ZOD.
There was a used record store run by a wormy, milquetoasty guy, but really by his wife. Anyone trading stuff in would have to listen to him call his wife (no one ever saw her set foot in their store) and list the name and condition of anything he wanted to buy and his wife would say yea or nay. The best part was hearing him mispronounce or just plain misunderstand what he was reading. I remember hearing him go, “Sweet Communism – what the hell is this?!?” (It turned out to be a gospel album called Sweet Communion). The other irritatingly entertaining thing he would do was to chat with you while he went through your stuff, trying to appear knowledgeable about music. One day he was looking over a pile of stuff and came across an album by King Crimson, of whom he claimed to be a huge fan. “Ah, my favorite King Crimson song,” he said, as he scanned the song titles. “21st Century ShaZOD Man!” Now, anyone who’s ever heard the song (or learned the English language) would know that it’s schizoid (which is a word), not shazod (which is not a word). After that, whenever someone was trying to pretend to know something or like something – a music group, for example, or a book – in order to be thought cool, we would bust him by saying “shaZOD!” Eventually it got shortened to “ZOD.”
– Doc (May 17, 2002)
Tags: one word