Dictionary of Obscure Joys

Might as well be happy about something.

[dictionaryofobscurejoys]

Kragh

n. the surly, worryingly competent worker at an outdoorsy rental facility.

Too old and sure for this to be their first rodeo, their weather beaten faces, wry looks and confusing sarcasm enough to make you wonder if they have this whole life gig figured out.

Even more than leaning slightly left on third turn in the rapids, an air that although they are presently working for you, you've gotten the short shift in life. Whereas theirs is filled with the sort of anecdotes that take up several TED Talks or what would surely be the most fabricated LinkedIn profile of all time.

[dictionaryofobscurejoys]

lubbut

n. that sudden easing of the deathgrip of winter , a feint to the head instead of the usual uppercut from a powerjack, that makes you remember better days ahead, when dying from exposure will feel like a distinct impossibility; a reminder that the neverending doom that drums on your head like an existential drumroll is never so dire, never so neverending, that reprieves can and do happen. Scarves gotta be put away at some point.

[dictionaryofobscurejoys]

bmksh

n. the flood of words that come from a 12-year, lacking discernment from what is more or less is important, what, if any, is the point of the anecdote.

An almost unvaried monolith of information, whose crevices and bumps and main reliefs are almost indistinguishable from the the everyday layer of information stratum. A massive edifice that defies nearly any attempt to comprehend.

A testament to when all life is interesting, every variance a milestone, when there is, in fact, a listener to your everyday background radio static of thoughts and meandering whose attention can only ever be buttressed by that sort of everyday callused steady 24 hour familial love that doesn’t get nearly as much attention as it deserves.

[dictionaryofobscurejoys]

optnoxious

n. The unhinged optimism when one product is advertised for entirely different usages in the hope of more sales, at the cost of any semblance of logic, good taste, or vague adherence to precedence.

(e.g.

When you think dessert, think endives.

Tell her you'll marry her all over again with a set of Paulson X-83 50W LED industrial spotlights.

Make Thursdays coffee bean burritos night!)

A sharp outline of the making of the sausage in the great butcher shop of creativity, the refuse and snouts usually left on the floor. Repurposed either because a committee actually believes it'll work out, a great testament that nothing of creative value has ever resulted from anything where minutes are taken; more likely because the overworked, harassed, and grossly underpaid copywriter made a hilarious and successful hail Mary that got them to Brooklyn Nine Nine bar trivia night just in time to make quip about Cheddar.

[dictionaryofobscurejoys]

Gurradged

adj. the toughened quality of a jacket, owned over many years, relationships, miles. Whose actual ownership is muddied by its questionable style, faint scent of what perhaps might be formaldehyde.

Chaffed and scraped over many adventures, or just as likely, the sort of clumsiness that both embarrasses and informs the adult you’ll become, far less aware of, much less worried, about the bugbears and slings and arrows that take up all our youthful vision, peripheral and otherwise.

Armour beaten into shape from dragons who have faded from feared to something pretty close to affection.

[dictionaryofobscurejoys]

Paarhaus

n. And exceptionally well-designed sign for a small business that could never, in its 38 years of existence, ever afford it. A signal that excellence can still come from nowhere, that even in the oft-neglected industry of Landscaping-Xerox-Hungarian comfort food combination shops there still beats the striving for the superlative, no matter how brief, no matter how forgotten. A striving that will surely serve the owners' kids as the main theme to their Ivy League entrance essay that wins praise and a small footnote in Greater Tri-Cities of Chattanooga Small Business Quarterly.

[dictionaryofobscurejoys]

ioer

The enthusiasm of a great teacher of small kids. Infectious and unaware, reminding you of a slightly less manic Robin Williams, minus the outrageous accents, 80’s pop culture references, and not so well disguised dependence on class II stimulants.

An enthusiasm that reminds you of your erstwhile dimmed excitement about bike polo, or World War I trench warfare, or the rise and fall of shag carpeting in contemporary game shows. Awakens a hunger in you to capture that excitement again, go on another weird journey of obsession that maybe only your mother could understand, and maybe not even her.

[dictionaryofobscurejoys]

ioer

The enthusiasm of a great teacher of small kids. Infectious and unaware, reminding you of a slightly less manic Robin Williams, minus the outrageous accents, 80's pop culture references, and not so well disguised dependence on class II stimulants. An enthusiasm that reminds you of your erstwhile dimmed excitement about bike polo, or World War I trench warfare, or the rise and fall of shag carpeting in contemporary game shows. Awakens a hunger in you to capture that excitement again, go on another weird journey of obsession that maybe only your mother could understand, and maybe not even her.

[dictionaryofobscurejoys]

Sure thing! We're putting together stories about feelings that are hard to put into words. Each person is to put together a short story about a feeling of their choice so I've been compiling some options mostly picking words from foreign languages that just don't have an English equivalent. We're also encouraging people to come up with their own words as well, but I think your words are an excellent place to get inspiration from!

