zwieback

\SWEE-back\

noun

: a usually sweetened bread enriched with eggs that is baked and then sliced and toasted until dry and crisp

ZWIEBACK is German for "twice-baked", and while the word here describes those biscuits toothless babies chew on, the phrase "twice-baked" in America refers usually to potatoes.

My older brother Heath is a fan of the twice-baked potato. My mother would make potatoes this way pretty frequently—in fact, I don't remember her making potatoes any other way. Bake, slice off tops, remove innards, mash with butter, salt, onion powder, and parmesan cheese, replace innards, bake again to a crisp. While most of my immediate family would have a single potato alongside dinner, Heath would somehow manage to devour at least three or four of the taxidermic roots. Even on Thanksgiving Heath's plate would be garnished with a perimeter of potatoes already surrounding a feast. Impressive. He's not a large man, just a healthy appetite I suppose.

During the International Year of the Potato in 2008, potato farmers, enthusiasts, and scholars attempted to spread the joy of these earthy tubers, or oblong outgrowths of a subterranean stem (not to be confused with tubular : having the shape of a tube; excellent [slang]), letting the world know the potato should not be overlooked. Some objectives behind this United Nations-inspired annual focus included sustainability, climate change on ecosystems, agricultural development for rural communities, and of course culinary arts.

Stanislav Menard, the president of the Slovenian Society for Sauteed Potatoes and Onions, has a soft spot for the tuber, which plays a large role in Slovenian culture. When asked about his country's love affair with the potato, Menard responds:

Agriculturally, Slovenia in the 18th century was a poor country, and famines were frequent. After a series of famines in the mid-1700s, Maria Theresa, the archduchess of Austria, decreed that our farmers should start growing potatoes. It was the beginning of a new era. Slovenia is a mountainous country and ideal for potato. Suddenly farmers had a reliable food supply, and feed for farm animals. So what the International Year of the Potato is preaching is absolutely true - the potato did save Slovenia from hunger.

Menard is also quoted as saying "In front of a potato, we are all equal." I suppose he's right.

That same year, Slovenia erected a bronze life-size statue of Maria Theresa dressed as a peasant, offering a potato with her outstretched hand. I can't locate a photo, but it sounds epic.

fester

\FESS-ter\

verb

1 : to generate pus

2 : putrefy, rot

3 a : to cause increasing poisoning, irritation, or bitterness : rankle b : to undergo or exist in a state of progressive deterioration

First thing's first: rankle : to continue to cause keen irritation or bitter resentment within the mind. Fantastic word. Paranoia, animosity, vehemence spinning, churning, writhing within the walls of the brain. Lovely. This whole above definition is just...awesome.

My first thought, after rankle, was of course: uncle. I grew up on the Addams Family movies, embracing a kinship with Wednesday, aspiring to be Morticia (Anjelica Huston still makes me want to grow out my hair), and generally developing comforting parallels with the concept of a "weird" family. I loved anything dark as a child (I still do) and this morbid humor had my eyes locked with the television. Uncle FESTER was just another reason to adore the film—he never quite made the cut for fantasy dad (while Gomez absolutely did), but fantasy male role model for sure. The character also just added to the awesomeness that was Christopher Lloyd. As though Back to the Future and Who Framed Roger Rabbit weren't enough. Lloyd redefined the twisted and maniacal gentleman for the end of the twentieth century.

Second thoughts: wounds. Specifically mine. I tried to remember the last time I had a wound that FESTERED. A couple years ago I had to get my toenail removed due to an abscess that was caused by the shit-quality non-slip work shoes I am forced to wear. (Worker's Comp!) After a few months of general toe-discomfort, I finally went to the podiatrist. The interaction unfolded as follows:

Well, this nail is gonna have to come out.

Okay. When do we do this?

Now.

At least it's not the whole toe (nervous laughter).

You laugh but that happens a lot around here.

I'm sure there was some FESTERING in this toe debacle. The whole mess was pretty grotesque (see above).

