Greem Day Packing

Never heard of the colour greem¹? Perhaps your reading list is a tad anemic. Unlike some, I'm not one for coining colourful neologisms. But sometimes enough is just too copious.

When I espied SWEDOW, an NPO acronym describing how unvendible garbage can be transmogrified into a tax credit or deduction (depending on your tax jurisdiction), I drew a line in the sand and avowed solemnly "Yes, by Vectron's jewel-encrusted virtual cosmic æstel!".

Mitchell and Webb and Vectron went down to the sea to bathe ... See who wasn't saved:

Note to workaholics: This is exactly what can happen when you take a day off

Now, it's not that there aren't multitudinous methods of describing my neologism's sentiment, it's just that those that come to mind tend to be unprintable (ie, as unspeakable as the meaning they're meant to convey).

In the spirit of Vectron, I propose "widoa" (wid-O-AH), or, Words I DOn't Appreciate. I have the hunch this will entrench itself in my vocabulary, so I ditched the caps (prenatally, so to speak -- think widoa, not WIDOA). Thus, to paraphrase Shakespeare's² third witch, Widoa: ditch-delivered, but no(t) drab. Nope. No need for Madame, no blots (spots) in its copybook.

Highly recommended London
Coliseum,  scene of the
Unspeakable. Courtesy ENO. 

Require the dictionary-dictated example of usage? How about the phrase waiters (waitpeople? waitpersons? servers?) use to interrupt your meal (for should you actually require their attention, be assured, they pointedly ignore you). Nothing more warranted to turn your temper, and your stomach, than the faux-sincere "How's your food, everything OK? Good!"

Another stock weasel usage: "Did you find everything you were looking for?" Ever stood in a checkout line waiting for your chance to describe the hour of futile searching for an essential product and/or help? How, frustrated, you accepted the pricier third- or forth-best? And, as customer after customer responded "Yes", you were busy polishing your soliloquy: "No ..."? 

Eagerly awaited 3rd edition
Courtesy amazon.co.uk

Yet, when your turn blissfully arrives, it's grunts and gestures, rather than speech, from the clerk. Foiled again by the tell-tale signs that alert salespeople the word over that they're about to be taken literally. Yes, they can tell when the answer will be negative, and so desist in the posing. 

Rather than playing their game, I slither into the role of satisfied customer. Given the opportunity to say pleasantly "Yes", I'll say, "Well, no. I'd hoped the books I want would be cheaper. And I've been waiting for X to come out in paperback. The hardcover's still too expensive". 

For some reason I've yet to receive a response.

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Courtesy amazon.co.uk

Yesterday, I had no choice but to contact † The Organisation †³ whose unofficial motto is "We Always Use Voicemail" (WAUV). Telephone and ask the receptionist to speak to X. I guarantee you will be connected to X's voicemail. Confronted with WAUV, I always call again to explain I requested a human being. Very rarely, it works.

Yesterday, call One served to inform me that I was using the wrong terminology (logo, never symbol). Two's let me know the object of my search, had (unlike Elvis) not left the building. If I were to leave a message (done) she would definitely "take my phone" (the dreaded widoa). Less than two hours later, at ten minutes to five († The Organisation †  does not keep 9-to-five hours), I was goaded into recording a few more messages ...

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Courtesy amazon.com

Eureka (see, I speak Greek too)! Last night, I stumbled upon the website of pseudonymous author Robin Cooper. Several years ago, I serendipitously⁴ read The Timewaster Letters and its sequel, The Return of The Timewaster Letters, two amazing collections of the opportunistic meeting the cretinly credulous, or what Cooper might be prodded into saying, the greemly green¹. 

"It's Robin Cooper here. Sorry it's taken me a while to get in touch. My wife's wretched ankle has been playing up of late, and we've had to change her ankle specialist, as she became frightened of Dr Hemsley (she thought his face resembled that of a horse's skull)" Robin Cooper (From the author)

My sequel copy is especially noteworthy because I picked it up in a Viennese bookshop that also housed a Canadian culture book whose contents could have been lifted from Rick Mercer's Talking to Americans. Talk about misclassification. Here's what I thought was an apology for Mercer having convinced those Harvard, Princeton and Stanford professors and all those politicians for making fools of themselves, but it turns out I may have been wrong.

Warning: A self-described passive-agressive so-called "apology" in very poor taste.

Its stuff like this that justifies our current government's slashing of the 

Exploding Pizza Channel's (aka CBC) budget, yet again

BTW, if you want to do as Rick suggests, and take it out on Bouchard (currently Quebec's fracking poster boy) and Gilles Duceppe (the shower cap fashionisto) and Yuck, Rick's "Eskimo prime minister". Many of my fellow Canadians would be more than happy to support you. In fact, they already do.

