WASTED WORDS: Six Years of Fugger!

Fugger first blogged on this day, six years ago. That's six years of words arranged in grammatically dodgy order for reasons best known to absolutely no one, least of all me. All I know is that six years is a lot of words. Too many words. But what the Hell, it's Fugger's birthday so here are some more...

For this anniversary post, I thought I'd do something special and let you know about the word quota. Everyone has a certain amount of words assigned to them for use in their lifetime. Did you know that? Yeah, there's a word depot that stores a limited amount of words for each person's use. Once you use up your words, you can no longer speak or write. You are struck dumb. You never get to communicate again - beyond pointing and waving or using facial expressions or nodding and shaking your head. Consider that next time you waste a load of words complaining about the shite on telly. You might run out of words before you've said what you really want to say. It happens. Having said that, I'm not sure if running out of words is a bad thing at all.

Words drain life of value. Honestly. When you recount an experience in words you reduce that experience to just words. You even start to consider the experience as a story that you tell and forget the actual sensation of the experience itself. Emotions become syntax. Then you start to embellish things, to add a bit of sparkle to what inevitably becomes a jaded narrative. You might even discard reality completely and make something up. I'm not sure if anyone knows for certain why we do this. Maybe we do it to entertain others so they'll like us. Being liked feels good. Being liked makes us feel safe. Being liked sometimes brings rewards or gives us a chance to procreate. Or maybe it's not about being liked at all. Maybe we exaggerate just because, you know, because. For reasons we can't put it into words. We're a funny species, sometimes on purpose.

To keep experience authentic, the less you say the better. The only way you can properly convey an experience is through telepathy and we can't do that, yet. Once we master telepathy, we'll consider words as insufficient and rudimentary a means of communication as smoke signals. Dishonest smoke signals at that. With telepathy we'll know exactly how each other feel and we'll understand each other's motivations and no longer have a clutter of words clouding our mutual comprehension. Despite the odd embarrassment, this will be for the best. There'll be a certain amount of awkwardness because people you dislike will know that you dislike them and, worse still, people you love will know that you love them. Your silly preoccupations and insecurities will be on show for all to see, but then so will everyone's. This will probably lead to a lot of empathy in the end. We'll all see how silly we are and have a good laugh. You might even stop disliking those you dislike and come to love them, now that you've come to truly understand them.

(This post isn't very good is it? I should be putting a narrative on all this and packaging these concepts in some kind of amusing scenario, with a set up and a pay off. There'll be a funny bit at the end, I promise, but it should be less of a slog getting there shouldn't it? I should try harder to hold your interest. Holding your interest is my aim I suppose because, you know, just because. For reasons I can't put it into words.)

But where was I, oh yes, the word quota. Some people, those who talk too much or write a lot, like yours truly, often exhaust their word supply before death. If you keep an eye out, you sometimes see these wordless people around the place. You might see them paying for items at a checkout and smiling politely but saying nothing when they are handed their change. Most are elderly, but some are younger, living out decades incommunicado. I've a theory about these people. I reckon they find it liberating to be without words. I can't say for certain of course because wordless people aren't able to confirm it, but their knowing smiles and zen demeanours could well be down to their word lack. They look free to me, whenever I see them. They seem unburdened. I say 'hello' and they just nod sagely.

Anyway, this brings me to the funny part of this sixth anniversary post. 'At last,' says you. OK, so, there was this fella right, and he was always going on about this and that and whatever and never shutting his yap and it's his first day at work in a new place and he really needs a shite. He's busting to go, absolutely dying, but the building is huge and he can't find the jax so he goes to ask where it is, but then he finds that he's run out of  

THE FOREST OF WORDS

There once was a little boy who loved words so much he spent all his time in the forest of words, where words grew instead of trees. The little boy would pick words from the forest and press them into his little book where they made lovely patterns and formed sentences and paragraphs. One day the little boy got lost in the forest of words. It was a very confusing place and he could not find his way out. The little boy's beloved words were not much help. Some of the words said 'come this way' and other words from a different direction said 'no little boy, come this way'. Some other words that were in the forest didn't make much sense at all but the words that did make sense seemed to want the little boy to go in circles, around and around and around, forever. The little boy knew that he could not rely on the words to get him out of the forest. 'If I follow the words I will never get out of here and I might die', said the little boy to himself. The little boy felt betrayed by the words that he loved. He was very upset and missed his family and his dog very much.

