SHANE'S EXCELLENT NEW WORDS: "Mickey Mouse" without Mouseketeers simply doesn't make sense.

Welcome to another installment of SHANE'S EXCELLENT NEW WORDS, a regular Wednesday feature at NA Confidential.

Around this time each week, the anguished wails begin seeping out of the bunker's ventilation ducts: Why all these newfangled words?

Why not the old, familiar, comforting words, the ones that sufficed during the glory days, in those simpler times, before inexplicably naked greed kicked in like a bond-issue-percentage speedball, knocking you back into the turnbuckles but feeling oh so fine, and now, as the Great Elongated and Exasperated Obfuscator of comic book series fame (can Disney World be far behind?) you teach detailed principles of banking to bankers, at least when not otherwise occupied making healthy deposits into your own account?

Thankfully, even if one toils for the Invincible and Triumphant Leader, a healthy vocabulary isn't about intimidation through erudition. No, not at all. Rather, it's about selecting the right word and using it correctly, whatever one's pay grade or station in life.

Even municipal corporate attorneys reaping handsome remuneration to suppress information, squelch community dialogue and retrofit scarce affordable housing into luxury condos with a view of the Eiffel Tower, can benefit from this enlightening expansion of personal horizons, and really, as we contemplate CPIs, IUDs and IOUs, all we really have is time -- and the opportunity to learn something, if we're so inclined.

Really? It sounds like this attorney target of yours works for one hell of a Mickey Mouse organization.

Indeed, and the enduring but delicious irony of Mickey Mouse in the context of City Hall's ruling elite is that when they look in the mirror, they see themselves as the inheritors of Walt Disney as the slickly successful multinational conglomerate image-churner, when in fact it's that other definition that really matters.

mickey mouse

adjective, (often initial capital letters) Informal.

1. trite and commercially slick in character; corny: mickey mouse music.
2. useless, insignificant, or worthless: mickey mouse activities just to fill up one's time.
3. trivial or petty: mickey mouse regulations.

Origin of mickey mouse

1930-35; after the animated cartoon character created by Walt Disney, orig. with reference to the banal dance-band music played as background to the cartoons

Verily, I wasn't made for a world this stupid: "Visiting Disney World is the modern version of a medieval pilgrimage."

An occasional reminder is justified, because John Kennedy Toole's novel A Confederacy of Dunces is a very funny book. This brief extract begins with Ignatius's long-suffering mother, as she dares enter his room in the New Orleans house where they live.

“It smells terrible in here.'

Well, what do you expect? The human body, when confined, produces certain odors which we tend to forget in this age of deodorants and other perversions. Actually, I find the atmosphere of this room rather comforting. Schiller needed the scent of apples rotting in his desk in order to write. I, too, have my needs. You may remember that Mark Twain preferred to lie supinely in bed while composing those rather dated and boring efforts which contemporary scholars try to prove meaningful. Veneration of Mark Twain is one of the roots of our current intellectual stalemate.”

I prefer the punch line like this:

Veneration of Walt Disney is one of the roots of our current intellectual stalemate.

Just what we needed.

In a world grown increasingly complex, when reality so desperately demands prompt and scrupulous attention, what we do instead is create another religion, so that local office holders can look longingly to unreality as a basis for revitalization.

Visiting Disney World is the Modern Version of Making a Medieval Pilgrimage According to anthropologists, religious studies experts, and art historians, by Sarah Laskow (Atlas Obscura)

At Walt Disney World, the weeks around Christmas are one of the most crowded times of the year: from all over the country and all over the world, families flock to Orlando to be in this special space for just a few days. Most Disney patrons would probably call their trip a vacation, but to anthropologists, religious studies experts, and art historians, a visit to Disney World looks a lot like another, older form of travel—a pilgrimage.

“Appetites for direct contact with Disney’s creations have transformed the trek to Disney World into a genuine form of pilgrimage,” writes historian Cheryl Krause Knight, author of Power and Paradise in Walt Disney’s World. In the modern world, a trip to Disney has become a rite of passage that transforms those who make the trek, and the design of the park heightens that experience: Disney World resembles a medieval pilgrimage center, designed to connect pilgrims with the supernatural, represented by Mickey Mouse and company.

Mickey is like a supernatural being.

It's a Monday morning caption contest.

(we probably already know who'll win)

Drinking Progressively: Let's make it Tuesday evenings, beginning on November 25.

Inspired by FDR, the Floyd County Democratic Party squelches free expression on social media.

Local Democrats courageously prepare for 2015 by censoring Roger on social media.

Local Democrats courageously prepare for 2015 by censoring Roger on social media.

In the aftermath of the Floyd County Democratic Party's historic and epochal beat down in county elections ten days ago, its hip, web-savvy "reformist" central committee has taken a bold and innovative step to rebuild the tottering local party machine.

It has blocked me on social media.

I kid you not.

Surely this bit of childishness represents the acme, the pinnacle -- the very highlight -- of my career as a pestiferous gadfly,

That's right. The very same entity that jumped up and down, sweaty and red-faced with delight just like a little kid on Christmas morning, when the newspaper handed it the pre-election gift of Fakebook -- and then somehow actually lost ground in the voting after outside money slimed the incumbent Ed Clere -- now dons the ear plugs and blinders by quashing the free exchange of information.

I can only surmise that Adam and the gang feel threatened by ideas ... not that they've ever participated in any genuine social media exchange involving them.

Did you know that the lexicon of American slang includes the phrase "mickey mouse bullshit"? It seems applicable, as I may have prompted the current round of MMB with this post-election comment:

Then again, it might have been this:

New Albany's new slogan: "Truck Through City" ... Part 54: Jeff Gahan averts his gaze as dump trucks keep dumping all over us.

Ironically, I learned of my muzzling when I was trying to decide where to post this:

How the Democratic Party Lost Its Soul, by William Greider (The Nation)

 ... The tattered authenticity of the party matters more now because both the country and the world face dangers and disorders that demand a fundamental reordering of the global economic system. This requires bold action, at a time when neither party is confronting the threatening situation. The Republicans are a wholly owned subsidiary of the business-finance machine; the Democrats are rented.

What we need is a rump formation of dissenters who will break free of the Democratic Party’s confines and set a new agenda that will build the good society rather than feed bloated wealth, disloyal corporations and absurd foreign wars. This is the politics the country needs: purposeful insurrection inside and outside party bounds, and a willingness to disrupt the regular order. And we need it now, to inject reality into the postelection spin war within the party. On one side, the right-wingers will blame the loss on Obama’s unpopularity, claiming his economic policy is too liberal; progressives must counter that the Democrats lost because they had no economic message aside from Obama’s replay of tired Wall Street bromides that misfired so spectacularly.

I'm just the beer guy, but it seems to me that with the local voting math changing fast, it may not be the best idea for the Democratic Party to kiss its left wing goodbye. But if that's the way it has to be ...