my haul.  Art?

     Perhaps I should have gotten closer.  The title is "The West Riding Territorials In The Great War" and YES! another addition to my collection of the official histories of Perfidious Albion's armies in the First Unpleasantness.  This one covers both the 47th and 62nd divisions, so it's a two-for-one.  It will have to take it's place in the queue as there are three other works ahead of it.
     That's not all, though, as once again Conrad has been bitten on the nethers by that damned Coincidence Hydra.  Conrad lives in Oldham, remember?  Art!

     Ouch.  The book was only published in 1920 and there it is in Oldham, where it remained for nearly 40 years, before getting a transfer to Chester.  It's in pretty decent condition for a book nearly a century old.
     Okay, time to wrap up this Intro and move on to Starring My Brain.


"Laodicean"
Where this one - thank you, brain! - came from baffles me utterly <takes deep breath and carries on>.  Okay, time to travel back in history and theology, to the ancient Christian church of Laodicea, which was in Asia Minor and which features in the book of Revelations, which is part of that eternal best-seller The Bible.

The church.  A fixer-upper if ever there was one.

     Conrad is not especially religious and has not read the Bible, nor is he a scholar of Apostolic Christianity, or the religious history of Asia Minor, so the question very much to the fore of his (treacherous!) mind is - 
     - where on earth did this word come from?  I can only think that I came across it many years ago, and it has sat forgotten in a corner of my mind, waiting patiently for the chance to emerge, blinking, into daylight.
     Okay, Laodicea, that's your time in the spotlight.  Off back into the corner.

This is something to do with Laodicea, somehow.

     Incidentally, that painting is by Holman Hunt, who also has another work in Oldham's Art Gallery - "The Scapegoat" I think, for another coincidence.

"Saccade"
This one might have been as the result of a bit of scientific literature noodling.  At first glance it looks like the latest sugar substitute**, "Greener than Stevia!  Grainer than Sucralose!  Greater than aspartame! (which itself sounds like a Greek city state circa 350 BC)".

"The polis of Aspartame was noted for it's splendid honey"

     Well, yes, except NO.  It refers to a variety of what you might call rapid eye movement, note the lack of capitalisation, as it is done whilst You The View are fully conscious.  Or as conscious as you lot get, mobile phone zombies that you are.
     Here an aside.  Don't complain, these have been quite sparse of late.  Art?

I Googled "mobile phone zombies" and here we are

     Every day when I stand at the 24 bus stop in the very beating heart of Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell, I can see the pedestrian crossing a mere thirty yards distant, and the hordes of pedestrians who completely ignore the red or green crossing signs.  I notice especially the MPZs who cross against the lights whilst in a trance staring at their digital devil box.  There are all sorts of pronouncements and prognostications about how stupid this is, and what lawmakers and traffic controllers ought to do about it and this and that and -
     Here's a radical idea.  Do nothing.  Do nothing and the problem will sort itself out.  Darwin Award winners in action.

This can't be real, can it?  Can it?

     Anyway, saccade.  Art?

Saccade motion tracked

     It comes - O joy unabated!*** - from the Old French word "Saquer", meaning "To pull" as in the sense of a tugging or uneven motion.
     There you go, two examples of WoE.  Bring on the third!

"Inutile"
Again, going by the sound of it, this would be a tribe of Asian hunter-gatherers who crossed the Bering Straits and settled in the far north of British America, using bone to tip their arrows and seal-blubber to grease their sled runners -
     Wellll, except NO.
     This was actually the answer to a Cryptic Crossword clue, which I cannot remember verbatim but which went something like "Until, that is, blab blah blether".
     It is, of course, an anagram of both "until" and "ie", which is the abbreviation for "that is", and Your Humble Scribe could not decide if he'd made the word up out of whole cloth or if it really existed in the first place.

But no!  'Tis real.

     Forgive me for picturing another Darwin Award winner, but the meaning of "Inutile" is "Useless", in that whatever it is - as in the waste of genes above - has no utility.

     So, Laodicean, saccade and inutile.  What might pop up in the head of Your Modest Artisan today?
     (Something already has, but we're leaving it until tomorrow)



*  Both of them!  <the painful truth courtesy Mister Hand>
**  Shakes fist at diabetes - wait a minute - that treacherous twod Mister Hand was here already?  The dirty cur!
***  Or even "Sweet".  Ahem.