Then the little boy had a very clever idea. 'I know', said the little boy to himself. 'I will leave a trail of shite and that way I will know if I am retracing my steps and going back into the forest'. Then the clever little boy pulled down his britches and deposited a tiny shite on the forest floor. The little boy continued to do this as he made his way through the forest. When he saw a shite or smelt one nearby, the little boy knew he had doubled back on himself and he would change direction. The little boy did not run out of shite because as he made his way through the forest the little boy picked and ate the words that grew there. Then the little boy would shite out the digested words, a bit like most people do when they are talking but the little boy made the shite come out of his little bottom instead of letting a load of shite pour out of his mouth.

The little boy eventually found that he was not in the forest of words anymore. This was not because the little boy had found his way out, oh no. This was because the little boy had eaten all the words in the forest and turned the forest into a big heap of shite that the little boy stood atop. This was the biggest heap of shite that ever was and from the top of it the little boy could look out upon the whole world. From where he was standing, the little boy could see words everywhere, telling people to do this and that and confusing them and playing tricks on them. The little boy called out to warn the people below but it was no use. The little boy could not be heard from way up on the mountain of shite that had all come out of his clever little bottom. This made the little boy sad and he began to cry. The little boy cried and cried and his tears made the shite soft and the little boy began to sink into it. 'Oh no', said the little boy, 'I am being swallowed up by my own shite', and so he was and the little boy was never seen alive again.

The mountain of shite then calcified in the hot sun and became so hard and stiff that the people of the world were able to build upon it. The people built a library on the shite and named it after the little boy who had vanished to where they knew not. They put all kinds of books in the library that had all kinds of words in them that said all kinds of confusing things. Little did the people know that the little boy would not have liked this because the little boy had learned not trust words and had decided that even shite is more dependable; as long as the shite doesn't go soft and swallow you up.

One day, the little boy's dog was sniffing around the mountain of shite and began digging a hole in it. The little boy's dog then discovered the little boy's skeleton and started to chew on the bones until the little boy's father discovered the dog and shot it in disgust. Then the little boy's father wept over the little boy's remains and later he wrote a book about the little boy's life and the book was full of words and do you know what readers? Yes, that's right. The book was a load of shite.

The End!

THE FIRST WORD EVER

It's incredible what they can figure out about the past these days isn't it? Did you hear that they've discovered the first word ever? Just think, the first word ever used by our species. They found it plastered onto the walls of various troglodyte abodes. They carbon dated it and it predates the hell out of sanskrit. This first word was depicted by a single letter of sorts that was just a simple handprint. Seriously, the 'letter' looked like a basic outline of a hand. The troglodytes just had to daub their hands in pigment, slap them on the side of a cave, and they had written the word. They reckon that this handprint word was the only word used by early man for several generations. Early man never said anything else, just this first word, over and over. They've even figured out how the word was pronounced. Apparently it sounded like a bark. Just a big fuckin 'woof!'. Mad isn't it? Of course, this first word ever was eventually joined by other words, which led to sentences and grammar and a linguistic sophistication that allowed us to say complicated things to each other and drive each other crazy.

I've no idea how they know all this about the first word ever but the evidence has been peer reviewed and it all seems scientifically sound. It did take them a long time to figure out what the word meant but even that was eventually deciphered. For a long time it was assumed that the first word ever would mean something simple like 'danger' or 'hungry' or 'me' or even, as one sentimental anthropologist optimistically postulated, 'love'. But no, interestingly it turns out that the first word ever didn't mean any of these things. The first word ever meant 'pardon?'

STORY JAR

I've written a novel that contains an infinite variation of themes, narratives, and conclusions. The novel has a word count of about 80,000, the average length for these things, but these words do not come within grammatically ordered sentences in paragraphs on pages. No, the words of my novel come on separate pieces of paper in a jar. The jar also contains little pieces of paper featuring various punctuation symbols. The idea is that you shake the jar, pour out the words and symbols and arrange them. I have been very cunning in my selection of the jar's contents so that no matter what happens, no matter what order the words and symbols come out of the jar, you'll end up reading a story of some sort. The only thing that occasionally goes wrong is that you can end up with two punctuation marks or the same words next to each other or maybe a few in a row. If you are willing to overlook this and place the excess punctuation marks or words back in the jar you get a coherent narrative. It may be a comedy, a ghost story, a family drama or any other genre and it may or may not be to your liking. Whatever it turns out to be, you get a story. It might be the best story you've ever read or the worst or just OK. Like life, your enjoyment is mainly down to random luck combined with the attitude you adopt in reaction to this random luck. However, unlike life, if the narrative is a total pain in the arse or really boring you can give up, put the words back in the jar, shake it, and start again. There's also an app you can download that shuffles and selects the words for you should you want read the novel on your phone, Kindle, or computer. The app is quite good actually because it ensures that you don't get the repetition problem.

