In the Cryptofont Zoo of bizarre and exotic creatures of word, I, as a wordsmith, have become quite a keeper.  My lovely Zoo is the rival of any in the world… er, U.S… er, well, it’s different.  Let me give you a tour and see what you think.

borrowed from http://oliveoylloves.com/

First on our tour are the strange and wonderful animals in the Popeye-isms section.  You know, the bizarre creatures of word first spawned by E.C. Segar in his strip known as Thimble Theater, better known by the later name of Popeye the Sailor.  I regularly use many of these little animals in my writing, making the spell checker hate me and making the readers pause with a private “isn’t this wrong?” sort of thing.  I am often disgustipated with the words and I should have antiskipated the whole spell-checker thing.  If you just keep hitting the add to the dictionamary button, soon the whole thing is discomboobulated and ready to just give me the ol’ twisker punch!  It takes an ol’ salt like Poopdeck Pappy and a whole can of Spinach to sort this sichymawation out.

Thimble Theater
by E. C. Segar

Now next on our tour, fear this thing over here, this Seussian Sphere, where we keep the rhyme animals more.  I use these critters too, in place of bad glue, and to gloss over all that’s a bore. 

http://seuss.wikia.com/

There are also the Thingamadoodles like oodles of poodles that come from the Forest of Seussian Lore.  I never will know why the Whangdoodles tootle and spurt the bright snootles while they snore.   The thing that’s head-achy and a little mind-breaky about the Doctor’s good chore, is the way it is rhyming and syllable-climbing while you write it right out through the door!

Once I bounce just an ounce of the rhyming nonsense out of my head, I can tell you about word munchers and other evil critters.  One evil word muncher got the word “thing” in the previous sentence and made it come out “thong” until I caught the spelling error; (My spell checker still has not forgiven me my Popeye-isms, so I have to check it myself).  It is rare that a word muncher is ever useful.  I collect many of them in my writing on a daily basis, but mostly they just take up space (like the “mostyl” I just captured in this sentence!).  Oh, yes, the most common variety of word muncher seems to me to be the “dna” or “adn” or “nad” that always blossoms its evil petals out where ever I need a conjunction.

The family dog (not dgo) from the other day… but in full color ( not cloor)

Bedevils are evil stray thoughts that pepper everything you write with distractions.  Bedevils, by their very nature, and I assure you they are natural, will… what was that I was talking about?  Oh, they have evil in their very name.  Emerson said that a “foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds”, but I think that Bedevils are more like a real hobgoblin that plagues the minds of those whose heads are too full, and not of straw, like in this Wizard-of-Oz allusion.

Okay, I have taken you as far through this little word zoo as my mind can handle.  If you really read it and now are plagued with nightmares about it, I apologize for what I just did to your own writing.  You will never be free of these wee beasties again, will you?