Preface

The following essay was written “tongue-in-cheek”. If you’re from Arizona or New Mexico, I’m sorry :). if you’re easily offended don’t read this essay, it may offend you. No offense to any race, state, city, gender, country or anything else was intended. If you don’t see the humor in this, I’m really sorry about that. Read this at your own risk.

 

Albuquerque

So anyway, I am delayed -again. I love flying!

I’m sitting here like a hump in the city whose name no one can spell: Albuquerque. But I can spell it because I like the way it looks – the word, certainly not the city.

Come to think of it, I like the way a lot of words look – take “sullen” for example. You really have to smile when you see a word like “sullen” Words like “sullen” look and sound like what they mean. For instance, if I said: “Susan lost her finger in the mixer. She sat stunned and sullen in the ER, holding the severed finger carefully in her undamaged hand.” I bet you’d have no trouble determining that Susan was not a happy woman. Not even close. She was sullen, and you’d be sullen too if you lost your finger in a mixer.

Other words, like “dearth”, don’t mean what you’d think they would mean. These are foolapropisms.

Here, I’ll show you what I mean: “The peanut vendor was suffering from a dearth of peanuts.” That sounds like the peanut vendor is sullen because she has too many peanuts, and they’re all rotting on her peanut wagon stinking up the street corner.

But if that’s what you think, you’re wrong. The peanut vendor may indeed be sullen, but it’s not because she has too many peanuts, it’s because she doesn’t have enough of them.

And you can see, if you’re an observant person, that I am very politically correct since you probably thought the peanut vendor was a ratty-looking man wearing a striped shirt, derby hat and handlebar mustache.

Anyway…so you now see that the word “dearth” is a foolapropism.

So the peanut vendor is sullen because she does not have enough peanuts, and you’re sullen because you can’t spell Albuquerque. But you shouldn’t be sullen because you’re better off not knowing how to spell Albuquerque. If you can’t spell it you’ve probably never been there and that makes you a fortunate person. Fortunate is another word that pretty much looks like what it means – unlike indiscretion which looks like hell.

Anyway, a lot of words were invented to make you look stupid. Let’s take a look at some T-words: turgid, turbid, torpid, turpid, tumid, and turmeric. These are all real words, but most people don’t have clue. When’s the last time you looked at a muddy river and thought – “Wow! That river is sure turbid!”. Never. When is the last time you read a column by George Will and thought, “my how turgid that man is?” Never.

Can you remember the last time you saw a hooker plying her trade, wiggling her bare legs and so forth, and thought to yourself – “Hmm, that hooker is really turpid.” Right! You never thought that because you have no idea what turpid means. I am right, aren’t I?

Turpid is the root of all turpitude, moral and otherwise.

Now you can go out and impress your friends by calling them – if they’re bloated – “turgid”, Or if one of your friends tells you a crude joke, you can call her turpid. Yes, it’s the PC in me that makes me do that. Hey! I love the female gender…something wrong with that?

But ladies (and gentlemen) please don’t thank me. Yet. ‘Cause wait! There’s more!

Have you ever awakened in the morning and dragged yourself to the bathroom and thought, “I really feel torpid this morning”? Here’s a good one: The next time you need a day off from work, call you boss and tell him you have a severely tumid leg, can barely hobble, and so you can’t come in.

And turmeric? If you’re in the USA it’s only good for mustard. However if you’re from India or Tibet, then you can do many things with it, including using it as foot powder…and I’m not kidding.

If nothing else here makes you you think, think about this. I’m sitting in Albuquerque. It’s a city whose name few people can spell and even fewer people ever dare visit, unless they’re seriously bored. To those people, I say: If you’re think you’re bored now, come to Albuquerque. They do have an airport into which jets dare fly. If you’re looking for flights to Albuquerque, just type ABQ.

The people who run Albuquerque want you to think you’re in Mexico. They want you to think that so they can sell you fancy hats and toquitos and make you think the mariachi band is comprised of several, jovial and funny Mexican fellows wearing funny hats and really loud “fiesta” shirts with lizards on them – but not one of those are real mariachi guys. They’re all show. None of them speak Spanish; most of them barely speak English.

No substance, I tells ya!