The story jar has been optioned by a major movie production company. The people running company are delighted to have the rights to the story jar as it means they'll never have to bother bidding for another book again. All the other production companies are fed up as they're bound to go out of business. Even if they continue to make films, they'll inevitably be done for copyright infringement because no matter what they make it will be a story that could very easily have come out of the infinite range available from the jar. The same applies to all publishing ventures in the future. All authors from this point forward will be done for plagiarism as whatever they come out with will be an exact duplicate of something that could have come from the jar. Of course, there's also some talk of the story jar being done for the same reason by the property holders of every novel that preceded it but our legal team will argue that you can't sue on grounds of potential semantic similarity. In short, the story jar can always plead innocence.

I use the story jar myself. Even though I've written the novels that come out of the jar, I've no idea what they're about or what is going to happen in them. I recently read a historical piece about a sasquatch that captained a whaling schooner off the coast of Nantucket in 1886. Then I put the words back in the jar, shook it, poured out the words again and read a science fiction story about a whaling schooner that Nantucketed a captain off the coast of sasquatch in 8618. Both stories were OK. Did I mention that sasquatches and whaling schooners feature in the all the stories you get from the jar? Well, they do. But this too is like life. Life, as far as I can make out anyway, largely comprises of sasquatches and whaling schooners. 'Hoist the mainsails', 'thar she blows', 'look at the size of that footprint' – this is the stuff of life.

I'm hoping to win the Man Booker this year and all the other prestigious awards in various genres for fiction for all ages. (I've already been awarded the Maltesers Honorary Philip Pullman Prize for deicidal children's fiction aged 8 to 12.) You see, no matter what my story jar novel is not about it's about that too and no matter how bad my novel may be it's also the best novel you ever read. Something for everyone. Unless you're not so interested in whaling schooners or sasquatches. If whaling schooners and sasquatches don't do it for you then you'll probably find the story jar a bit shit. Fair enough. Each to their own. ...wierdo.

WORDS ABOUT WORDS - PART FOUR: WORD PRISON

Some words are so dangerous they have to be sent to word prison. Word prison is a kind of cultural Siberia. The idea is that if a dangerous word serves a long term in word prison no one will remember its significance by the time of its release and the word is rendered harmless by antiquity. Words get sent to word prison all the time. The type of words that get sent to word prison are not necessarily profane words. Profanity is more frowned upon than criminalised. Profane words are the lexicanonical equivalents of smokers or gypsies or something. The type of words that get sent to word prison are more than just naughty words, they are incendiary words, words that could start wars if spoken.

One of the nastiest inmates in word prison has been designated the new identity of The N Word. (That is what you do with dangerous words, you take the first letter from them and use that letter to refer to them.) Given that it was sent to word prison relatively recently, you might still remember The N Word. You might remember it but you dare not speak it lest you be the gateway by which societal tumult is released and/or are considered a bit of a dick. I'm going to risk typing The N Word here. I hope you understand that I am doing this for academic purposes and that you can forgive me. However, let this be the last time this word is typed or uttered. Right, here goes. Are you ready? If you don't want to see it you can look away now. OK. I'm going to type it. I'm typing The N Word next. The next word after the last word in this sentence will be The N Word. Nifflebibble. There I did it. Remember that one? Remember all the trouble it caused? See how feeble it is now compared to in the past when it had the power to incite events like the Viennese N Word riots of 1827? Despite all the time that has passed, I still feel unclean for just typing the word. That malignant combination of letters can still cause a lot of grief in certain regions. We can only take comfort in the knowledge that The N Word will remain incarcerated until such a time it can do little but wander the world entirely redundant, looking for a mouth to come out of and row to start, only to fail miserably - like an infamously violent hoodlum who leaves prison too withered and old to throw a punch.

