Home at last, home at last, thank god almighty I'm home at last...

Seriously, you don't expect to not get home until 10:30 when you step out of the door at 6:30. Well, not if you're me, and I am.

And as things go, it was not a very exciting day. I mean, I showed up to my office, had a bagel, and got to work on designing documents for today's class (drawing up worksheets and suchlike). Then I decided to make myself scarce for a bit. I needed some "me" time. Snicked off to the library to surf the webbies, handle some email, and then just sort of drooled over some guitar pedals for a while.

Soon, class came, and it was time to put on what I call "The Bing Show." Today, we were teaching students how to do a very brief presentation with main points distilled from other work that they had done in preparation for poster presentations. One class was swell, the other, not so much.

Between classes, my colleague mentioned that a couple of people from the department were meeting up. I had forgotten about this, and I got all tense and nervous. I'm very set in my ways, you see, and variation from my routine is disturbing. I need a few minutes to get used to the idea that my day (as I imagined it, at least) was over and that I was going to end up doing things I had not anticipated. I hate changing mental gears like that; they always grind.

Anyway, I went out to a new bar and had a lovely time, honestly. I came across a new word "mouthfeel," which is a made up word if I ever encountered one. It's like some jackass trying to find some aspect of beer tasting that nobody had yet discovered. I bet when he (you know it was a guy) came up with "mouthfeel," beer snobs all over the world celebrated the pushing the boundaries of...evaluating things in their mouths. Yeah, guys, you can have a big mouthful of "weenielick."

So, I got curious about this travesty of a word and went to the OED to see if it was there. I'll be damned. There is is:

The way an item of food or drink feels in the mouth, esp. a sensation of consistency, richness, etc., produced during tasting.

Seriously, if something is in your mouth, aren't you by necessity tasting it? Just saying. The examples they give are just as foppish:

1973 N.Y. Times 26 Aug. III. 12/2 The key to no-drip ice cream..is a new ‘stabilizer’ that ‘does not affect quality, texture, taste or mouth feel’. 1995 Fine Cooking Feb. 22/1 Fat..moistens sandwiches.., gives a tender richness to meats,..and it adds richness, texture, and great ‘mouth-feel’ to desserts. 2000 Wine May 29 A superb wine, with integrated oak and a vivid mouthfeel following an elegant opening.

A few things. In 1973, when "mouth feel" was pulled out of someone's butt, it seems to have been an advertising word. At least, that is how I am reading the quotation marks. So, yes, vapid non-word conveying almost a sense of a thing. In 1995, when you would have thought we'd have grown out of this mouth feel phase, they still had to put it in "this is not really a word" quotes. The 2000 entry conveys no information. It's superb. So what. What does integrated oak taste like? And a vivid mouthfeel following an elegant opening. NO content there. You have said, almost, "I liked it," only pretentiously.

Anyway, while I was at the bar, I got quizzed over my atheism, and the nice people decided that I was really an agnostic. Sure. I'd get into right now, but the whole mouthfeel thing has left a taste in my mouth.

HJ