And Now For Something Completely Different

One of the advantages of the PRK lifestyle is that you have literally a TON of time to wallow in adderall-fueled mind-melds (though truth be told, you’re probably selling your ‘scrip for some cash). Here’s a REAL-LIFE EXAMPLE of what happens when you’ve scored some ‘rall and you’re so bored you write an essay with EVERY SINGLE WORD the New York Times thinks is too difficult for jobbies to understand:

In a Sisyphean endeavour of verbal epistemology, I attempt to create a microcosmic bildungsroman sui generis. Why engage in such a saturnine task?

I have a GRE on Saturday and studying has thus far been inchoate so I decided to amalgamate the words most often looked up from NYT articles to rant a little. I’m not in the habit of “writing,” for fear my abilities at the craft would lead to abject penury, but long on time, here’s an apotheosis of abstruseness.

It has come to most everyone’s attention that the comity of Ivy leaguers with two years of less-than-recondite experience in finance is as fungible as the markets’ commodities… and has declined as precipitously in value. The appurtenance of a high-paying job or a prestigious role at a non-profit have blown away like phlogiston. So we now glut the streets like over-educated bonobos in contretemps suffering from our hand-crafted Atreus’s revenge in the form of a financial debacle.

I learned about Schadenfreude from Ms Pettingill in 8th grade English. I learned it again when I saw the high-school bully chortle as he kissed my prom date. My adenoidal pleas to lure her back were feckless. I was an ersatz even though I didn’t know what that meant. Now, when I speak with my parent’s friends and tell them of my tales on “wall street” I recognize my high-school pal Schaddy again, and its a reminder that the parlous state of our economy won’t turn until those smirks are gone.

Thus far I’ve had an, um… peripatetic career. I think “jack of a few trades master of fewer (trades are countable?)” is the modified banal shibboleth I’m looking for. My sartorial taste rivals the apocryphal youngest brother’s hand-me-down closet, so I haven’t blown my meager saving yet. But like many of my generation I sit contemplating my next move, reading, listening to, and watching the news.

The paroxysm of apoplectic headlines on the swine flu pandemic and the global recession suggests those responsible for providing the “news” are as solipsistic as the dauphin’s consoling words to his ailing father. The risible fact is that their fealty to truth is outmatched by the sanguine joy garnered from higher ratings and traffic. Lest I provide no point (and I have one?) in my peroration, underneath my obfuscating prevarication is a idealistic desire. Over time, I hope my generation develops more sumptuary tastes and enervates the hedonistic profligacy of the early 2000’s. Of course, I’m not expecting hagiography to replace banking, but if the greatest generation came out of the now antediluvian Great Depression, what will do we want to be called when we come out of GD 2.0? I bet we can do better.

Of course, as the grand nephew of a devout neologist (there’s a booming industry with little outsourcing), I propose we create a term for words that are both harder to pronounce and longer than their meaning. Antediluvian is both more letters and syllables than “out-of-date” suggesting using it in an attempt to appear laconic, is louche as best and at worst makes the interlocutor a douche. Hopefully we’ll leave it behind when we find a word for “better than greatest” and become that generation.

Don’t you wish you had more quality time on YOUR hands?