Tub Book: Glossary C - E

From Plastic Tub

Camel n. 1. A desert going vessel popular in Africa and Arab Countries; an oont. 2. A peddler of Stinking Weed. 3. Half the source of numerous hybrids.

Extrapolation

Steven Adkins once raced a camel for a space of some 50 yards before passing through the eye of a needle.

Caul

cowled child n. 1. A child born in big deficits of light, in darkness basically, but effulgent in the extreme, gasping for new breaths neath a forehead sheaf. 2. A congenital defect, particularly one which emerges from the head and dangles afore the eyes. 3. Archaic A foetus, especially one immersed yet by amniotic fluids. 4. Tuf. Street slang for an uncircumcised penis, an unshaved dong, a chinaman. 5. Obs. An enclosure or ensnarement.1 6. A condom.

Emerging Veiled

The cult of the cauled, or cowled, child has enjoyed the scrutiny of scholars from the classical world to the present day, evolving but very little beyond academic gape-mouthedness and heavily footnoted eye-rolling. Though rich in interdisciplinary possibility and ripened for historiographical extrapolation, contemporary surveys are very little in extant, the classic work in the field remaining David Ulansey’s 1972 Origins of The Caulic Mysteries, which reversed most previous scholarship in a gentle loving sort of somersaulting in revolution, a bean bagged naggie bin, which despite itself emerged truly alit and pining after truth and beauty and arrived on ticket, apunched through, nicely.

In it, the hints of a religious network of great antiquity; Ulansey perceived an enpanted power-source, operating with impunity, importuning Fate almost, whose bombs of joy narily evidence the big time engine power of The Sunrise. Describing this tradition as The Caulic Mystery Jam, Ulansey released a series of ruthlessly progressive rock and roll albums under the aegis of the Alpha Chimp. In the white hot beanpole of metaphor, he discovered the Cauls weild immense power in the field of body manipulation, political intriguery, assassination and a most profitable trade in organs, perambulatory limbs and sexual machinery.

From A Stone Ye Shall Rise

Ulansey’s story begins with Marie Devalius of Arles, a Cistercian nun who aroused passions and much apocalyptic speculation in the troubled realm of 14th Century France. Unlike the majority of Caulish children Marie not only lived until middle age, but retained the deformity, which was reported to have continued to grow into her old age, reaching a staggering 37 inches. All forms of wonderment were attributed to her, miracles which to the scholar run like a paranormal laundry list: levitation, a rosy or flower like smell, the gift of prophecy, unusual flexibility of skeleton and muscle and a beatific power to grace those around her with fortune, grace and the two fold pillars of divine beneficence --- the mysterious amassment of gold and silver and the equally baffling appearance of numerous children.

Ulansey reports that:

"According to the historical record and based on several etchings of her, Marie was an evidently comely woman, vivacious, energetically ruddy in complexion, full bodied and scandalously boisterious. Her remarkable beauty suffered but a single black mark -- the enormous flap of loosened skin which emerged from her forehead. The ungainliness of such an appendage troubled her not -- she wore it folded over-head in the manner of a close-fitting cap, or cowl, fastenened behind with clasps of her own device, manufactured of sheep’s wool and calfling leathers."

The skin pub, fortunately, has been preserved in the form of reliquary in Southern France. As in most cases of cowling, Marie’s body defied decomposition though it was later interred in the nearby church cemetery. The cowl, however, remained where it can be viewed to this day, having much the appearance of an oily wrinkle of brown paper. In 1995, scientists from Hamburg University were granted permission by the Vatican to examine the relic and submit to a series of tests and vigorous qualifications. Their findings were startling.

The skin pub was, as evidenced to the naked eye, remarkably preserved, and much detailed analysis was able to be performed. It was disovered that the cowl, particularly in it’s haunch and fore-ends, was a dense cluster of nerve cells:

"By all accounts this woman was wearing a bedsheet sized clitoris on her head."

