In response to this <a href=”http://editorialass.blogspot.com/2008/09/dying-words-contest.html”>contest,</a> I’d like to offer the following submission. All the words are included.

Cassandra pleaded with the officer.

“A fubsy female with griseous hair is captive in an olid oubliette! She’s in an agrestic region, covered in recrement! She’s donned a jade periapt! Heed my fatidical words! She’s in peril!

The officer looked confused. “Ma’am, you seem to be upset about something. If you’ll stop the hysterics, and talk slowly, maybe we could see what’s the matter.”

“Officer, my intention is not to embrangle, and I assure you, I suffer no caducity. My apodeictic vaticinations do not deserve disdain. My sesquipedalian speech is with veracity compossible! I am typically the very portrait of mansuetude.

The officer sneered. “Look, if you can’t speak English, don’t waste my time.”

“Do not vilipend me, sir. If your niddering attitude stems from my muliebrity, I may yet become oppugnant. There is a woman in need of abstergent, she’s petrified, huddled in caliginosity, awaiting avail! I beg you, please, ignore the malison of obfuscatory language!”

The officer signaled for assistance to remove the unintelligible woman.

Taking the hint, Cassandra started to leave the station. If the police would not help her save the unfortunate woman, she would go alone.

“I will leave you and your netid environs. Your disregard serves as roborant to my resolve.”

With that, she left the station, as pigeons scattered in a skirr before her purposeful stride.

At least, this is what I’ve been told.

Today, I’ve launched this new endeavor, which has been in the works far longer than I’d care to admit. I’m not entirely sure I’m up for it, but, what I’ve learned is that sometimes you have to just “jump in,” and do it.

I’ve been a part of the web world for over 10 years now. This shocks me. Has it really been *that* long?

Ten years on the web? It looks preposterous in type. I’m fighting the urge to rock back in my creaky chair, and in an old, curmudgeonly voice start telling rambling tails of the time “Back before Google knew everything…” or “When I built my first website, there weren’t no lousy “blink” tag, and we liked it that way.”

Yeah. No one wants to see or hear that.

Instead, I’m just going to welcome you to this experiment of mine.

I’ve come to think of myself as a “Geek of all Trades.” I’ve dabbled in so many flavors of Geek, I’m pretty much a Baskin Robbins by now. The sad truth is, I love so many different things, and while I was pretty good at many of them, I never really became a master in any one thing, and never really wanted to choose.

So, instead of choosing, I decided to embrace them all. Well, most of them, anyway. My love of weird and wonderful words I showcase in stories I call “The Word of the Day,” or “WoD” for short. A bit “on the nose,” admittedly, but, simplicity sometimes has its own brilliance. And, yes, the geek in me knows there are many other things staking a claim to the acronym, but, really, there is room enough for us all. Please. Can’t we all just get along? For the children?

The Word of the Day started many moons ago, in a few different incarnations, but, got dropped after inertia just gobbled it up. In these stories, I try to take a poor, lonely, seldom-used word from the vocabularily enhanced English language, and reveal the meaning of the word through a humorous story. Keeping words alive and helping people to add something obscure to their vocabularies, well, that’s just one of the many freakish things I do.

You might also expect to see posts on some of my other geekly loves, such as television, games and game design (admittedly, I’m something of a game snob, and yes, I will also admit, I have a huge collection of polyhedral dice), science fiction, comic books, cooking, you name it, if there’s any chance that something has dipped its toe in geekland, I’ve probably at least given it a good handshake.

Was that metaphor a bit mixed? Hmm. I think it’s okay. Discuss it amongst yourselves.

And, if any of these topics appeal to you, excellent. Pull up a chair and pop in anytime.

Come to think of it, “blink” is *still* really, really annoying.