The Lists #29 by Tim J. Myers

Improved Terms for Some Currently-Known Stuff

As culture changes, language does, too.  So must lexicons. Dictionaries of the world, the following are offered for your delight and edification.

• machina vomitorum: Thrill rides at amusement parks that inspire a terror which can quickly have digestive consequences
• genetic monsters: That 0.00001% of the population whose greyhound torsos, giant eyes, and abyssal cheeks qualify them as super-models
• the churchmice professions: Teaching or the humanities as careers
• In and Out: fast-food-induced diarrhea (which, ironically, never happens at the CA burger chain In and Out)
• Chichis con Huevos: Hooters Restaurant. Also the answer to a Mexican joke: What do honeymooners have for breakfast?
•  johnshock: One’s natural reaction, while sitting in a Port-a-Potty, when a stranger in extremis violently tries the door
• Omeletteville: A memory aid for the millions of Justin-bedazzled moms who can’t remember Justin Timberlake’s actual name
•  Loserschnitzel: Elitist nickname for the hot-dog chain Wienerschnitzel
•  mammal glamour: self-evident.

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Tim J. Myers (Episode 63, interview, Episode 31, essay) is a writer, songwriter and storyteller who also teaches at Santa Clara University in Silicon Valley.  He’s been nominated for two Pushcarts, has published over 130 poems, has three books of adult poetry out, and won a national poetry contest judged by John Updike.  He’s also published much fiction and nonfiction for adults and young readers, won the 2012 SCBWI Magazine Merit Award for Fiction, and won a prize in a major science fiction contest.  His children’s book Basho and the River Stones is a Junior Library Guild selection, his Tanuki’s Gift got an excellent boxed review with art in The New York Times, and his Basho and the Fox, a New York Times bestseller and Smithsonian Notable Children’s Book, was also read aloud on NPR.  He has fifteen children’s books out and two on the way, and his Glad to Be Dad: A Call to Fatherhood is out from Familius.  He can also whistle and hum at the same time, though he hasn’t won any awards for that.  Yet.