Moments Away From Time

This might explain some of the odd behavior Marie exhibited in the historical record. For instance, in 1467, Augustinian monk Charles Yuilasand visited the monastery at Arles in order to verify outrageous claims of the townsfolk. When he was introduced to Marie , he found her in the garden, lying on her back, with the cowl spread forth from her head. His account reads like a fevered romance novel, shot through a sow’s ear of Peretian fancy:

"She lay on the ground, or rather perhaps she lay under the benightened sky cannily thrusting it’s mighty weight down upon her, like the endlessly feathering hammer of veal, impressing upon her auto-gyration a beguiling majesty, writhation witnessed by myself as occurring between the manicured hedges and a statue of Our Lord and Savior, his one good and loving eye casting a long intriguing glance, hinting of infinity. Her appearance to the mind was that of a spectacular and mind-numbing manifestion of Nature, a gleaming and rough-furrowed lake, begged of it’s placidity, unfolded by tortuous degree like a dangerous parasol; her forehead appeared to me overflowing as would the waters of the legendary Soul-Bead, bouncing out of her tightened pores with diadems of moon-illumed moisture - and though straining credulity, all the more was the spectacle, due to a contrast in the mind; her loosened caul was by all appearance becovered with a jolly variety of bird-seed and welpling acorn. Unnaturally engrossed by this amazing scene, I further witnessed a cloud of fowls, a cackled and fluttering gallimaufry of the local avian breeds, mongering over these delicacies and dipping their beaks, flecking not a little gore, making a frightful commotion of caged pinion and feather. In reaction and by mine own eye issuing unseemly encouragement, she recoiled not but leaned incredibly her head forward, aswifted about her jutting caul, surely astruck by a baffling kind of divine light-ning, her form rigid in the grip of epileptical throe but nonetheless becalmed, her mouth open slightly and loosening a pendulous groan, her eyes rolling into the rear of her lids, revealing a deep and glorious white, such as that found in the snippering keen of a pearl knife-handle or the opinous and importuning wink of an arse needing the whip."

Here one suspects Ulansey levies upon his readers an immense lark. And yet, recourse to Ullian’s diaries clearly posit a fantastical scene indeed. Another telling anecdote arrives from Father Aminian Farthing, an Orthodox priest from Byzantium. He made the long journey to visit Marie by onieric insistence, having been plaqued by “tortuous dreams and forlorn weepy-style nightmares, where one wakes in the middle of night, screaming in fright descending the next moment into near diabolical laughter, confusing me profoundly.” Apparently, Aminian consulted his Bible and performed the odd ritual now and again and was thus able to snoop out the cause of his nocturnal distressing - a gypsy caravan provided both the answer to his problems and transportation to France.

Drinking Aphid Hints

When Father Farthing approached the monastery, he was soundly rebuffed by the hegemonical qualities of the inhabitants therein. However, having been pelted both in internecine insultery and rotten vegetables, he resolved to spend the night on the road, hoping for better luck in the morning. That night, curled up in his cassock, he had another dream, this time more intense than any he had previously experienced. In it, he was dressed as porter, waiting outside of a door inlaid with fantastical carvings and elaborate bas-reliefs. He wished to scrutinize this marvelous sight, and to investigate the filigree to the fullest extent that his intellect would allow. However, dream life can be cruel. He could only see by a complex arrangement of his body parts, for otherwise his view was somehow obstructed, the world being rendered as if seen from a great distance. Hence, in order to more closely observe what appeared to be a highly skilled rendering of the story of Cain and Abel, he was predisposed to sit on the ground, his ankles behind his neck and his arms twisted to form a curl of knobbed willowill. And to see the elaborate inlays portraying the ascension of our lord and saviour, he was required to bend his back to the sky, his belly upwards and and crossed by his arms, meeting at the elbow with his right leg, ankle turned to the West. His other leg, meanwhile, was need underneath his arched form, pinched at a precarious right angle

Non-Canonical Text

The phenomena of infant morphology has long fascinated persons whose intellectual pursuits lay at their most comfortable in untoward position, reflecting spiritual traditions to which the researcher has -- perhaps only casually -- sworn fealty. Nearly without exception, human religious experience autogyrates between the idea of being and non-being, living and death. The lives of men appear in our soul dramas as but limping children, somehow muscled and terse, mouthing dangerously invented languages of body, motion, of sword's edge and needle's point. To muddle with spyglass and pencil in the naked twilight of this experience is the duty of a lone nut, the errant scientician, the Gnomic up-ender, the Catholic.

