Another compulsion of mine ('long with the "Cristo Joke" compulsion) is that I can't say the word "pear" without following it with "Welinder." Example: "Would anyone like to split this pear Welinder with me?" This is so lame I can't even tell you how lame it is. But, alas, I will try:
In the 1980's, there was this rare phenomenon called a "freestyle skateboarder"- someone who skated on a skinny board and did all kinds of flatland acrobatics. One in particular became pseudo-famous and ended up skating for Powell-Peralta. He was born in Sweden but moved to the U.S. at a young age. His name? Per Welinder. He partnered with Tony Hawk and became filthy rich.
Why do I feel the need to reference a freestyle skater every time I reach for a pear? I reckon that's a question for the therapy hour. But I figure that it's because when I was a kid, me and my friends worshipped the Bones Brigade/Powell Peralta pantheon. Per Welinder may as well have been a demigod to me then. And you can't worship something and simply expect to just walk away once you lose interest. That devotional energy must go somewhere. In my case, language is the great Processor of my existence. So all kinds of archaic, telling things keep showing up in my vocabulary. Examining my language is like examining some kind of a weird bird's nest, really - a nest formed from every day I've ever beaked through.
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