Tuesday, July 15, 2003

Scrutable

I saw him from my seat on the bus.  He sat under the awning of Caffe Mio, shaded from the morning sunlight.  A broadbrimmed, high-crowned black hat covered his head and gave him a sinister halo of darkness behind the pale brown hair that fell back in waves to his shoulders.  A black trenchcoat concealed his person, with broad lapels and epaulettes, a fortress of oilcloth, inky and mysterious, falling extravagantly to his black jeans and black boots.  Small wire-frame glasses outlined his pale eyes; a pale van dyke beard fringed his delicate pale lips; his pale face was impassive and inscrutable as he smoked his cig, sipped his coffee, gazed out into the street from the shadows where he sat like a visitor from another time, another plane of consciousness.  He was above, beyond his environs.  A wizard in his own mind. 

No sooner had I gotten a good look at him than I saw her walking down the sidewalk toward him.  She was slim, tall, blonde, with long hair trailing veil-like in the morning breeze behind her.  Peach cotton top, white cotton pants, understated sandals, skin like creme caramel.  She looked like four perfect scoops of buttercream frosting packed into a delightful summer outfit.  She walked like gravity didn’t really pull her earthward like it did to other people. 

I watched him as she entered his field of vision.  The impact was visceral - she was three feet from his knee when she passed him.  He looked her rapidly up and down, then hiked himself more upright on his seat, squared his scrawny over-protected shoulders, leaned forward, and helplessly watched her walk away from him down the sidewalk until she was lost in the crowd.  The bus began to pull away as he leaned back in his seat, titillated and frustrated and impotent.  He took another drag on his cig but his inscrutable expression no longer seemed so inscrutable to me.  Underneath that big black hat he looked to me like he would sell his sister for a scrute.

What is “a scrute?”

Is that like scruple?
You sure get a lot riding on the bus. It’s as if we’re in these little air bubbles floating through a big-ass aquarium. At Disneyland.

its what you don’t have if you’re inscrutable.

A LOT YOU KNOW DAN...I AM a Wizard, and not just in my own mind, dammit.  And I wasn’t “impotent” when the hot babe walked past.  I think of it more as “temporarily neutered.”

I don’t think you’d have left this impression greg, this guy really seemed intent on the idea that he didn’t leave a shadow and could control traffic with his mind… you don’t seem so worried about the former, and you have more insidious plans to hatch than the latter, so you’re way out of his league....

i’m with jefe.  dictionary.com’s not happy.  had to search twice and got nothin’.

i’m guessing i know what it means.  this is just like the time i met a friend of bill’s when visiting him at school.  his nickname was / is “scrotie.” i said, “do you know what that SOUNDS like?” duh.  i think they—probably 10 guys DID.  go figure.

hmm. i just thought it was a fancy word for screw. so what is it?

This has gotten too controversial.  That which is “scrutable” can be understood through scrutiny.  “Inscrutable” means you can’t figure it out no matter how carefully you scrutinize it.  One who scrutinizes is a “scrutator,” according to my heavy old dictionary.  But I just saw this guy yesterday, and he seemed so hard to figure out but he became so obvious so quickly - at first I thought to myself, he’s inscrutable - then the word started playing with itself in my head and that first syllable started sounding like it meant more than “just looking.” But it doesn’t.  Except here, where language is a toy. 

Submit further questions to my 12th grade english teacher, Mrs. Hughes, who would hold up a handwritten sign that read “B.S.” when I would talk too long in class.

mhmmm.. suuure, dan.

do you just talk in circles so that people wont understand what you’re saying but just pretend to because they think you know what you’re talking about and dont want to look stupid???

i thought so too.

anne...........now you understand my entire childhood!!

haha!

i got the scrute thing, dan.  it’s just a shame that those who scrutinize others make such a big deal out of being incrutible themselves.  why can’t we all just live together in a happy state of high scrutiny?

with that, “scrute” has officially lost all meaning to me.  roads.  row-adds.  roooods.

Yeah, what’s a scrute?

Anne, I’m shocked.  I’m outraged.  But you totally have my number.

am i the only one who read that and thought, “ooh, i want her outfit”?

am i the only one who read that and thought “ooh, i want some buttercream!”?