It should come as no surprise then, that Europe's Mother Church enjoys a teaming wealth of scholarly information concerning those states of mankind which split asunder the divisory connections between man and animal, angel and monkey, chirping non-life and the waxy glow of gloamy non-existance. It takes a strange kind of man, in other words, to study strange kinds of men -- or as the case may be, very strange examples of newly-birthed children and in particular those examples which display superfluous body parts, glaring omissions of design or unnatural developments requiring immediate medical and priestly attention.

The so-called cowled child, "so richly sensual under its severe, religious folds"2 is just such a spectular birth-object.

Threading The Nut

Characterized by a flap of hanging skin, the cowled child is often born in what it must perceive as a state of woeful blindness.

Tersely sorting this cry from the collective wilderness are the distinctive characteristics which, despite the regular appearance of cowled children, mark each one as unique. In certain Inuit myths, the "reading" of a cowled child's particular "meaning" provided the calendar for everything from seal hunts to making love. In the Algonquin, the word for a cowled child is the same as "imperfect stone." In Europe, however...

....duly manipulated by qualified "seers" or representatives ....

NOTES

Note 1: Caul's etymology traces back to Greek (roughly, in our alphabet, “kaulus”), meaning an elaborate ensnarement or an intricate weaving. The earliest noted usages of the word refer more specifically to sheep’s pens, fishermen's nets, the weave of fate, and the inter-lacing lines of leaves in a head of cabbage (hence “kale”). The term was eventually extended to refer to a spider's web and a women's woven hat or hood. By the Middle Ages, the term was associated with a fold of skin covering the head (as well as with the male foreskin and the female Mons Veneris), suggesting both an enclosure for the head as well as a type of psychic ensnarement, while continuing to carry forward the connotations of linear patterns, as seen in the elaborate wrinkles and veins of the skin flap--hence the term's later usage among “New Agers” for a Native American "dream catcher".

Note 2: Proust, Marcel. Remembrance of Things Past.

Cessation of public activity

Most thoroughly described by Humphrey S. Didium in his landmark study of secret societies, Everything That's Not. Didium (1914-1981) gave a speech at the 3rd AA International Conference which has since given conspiracy theorists a lot of fodder for speculation. His speech, which contained several cursory allusions to Gnome practices, has left many dubious as to his affinities. He was, however, almost certainly not a member of The League of Gnomes or in any way "in the know" about their activities.

In the year of his death he attended an Incidentalist Dead Flesh Bonanza.

Further Extrapolation

The fourth distributive stage of Alpha Chimp material--largely unsuccessful even by the most blindingly opportunistic valuation scheme--is also called "cessation of public activity" aka "going out of business."

Non Canonical Text

"It's time for nap," she said with a glimmer in her eye. He choked on his asparagus, a spear gone down wrong; hands clutched 'round him yanking on his clavical. She licked his ear and the waiter blushed. Drowning.

Charismatic manipulation Charismatic manipulation thule. 1. A method of speech which relies upon the unspoken move, slyly rendered, amounting to the careful hand-tossing of fact. 2. The movement of information in accord with the ability to arrange objects in a careful line, and according to a predetermined stucture, and ductile, also asconced fatty-like between energetic leaps. 3. A re-alignment of fluid, being an invention, where our understanding is impaired by design, by looking strictly, by abounding through the scarce, and beside the crumby bluntness of reason, defeated. colloq; advice given to the weak, by degree.

See Also

• Secret Negro

Cheroot

cheroot n. 1. An aromatic plant, Anstimsus Cerefolium, native to Eurasia, having leaves used in suits and salons; consumed as an open-ended cigar. 2. Any of several related plants, esp. Chaerophlyum Bulbousus, having an edible winged child. 3. Evidence of evocation; a changing of the pantaloons. 4. Manufacturer of smoke and mirrors, one who obfuscates; producer of fume.

See Also

• Bleezy
• Stinking Weed
• Whale
• The Worship of Dongs

Chimp

chimp la. 1. A state of absolute liberty from moral, aesthetic or religious concerns. 2. A chimpanzee. 3. A man. 4. A kind of half-man, half-chimp creature, used for amusement or possibly as an exotic side-dish. 5. A humorous monosyllable.

Clamper Trap

clamper trap n. 1. The elaborate hullabulloo created by advertising firms which presents dung as gold and dictates the social importance of newly-created products and services. 2. A professional hoodwinking device. 3. Media objects from the curling genome, posited as the canonical interpretation of Poob Culture, intended for a clamper audience. 4. A public forum where the appearance of something new is being promised, or, more likely, sold.

