What The World Needs Now Is Some Mollification

The tendency would be to say that with Mother Nature wreaking all kinds of global havoc these days and the Middle East once again teeming with unrest, everybody just needs to chill out. But we here at spitoutyourgum like to buck the tendency, plus "chill out," for all sorts of reasons, just isn't appropriate. Besides, I have a much better word, one of the all-time best: mollify.

Yes, all kinds of situations all over the world need to be mollified, at once. Mollify: to soften in feeling or temper; pacify; to mitigate or reduce; from the Latin word meaning to make soft. What a fantastic word. Pronounced mol uh fahy, by the way, not mole uh fahy, and that makes all the difference. Forget the Latin (I have, most of my 4+ years of it); to me the word comes from the name Molly--if you have a situation that's gone out of hand, that cries out for softening and pacifying, put a Molly on the case to mollify it, and all your worries go poof!

Nomenclature is destiny. I've known a few people named Molly in my time, some in passing, some much more dearly, and there cannot be a name that signals calm, consideration, level-headedness, and kindness more than the name Molly. You can't help but smile and get a little soothing sugar rush just from saying the name. Molly. To prove my point, try this little experiment. Try to sing the Lizzie Borden song ("Lizzie Borden took an ax, gave her mother forty whacks...") but substituting Molly for Lizzie. See what I mean? Try as you might, you just can't sing anything but "Molly Borden took an ax and cleared a forest and built seven schools without additional tax..." can you?

"Bill, we got a problem. The rank and file are getting most obstreperous." "No problem, Boss. Just bring in Molly to talk to them a little." "Damn, Bill, you're a genius."

The U.N. should appoint a Global Molly to drop in on any and all hotspots around the world. Peace in our time, guaranteed. Hell, gather up the first twelve Mollies you meet, fly them to Cairo and put them on the streets, and within hours, at most, Mubarak resigns and everybody high fives him on his way out of office. Go ahead, try it.

Mollify. The pacifying, the soothing, the tempering doesn't work with any other name. It has to be Molly. Chantelle? Agnes? Ralph? Lou? Not quite. If you got your wires crossed and instead of Mollifying a situation you Danified it, believe me, you'd get people talking in parenthetical asides and re-irritating people, rather than de-irritating them.

Not to mention the word mollycoddle, which means to pamper. It might have negative connotations, but really, could a word meaning pamper and using a name be anything but mollycoddle? Hankcoddle? Rushcoddle? Barbracoddle? Gertrudecoddle? No. I love that when I looked up the word mollycoddle, for its origin (around 1825 or so) all it said was--Molly + coddle. My point exactly.

Mollify, perhaps the most perfect word in any dictionary.

Oh, and to you contrarians out there: The Molly Maguires were a secret society, I'm sure using the name Molly ironically, so as not to draw attention. And Molly Hatchet? Please. If there's a more inconsequential rock band ever, it goes by the name of .38 Special (mollify yourselves, Southern rockers, I'm just trying to make a point here).

Handsome Molly--Doc Watson by spitoutyourgumblog

Groundhog Night

"Actually," he begins, "for us, basically, Groundhog Night is much more important, scratch that, meaningful than Groundhog Day."

"He" is a guy I know, Yon (Thantos, from Indiana--stop that) and "us" is his group of Schmiccans, "an offshoot sect, basically, from the Wiccans." I nod. "We're basically more totemic in philosophy, more, well, technically, ascetically Druidic in practice, pagan monks, if you will." I won't, necessarily. "The hip nomenclature is 'ponk,' which I don't mind at all." He chortles.

"Basically, the ritual, which can be traced back as far as King Ethelrad's reign, but most Schmiccan elders believe it pre-dates that era by at least half a millennium, revolves around keeping vigil on this night and observing the nocturnal activities--which, actually hopefully are nil--of the latest descendent, presently Clearfield Caliph IX, of the ancient holy avatar groundhog Jesper. Basically, if the groundhog sleeps through the night, unstirred, Gaia will be good to us the following year: plentiful but not overabundant precipitation, adequate warmth for growing, but not excessive heat, basically a Mother Earth in harmony, or, if you will, one who's got her chakras together. If, on the other hand, the groundhog stirs, ambles about, and especially if it relieves itself, then, well, we're in for a tough year, I mean, storms, heat, cold, earthquakes, you name it. Like back in '96, Clearfield Caliph X, in what would be his last Groundhog night (he was killed in a tornado, naturally), he was basically doing cartwheels all night, in between relieving himself like, I mean, massively. We Schmiccans basically battened down the hatches that year. You remember the climate that year, don't you?" No. "You can look it up." I won't, obviously.

"Yeah, I won't be making the trek this year, but I'm going to stay up all night, nevertheless, actually, and watch the live feed. I'll call you if Caliph does anything weird." Don't, please. "I'd give you the password for the website, but then I'd have to summon you to a cleansing ceremony."

Just then the nice lady behind the counter at the Post Office asked if she could help me. "Don't get too crazy tonight, Yon."

"Actually, it's distilled moss night. YRRREEAAFGFGHHGEEEEEE!"

What it takes to mail a letter these days.

Doc Watson-Groundhog