--Malcolm Bradbury

I've been looking into getting an air conditioner.

It hasn't been so bad here yet, actually, but I remember the sauna-like conditions that prevailed in this apartment last summer, and I really don't want to have to experience them again.

My original idea was to get a dehumidifier. For truly is it written in the Book of Summertime Complaints, "Look not to the heat, for therein lieth not the problem; look rather to the humidity, for it is a scourge on the land, which greatly increaseth thy sweat and thy stickiness and thy discomfort" (VII:4). Or, in the vernacular, "It's not the heat, it's the humidity!"

It turned out, however, that dehumidifiers are expensive. So expensive that it seemed to make more sense to look into getting an air conditioner instead.

For one thing, while my rent includes utilities, there are limits. I'm getting away with having enough electronic equipment in here to run a small radio station (okay, perhaps I'm exaggerating a bit), but an air conditioner would be pushing it too far. If I wanna get one, my landlords are going to have to charge me for the additional cost of electricity. And while they have no idea of how much that'll run (if it comes to that, they'll dig out last year's electric bill for the same time period and charge me the difference), they can't imagine it'd be less than $25 a month.

So to the $200 for the machine itself (based on surfing around the 'Net looking for models at the low end of the price scale), I'd also have to budget in, say, $100 in electricity bills, assuming three months of use and erring on the side of caution. Lovely.

And then I measured my windows and realized that, owing to the fact that they don't open all the way, any model I'd get would have to be a maximum of 11.5 inches in height. Going back to the Web sites I'd checked out, I have failed to find anything that small. So unless it's possible to take out the lower window entirely, this whole thing may be a moot point.

Maybe I should check out dehumidifiers again.

My problem with leaving the windows open is that this lets more humidity in, and thus, more often than not, actually makes conditions more unbearable than they'd otherwise be. Keeping the door open also might help, but I really really don't like the idea of leaving my apartment wide open. Even if the screen door has a lock on it, and so on. I don't even like having my window shades up. I put a high premium on my privacy.

Plus my other strategy for beating the heat involves not wearing very much, which isn't a workable solution if I have the windows and door wide open.

The first is the Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, a reprint of a slang dictionary originally published in England in 1811, which is absolutely fascinating. Not so much as a dictionary per se -- I'm taking the derivations found therein with more than a few grains of salt -- but for its value as a cultural document. What's included and excluded; which words have letters censored and how; the editorial biases... it's great stuff in a way the authors never intended, fascinating in a sometimes horrifying sort of way.

There is, for example, the two page definition of "Gypsies" (the longest definition in the book), a frighteningly imaginative flight of fantasy that begins with "A set of vagrants, who, to the great disgrace of our police, are suffered to wander about the country," and goes on to detail the oath taken by new members of the group, and what sort of activities they engage in.

By comparison, the Jews come off pretty well, being defined merely as "An over-reaching dealer, or hard, sharp fellow; an extortioner: the brokers behind St. Clement's church in the Strand were called Jews by their brethren the taylors."

Of course, given my interests, the dirty words are nice, too. The F-Word is left out of the main listing entirely, although it's alluded to within several of the definitions. There is, however, an entry for "C**T", for which they resorted to other languages: "The connoz of the Greek, and the cunnus of the Latin dictionaries; a nasty name for a nasty thing; un con Miege." (The Greek bit only displays properly in the "Symbol" typeface, and that might only be in Windows... and I may have transcribed it incorrectly. Oh, well.)

"A nasty name for a nasty thing." Tell me that's not fascinating. And not frightening.

But we claim not merely the praise of gratifying curiosity, or affording assistance to the ambitious; we are very sure that the moral influence of the Lexicon Balatronicum will be more certain and extensive than that of any methodist sermon that has ever been delivered within the bills of mortality. We need not descant on the dangerous impressions that are made on the female mind, by the remarks that fall incidentally from the lips of the brothers or servants of a family; and we have before observed, that improper topics can with our assistance be discussed, even before the ladies, without raising a blush on the cheek of modesty. It is impossible that a female should understand the meaning of twiddle diddles, or rise from table at the mention of Buckinger's boot. Besides, Pope assures us, that "vice to be hated needs but to be seen;" in this volume it cannot be denied, that she is seen very plainly; and a love of virtue is, therefore, the necessary result of perusing it.

Can you not love reasoning like that? And do note how, in the same paragraph that professes such concern about upholding female purity, "vice" is referred to as "she." Madonna/whore dichotomy, anyone? Honestly, the gender issues are the most interesting aspect of the entire work.

So, with five general dictionaries of the English language (three unabridged, two college) to my name, am I satisfied? You've gotta be kidding. Next on my list is a good British dictionary; I could really use one of those. A British grammar handbook would be helpful too, for that matter. And then there's the compact edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, which I will own someday. It's just a matter of time, and/or of winning the lottery.

'Course, I'm also waiting for the long overdue Webster's Fourth, which, rumor has it, may actually be along one of these years. Oh, that would be something; I'm drooling just thinking about it.

Come the site move (about which more anon), I think I'm going to do a global search 'n' replace on my e-mail address. That being impractical to do over here, though, please ignore the e-mail address found everywhere else on this site for now and use shmuel@nycmail.com instead. Or use my usual primary address, if you know it.

Postscript: Just as I finished tinkering with the index page and was about to upload this, I checked my England.Com mailbox, to find that my messages are finally starting to come through again. Better to use the other address for now anyway, though, I suppose.