Idler's Glossary coverage is coming fast and furious. There's a good interview with Mark Kingwell on CBC's The Point, (check out the Part Two section, first 7 or so minutes) which can be found here.
A conundrum: How to encourage people interested in the concept of idling to rouse themselves to come to an event … honoring idling?
Joshua Glenn, my predecessor as Brainiac's author, has certainly not been slacking since his departure from the blogosphere a few months ago -- although he has been assiduously idling. The distinction between the two lies at the heart of his new book, co-written with the philosopher Mark Kingwell: "The Idler's Glossary." Tomorrow night (Thursday, October 23), the Harvard Advocate is hosting a release party for the book, from 5 to 8 p.m. Its offices are at 21 South Street, in Harvard Square. Bestir yourselves, fellow lubbers, shirkers and scrimshankers! (9-to-5'ers will not be turned away from the door, either, even content ones.)
This book, it must be said, is no joke. Kingwell's introduction begins with a Kierkegaard quote, and carves up concepts with true philosophical rigor. "A slacker is not a true idler," Kingwell writes, "because he is engaged in the project of avoiding work, and as long as that remains the case, work's dominion remains unchallenged …"
The "genius of idling," he continues, "is not its avoidance of work but rather its construction of a value system entirely independent of work."
The glossary, a sequel of sorts to Bertrand Russell's small book of 1932 titled "In Praise of Idleness," explains exactly what it means to cabbage, and parses the distinctions among cadgers, clock-watchers, and couch potatoes -- just to touch on the C's.
boing boing, one of the most widely read blogs in the world (last I heard, top 5, with millions of daily hits, and lord knows how many daily subscribers), has highlighted our Idler's Glossary in today's posting. If you're Canadian, you should be able to find this book almost everywhere; in the US, at the best independents and online at borders, b&n, amazon and elsewhere. 
Just in time for the return of mass unemployment (kidding! right?), the Canadian publisher Biblioasis has released “The Idler’s Glossary,” Joshua Glenn and Mark Kingwell’s vocabulary-expanding manual for the bootless, malingering and lotus-eating types among us.
(Sorry, I meant “among you.” Everyone here works very hard. Especially on Tuesday morning.)
Kingwell, a professor of philosophy and a contributing editor at Harper’s, kicks things off with a passionate defense of slackery that cites everyone from Kierkegaard and Kingsley Amis to Bataille, Bartleby and Bingo Little. (Look it up.)
Glenn — a rather industrious sort who according to his bio has worked as a skateboard messenger, house painter, espresso jerk, barrel washer (huh?), blogger, Boston Globe columnist and founder of the philosophy ‘zine Hermenaut, among other things — provides the A to Z part. There are also great illustrations by Gregory Gallant, the comic artist otherwise known as Seth.
This one gives the salty flavor:
BOONDOGGLE. Given the pointlessness of today’s Boy Scouts, it’s appropriate that this term, coined by an American scoutmaster to describe the braided leather lanyard made and worn by Scouts, has come to mean any time-killing or useless activity — particularly when performed by a sluggard on the public payroll. NB: The sociologist Robert K. Merton once claimed that the intellectuals whose work lacks immediate practical application may suffer from the “boondoggling neurosis.” See: DODGER, WHILE AWAY THE HOURS.
And aspirants to chillaxery and Skimpole-hoold may be interested in this:
LUBBERLAND. From a 1685 broadside ballad titled “An Invitation to Lubberland,” we learn of an imaginary country where “There is all sorts of Fowl and Fish,/ With Wine and store of Brandy;/ Ye hae there what your hearts can wish:/ The Hills are Sugar-Candy.” See: BIG ROCK CANDY MOUNTAIN, COCKAIGNE.
Here are the Eleven Steps, which are closely modelled on AA’s more serious twelve:
1. We admitted we were powerless to make work less boring or harmful—that our lives as salarymen had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that idleness was greater than our efforts and could restore us to sanity.
3. Had an idle thought to turn our lack of will, and so our lives, over to the care of idleness as we understood it.
4. Made a searching but relaxed inventory of our working selves, a. k. a. our Inner Drudge.
5. Admitted to the way of idleness, to ourselves, and to any other human being within easy earshot the exact nature of our wrong ideas about the need to work.
6. Were entirely ready to have idleness remove all these defects of character, as long as it didn’t involve any effort on our part.
7. Humbly asked the way of idleness to remove our shortcomings since we couldn’t really be bothered.
8. Considered a list of all persons we had worked for, and became willing to tell them all to get stuffed.
9. Contemplated direct address to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would inconvenience us.
10. Continued to take casual personal inventory, and when we were slack rather than idle promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through laziness and indolence to improve our conscious contact with the way of idleness as we understood it, praying only for knowledge of its non-will for us and the power not to carry that out.
A book to cosy up to this fall, and to locate strategically for choice toilet reading, is Joshua Glenn and Mark Kingwell's compact but chock full The Idler's Glossary. Think of it as a dictionary for the manifold varieties of sloth we humans have invented, enjoy, and in many instances deride. It includes a somewhat whimsical essay by philosopher Mark Kingwell – “Idling Toward Heaven: The Last Defence You Will Ever Need” – and Glenn's glossary proper, a witty though incomplete compendium of idler-specific words and phrases, everything from “couch potato” and “lotus-eater” to more obscure terms like “sinecurist”:
“For as long as bureaucracies have existed, there have been people eager to obtain offices and positions that require little or no work. However, although a sinecure is preferable (for obvious reasons) to a job that’s demanding, a sinecurist is a bird in a gilded cage: She may become too complacent to fly, even if the cage door is left open.” (p. 102).
I call this dictionary “incomplete” because Glenn has left out one of the more colourful and perhaps even popular terms for sloth: Dog-fucking. If you’ve ever worked a unionized job, you’ve likely met a few dog-fuckers, or have even fucked the dog yourself. Nevertheless despite the glaring (to me) omission, I found The Idler’s Glossary funny, informative, and not out of place on any bookshelf, or in any bathroom.
"Rose-water is the rain they have,
Which comes in pleasant showers,
All places are adorned brave,
With sweet and fragrant flowers.
Hot custards grows on ev'ry tree,
Each ditch affords rich jellies;
Now if you will be ruled by me,
Go there and fill your bellies.
"There's nothing there but holy-days
With music out of measure;
Who can forbear to speak the praise
Of such a land of pleasure?
There may you lead a lazy life
Free from all kind of labours:
And he that is without a wife,
May borrow of his neighbour.
Go check both out:
/theroyalorderoftheindolent.blogspot.com/