Actually the Mariachi band is comprised of five Iranian refugees, all hiding from King Tutankhamen – or whatever that goof’s name is – Ali Chimney or however you say Ali Khamenei. Long live, Ali. May he last at least long enough until you read this so this does not appear outdated. That’s the last thing I want. I want to be current and fashionable. I want to keep you out of trouble; I want to keep you out of Albuquerque mostly because it’s boring and too close to Arizona.

So as we know, Albuquerque goes to great lengths to make you think you’re in Mexico – they perpetrate a grand ruse – even their highway signs are metric – which is a European language often used in Mexico along with Spanish. Spanish, by the way, is just barely a European language’; most Europeans eschew it.

Now eschew is a foolapropism. It looks nothing like what it means. I was eschewing my tobacco when a young man warned me of the mayhem eschewing tobacco may wreak. But eschew has nothing to do with chewing anything. Really!

Eschew: es·chew. verb \e-ˈshü, i-; es-ˈchü, is-; also e-ˈskyü\. : to avoid (something) especially because you do not think it is right, proper, etc.

And metric makes sense I guess if you grow up believing in it. But I go around thinking stuff like – how many liters in a gallon? How many litters to a cat?

And despite the tomfoolery of Albuquerque’s city fathers – when you’re in Albuquerque you’re not really in Mexico. You’re in New Mexico. Grab a map – New Mexico is right next to The Republic of Arizona. While Arizona is trying hard to secede from the United States, it has not yet been successful – but Arizona may secede when Texas does and there goes our supply of baby cacti. Unless cacti become as valuable as oil, I can’t see why we need to force Arizona to stay in these United States. OH YES! You’re right! The weather. Florida gets too crowded in winter and Arizona has plenty of room and lots of sunshine in winter. They even have scorpions – so bring your house cat with you. Cats are immune to scorpions and will chase them and eat them which will keep them from biting you and making you sicker than you will already be if you’re in Arizona without the proper papers.

I wish Abraham Lincoln were president now, he could tell us what to do if Arizona gets crazier. If New Mexico seceded no one would care, but Arizona? How would all those little cacti get to Walmart? How would wealthy old people stay warm? How would one dry out her sinuses? (You love my PC don’t you ladies? )

If you’re from Mexico and you travel to Albuquerque, either by accident or on purpose, and you don’t have your “papers”, they’ll deport you to Arizona because they know Arizona has the cajones to make you miserable. If your paperless in Arizona they’ll put you in concentration camps and make you listen to Sousa marches and America-will-rule-the-world-or-else speeches translated into Spanish. And at night they bombard “confinees” with rap music translated into Chinese – so as to make it more understandable and more likely to drive all those unlucky Hispanic and real American citizen Hispanics insane.

I don’t know much about how Mexican people think, but I can tell you that you don’t want to end up in an Arizona concentration camp. Many a poor illegal immigrant – and legal ones without papers – have gone in sane and come out crazy if indeed Arizona ever lets them out. Sometimes they don’t.

Welcome to the Hotel Arizona…you can check-in anytime you like but you can never leave…

You don’t want that kind of thing happening to your family. It can get into your bloodstream and become a bad gene and thus all your progeny may be affected. So if you’re from Mexico and want to visit Albuquerque because you’re bored, make sure you have your papers with you at all times, To refresh your memory: make sure you have your papers with you because New Mexico is right next door to Arizona and you know what that means.

I’m ready to leave Albuquerque now. Hopefully, you’ve learned many things today – some new words, all about Albuquerque and its quirky, intolerant next-door neighbor Arizona. If you’re American, you may visit Albuquerque with impunity – no papers needed; unless of course, you’re an American who looks like an undocumented person from Mexico. If you are an American citizen who looks even remotely foreign, you should bring your papers – a passport or birth certificate should do just fine – with you. You sure don’t want to end up in an Arizona concentration camp, do you?

I am bored as I board the aircraft. I look out the window of the plane and I see the skyline of Albuquerque – all those thousands of tepees, all festively lit, all fake, lining the horizon as far as they eye can see.

I sigh as the jet engines spool-up. All I can think of as I peer out the plane window for one last look at Albuquerque is how the people of New Mexico will do just about anything to suck the money from us torpid tourists.

