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From Imbecilese

From the Forthcoming Book....

A Note on the First Edition

I’m not sure why I’m calling this the First Edition; there probably won’t be a Second Edition [never know, though]; but, in any case, here’s the thing.

In 1997, when gremlin.net launched, insofar as it ever really did, it was really nothing more, in its First Edition [its Version 1.0, really], than a sort of undercon splash with a bulletlist I’d thrown together for little more reason than to imply [defraud] that I’d had, at that time, any real plans for the site. It looked something like this:

Coming Soon....

• Deinosaurs
• News of the Stoopid
• The Further Adventures of TransAmMan and His Sidekick Pediddle
• Gremlin’s Unappeased Dictionary

Created: 4th January 1997
Revised: 4th January 1997

...meaning that, in fact, the list I just copied out of News of the Stupid.doc was incomplete; I’d also intended, as of 4th January 1997, to maybe throw together a sort of dictionary online. This, incidentally, was a few years before wiktionary.org showed up, or even the MediaWiki software on which it runs today. Meaning that, at the time, I had this loosely constructed idea about...I guess maybe just building a list of stuff in basic hypertext, possibly as an index.html of links to definitions, or even as an eventually immense Unordered List of stuff including that stuff’s definitions. I’m not sure what I was thinking it could be, eleven years ago, apart from itself; that it could in fact be, at the time, was as far as I’d got in plotting it out at all.

Later that year, I started up News of the Stoopid, which eventually got its own website and which has to date spawned two books. The rest, eleven years later, is still sitting in preproduction: the thing about deinosaurs might still eventually appear at deinosaurs.com; TransAmMan evolved into the massively uninformative splash currently at subheroes.com; the Unappeased Dictionary....

If this Introduction counts as preproduction, then that’s where it is. For the moment. Meaning, probably, for tonight. Then, by tomorrowish, this’ll be done; then I’ll be into production itself, which might actually take a little while.

Also, I’ve changed my mind.

As much as I’d like to have a dictionary which redefines a vast number of words to mean what I’d like them to mean [in most cases, they would coincidentally mean what they do in fact actually mean, though no one ever knows these things], it would be impractical. Partly because most of the words I’d include are already defined correctly in other [real] dictionaries; partly because no one evidently ever bothers to read the other [real] ones and I have no reason to suspect that anyone would ever read mine instead.

So, I’m going the other way with this: defining various words through the common useage I observe every damned day, largely online.

Which is to say that—to pick a word nearly at random—while the actual, logical, etymological, defensible definition of atheism [it starts with a, after all] is the state of being without theism; the state of being without deital beliefs, it would in the emerging language of Imbecilese be defined thusly:

          Atheism noun The belief that Jehovah is only a theory.

Of course, in reading that, one might then need to look up Jehovah and theory within Imbecilese to learn that they mean, respectively, all deities apart from those of which one has never heard, which one has not personally disproved for oneself via a priori emotional rationalisation and that which one thinks up toward the end of a night of extreme drinking, often as a gag.

As this preproductive state nears its end, the more productive state of actually writing the dictionary lurking there on the metaphorical horizon [see also literal, once this book is finished and I’ve got its entry written], I realise a couple of important things, which are likely to get in my way overall: I’ll probably write this out as I think of words in Imbecilese to include, only alphabetising the whole thing at the very end, making it somehow doubly nonlinear, which isn’t something I’ve really done before, and which might be really, really strange; also, since I’ve had imbecilese.com for a few minutes now, I’ll probably also clone all these entries into a MediaWiki site, making this First Edition both the Last Edition and the Redundant Edition...except that, while there are already free dictionaries online, the things are still sold in stores, so they might not be entirely redundant after all...for the moment...making this, really, approximately my last chance to get round to it while there’s still a point...if there ever really was.

Continuing that last point: there wasn’t. A point. I mean: that last point was a point; but there was never really a point to writing a dictionary in Imbecilese. In fact, dumb people can’t read, and smart people don’t on average want to understand the language of dumb people. We’ve already gone through this a couple times, first when English spawned the abortion of American [yeah, that’s a mixed metaphor from hell] and again when American spawned Ebonic.

Imbecilese isn’t Ebonic, of course. It likely shares a number or words, though the definitions may differ. Otherwise, they’re functionally unrelated. Which isn’t really the point. Though it’s a point.

Continuing the penultimate point, about Imbecilese lacking a point: this isn’t really to be taken too seriously. Sure, one could consult this work for definitions, and maybe even use it to learn this meaningless language; mostly, though, it’s just something to glance at and maybe smirk every once in a while.

If that’s not what you were after: don’t buy this book. Wait for some etymologist and/or sociologist somewhere to write a real one. I’m not that guy.

If it is what you were after: let’s get started....
—Gremlin
Thursday 27th March 2008

Regarding This Site

Having written the introduction, above, while the MediaWiki software was installing itself to imbecilese.com, I didn't think to mention the obvious which, being obvious, needn't be mentioned in the book, which the obvious doesn't particularly modify. Which is of course that, this being MediaWiki, it's fundamentally open to be appended and edited by anyone, anywhere, anytime. Which isn't actually quite the case.

For example: once I get done typing this out, I'll lock up the entry to prevent editing after the fact. Unless I edit it after the fact, being able to unlock it after the fact as needed. That said though, it won't be impossible for You the User to jump in and add entries for words not yet in the database. Which could be kinda cool, really. I can write the book over in Word, and You the User can at your option add words here at the site which I don't appear to have yet added to the book. Since it's easier to copypaste things from Word to MediaWiki without causing unfortunate formatting errors, I'll be pulling things from the book to this site as they become ready; but, as words are added herein by You the User, I'll be able to transcribe them to the book over in Word if they seem fit for publication.

In the end, I suppose I'll write a sort of Afterword for the book, listing the various names of You the Users as you've registered them on the site; naturally, one near the top of the list will be Anonymous, since registration isn't [momentarily] required prior to writing new entries.

I'm not a huge fan of editwars. But, in this case, they might prove useful. As the admin of the site, I'm likely to pick the best definition[s] for a given word and lock the entry to prevent further fuckery; otherwise, feel free to correct [as far as you know] whichever definition seems wrong to you at the time; it'll all work itself out, one way or another.

If You the User are new to MediaWiki: don't worry too much. Form follows function. If you've got a word and a definition to add, just create or edit the entry and add the text itself. If you're already somewhat expert in editing things like wikipedia.org, feel free to format the hell outta any entries you see, regardless who founded them.

I've configured the site to allow images to be uploaded, just in case that proves useful somehow. I've never quite agreed that an image is worth a thousand words [they sure as hell aren't factored into wordcounts], but the option is there for now. If it proves detrimental over time, I'll rethink the permissions.

I think that's it. For the moment. If I have anything to add or edit later, it'll be good that this site isn't technically a book. I'll let you know....
—Gremlin
Thursday 27th March 2008