See Also

• The Farmer Diary
• Heaven
• Logos
• Poob Bargain

Clampers

clampers n. 1. Term used to describe AA sympathizers who either never fully participated in the movement or contemporary artists and thinkers who have only reluctantly acknowledged its influence. In the former category belong Stan Lee, Alfred Bester and Nathanael West, who carried on a lively correspondence with a young Addisson from 1938 until his untimely death in 1940. In the latter category belong Steve Malkmus, Beck Hansen, Matt T and Michael Baldwin. 2. Persons who move with fashionable trends, vacuous hipsters, hanger-ons. 3. A popular Southern Journal catering ultimately to cultural guerillas and Spray-Paint Mathematicians; known in Texas as a vehicle for The New York Invasion.

Extrapolation

The word was once believed to derive from one Ernest C. Clamper: Dandy, aide-de-camp to Ulysses S. Grant, on-and-off sexual partner of Walt Whitman. He never admitted how much of his political discourse was in reality re-hashed Whig-ism and he clung to Grant's coat-tails as if he would slip into an abyss without them. His "Priapic Promes" were derivative, dime-store Whitman.

However, this is fiction. Addisson himself came out with the word when, at the nadir of their relations, he saw Balthazar Buehb almost genuflecting before Stimso Adid.

Addisson: "I first thought of a leech, then a moray eel, jaw about to clamp down on the fish and then retreat down into the hole. One, big clamping mouth. That's about what's it's like to be taken by the arm by a clamper. Ho ho! Write that down!"

Ernest C. Clamper was an extended member of the Slippers family, and thus some kind of distant cousin to Stimes Addisson. Stimes Addisson's father Solomon is originally from Clamper Mountain, West Virginia. Usage

"What the fuck's with all the clampers?", William Flintrock in the ear of Wilhemina Forkes, overheard at the Second AA International Conference. [ See Also

• Boneyards
• Clamper Trap
• Honeybees

Cocks comb

Poopy Knickers

The secret hand signal of the Crack Stepper grade of The League of Men with Fancy Gloves is called the Cock's Comb. It is made with the right hand.

The Worm Turns

It is also used by Anahinthan members. The Grand Rond in Toulouse, France, features a sculpture of a jolly man, attired as a butcher, one hand amputated indicating high rank, his other hand upon his apron giving the hand signal. Many have speculated that the man in the sculpture is a local leader posing in a kind of daring show of cards designed to provoke, antagonize and bewilder local Gloved Ones. Tellingly, the signal is given with the left hand, which is a reference both to the Anahinthan's oppositional purpose to that of the Gloves and a sign of allegiance to the left-hand path. The amputated right hand is thus emphasized, the inevitable end point to a train of thought which though shuddering at the repulsiveness of the conclusion, cannot but help to feel a strange twinge brought about by years and in some cases decades of georeligious indoctrination (that branch of science so laden with heavy and unfortunate connotations), which so humbly accepts the often bloody dignity (so posited in his or her geomantic thought implants) of sacrifice.

Usage

"The right-handed Cock's Comb is flashed invisible by the secretive Anahinthan, amputated. Thus must we worry! Forever diligence!" -- pamphlet in a puddle, origins unrendered by a muddy trample

See Also

• Architect's hand
• Asian Thumbs
• Cock's Comb
• Fancy Gloves
• Fisticuffs
• Hand Pants
• Masturbation
• Unseen hand

Cold

cold op. 1. A state of being defined by its relation to heat or motion, being itself the lack thereof. 2. That state in which coffee is undrinkable. 3. The robotic motions of a prostitute during the act of love; the attentions of a crone. 4. Conflicts enacted symbolically or by elaborate proxy, characterized by Poobic Bluster, a stumbling bureaucracy and the endless proliferation of stand-offs, stare-downs and no-shows.

Usage

"I feel cold." -- Last words of Ahmed Capra, 1962.

"Sure is cold in here... I feel like a nipple-hair on a skinwalker." -- Solomon Witte, 1980, at CBGB's.

See Also

* Revelation of the Method
* Ryan O'Donnely 

Contemporaries

"If there were a place you could stand while holding your breath but while breathing you could by smirking almost."