OK. Now you can thank me.

Oh! And one more thing: Did you know that 94% of the world’s turmeric is grown on large commercial farms right here in Albuquerque? It’s true. Albuquerque’s crappy climate is ideally suited for growing the spindly, turgid turmeric bushes. Albuquerque has a dearth of turmeric berries.

And did you know that many migrant workers come every autumn to pick the tender, tumid, turmeric berries? One can only hope those industrious migrants have papers.

Most of the berries picked in Albuquerque are exported to India and Tibet, where big companies process the turmeric berries, and exploit the native worker, while thumbing their noses at child labor laws. Children as young as 7 and old men as old as 96 – there is no Social Security in Tibet or India – working together churning out vast quantities of foot powder to ease the burning and itching of bare feet in countries where people don’t normally wear shoes.

A small percentage of the processed turmeric is shipped to China and then shipped to the U.S.A. from China (this is called “outsourcing”) where it sold by several middlemen to companies like French’s’ and Heinz, America’s mustard kings. Some of it is sold to companies like McCormick and Durkee who put it in small spice tins and sell it at Walmart and other fine grocery stores for the five or six people in America who still make their own mustard – or, like my grandma used to did, make mustard poultices and put them on their grandchildren’s chests to ease the labored breathing of those unlucky enough to be afflicted with upper respiratory infections. Colds.

If you have a tumid foot, try dusting it with turmeric. The people in Tibet and India swear by it. Even if you don’t go barefoot most of the time you can still suffer itching, burning or irritated toes and feet. You can order turmeric online in bulk fifty-pound bags from Amazon but unless your feet chronically itchy and irritated what are you going to do with fifty pounds of turmeric? For most of you it would be better and cheaper for you to eschew Amazon and just buy some Durkee or McCormick turmeric at Walmart and sprinkle it on your toes. Works as well as the kind from Tibet or India or Amazon, plus the labels are all in English. Nothing is worse than trying to decipher Tibetan while your feet and toes are itching and burning. Better to get right to the sprinkling.

If you’re from Mexico, or Tibet, or India, or California and you plan on looking for employment in Albuquerque this coming fall to pick turmeric berries, make sure you bring your papers.

You sure don’t want to end up in Arizona.

So anyway, I am delayed -again. I love flying!

I’m sitting here like a hump in the city whose name no one can spell: Albuquerque. But I can spell it because I like the way it looks – the word, certainly not the city.

Come to think of it, I like the way a lot of words look – take “sullen” for example. You really have to smile when you see a word like “sullen” Words like “sullen” look and sound like what they mean. For instance, if I said: “Susan lost her finger in the mixer. She sat stunned and sullen in the ER, holding the severed finger carefully in her undamaged hand.” I bet you’d have no trouble determining that Susan was not a happy woman. Not even close. She was sullen, and you’d be sullen too if you lost your finger in a mixer.

Other words, like “dearth”, don’t mean what you’d think they would mean. These are foolapropisms.

Here, I’ll show you what I mean: “The peanut vendor was suffering from a dearth of peanuts.” That sounds like the peanut vendor is sullen because she has too many peanuts, and they’re all rotting on her peanut wagon stinking up the street corner.

But if that’s what you think, you’re wrong. The peanut vendor may indeed be sullen, but it’s not because she has too many peanuts, it’s because she doesn’t have enough of them.

And you can see, if you’re an observant person, that I am very politically correct since you probably thought the peanut vendor was a ratty-looking man wearing a striped shirt, derby hat and handlebar mustache.

Anyway…so you now see that the word “dearth” is a foolapropism.

So the peanut vendor is sullen because she does not have enough peanuts, and you’re sullen because you can’t spell Albuquerque. But you shouldn’t be sullen because you’re better off not knowing how to spell Albuquerque. If you can’t spell it you’ve probably never been there and that makes you a fortunate person. Fortunate is another word that pretty much looks like what it means – unlike indiscretion which looks like hell.

Anyway, a lot of words were invented to make you look stupid. Let’s take a look at some T-words: turgid, turbid, torpid, turpid, tumid, and turmeric. These are all real words, but most people don’t have clue. When’s the last time you looked at a muddy river and thought – “Wow! That river is sure turbid!”. Never. When is the last time you read a column by George Will and thought, “my how turgid that man is?” Never.