****

Did you know that there is a nation that has banned the use of words entirely. The logic being that any word can potentially cause unrest so all words, including the name of the nation itself, have been sent to word prison. You are only permitted to speak two words in this nation, the word 'the' and the word 'word'. Saying letters is also permitted. This allows people to continue communicating without using words. However, just saying a simple greeting can be a very drawn out process in this nation. Instead of simply saying 'hello, how are you?' the citizens of this unnamed nation have to say: 'The h word, the other h word, the a word and the y word'. As you've probably deduced, this can get pretty confusing. So many words start with the same letter. People often misunderstand each other. It can lead to trouble at times with people wrongly taking offence. To be honest, sending the whole dictionary to word prison hasn't really helped this nation. All the breakdowns in communication have badly effected the economy. The people are unhappy because they can no longer make themselves understood. Ironically, the exchanging of insults is where most clarity remains. Someone pointing at you and shouting 'the f word and the o word' is obviously telling you to go away and in no uncertain terms.

****

Instead of being sent to word prison, sometimes words are just banished from certain places, like an individual might get barred from a nightclub or pub. Due to some traumatic past event or colossal faux pas, seemingly harmless words might hold a significantly dire association in particular workplaces or social groups. Groups of colleagues, friends, or acquaintances often banish words from their direct circle. Sometimes the forbidden word might be a name. You might meet a group of jovial bachelors who go a bit tense when you mention the name 'Edith'. From the sudden silence and the communal dropping of eyes, you will realise that an Edith was once known to these gents and that something bad came of this. One bachelor might even mutter something like 'bloody Ediths' and another will snarl at him 'leave it!'. Then, after a brief lull, you'll all go back to talking about the match. Certain words can also be barred from family homes, I know because there was a word banned from the house where I grew up. A simple enough word that, when uttered, sent out invisible shockwaves like the detonation of a psychological bomb. A word that meant nothing of any import to others but brought something appalling to the minds of my whole family. That word was 'rancheros' and to find out more just click the following escapee from my personal word prison: RANCHEROS!!!

WORDS ABOUT WORDS – PART THREE: WORDS FOR THINGS UNSEEN AND FORGOTTEN

I've invented a few words in my time. Words for unseeable conceptual things I've noticed or sensations I've felt that don't have names. Urnk, fweelt, huphtink, and schwelpt - that's just four of them. There are lot more. I have them all listed in a journal. Sometimes I forget to write down what they mean and when I make that mistake it inevitably leads me to forget the thing I invented the name for even exists in the first place. I'll try and make myself clearer: Imagine you noticed the sensation of feeling at ease. You noticed that everyone seems to undergo this sensation at times. You start to recognise it in others, a gentle smile and unguarded body posture. So, imagine you decide to name this sensation of feeling at ease. For the sake of simplicity, let's imagine you call this sensation 'comfort', a word that, along with any possible synonyms for the same sensation, has heretofore not existed. Now imagine you write the word down. Now imagine that you return some time later to discover the word 'comfort' in the place you wrote it but you have forgotten what it relates to, what it means, and you have forgotten that 'comfort' ever existed. Can you imagine something like that? Well, that kind of thing happens to me all the time. Unseen things only exist when named. If you forget the names of unseen things they vanish from your mind. I mean to say, they are still there, it's just that you can no longer perceive them.

If we all forgot what the word 'comfort' meant we would forget we even feel it or have a need to feel it. We would live in near perpetual discomfort, only occasionally experiencing the unrecognised sensation of 'comfort' quite by chance. We wouldn't discuss it or anything. We'd probably never mention it. You might doubt this. You might say that we would eventually put a name to a sensation if it was something we felt. 'After all', you might say, 'we do have names for unseeable sensations and concepts'. You might apply this logic and say that it proves my postulation invalid. However, if you were to do such a thing I would be forced to point out that you seem decidedly underschwelpt. This would make you confused. You would not know what I meant but this would only be because you would not recognise the unseeable truth I would have described. You'd have no idea what I am talking about but believe me, your obvious lack of schwelptness would be showing and you would be risking absolute huphtink.

So you see, a great many unseeable things have yet to be named. A great many others have been named but those names forgotten or what they mean has been forgotten. We should really keep an archive so we don't become unaware of more of these unseeable sensations and concepts. Some may be of great significance. Some may define fundamental aspects of human experience. It would be a tragedy to lose more of them. For example, can you remember what it is to chizzet? No, I thought not. Sad really. I think it is high time we catalogued these words in journals - perhaps in alphabetical order with the meanings of the words written next to each entry. We could call these journals Lexiconicons or Wordadoriums. What do you think? Really? I think the idea is pretty fweelty myself.

