Damn fine Christmas news!
Good news, everybody! Not only was Christmas fun, but I got a great update from a dude I been workin' with to publish a new book concept I had! Read on, but only if you hate information that sucks.
So, for a while now I been pitchin' this idea to Simon & Schuster and various other publishin'-arena Daddy Warbucks. My dude at Cantnell Osovich Derillio finally bit, and this spring you should be seein' a hilarious yet important new title on the shelves: Brand New Words and the Celebrities That Created Them!
As you may know, one of my hobbies is living on the outside edge of the evolution of language. Here's a little excerpt from my foreword:
Dear Reader,
Somewhere between an accepted, clearly-defined word, and a total nonsense group of sounds, lies the area in which new language takes hold. Shlemiel. Shlimazel. Chochacho. At one point, none of these words was considered more than nonsense. However, today, they represent powerful concepts that all can agree on.
More often than not, a celebrity brings these new word-ideas (WORDES) to the public via their great means of visibility (tv, radio, ads, etc). Their wordes may be mistakes because of a quick confusion of the mind, or they may be intentionally constructed after hours sitting at a writing desk with the OED. Either way, their flowering malaproetry deserves a showcase. This book is that showcase. Note how it is bound in "clearlamb," which is what Tom Sizemore once insisted was the word for the tanned skin of an unborn lamb, as he talked full-tilt with friends outside of an L.A. nightclub.
[...]
You and I are on a journey, and language is both our coach and our impossible goal. Speaking the English language is like jumping a sports car through a gap in a quickly-passing train, only to find that on the other side is a table full of girls from the Clinique counter who get quiet and then call you "random."
I hope you buy this book. I know I did.
Ray Smuckles
Achewood Estates, California
December, 2005
