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The Accidental Lutheran attempts a belief in everything but Faith. He believes in faucets, cues at the Post, the banality of discussing banality, indulgent habits, just hanging out, and barely fictive prose. In his belief/disbelief in all things he must eventually face the avoided question: does Faith get lumped in with the lot or does it remain separate? If he lumps it in he's forced to then admit it exists as a Lutheran does. If he keeps it separate, thereby designating it officially the only thing that does not exist (though technically anything that's debated must exist or what is it the debate is based on afterall?), he makes it as much a leap of Faith as all religion is and he's found Faith just as a Lutheran has.

-- Chris Leo


An accurator is one who arranges his truths artfully.

-- Chris Leo, Laura Marchetti


Adjucation is the unfortunate verb forced into fighting the stalemated battle of corralling Bourgeois away from their beloved adjectives and closer towards actual nouns. “Adjective” (think “trajective”) comes from the Latin adicere (“to throw near”) and comes from the palazzo not the piazza. An adjective is like something, but never is something. Amidst every culture from every era there is the peculiar pathology of princes believing that words of the previous century are superior and solely authentic to the current slang from the streets, despite all recurring historical evidence otherwise. This results in an upper class using more adjectives and a lower class using more nouns (since aging nouns ferment into airy adjectives). A noun, after all, is simply something that does something so consistently it becomes safe to give a name to the motion: a couch couches, a woman womans, a rock rocks. Once it becomes safe to name these actions, we think it then safe to use them as points of reference. The problem is, by the time they become referable they're also already at least partially (if undetectably) antiquated. A couch is now only couchlike, a woman womanate, a rock rockish, and even the adjectives supporting those nouns fall short-ish. To the cultural elite, everything must be “like” something because the only things the culturati experience nonvicariously are similes and betrayal. Holding themselves captive in their own castles comes with a price ascetics could argue (if we could only get those guys to argue!) outweighs their profits pulled in. To these elite, the men of the last century who created the nouns-cum-adjectives they prefer, having merely met these men through books, are only “like men” – making them as adjectivelike and therefore as vacuously valid as the words they prefer! An attempt to adjucate using modern examples is useless because the “well fine, but what is it like?” is often non cross-referenceable. “Not a problem,” the adjucation thinks, “I’ll just dip into my store of stories from any yesteryear they prefer to prove being here with us now is simply more here period”. But no, this winds up nowhere too. One would think the endless examples of Latin adjectives referring to Vulgate nouns (the “bovine” belly from the meal of “mucca” made by the maddened contadino who moved to NYC and became a “mook”) or ruling Norman English adjectives referring to English countryside nouns (like the sheep removed from the pasture that became mutton and the deer removed from the woods that became venison) would settle things, but it’s hopeless. If you try to adjucate that two of the most semi-fictive famous fornicators in English literature had semi-fictive names that reflected their fornication -- Lance-a-lot and Shakespeare ("wielder of spears") -- they spear their own eyes into your soul like a fundamentalist does into those of the deeply pitied. Nope, Adjucation always loses. Why? Why would a verb created to straighten out and tighten up other words fail at its rightful mission? -- Because the attitudes he advocates for are neither straight nor tight. It's looser with the fam than with the Man. Adjucation therefore operates more in accordance with the manners of his adversaries, while the real epigeals oggle the ass moving of the agile adjectives. Confused? We are too. River Plates itself, often caught between a noun and an adjective, may be in need of some aducation. For example, there's currently a moratorium in these offices on the "internet is not a street" debate because we just can't reach an agreement on which one is the noun and which one is the adjective.

“Actual” comes from the Latin "actualis" for “active.” Something that is actual is active. To "stare" in English means to fix your eyes upon something, but "stare" in Latin only meant to remain somewhere temporarily. Nouns are verbs nouns are verbs nouns are verbs, but there are those who believe and those who do not.

the adjunct of an adjective to education = when I dip you -- let go, when you twist -- I’ll stay fixed

-- Chris Leo


Adormable crushes with their foreman’s pudge and quart of ice cream built triceps might not be the best looking, but on cuteness alone they reap all the railing beautiful people work so hard for. Yes, a savage destruction of undergarments, bite marks, and blended sweat may not be in the cards for their romps, but after heavy cuddling matures to heavy petting they get in nonetheless – and no one ever calls them an asshole for it.

adorable + dormire (“to sleep” in Italian) = devouring cute



Altero is the combination of two synonyms to add a suplorious emphastress. In English, “extrawesomeness” and “malevilent” are two examples of alteros at either extreme. The most romantic altero though is bisogno, “a need” in formal Italian. When a sogno is a “dream” and bi is “two” what we literally have is the addition of two synonymous dreams therefore equaling desperately one need.

