This Is This

Well, not the best words, but the best sounding words are:

Pink
But not when you pronounce it “PING’k” like everyone else. Say it like its spelt: “piN-k” so you can hear the N. Try it - it will make you happy.

Mollusk
There aren’t many words that make you feel like the animal when you say its name. Kiwi, cicada and gecko are notable exceptions, so for that, I take my hat off to “mollusk”.

Time
Ah, what can I say about this word. What can’t I say? It means nothing, it means everything, it is emptiness, it is form. The phonics of it - the hard consonant followed by a long vowel and a soft consonant. If this word were an order at a bar it would be a single malt scotch followed by a pint of Guinness and an Irish coffee. In culinary terms it’s garlic mushrooms then pad thai and strawberry cheesecake. The sound of it, the meaning, the way it comes across differently depending on who says it and what it signifies to them - makes the word “time” my favourite word of all time ever in the history of words. Best sung by James Taylor in Baby Buffalo, but good by Michael Stipe in Low (”You and me - we know about time”). God damn yes.

Zamboni
This is the machine that smoothes over the ice in rinks to level out the grooves made by skates and hockey sticks. It is cool because:

1. It would be really fun to drive one .
2. It is named after Mr Frank Zamboni and no one could think of a better name for it, while the inventors of the jetski and the snowmobile probably lived out their days in bitter anonymity.
….but most of all ….
3. It sounds like the scat singing at the end of “I Wanna Be Like You” from The Jungle Book:
“Habbadoooweee!”
“A ram bam booty”
“Skiddy bo ZA!”
“Wit’ da big Zamboni!”
“Skiddly bop! Skiddly bop! Skiddly bop! Skiddly bop!”
“Rahhh rahhhhhh….”

I’m solid gone.

Also on This Is This
I’m sorry - we’re not going to be able to help with this. As you can imagine we get lots of interview requests for the editor and he is just too busy to fulfill them all.
Best wishes,The Guardian
Read this post...

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 20th, 2005 at 8:55 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed, or leave a comment yourself.