“A person’s vocabulary is the set of words they are familiar with in a language. A vocabulary usually grows and evolves with age, and serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge.”

— cribbed from the Internet



Building vocabulary is a vital step toward mastering any language. As one’s vocabulary grows, his or her reading, writing, speaking and listening skills are enhanced, and there are direct correlations between these improvements and greater academic attainment and social confidence.

While writing this column, and during my other sideline as blogger, I’ve referred to words, terms and concepts that provide a specialized vocabulary of life in the Open Air Museum (see below).

Following is an evolving, alphabetical list of some of these. It is my earnest goal to periodically refresh and expand this list, and your assistance is requested in doing so. Please send corrections, additions and comments to istanbul85@yahoo.com, and help define the New Albanian zeitgeist.



About Schmidt

1. 2002 movie starring Jack Nicholson

2. Propaganda in the form of generally fallacious, encrypted numerology, as in: “These budget numbers are About Schmidt.”

Barbecued bologna

1. Twice-butchered meat by-product.

2. Councilman Cappuccino’s self-serving spasms, speeches and sidewinding.

Bazooka Joe U

Councilman Cappuccino’s gum-encrusted alma mater.

Councilman Ceesaw

Diamond-studded Roman Centurion who deposed the councilwoman’s husband, then fell down the same rabbit hole.

Birdseye

Indiana Utopian community valued by Councilman Cappuccino for its bucolic nothingness and/or septic tanks.

Boiling the bitter Coffey

Demagogic practice wherein grandstanding politicians attack the source of ideas, innovations and hope as a means of staving off progress.

Civil society

Severe allergy afflicting little people, but curable by frequent tea parties, town hall meetings and tax cuts.

Conjoined councilmen

Elected officials joined in the pits.

Councilman Cappuccino (CC)

Copperheaded “Wizard of Westside.” Currently about a dozen votes away from the electoral abyss.

Democrats

Not really.

Full audit

Millennial Holy Grail for the little people and potty police, to be facilitated by Grover Norquist, Their Man Mitch, the g-man in the great sewage submarine, or all three simultaneously.

Gang of Four

Quartet of inveterate obstructionists in the city council, 2003-2007. King Larry retired and About Schmidt was defeated, meaning that the Gang of Four is now the Gang of Six, Seven or perhaps even Nine, the latter coalescing only if the proposal at hand comes from the mayor.

Gestapo

Word in rental propertyese that means “ordinance enforcement officer.”

Golf cart

Conveyance to facilitate stealth mayoral campaigns, powered by Falangist flatulence and regressive swill.

Harvest Homecoming

Festive week when New Albany’s best and brightest return home to be reminded of why they left.

Information

Object so highly desired by Councilman Cappuccino that he typically refuses to acknowledge its existence right up to the point of misstating it.

King Larry

Ward-heeling, caterwauling wannabeen whose most famous political axiom is: “Each ordinance enforced is a vote lost.”

Li’l Stevie

Ventriloquist’s dummy, but in the end, just a puppet.

Little people

1. Certain cast members in “The Wizard of Oz.”

2. Self-reverential, irony-free way of describing one’s political and temperamental marginalization so as to elevate futility to oddball status as social class.

Luddite Bar & Grill

Place where the little people go to lament all human progress — and to denounce all others who favor it.

Mad as hell

What the little people become after drinking regressive swill at the Luddite Bar & Grill.

New Albany Syndrome

Waterborne malady manifested in symptoms like mistrust, inertia, secrecy and contempt. Sufferers fear the future, venerate the past, and regard any sign of communication and cooperation with others as weakness.

Nickels and dimes

1. Li’l Stevie’s council pay packet.

2. Contents of grandmaw’s cookie jar.

3. Sum of how the 3rd council district has benefitted from Li’L Stevie’s council tenure.

Novelty cigarette lighters

Items banned by the current sitting city council, and still openly sold throughout the city (see “ordinance enforcement”).

Open Air Museum of Ignorance, Superstition and Backwardness

City-wide folkways theme park devoted to the reality of life in New Albany: “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

Ordinance enforcement

Condition permitted by city residents only so long as it doesn’t apply to them.

Ordinance enforcement officer

Grudgingly tolerated and endangered species, traditionally denied the tools to succeed by city council persons utterly disinterested in success.

Political courage

Elusive quality, now extinct in New Albany.

Potty police

Self-deputized sewer enforcement officials with a localized Freudian twist who await the arrival of the g-man in the sewer submarine, who’ll come up from below and require a full audit.

Progressives

See “them people.”

Progressive pints

Antidote to regressive swill.

Redistricting

Method of forcible tooth extraction to be avoided by council persons at all costs.

Regressive swill

Why progressive pints are necessary.

Rental propertyese

Language radically inverting ethical values associated with home ownership, thus rendering them into barbecued bologna.

Republicans

See “Democrats.”

Robert’s Rules of Order

Just another book Dan Coffey hasn’t read lately.

Slumlord

Synonym for “misunderstood victim.”

Them people

Mortal enemies of Councilman Cappuccino, whose literacy, education, achievement and ability cannot be permitted to proliferate.

Troglodyte

Cave dweller; variously, troglobyte: Internet cave dweller.

Trinkle Dome

Formerly, the canvas-topped riverfront amphitheater protected from public use by its overseeing namesake.

Voice of the People

1. Condition of chronic laryngitis.

2. Malicious graffiti that keeps appearing on a nice lady’s whitewashed wall.