No accounting for taste, I suppose.

vicarious

\vye-KAIR-ee-us\

adjective

1 : done or suffered for the benefit of someone else 2 : sharing in someone else’s experience through the use of the imagination or sympathetic feelings

It's fascinating how the definition seems to have transformed from the physical to the emotional. The word derives from the Latin "vicis," meaning change, alternation, or stead. While this word literally translates to taking one's spot, it is now predominantly used in the figurative form of fantasizing you are in someone else's place.

Living VICARIOUSLY, in the second sense, usually implies channeling a situation that is better than the subject's in order to pretend-live the good life for a while. But the word can also suggest the opposite: the repositioning of one's self into a situation worse than her own in order to put things into perspective. In both cases of VICARIOUSNESS there's a dangerous element of self-avoidance, or rather, understanding the self only in terms of better or worse off than someone else. But we could go even further and ask—who are you without your "other?" Do you even exist?

Or we could stop.

My point is, VICARIOUS living is both detrimental and unavoidable. Like capitalism, the best you can do is realize you are an active participant and move on. If you try to escape you just look like that dude who pays taxes and has a bank account but refuses to get a cell phone because he's avoiding the "system."

Good luck.

eisteddfod

\eye-STETH-vawd\

noun

: a usually Welsh competitive festival of the arts especially in poetry and singing

Coincidentally, the Welsh EISTEDDFOD happens every year in the first week of August. And look where we are.

The EISTEDDFOD can be traced back to 1176 when Lord Rhys of Cardigan gathered poets and musicians from all over Wales to his castle for festivities. As tradition holds, the best poet and musician is awarded a chair at the Lord's table. (Although, I'm not sure who the contemporary Lord is.)

The main purpose of the EISTEDDFOD is to promote Welsh culture. This makes me realize I know NOTHING about Welsh culture. Lucky for me, there's Wales.com—the official gateway to Wales. Some interesting things about Wales:

- home to the World Bog-Snorkelling Championships, also held annually in August.

- birthplace of Catherine Zeta Jones

- importer of various cheeses, namely caerphilly, a hard white cheese originating from (you guessed it) Caerphilly, Wales; known as "the crumblies," although I cannot locate an explanation for this nickname

- home and stomping ground to Dylan Thomas, famous poet known for "Do not go gentle into that good night," although apparently this piece is not particularly representational of his style. Thomas died in New York shortly after his thirty-ninth birthday of a gnarly case of pneumonia which may have been helped along by pollutive smog.

- origin of a mountain "Lady of the Lake" myth:

Llyn y Fan Fach, a remote lake in our Black Mountains has its very own Lady of the Lake legend. The story goes that it was here a young farmer named Gwyn won and then tragically lost the love of his life.

He fell in love with a beautiful water fairy and she agreed to marry him but warned him she would leave him for ever if he struck her three times. They lived happily for many years and had three sons but when Gwyn struck her playfully for the third time she disappeared into the lake and he never saw her again.

She would sometimes reappear to her sons and teach them the powers of healing with herbs and plants and they became skilful physicians as did their children after them. Some of their ancient remedies have survived and are in the Red Book of Hergest, one of our most important medieval manuscripts.

I feel like this myth has some holes in the story. As a reader I am confused. I am unclear with whom I am supposed to sympathize—the battered woman or the misunderstood farmer. While her conditions are totally reasonable, I am not informed of the first two strikes, only the third. Am I supposed to take her word for it? Am I supposed to side with the farmer because his strike was "playful," suggesting the fairy may have overreacted? In her defense, she did lay down some pretty clear ground rules, and if I were that farmer I wouldn't have fucked with some water fairy. This is what I think happened—I think he agreed to her rules and then after he got her knocked up THREE TIMES he got complacent and forgot who he was dealing with. Thankfully she stuck to her guns and set an example to warn future generations of single Welsh farmers who drunkenly wander the outskirts of lakes looking for some mythical virgins to ravage.

sirenian

\sye-REE-nee-un\

noun

: any of an order (Sirenia) of aquatic herbivorous mammals (as a manatee, dugong, or Steller's sea cow) that have large forelimbs resembling paddles, no hind limbs, and a flattened tail resembling a fin

