NY Times Crossword

I like to do it. Once a week. It's one of the few moments of relief in the daily drudge here at the Yoni School.

Every Saturday the Lunchbucket Lament includes the NY Times crossword in its Lifestyle section, or Peripheral Pursuits We're Not Sure Where To Place section (which includes book reviews, religion and How I Put Down My Dog pieces.)

Suzy Homemaker and I are a tag team, poring over clues, wracking our brains, assaulting the Web, until one of us runs out of steam and passes on to the other. When we first started doing it (don't even ask how long ago!) we rarely finished it. But we've become much better at it and now we rarely don't finish it. You feel a curious mix of satisfaction and a profound sense of emptiness when you fill in that last box. As in: "Ha! Did it again" and "Now what am I gonna do for the rest of the day?"

But there are three things to note here: It takes both of us to finish it. I couldn't do it by myself, and neither could she. Sometimes it spreads over several days and, therefore, one a week is enough. I'm grateful, in a way, that the Lunchbucket Lament does not run the puzzle every day, since it can be addictive and Larry is nothing if not addiction-prone.

This week there was a clue that demonstrated the effect of the zeitgeist on my mind, squirreled away in this creative desert of the Yoni School even as I am. (Zeitgeist! Oh god, how I've pined to use that werd in a post on Mental Blog!) It was a three-letter werd, the clue -mo. First I thought of Keb 'Mo, the reggae artist. Then I thought of Git-mo, the slang name that's been adopted by media mavens to designate the horror show at Guantanamo. In the end, Suzy got the answer, which was slo. As in slo-mo.

Now, this is undoubtedly the most logical answer, but it harkens back to a previous time, don't you think? Like Paul Simon's song, The Boy in the Bubble, in which he sings, "The way the camera follows us in slo-mo..." But that was back in the 80s, right? To my mind, my messy mind, my buzzing radio-tuned mind, my flat-screen cable mind, the answer which floats to the top is Git-mo.

Zeitgeist!

And may we fall on our knees and beg forgiveness for creating a world in which Git-mo springs so easily to our lips.