-- spoken by two people at the exact same time: 17:53:27 EST, September 19, 1999. Pedro Marquez of San Luis Potosi, Mexico, and Kaoru Hashimoto of Osaka, Japan, both said the words in Algonquin. Both bore an uncanny resemblance to Verna Cable.

Extrapolation

The term itself simply refers to persons existing in the same chronological space; further, there is an implied congruence of activity. For instance, while a house painter could very well be the chronological contemporary of an easel painter, usage of the word in this sense would be considered inappropriate. A more accurate rendering would be the statement: The House Painter is the Contemporary of The Organ Grinder who is the Contemporary of The Unbridled Horsey who is the Contemporary of The Bleary-Eyed Rummy who is the Contemporary of the Easel Painter. And so on. Through analogy the original statement could be considered inviolable -- it is only the extreme degree of associative removal which renders it suspect.

And so goes the contemporary wisdom. Associational thought turns this wisdom on its ear -- or perhaps, its eye. In AA parlance, the greater the analogical separation one can achieve would imply greater relation between the objects in question. Turning again to the illustration above, its correct Associationalist presentation would be that statement which benefited most from a long distance analogical partnering, such as: The house painter is in fact nearly identical to the easel painter or maybe not -- but he's sure as shit a contemporary.

See Also

• Creatine Panderbox

Crab Canon

crab canon cc. 1. musical An ouroboric tune that plays the same backwards or forward.1 2. meta. That which is conceptually or literally reversible; that which undoes itself (e.g., palindromes, fancy down jackets, presidential elections, New Orleans, erections, golems, drinks before noon). 3. A mirrored reflection. (No, it clef, er…). 4. Thai term for a male prostitute.

Extrapolation

The follow text is a fragment lifted from Dapper Clementine’s senior thesis, Grignotti and the "Buggeroni" BDGDB Motif:

Bach appeals to the brain: pure head music. From the mathematically rendered precision of his cancrizans canons, looping and inverting like Möbius strips, to the cunning nomenclatural codings like his "signature" BACH motive2 -- Bach's music is a mirrored reflection of a stupefying intellect far removed from heart-wrenching, gut-twisting storms of Beethoven and Stravinsky.

But where to place the enigmatic Paolo Grignotti? Though he clearly stands in the shadow of Bach's intellect, his operatic forays suggest we look elsewhere. Indeed, Grignotti's numerous musical references to Bach's Mass in B minor may be read as homage -- or as "cryptic and often mocking allusions, hinting of ironic insincerity."3 While virtually all living critics agree on Bach's genius, Grignotti's opinion is open to debate. Does he display a sincere, imitative mimicry? Or is it insincere, a subtle mockery? Or is it all simply a case of a somewhat more heavy-handed realization by a jealous Grignotti?

No matter how we read it, Grignotti's evident debt to Bach rings clear in the crab canons and "coded" notations of his wry Buggeroni (1789). Listen, for example, to the reversible BDGDB motive, with its twisting and straining crab canon and its veiled noted references to the infamous "B"iberoni, "G"rignotti, "D"iamanta love triangle.

Grignotti's more bizarre themes have yielded more outrageous interpretations than these lighthearted musical puns. Indeed, before Grignotti's disappearance, there were more than a few suggestions that his music supplied La Ligue du Masque Cancéreux with encrypted directives. Pie-throwings, assassinations and ritual shoplifting were all variously linked back to "this madman's furtive work."4 But all these intellectual readings do little to explain the plaintive cry of The Sharper's Tale (1796) and the bitter stomp of A Sausage Became Her (1797); such heart-tugging tunes suggest Grignotti was made of more emotive stuff.

Perhaps Grignotti is best viewed as striking some peculiar balance, some sort of devil's bargain -- like Shostakovich, who, some one hundred and fifty years later, straddled two worlds, one foot in the avant-garde and a second steeped in romance, from the lonely, frightened howl of Symphony No. 15 to the tight-lipped, head-tripping experiments of Jazz Suite No. 1. It's little wonder he was so torn, for he lived in war-torn world. Some of his earlier work, like the haunting march of his Symphony No. 7 (27 December 1941), was written during the Siege of Leningrad, with Nazi troops closing in on his Russian homeland. Later pieces found him cowed, desperately trying to please the oppressive regime that arose from within Russia herself. Fine – enough about Shostakovich -- his demons are well known. Again I ask, “But what of the enigmatic Paolo Grignotti?” What demons tore Grinotti asunder?

