It All Depends How you Feel; James Q. Oxter’s Dictionary of Gobbledygook

A short while ago I paid a visit to the local rubbish tip. The gully where the tip is will eventually be levelled off and turned into a playing field; but at the present time it is still blooming in all its unregenerate glory, a place for poets and novelists to visit and brood on, the one free place left in the world.

Old bicycles with seats or spokes, empty wine bottles, broken packing cases, the apparent remnants of a florist’s shop gone bankrupt, wheels, drums, various forms of household sludge, several chairs, exuding dust and horsehair – the list could go on ad infinitum, and what it represents held me spellbound. What a field for the amateur archaeologist! What a source of knowledge and comfort for the conservative theologian. I have long held that the true function of man is to be a rubbish-producer; and the sight of this magnificent display confirmed me in that eminently sane belief.

I saw what I thought at first to be a cookery book protruding from under an oily lump of cogs and broken flanges. But when I picked it up gingerly I realised that it was something else. There were only a couple of pages, the rest of the volume had been torn away and lay buried somewhere under the mounds of debris. But the printed word is sacred, as St Francis knew well when he used to pick up any printed scrap that he saw and tuck it away somewhere out of harm’s way. I opened the pages reverently, and this is what I read.

It all depends how you feel; James Q. Oxter’s Dictionary of Gobbledygook

(a compilation of common phrases interpreted for the benefit of the uninformed and illiterate)

To clarify a situation: To add one’s quota of words to the common buzz.

To be a despairing progressive within the Church (Charles Davis): To leave the Church.

The incompatibility between Papal teaching and the facts of married life. (Davis): Priests getting married without dispensation, and people using the Pill, and the Pope saying they can’t without making a bubu.

To be a hopeful progressive within the Church (Davis): To be a clot and not get out of the Church and have a ball and follow your own ideas.

Endless ecclesiastical battles (Davis): Priests quarrelling with their Bishops.

The central attraction of one of our prime tourist regions: The stack of broken bottles at the back of the Hermitage at Mount Cook.

Informed opinion: What I think and what my friends had better think if they’re going to remain my friends.

Reaction of the sensitive adolescent to the void at the heart of modern society (James Q. Oxter): Robbing a shop and beating up the owner with a bike-chain.

Our depersonalised, desacralised, centralised culture (Oxter): A Dunedin bus shelter.

Intellectual honesty: Whatever my first thought was when I woke up this morning.

To react negatively to the pressures of family life: To go and get howling drunk.

The attitude of the general run of Catholics is varied and complex in a way that defies classification (Davis): I left my specs and my manual of moral theology at home today.

The Tourist Hotel Corporation is interested in maintaining a high-class accommodation: We want them dollars; we want them dollars; Lord, how we want them dollars!

The gradual integration of Maori and pakeha culture: Bulldozing a pa into the river.

Integration in our common interest: Bulldozing a pa into the river in order to build a dam to supply electricity to a factory that makes bulldozers.

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Mental depression resulting from the birth control issue (Dr Bennett): A contradictory wish to be on and off the Pill and to have kids and not have them.

There is not much you can do for them (Dr Bennett): Catholic women are mediaeval-minded clots.

Perhaps it could be said that there is an unexplored area of communal tension (Oxter): My wife disagrees with me about this.

Improvement in liaison sought: Manufacturers getting together to put the prices up.

Doctor ratio is improving: More patients are dying.

I regret to say that the oil stains on the remaining pages made it impossible for me to read them. I found the dictionary rather bewildering, since the compilation did not follow any rational order, and the names Bennett, Davis and Oxter were unknown to me. As I threw it away over the tip, the wind caught its pages and made them flutter. I lit a cigarette and inhaled tobacco smoke along with the gentle odour of dust and decaying cabbage stalks, the last being a donation from a local green-grocer. And I was happy, as I always am when I visit the rubbish tip. It takes all sorts to make a world.

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