Wednesday 30 April 2014

The New Parkinson's Alternative Glossary (& The Naked Carpenter)

Sometimes people say I make up words. I reply, "Necessity is the mother of invention." I only resort to forging new words when the English language cannot keep up with my convoluted, dopamine-starved, twisted, fictionettes.

It used to be that every linguistic street crossing had sentries posted to guard against entry of neo bastardized words - inevitably from the Rock n' Roll stained youth of the time. These days, the sentries look to have abandoned their posts. It would appear that anyone can become a pseudo authority and start their own dictionary. It's like we've gone from "Let's start a rock 'n roll band and make a million dollars" to "let's write a dictionary to legitimize our verbal diarrhea."

wordlef.PNGOf course we have the gold standards, the Oxfords, the, Webster’s, etc. We know of several upstarts such as the URBAN dictionary, the RURAL dictionary, and my personal favorite “Right On The Edge of Town”  (but still close to Starbucks), dictionary, aka, “The New Parkinson’s Alternative Glossary."

Yes, I am pleased to present to you the latest entry in the increasingly crowded dictionary/glossary market: The New Parkinson’s Alternative Glossary. This latest entry fills a strong need for a glossary/dictionary that can decipher and crack the code of some of our multi-worded phrases in the Parkinson's sphere. While these cryptic references are primarily from my personal dialect, many fellow Parkinsonians will recognize some of the references.

This truly is the English language at its most beautiful. This handsome, six page, no-cover downloadable beauty would make a great gift for anyone affected by Parkinson's - but would also be an excellent gift for any others that are curious about how the other 1% live!

Parkinson's Wake has managed to extort a review from Giff, our old friend from REHAB:

"A must-read for those friends and family who don’t find anything funny about Parkinson’s"
Gifford Falway - REHAB (Retired Elders Having A Blast)

We will be feeding you these gems one minnow at a time here on the blog. 
Without further adieu, our first entry is..


Verb (latin)


  • Literally, to “seize the night”. Parkinsonian definition refers to an unusual spurt of good mobility, a rare nocturnal “kicking in” of dopamine. This often results in a titanic mental steel cage match pitting a frenetic urge to leap out of bed and “make hay while the sun shines” with an almost equally powerful urge to stay put and drift off into effortless sleep (the latter with the recognition that the typical Parkinsonian banks as much sleep as a coffee taster on night shift.
  • New York's Naked Cowboy
    A distant relative of Calgary's
     the Naked Carpenter
  • Additional Info: A willingness to engage in "carpe noctum" activities means the individual must accept the risks of functioning in times of a manic state. There are documented cases of extremely odd behaviour associated with carpe noctum. In one disturbing case in SW Calgary, an individual was found in his carpentry shop working away in his underwear at 3:30am. When confronted and questioned why he was in underwear, he responded "Wouldn't be very safe doing carpentry naked, would it?" It is said that the first respopnder was reminded of New York's "Naked Cowboy". (Minus the boots, the cowboy hat, and replace the guitar with an 8 ft. length of beautiful milled Birdseye Maple.)

No comments:

Post a Comment