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Piece Of Work In Progress

Great name of the new blog of the funny and weird Dan Collins, a.k.a. Vermontaigne, because he lives in that state somewhat left and north of where I am currently located that was for some weird part of its history not even part of the United States. When every other state around it was. 

A couple of my own prior posts will tell you almost everything you need to know about Vermont. I’ve been there and I can assure you the official town government Bush impeachment resolutions and the downtown nudity stuff is pretty normal up there. Republican governor, a Socialist in Congress and Howard Dean. Lest anyone think the Vermont is just full of screeching egomaniacal nutjobs who are wasting perfectly good educations, however, it’s important to note that vast swaths of the Green Mountain State are at least as remote from civilization as Lake Tanganyika and Kyrgyzstan; not done justice by the minimalist dairy cow art of Ben & Jerry’s labels; and peopled by frightening aboriginals it is better not to tarry amongst. That last part, because I stuck mainly to paved roads, I’m getting secondhand from a man I know who married one and dwelt among her kind for 20 years in a region they call the Northeast Kingdom, going native for a time though he eventually broke free, bolting for the relative normalcy of closer New Hampshire. The tales he told would curl your teeth.

Anyway, regarding Dan Collins … quite apart from his lengthy yeoman’s service at Protein Wisdom … the abovementioned particulars are some of the reasons why I think he is well qualified to comment on just about anything with authority.

Regarding Vermont itself, there is probably more to know about it than the narrow, bigoted presentation I’ve just offered up, and if so, Dan Collins is your guy.  

At the top of Dan’s new site currently there’s an artful shot of a disconnected urinal, which I take to be art from the Farrow Gallery in Castleton, Vermont … where Mia Farrow’s brother’s body was found the other day, having departed this mortal coil under suspicious circumstances … though it’s hard to tell from Dan’s mystical folk treatment of the subject exactly how the urinal fits in. He’s also got something about a crime-solving wonder dog that turns out to be no wonder dog at all, just sorely used by his master, who is looking like a liar who put innocent men behind bars. And there’s some political stuff. I would most definitely call it a Piece of Work in Progress and intend to make it a regular stop to observe developments.

Side note: Anyone know if there is a word in English for what happens when you take two stock idioms, stick them together, and get something else entirely, like Piece of Work in Progress, that is greater than the sum of its idioms? Idiom cubed? Transcendental idiomism, maybe. Quantum idiomics. Whatever, it’s pretty good.

Topics: America, ancient mysteries, blogs

  Posted by Jules Crittenden at 2:30 am Comments (5) on Wednesday, June 17, 2009

5 Responses to “Piece Of Work In Progress”

1. TheBigHenry Says:
   June 17th, 2009 at 12:41 pm

   Re: greater than sum of its idioms:

   I see an analogy to nuclear fusion, wherein the resulting nuclear mass is less than the sum of its parts but the difference in mass has been converted to a tremendous amount of energy. Hence, I propose “idiomatic fusion”, wherein the sum of contributing stock idioms produce a greatly energized resulting idiom.

2. RebeccaH Says:
   June 17th, 2009 at 1:12 pm

   I like the sound of “combinidioms”, myself. It sort of rolls off the tongue. Although TheBigHenry makes a compelling argument.

3. mojo Says:
   June 17th, 2009 at 6:10 pm

   Or, in German, Gestuckidioms

4. Jules Crittenden Says:
   June 17th, 2009 at 8:50 pm

   I think the proper Hochdeutsch is “Gestuckidiomischekombinaziongesprachmus,” though young German hipsters like to call the popular word plays “Kombis.”

5. AW1 Tim Says:
   June 18th, 2009 at 7:43 am

   A conjoined idiom, as it were?

   Going with the German it could be “du-idiom”, though that isn’t grammatically correct but sounds nice.

   But Zwei-Idiom might work, even contracting it in a Isotope manner as in post #1 and call it an “Idiom-Z”.

   heh.

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