Wednesday, January 14, 2009

thinga-longwordsomethingortheother-majiggy

noun. Of all the majiggies, this is a whopper of a whatsit.

Real citation: "'The problem with Africa is,' he paused, as if he was going to tell me something really important, or confidential, or novel, or dramatic, or all of the above, 'that we do not have an identity. What we had was overwritten, palimpsest, by various other cultures, identities and outlooks. We were also traumatised, by the processes of colonisation, decolonisation and the failures of the newly independent state that all we see is the floccinaucinihilipilification of our character.' What did you say? I wanted to ask. But then, if he wanted to talk to me he would have talked to me in simple terms. As it stood, he was talking to himself including addressing himself with this thinga-longwordsomethingortheother-majiggy. I thought of cutting his head off, putting it a blender so that I cut all his words to manageable, if not rational, proportions. 'We hear of "An African solution to an African problem", but how many of the problems have we solved? You can't solve a problem if you are the problem. That demands very serious introspection and self conquest, something we do not have both the intention and the capacity of doing.' "
(Dec. 4, 2008, Tinyiko E, http://tinyikohalimani.blogspot.com/2008/12/when-two-people-do-same-thing-its-not.html)

Made-up citation: "Oh sweetheart... I lost my thinga-longwordsomethingortheother-majiggy, along with my dreams and my meth lab. I don't think this marriage is working."

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