Having lived in England for three months now, and in spite of quite liking the place and the people, there are a few things which strike me as so odd that I had to make up a new word plus a couple of back formations to cover the situation.

Nowhere else that I've been do people face such bad service from essential services and constantly being either ignored or bullied (or both at the same time) by civil servants with such equimanity. The strangest things happen to people and they just seem to accept that this is the way it is and presumably is the way it's meant to be. I spend half my time in a state of anger at the causes of these situations and the other half frustrated at the sheep-like behaviour of the people who just accept them.

An example of this is the trains. They an essential service in a country like England. And they're rarely on time. The railway businesses have reacted to criticism, but not by improving the service at all. No, no, instead they've redefined "late" into two categories: "delayed" which apparently can be up to an hour after the scheduled time and isn't to be confused with "late", and "cancelled" which almost always seems to follow "delayed" and, of course, can't be considered to be "late", either. This way, trains are never late. This seems to satisfy everyone ...

So the words are:

surnormality n. 1. The state or fact of being surnormal; surnormalcy.

2. Something surnormal; the normally surreal.

3. conformity with the surreal norm

[syn. surnormalcy] [ant. normal]

surnormal adj. A state of surreality which is so prevalent so as to be considered by its inhabitants to be a completely normal state.

surnorm n. The normal general level of surreality.

absurnormal adj. 1. A state of surreality so intense that even the denizens of an surnormal state recognise it as being non-surnormal.

2. Deviation from the surnorm.



The idiot also known as Capfka ...