That’s right–it’s time once again to dick around with words.  For anybody who doesn’t know, a “portmanteau word” is a word made by squishing two words together.  Like “spork.”  Or “brunch.”  Lewis Carrol coined the term in Through the Looking Glass, referring to words in Jabberwocky like “slithy” (lithe + slimy) and “mimsy” (flimsy + miserable).  Since I am a strange and isolated person with a deranged brain, I’m a big fan of making portmanteau words in my spare time.  Maybe one day, when I’ve completely run out of things to do, I’ll make a whole dictionary of them.  For now, though, here’s one of my favorite coinages:

“awfulsome” (adj.): A conflation of “awful” and “awesome,” indicating something so terrible it’s good.  In fact, it goes far beyond the standard “so bad it’s good” paradigm.  Something has to be truly horrible to end up being awfulsome.  A good example of awfulsomeness is, for instance, a youtube video of David Hasslehoff covering “Secret Agent Man.”  I’ve seen it.  It’s awfulsome.

As a free extra no-strings-attached bonus, I’m throwing in a couple palindromes at no charge to you whatsoever.    Here you go:

Oozy rat in a sanitary zoo

Go hang a salami; I’m a lasagna hog