Alrighty, go ahead and use one of them :)

[dictionaryofobscurejoys]

mamblory

After a trip, the feeling of home when taking transit. That old lady with the too tight pants, questionable hair dye job and a cane of all things; the overloud, overtanned, overmuscled men with visions of conquest and no tommorrow; the young couples with their groceries and documentary filled pvrs; the construction workers with the obvious, wandering eyes; the business women tapping staccato missives to corporate synergy; the wearied post-punk 40 year old with the optimistic neck tattoo.

This is the crumbling tottering of life, but life as you know it, somehow more home, strangers less strange to you, danger just around the corner, sure, but acceptable and expected. Weirdness and failure and joy well-marked with a legend that keys up exactly with the map that informs your every waking moment.

[dictionaryofobscurejoys]

embedderiment

n. The realization that the decor you once found tacky, dated, something that left the taste of an abandoned Welcome Back Cotter Revue in your mouth, no longer seems so out of place. The orange shag with the teal border, the linoleum with alarming black splotches over what could likely have been a maritime scene or an ode to Olympic equestrian , the tea cozy embroidered with David Hasselhoff, not ironically; the acceptance of these things indelibly linked to what that place is, a place of work, of worship, your local dojo: a place where you've poured so many grunts and grimaces, grinding disappointments and hardscrabble victories that all its imperfections only serve as crags on which your affection hangs.

[dictionaryofobscurejoys]

sebbiditaic

adj.the painstaking quality of craftsmanship in a public works ornament. The riotous tiled mosaic of a long since habituated subway, the intricate filigree of a manhole cover, a porcelain sink in a public washroom on an all-too frequented beach.

The care and quality of every human detail jumping out from the whole, reminding you that the makers and tinkerer, creators and industrious weirdos can still leave a lasting impact. The middle managers, the maddening boyfriends, the undead bureaucracy of life long forgotten, leaving only this mural , far too large, airbrushed and containing the unfocussed glory of 1970’s disco on the side of the post office.

[dictionaryofobscurejoys]

umbroud

n. Low , continuous undulating cloud-cover, which reminds you that we are all in a gasfilled shell of life on an iron filled rock hurtling through a vacuum. A wafer of life and grief and joy and small heartbreaks.

Shared, sure, all going through, more or less, the same things, given a long enough time period, all of us little minnows in a sea of air under waves of cloud.

[dictionaryofobscurejoys]

joiel

n. the joy one feels on receiving, of all improbable things, a letter in the mail, from an actual person — not Sears or the Verizon, nothing made by the radiant alacricity of some far flung long forgotten computer, calculated to crag ever more time from your quickly dwindling supply — a person who knows a little bit more of you than most, loves you in spite, or better yet, because of it.

A real life awkward, weird, person person just like you but maybe a bit cooler with slightly better time-management skills. Someone who has solved a few more of life’s intractable riddles than you but has still decided to send you, YOU a letter.

Papery and stationarily and with that odd whiff of a note passed in class without the feeling of petty larceny and the lurking suspicion that just one more note passed like this and you’ll flunk Chem 11 for sure.

[dictionaryofobscurejoys]

scrubdibly

n. the cheerful dilapidation of the summer cottage you rented for far too much money near a beautiful natural landscape that has, for lack of a better phrase, been aggressively gentrified. Your rental place a stalwart bastion for the genially mediocre and financially middle of the road vacationers; squat against the sea of entirely too well appointed cottages with euro-prestige vehicles parked in front. The creaky, lopsided floors though freshly painted and clean would make a home inspector faint,; a long ago vacation spot for a family that was not unlike yours but through a happenstance of demography and luck bought this for the cost of a horribly mangled Corolla in 1972.

[dictionaryofobscurejoys]

dwaren

n : the secret glee that very small doors in old houses give you, a feeling undiminished by years, when you used to think that such doors (to dumbwaiters or laundry chutes or crawlspaces), were the portal to a world of elves and fairies and small sentient teddy bears. Not that such a belief was ever fully extinguished, or ever could be, leaving, somewhere at the top of all your secret desires, to own a large, well-lit, Edwardian house full of these crawlspaces, each one waiting to be converted into a reading nook.

[dictionaryofobscurejoys]

Lllunimon

n. The state of complete socal blindness that two young people fall into when they flirt egeregiously in front of shared friends. Fooling no one but themselves and maybe even not that much, but providing enough plausible deniability, enough doubt-filled armour that will, by its nature, leave them wondering "do they, don't they", while flipping through Best of HuffPo and drinking themselves into a Slurpee coma every night through an agonizing, Lovely-Only-In-Retrospect hot summer.