Can you remember the last time you saw a hooker plying her trade, wiggling her bare legs and so forth, and thought to yourself – “Hmm, that hooker is really turpid.” Right! You never thought that because you have no idea what turpid means. I am right, aren’t I?

Turpid is the root of all turpitude, moral and otherwise.

Now you can go out and impress your friends by calling them – if they’re bloated – “turgid”, Or if one of your friends tells you a crude joke, you can call her turpid. Yes, it’s the PC in me that makes me do that. Hey! I love the female gender…something wrong with that?

But ladies (and gentlemen) please don’t thank me. Yet. ‘Cause wait! There’s more!

Have you ever awakened in the morning and dragged yourself to the bathroom and thought, “I really feel torpid this morning”? Here’s a good one: The next time you need a day off from work, call you boss and tell him you have a severely tumid leg, can barely hobble, and so you can’t come in.

And turmeric? If you’re in the USA it’s only good for mustard. However if you’re from India or Tibet, then you can do many things with it, including using it as foot powder…and I’m not kidding.

If nothing else here makes you you think, think about this. I’m sitting in Albuquerque. It’s a city whose name few people can spell and even fewer people ever dare visit, unless they’re seriously bored. To those people, I say: If you’re think you’re bored now, come to Albuquerque. They do have an airport into which jets dare fly. If you’re looking for flights to Albuquerque, just type ABQ.

The people who run Albuquerque want you to think you’re in Mexico. They want you to think that so they can sell you fancy hats and toquitos and make you think the mariachi band is comprised of several, jovial and funny Mexican fellows wearing funny hats and really loud “fiesta” shirts with lizards on them – but not one of those are real mariachi guys. They’re all show. None of them speak Spanish; most of them barely speak English.

No substance, I tells ya!

Actually the Mariachi band is comprised of five Iranian refugees, all hiding from King Tutankhamen – or whatever that goof’s name is – Ali Chimney or however you say Ali Khamenei. Long live, Ali. May he last at least long enough until you read this so this does not appear outdated. That’s the last thing I want. I want to be current and fashionable. I want to keep you out of trouble; I want to keep you out of Albuquerque mostly because it’s boring and too close to Arizona.

So as we know, Albuquerque goes to great lengths to make you think you’re in Mexico – they perpetrate a grand ruse – even their highway signs are metric – which is a European language often used in Mexico along with Spanish. Spanish, by the way, is just barely a European language’; most Europeans eschew it.

Now eschew is a foolapropism. It looks nothing like what it means. I was eschewing my tobacco when a young man warned me of the mayhem eschewing tobacco may wreak. But eschew has nothing to do with chewing anything. Really!

Eschew: es·chew. verb \e-ˈshü, i-; es-ˈchü, is-; also e-ˈskyü\. : to avoid (something) especially because you do not think it is right, proper, etc.

And metric makes sense I guess if you grow up believing in it. But I go around thinking stuff like – how many liters in a gallon? How many litters to a cat?

And despite the tomfoolery of Albuquerque’s city fathers – when you’re in Albuquerque you’re not really in Mexico. You’re in New Mexico. Grab a map – New Mexico is right next to The Republic of Arizona. While Arizona is trying hard to secede from the United States, it has not yet been successful – but Arizona may secede when Texas does and there goes our supply of baby cacti. Unless cacti become as valuable as oil, I can’t see why we need to force Arizona to stay in these United States. OH YES! You’re right! The weather. Florida gets too crowded in winter and Arizona has plenty of room and lots of sunshine in winter. They even have scorpions – so bring your house cat with you. Cats are immune to scorpions and will chase them and eat them which will keep them from biting you and making you sicker than you will already be if you’re in Arizona without the proper papers.

