Dream On

Strange dream No. 2 Ol' Hoss has had recently:

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School Budget Officer, on phone to school construction bidder: "What is a phlegm catcher?"
Bidder: "Huh?"
Budget Guy: "Here on page 306 of your proposal, it says 'Phlegm Catchers, 6 @ $7.80 an hour.'"
Bidder: "You're actually reading 1304 pages of boiler plate about items that go into building of a school? We contractors pretty much list the same things all the time."
Budget Guy: "Kindly explain."
Bidder: "Well, now that so many people are quitting smoking they are going to smokeless tobacco, which produces a lot of spit -- scientists call it phlegm. Now, we got guys working on the second floor and above who need to hock an oyster now and then, but we don't want it raining down on the workers below. So we hire these kids to catch the spit in buckets and haul it off at the end of the day. I guess we could list them as sanitarians, but you might think we was trying to palm some damn mental health workers off on you. So we call 'em phlegm catchers. Kind of like dream catchers, only different."

Budget Guy: "Now then, where do you get 'phlegm catchers'? Is this a competitive occupation?"
Bidder: "Most of them come from Iceland. Over there, you understand, the country is all froze up, so there's no running water. So they get these guys going around catching icicles when they fall off buildings and melting them for fresh water. If they waited till the icicles hit the ground they'd have lava all over 'em, and that makes the water too gritty. Lava rock in your mouth would grind your teeth down to nubs in just a few weeks."
Budget Guy: "And this is a paying proposition?"
Bidder: Well, I hear it is. I am told of one guy who collects so many icicles every day that he gets enough water to run a coin-operated laundry. I hear coin-operated laundries is where the big money is in Iceland."

Budget Guy: "I suppose that's enough for today. This is slow going, but I will be back tomorrow to ask you several other things, such as 'Spastics, 8 @ $6.97 per hour.'"
Bidder: "Are you going to go through this, page by page, with every bidder?"
Budget Guy: "Why certainly. I have plenty of time, since I don't go to hockey games. Well, I guess nobody does, so perhaps that isn't a good analogy. I used to pride myself on analogies, but now I'm only good at verisimilitude."

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My favorite word today is verisimilitude. Adj., the nearly real McCoy. Def.: Typical of words used by a smart-ass who thinks you probably don't know what they mean, such as "ergo" and "billet-doux."