See Also

• Daedalus: nine, Peninsula: dead
• Grignotti and the "Buggeroni" BDGDB Motive
• God
• Potato Cannon
• The Untieable Knot

Notes

Note 1: The "canon cancrizans" (as it was originally termed) is a melodic counterpoint (or canon) which reverses the notes of the original melody (the "cancrizans", or "crab", scuttles backwards).

Note 2: That is, the notes B-A-C-H, where H is German for B natural.

Note 3: Professor Newton Periwinkle, Flying Pigs, Grignotes '62, p. 13.

Note 4: Author unknown, Conversations with Flambini Lamenti, 1785.

CRACK STEPPER

Crack Stepper (n.) 1. One who wishes his mother harm 2. The second grade of The League of Men with Fancy Gloves. 3. rep. One who has reached the second tier of the Anahinthan priesthood and who also, inextricably, wishes harm to his mother.

Initiational Systems and the Casual Observer

The initiation rituals attributed to the second grade of the League is suspicious in its use of Masonic ceremonial movements yet it is obvious to occultic scholars that the pomp and circumstance is designed to mislead the casual observer or inquisitor. If a Greenhorn is deemed worthy after his 27 tests he is a viable candidate for the Crack Steppers. The Crack Stepper grade also consists of 27 tests each with 27 questions dealing with everything from real estate and maritime law to preparation and presentation of sushi. The foyer of the Crack Stepper grade is littered with those who cannot meet the rigourous demands.

Accroutment

The Crack Stepper is awarded a Single Sleeve with each test passing. There are 27 sleeves in all, one for each digit on the hands and feet as well as one for each ear and eye. The final three sleeves or Demem Trias are reserved for the nose, the mouth and the genitals. The anus is awarded an inverted sleeve when the crack stepper is initiated into the final grade of Holy Man/Woman.

See Also

• Cock's Comb
• Crack Stepper Jack, the Untold Story Told

Creation Myths

creation myths n. 1. How it all began. 2. An unsuitably heady topic for light social affairs.

Usage

"The pursuit of truth is what keeps us from pursuing each other." -- James H. Billington, Librarian of Congress, explaining why nerds don't get laid.

Non Canonical Text

"And so we wade through truths, mining symbols, myths, and archetypes in our search for the beginning, that original event, that catalyst -- Zeus’ thunderbolt hurled from an inky sky into the primordial seas -- that very thing that triggered it all. To consider the literal truths behind the tale is to miss the point. And so we may find pigs rolling in the first dusty settlements as men toil, seeding the soil; tobacco growing into a catalyst that fuels the flames of colonialism. We may hunt for the earliest invocation of the owl or trace the umbrella back to the stony hearts of men. We may look to that auspicious meeting of friends and find Stimes and Adid, both living on 27th, swapping mail, talking, discovering, laughing -- origins unfolding in the accident of their meeting, the association of circumstance and newfound friends, that first glimpse of the totemic 27, and the trading of letters, like the trading of ideas for years to come. We can even look to the genesis of myths, and find the Fallen Stone fertilizing the roots of the Garden of Eden, entangled in the mystical stuffs of Gnostics. And as we hunt for very origins of man we find ourselves in the damp and fecund clay, shaped and infused with the breath of the gods, forbidden fruits feeding our flickering gnosis, stones hidden in the heads of babes, and the light bulb turning on with first club-swinging chimp…." -- Carl Jung, Jr., winning the argument by boring the pants off the competition at a friendly wine and cheese lawn-party in Iowa with Nevid Kessar.

• Procreation Myths
• The Worship of Tits

Crossed Spoons Device

An image of a pair of black and silver crossed spoons, often sewn into the upper right-hand corner of a red flag. Commonly known as the "War Flag," it is used only on rare occasions, notably by the Associationalist Drum and Fife Band. The flag is often emblazoned with the motto "Don't Pike on Me" and is always flown subordinate to the pancake banner.

The origin of the device and the flag is unknown, although the device is known to have existed in 1947 and the flag by at least 1950.

In the aftermath of the vengeance mission resulting from the destruction of Wee-Wee, those arrested were found to be carrying one of these flags.

See Also

• Pancake banner