I'll conclude by making a prediction. Have you noticed how the word 'morality' is being used less and less these days? It is, really. You tend to find other words in its place. Words like 'practicality' or 'realpolitik'. Soon we'll stop considering the concept of morality altogether and quit discussing it or aspiring to it. We'll forget that morality ever existed but, you know, maybe it never did. Maybe this is one case of a word that is best left to oblivion. Maybe 'morality' is just used as an abstract excuse for other things or maybe it's too vague and subjective and impossible to objectively quantify. Maybe we never should have believed in it in the first place. Maybe this word is a word for an unseeable thing that actually doesn't exist. Yes, maybe we should forget it. Maybe it's just a silly word. Maybe it's just a load of urnk.

WORDS ABOUT WORDS – PART TWO: WORDS WITHOUT MEANING

In the future, everyone will continue to use words even though they will have forgotten their meaning. This will be thanks to innovations like Facebook and superficial people taking over culture and and things like that. It's already beginning to happen. People are using words without knowing what they really mean. Take the word 'awesome' for example. 'Awesome' used to refer to things that inspired a feeling of awe, like seeing an eighty tonne blue whale surface next to your boat or watching the aurora borealis streak and shimmer across the night sky. These days however, the word 'awesome' is employed as an expression of approval, often mild, as in:

Man: 'There's a two for one on bottles of ketchup in Lidl until the end of the week.'

Woman: 'Awesome.'

'Like' is another example. Instead of being something you feel, 'like' is now something you do. You do it on your computer. It just takes a fraction of a second. It's a thing you do to oblige others in the hopes that they will oblige you in return by 'liking' something of yours. It's a kind of conditional quid pro quo transaction. You contribute 'likes' and collect 'likes'. It's similar to philately, only less interesting. Liking things, on an emotional level, is no longer relevant. 'Liking' is now an activity. Everyone is gradually forgetting what it actually is to like something but no one has forgotten that it is important to be 'liked'.

Despite the excellence of the above examples, you still mightn't think that people have forgotten what some words mean. You mightn't have noticed because, despite having forgotten what certain words mean, people still remember the facial expressions and mannerisms that go with these words. Take 'happy' for example. 'Happy' has the smiley emoticon face. Likewise, 'angry' has a frowning emoticon. People use these emoticons when they are online and facially imitate them in the offline world. The protocol associated with certain words is retained but the actual meaning of them, the feeling of them, what they represent on an emotional or visceral level, is long gone.

Now that I've pointed it out, you'll notice this phenomenon more and more. You'll get that 'in the uncanny valley' sensation. It's the feeling you get when you see a creepy mannequin or android that is just about lifelike but not quite. Near human but inhuman. Seemingly alive but obviously dead. It looks happy. It looks sad. It smiles at you. There is something deeply chilling and repulsive about the attempted emulation. You'll get this same feeling when you notice people using words they no longer know the meaning of – a deeply chilling repulsion.

Has a psychopath ever told you that they love you? If this happened you would know that the psychopath does not love you. You would know that the psychopath just needs you for some reason and that is why the psychopath is claiming to love you. The psychopath says they love you in the hopes that you will love them back. Like anyone, the psychopath needs love but, unlike almost everyone, the psychopath cannot return the love. The psychopath does not want the love of someone the psychopath loves, no, the psychopath wants the love of someone the psychopath needs – so they can feel validated, or progress in some way, or survive, or maybe even destroy. The psychopath is an ego without real emotions. The psychopath knows the protocols but has no real idea what they represent. The psychopath is just making use of these things. The psychopath is leading the way. Don't forget to give the psychopath 'likes'. You should subscribe to the psychopath's channel. Why not follow the psychopath on Twitter @psychopath #pretending. 

WORDS ABOUT WORDS – PART ONE: THE LONG WORD

(pictured: an extract from The Long Word)

I've invented a new word. It is an unsayable word. It is actually impossible for a human to say the word. This is because the word is very long. So long that I can't type it here, it would hog up loads of the blog. While saying this word you need to inhale but you can't because you are saying the word. You die from lack of oxygen before you get to the end of the word. Even if you somehow devised a means by which you could take in breath whilst saying the word it wouldn't help because it takes longer than the average lifetime to say the word. This is ironic. The irony being that this long word I've invented is a synonym for 'why'. You never get the answer. You never even get to finish asking the question. You may as well not bother and that's probably the point.