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Courtesy amazon.com

Taking the same approach as the first modern English novel, Samuel Richardson's Pamela: Or, Virtue Rewarded⁵, the non-fiction, Timewaster is a series of back-and-forth (mainly forth) correspondence. Ever had the urge to tell someone in a secondary sector (eg, secondary metals) to grow a backbone, rather than playing second fiddle to a bunch of stuck-up A-listers (ie, primary metals)? Or, since they're the so-called experts, asking a member of one of the "psych" professions why you chose to communicate (eg, write a letter to her)? 

If you're the creative type, how about asking royalty to subsidize you? Why not emulate Cooper who petitioned the guy with the three ostrich-feather heraldic badge⁶ to foot the bill for a (class-segregated) hound (upper) and dog (working)⁷ abode? Especially since he quit his day job (if I remember right) to work his way into architecture.

"In Return of the Timewaster Letters, [Cooper] delivers another wonderful collection of his polite, persistent and peculiar correspondence. Whether he is raising money for his nationwide hair-drying tour, booking a hotel room for his robot calf, or just trying to get rid of half a ton of unwanted herring." Amazon

Courtesy amazon.com

In this book, it's not a question of why anybody would bite the proffered hook, but how long the target will continue responding. The bait includes Cooper's wife's continuing ankle woes, his children's army-worthy bad behaviour, bizarre pets (eg, Comfy the boar), threats of having quit his job or destroyed his masterpiece, the personification of the ping pong paddle, and the alleged absence of a telephone (although Robin contradicts himself on his website). 

Off tangent and back on track. Never too old to learn, I listened to a some of Robin's calls (telemarketer and airline) and decided: The Timewaster's track (TT) was the one for me!

* * *

I rang † The Organisation † today to complain my phone "was not taken". Apparently, it's because I said I'd be "out today". Yeah, that's why I was worried -- I'd rather a ring at the door than a break-in. This time, I specified a human, not a machine, and (miracle!), I got one.

Refusing to use PC terminology, I pitched my demand to the phone pincher, including my phone loss concern. She went into broken-record mode, so at every pause, I answered TTishly, "If you wish". Prepared for her email address request (my version of Cooper's no-phone excuse), I answered, "I'll give you my fax number", complete with the TT inclusion of my historical statement mnemonic.

A ring at the door? Courtesy starwars.wikia.com

After my telephone?
Courtesy wikipedia

Success! The phone went "click" and happiness ensued. Although it took longer than the promised ten minutes, the fax arrived. Waste not, want not, so I used the interim to bring † The Organisation's † receptionist up to speed on the phone pincher's pilfering threat denial. This time it was my turn to replace the receiver when, tables turned, my perplexed tormentor (in denial mode) attempted a pincher re-connection. Thank you Robin Cooper for a thoroughly satisfying land line experience!

Even if you're disinterested in The TT approach to telemarketer telephony (my nonce word) -- telephone as anonymous instrument of torture -- you should love Timewaster and Timewaster Two.

I word of advice. Avoid on a full stomach (you may laugh yourself sick) and use caution when in public (your hilarity may be mistaken for madness).

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PS: I still have all my phones -- plain vanilla landlines, cordless, smart cell/mobile and retired (unsmart? stupid? challenged?) now immobile cellular.

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Notes
¹ An inspecific colour dreamt up  by Timewaster author Robin Cooper.
² Hey, there's a superstition about naming this play. I've been told the unspeakable occurred in the London Coliseum. A place I've been in several times, but only after becoming horribly lost. Something to do about St Martin. Don't ask me what, the guy in the Coliseum's ticket booth told me to enquire at the church. As if I could find that either. At least this Coliseum doesn't have vomitoria.
³ Name withheld to protect the guilty, since † The Organisation † enjoys intimidation, -- "Your name had better not come to my attention again, or else (spit, hiss, gurgle, pop)!" -- I'm virtually mum. I like to think of † The Organisation † as a highly-flawed version of what the white mice would have commissioned had they chosen the HO of Pandaemonium's property managers. That is, if Douglas Adams had given up on the Hitchhiker's Guide and decided to channel Milton instead.
⁴ Serendip is on my travel list, under a non-PC aka.
⁵ Harold Bloom told me it was a wonderful book. Who am I to disagree?
⁶ Attributed to that scourge of the French, the Black Prince, the guy with all that paraphernalia on display at Canterbury.
⁷ The upper class, leisure-loving, hound was compared to the common-as-dirt, working class dog, in an episode of the BBC's Balderdash and Piffle. Although the show's links no longer work, an echo remains on BBC News' Gordon Bennet! Who was he? page.

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Books mentioned

• Macbeth (Arden edition)
• The Timewaster Letters
• The Return of The Timewaster Letters
• Pamela: Or, Virtue Rewarded
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe (omnibus edition)