The Dictionary: Sexy, Titilating & Most Powerful Book On The Planet

Years ago I worked at a sign factory. Terrible place to work. No windows, massive 55 gallon drums full of chemicals distilled into poorly ventilated rooms and angry, humorless people to work alongside, for the most part anyway. There was one upside to this carbon compound hell, lots of downtime. Probably never would've finished Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Idiot if not for that factory. Or read Walden and The Jungle three times. Also probably never would have read the Dictionary.

MalcomX, Ernest Hemingway and Ben Zoltak (that's me) all advocate reading the dictionary. Hemingway says if you're a writer you should throw it away after reading it three times, but I suggest holding on to it, whether you're a writer or not. There is nothing sexier than your brain. Like the character Jackie Treehorn says in the film The Big Lebowski: "People forget, the mind is the largest erogenous zone."

The more you know, the more definition you can add to your life. The more fine the description of your life becomes, the more titillating your rewards.

Lots of people will recommend lots of different books in your life, but none is so important to read as the dictionary. Not a crummy abridged version either, get one that's at least three or four inches thick and ten or twelve inches long. I mean come on, this is know how we're talking about, you want a voluptuous volume or some waify excuse for verbiage.

There are several positions you can master for reading the Dictionary. You can diddle about, reading random definitions too and fro. Or you can go on a meaning hunt, one of my own favorite approaches. Here you look up a word you always thought you knew, lets say "manipulate" which has several definitions. Most of these you understand well, but if there are any words in any of the definitions of "manipulate" that you don't understand, they you look those up next. "Shrewd" is part of the definition of "manipulate" and of course you pretty much know what "Shrewd" means but after looking it up you realize there's so much more. Who knew that "Shrewd" more specifically meant artfully cunning! Below the definitions for "Shrewd" is an entire list of synonyms that include: shrewd, sagacious, astute and quick-witted; each with a more tenacious tendency than the last. Just like ravenous ships passing in the night, each encounter with a word's definition reveals that each one has a slightly different meaning. Again, it's important to know that no two words are alike.

So look at the Dictionary if your libido is low, if your mate is bearing erysipeloid marks on his or her hands and you're feeling a salacious urge to run to the nearest bar and down a tap. The first intercourse that you should entertain before any baser encounters is the trial between your mind and what you know.