I wish Abraham Lincoln were president now, he could tell us what to do if Arizona gets crazier. If New Mexico seceded no one would care, but Arizona? How would all those little cacti get to Walmart? How would wealthy old people stay warm? How would one dry out her sinuses? (You love my PC don’t you ladies? )

If you’re from Mexico and you travel to Albuquerque, either by accident or on purpose, and you don’t have your “papers”, they’ll deport you to Arizona because they know Arizona has the cajones to make you miserable. If your paperless in Arizona they’ll put you in concentration camps and make you listen to Sousa marches and America-will-rule-the-world-or-else speeches translated into Spanish. And at night they bombard “confinees” with rap music translated into Chinese – so as to make it more understandable and more likely to drive all those unlucky Hispanic and real American citizen Hispanics insane.

I don’t know much about how Mexican people think, but I can tell you that you don’t want to end up in an Arizona concentration camp. Many a poor illegal immigrant – and legal ones without papers – have gone in sane and come out crazy if indeed Arizona ever lets them out. Sometimes they don’t.

Welcome to the Hotel Arizona…you can check-in anytime you like but you can never leave…

You don’t want that kind of thing happening to your family. It can get into your bloodstream and become a bad gene and thus all your progeny may be be affected. So if you’re from Mexico and want to visit Albuquerque because you’re bored, make sure you have your papers with you at all times, To refresh your memory: make sure you have your papers with you because New Mexico is right next door to Arizona and you know what that means.

I’m ready to leave Albuquerque now. Hopefully, you’ve learned many things today – some new words, all about Albuquerque and its quirky, intolerant next-door neighbor Arizona. If you’re American, you may visit Albuquerque with impunity – no papers needed; unless of course, you’re an American who looks like an undocumented person from Mexico. If you are an American citizen who looks even remotely foreign, you should bring your papers – a passport or birth certificate should do just fine – with you. You sure don’t want to end up in an Arizona concentration camp, do you?

I am bored as I board the aircraft. I look out the window of the plane and I see the skyline of Albuquerque – all those thousands of tepees, all festively lit, all fake, lining the horizon as far as they eye can see.

I sigh as the jet engines spool-up. All I can think of as I peer out the plane window for one last look at Albuquerque is how the people of New Mexico will do just about anything to suck the money from us torpid tourists.

OK. Now you can thank me.

Oh! And one more thing: Did you know that 94% of the world’s turmeric is grown on large commercial farms right here in Albuquerque? It’s true. Albuquerque’s crappy climate is ideally suited for growing the spindly, turgid turmeric bushes. Albuquerque has a dearth of turmeric berries.

And did you know that many migrant workers come every autumn to pick the tender, tumid, turmeric berries? One can only hope those industrious migrants have papers.

Most of the berries picked in Albuquerque are exported to India and Tibet, where big companies process the turmeric berries, and exploit the native worker, while thumbing their noses at child labor laws. Children as young as 7 and old men as old as 96 – there is no Social Security in Tibet or India – working together churning out vast quantities of foot powder to ease the burning and itching of bare feet in countries where people don’t normally wear shoes.

A small percentage of the processed turmeric is shipped to China and then shipped to the U.S.A. from China (this is called “outsourcing”) where it sold by several middlemen to companies like French’s’ and Heinz, America’s mustard kings. Some of it is sold to companies like McCormick and Durkee who put it in small spice tins and sell it at Walmart and other fine grocery stores for the five or six people in America who still make their own mustard – or, like my grandma used to did, make mustard poultices and put them on their grandchildren’s chests to ease the labored breathing of those unlucky enough to be afflicted with upper respiratory infections. Colds.

If you have a tumid foot, try dusting it with turmeric. The people in Tibet and India swear by it. Even if you don’t go barefoot most of the time you can still suffer itching, burning or irritated toes and feet. You can order turmeric online in bulk fifty-pound bags from Amazon but unless your feet chronically itchy and irritated what are you going to do with fifty pounds of turmeric? For most of you it would be better and cheaper for you to eschew Amazon and just buy some Durkee or McCormick turmeric at Walmart and sprinkle it on your toes. Works as well as the kind from Tibet or India or Amazon, plus the labels are all in English. Nothing is worse than trying to decipher Tibetan while your feet and toes are itching and burning. Better to get right to the sprinkling.

If you’re from Mexico, or Tibet, or India, or California and you plan on looking for employment in Albuquerque this coming fall to pick turmeric berries, make sure you bring your papers.

You sure don’t want to end up in Arizona.