Meaning of the title

A long time ago, in a far away land, there was a great big war. After it ended, a lot of people were very sad. One small group of artists was particularly sad. How could they make art after such a cataclysmic war? They just couldn’t make art the same way that they had before that huge war. Instead, they went about making new art, strange art, crazy art. This new art had to have a name, because everything new has to have a name. The artists got together one night in a cafe and took out a dictionary. They opened it up, and look! The word they had opened to was “dada” French for “hobby-horse”. Their art had a name.

Not so long ago, in a not-so-far-away land, a group of musicians got together, and played their instruments together, and liked the way that it sounded. They decided to form a band. But they had to come up with a name for their band, because every new band has to have a name. So, they got a dictionary and a couple square bottles of whisky, and stayed up all night playing their instruments and drinking their whisky, and at the end of the night, the opened their dictionary, and look! The word they had opened to was “R.E.M.”, short for “rapid eye movement”. Their band had a name.

Just now, in Corvallis (which, it must be admitted, is at the edge of The End Of The World, but more on that later) I decided to make a blog (I’m still out to sea about if the word “blog” is beautiful or not) and every new blog has to have a name. I sat down at my laptop, in a cubby on the first floor of the Valley library. Instead of taking out a dictionary, I pulled up the Oxford English Dictionary Online, clicked the “Lost for words?” button and look! The word I had opened to was “shalloon” which is “a closely woven woollen material chiefly used for linings.” This blog has a name.

There is a moral to these stories. Going to dictionaries for names for things is mostly stupid. Then again, naming things is mostly stupid, but is also mostly necessary. New things need new names. And while there might be better names for this little blog, “shalloon” is still a fun word to mentally shout. Shalloon! Also, shalloon does not, nor will it ever, show up in any spellcheckers as a real word. It’s somewhere on the tightrope between real word and imaginary word. Shalloon!