The word SIRENIAN derives from the same source as the sirens of Greek mythology. That said, a "sea cow" somewhat clashes with the idea of the beautiful and alluring half-bird-half-woman creatures beckoning from an island in the Mediterranean. According to sirenian.org, these animals got their name from associations with mermaids, another offshoot of the half-woman-half-something else creature. European explorers, including Columbus, thought these exotic creatures to be mermaids because of the "pectoral breasts, dextrous forelimbs, and fish-like tails." Columbus commented in his ship's log:

They were not as beautiful as they are painted, although to some extent they have a human appearance in the face....

I really hope Columbus didn't take advantage of any mermaid-like SIRENIANS. I'm sure he'd been at sea for quite some time. The mermaid as a sexual being is fascinating in that she is essentially impenetrable. Mermaid-human relations involve a lot of compromise. Take Ariel from The Little Mermaid, for example. She had to give up her whole family and life in the sea in order to be able to fuck a man. In Splash, it's the other way around. Tom Hanks lets go of his life as a produce distributor to be with Darryl Hannah in an underwater kingdom. Of Mermaids. And Mermen. I'm not really sure what I'm trying to say—humans and mermaids cannot co-exist? Or their relationships are stronger since they're based in sacrifice? Or Christopher Columbus was a pervert.

Or a little bit of all of the above.

inchoate

\in-KOH-ut\

adjective

: being only partly in existence or operation;especially : imperfectly formed or formulated

A lovely phrase included in the etymology: the formlessness that often marks beginnings.

the formlessness that often marks beginnings

the way things seem to unfold into themselves with no actual start

trying to remember the first time you saw someone, knowing the first time in no way held the possibility of such significant future times

a beginning, often established only after the fact

a subjective concept existing only where we decide to place it

let's see, where do i start

an address and hour scribbled on a post-it

a dark and stormy night

the way in which a film breaks into a place that seems to pre-exist outside of those two hours in a dark theatre

knowing everything is a cycle and therefore has no beginning or end, but begins only when you realize you are in it

merging onto a highway, jumping into a river, waking up—suddenly and INCHOATELY becoming part of something that has always been there and will always be there, going, moving, unfolding, whether you are there or not.

adjure

\uh-JOOR\

verb

1 : to command solemnly under or as if under oath or penalty of a curse 2 : to urge or advise earnestly

I immediately confused ADJURE with the word with adjourn, to suspend or postpone to a later time, or indefinitely—as in, the court is adjourned. Not so. I think I saw the word oath and went for it. Apparently this word aims to confound, since Merriam warns me TWICE not to confuse ADJURE with the closely related ABjure, meaning to renounce or abstain from. I'm all mixed up.

My favorite part of the above definition: "penalty of a curse." A gypsy's ultimatum. I wonder how often the average person gets commanded under these conditions? When I do a google search for "gypsy curse," the first website I find is a Yahoo! Answers page posing the question: How to break a gypsy curse? Here's the solution:

In the book Death and Destruction, there's a spell for protection you could use. You need to get some conjure formulas called Fiery Wall of Protection -- you get the oil, and either the powder or the bath salt. You draw a bath and put some of the Fiery Wall powder or salt into it, and you also dress four small white candles with the oil and position them around the corners of the bathtub. You light them, and you get into the tub and let them burn down. This makes a "wall of protection" and, also, it washes away any existing jinx you may have had.

Hm. But seriously, I don't want to fuck with any gypsies. Have you read Thinner? That shit is messed up.

Curse is actually a really interesting concept in that, like luck, it exists only inside one's perception to explain the repetitive occurrence of negative events. To ADJURE suddenly seems like an act of negative reinforcement— a "take out the trash or I'll render you barren" sort of thing. How sneaky. ADJURE is like a threat that goes without saying; the idea behind the phrase: If I were you I wouldn't do that. Some heavy-handed advice with the implication of negative repercussions.

This word turned out to be heftier than I thought.