Altero itself is an altero and an eponym. Altero Giambpieretti opened two pizzerias in Bologna in 1953 and to this day has Italians considering him an inventor of the “quadrini”, which simply means he started cutting pizza in squares rather than triangles. His pizza is as quick as a franchise and as tasty as a mamma and papa. Altero is the combination of altro “other” + estero “other”, which is to say that his pizza is atmostratispheric. His logo reads “pizzAltero” which is yet another altero, for when both pizza and the Altero name already mean fantasmical, we are left feeling that bisogno.

-- Chris Leo


An Appology is sorry as sword, submissions through submissions, "you are lowly because I made you" type southpaws.

-- Chris Leo


The ascetic aesthetic is known in Italian as punkabestia ("punk with beast") because they wear dreadlocks and rottweilers like ladies on Madison Ave wear perms and poodles. They may read manifestos but when they protest they manifesta. Why/how? Because again the Italians nailed it. Their word for "weekdays" is "feriali" from the same root as "festival". However, their word for "weekend" is not therefore "fine feriali", party over -- it was "fine settimana", simply "end of the week", but it's now the very English sounding "weekend". They have infested the week thereby ensuring no weak ends, oh and that's to say that "sure" and "shore" also share the same root and the Italians have yet again nailed it.

-- Chris Leo


Aspirition is a phantom word that appears between other words. This word is not written with spy’s ink or encoded subliminally anywhere on the page. It is one’s own mental imposition into the blank space between words. Sometimes complete stories form between just two words, sometimes entire books only inspire one continuous nagging and haunting aspirition. Fascinatingly, quality of story has little or nothing to do with quality of aspiritions; an incredible story can be ghosted with trite aspiritions, whereas fluffy romances are often filled with enough visionary material to captivate the bar all night long without pricking a single suspicion that you’d bought your current book at a newspaper stand.

aspirate + apparition = a word between words that carries the word spirit between itself

-- Chris Leo


ATD, or fully Alex Trebek Dilemma, is the confusion of whether to say a foreign word correctly or to say it as those around you are saying it. Alex Trebek, Canadian host of the tv game show Jeopardy, has spawned many an American dinner debate over his non-Anglofication of foreign words. The curious linguistic pride that plagues all nations fosters a feeling in the gut that proper pronunciation is pretentious at best and possibly even downright traitorous, communist, Viet Congoese, or French. When Laura’s coworkers in Bologna ask her if she’ll join them for “branch” on Saturday she slyly avoids the ATD of whether to roll with the “branch” or be the only one saying “brunch” by offering River Plate’s “la prena” (see the "Italian Brunch" entry) discovery.

-- Chris Leo


Autorageous. I'm the kind of guy that. Because I'm like that, that's how I am. They know, when it comes to me it's a whole 'nother thing. I'm just like that, I can't stop. That's what I'm known for. If I was to cut back I wouldn't be me. They know, when it comes to me there aint no knowing.

-- Chris Leo


Azmuthologists are guided by stars. The problem is, not just one star, but every star. This makes guidance guaranteed, but concentration impossible. Some believe the name is derived from “azimuths”, from the Arabic as-sumt, which measure the distance from us to the stars. Other's claim it comes from Ozmythologists because their ways are just too peculiar. Others yet believe it’s a reference to the way these advanced ADHDed learn languages: they buy a foreign dictionary and begin with gusto at the beginning reading to the end of the ‘A’ entries, they then skip to the back for the ‘Z’ entries thinking they could work their way in reverse to keep things interesting, when they soon start to tire and feel like a balance is needed they shift to the ‘M’s, bore, and then move on to the next language leaving the rest of the book unleafed. When confronting a non-English speaking azmuthologist “Aye! Andiamo alle movies manana? Maybe zip around a metro meeting aphrodities and mayhem? Make a manifestation aveq an adhoc zoo at the marquee maggiore?” would work, and they’d respond with “Mostly!” Azmuthologists, so say the stars, make mean matches mit abecedinarians. .

-- Chris Leo