early 15c., obliquite, “state of being slanted or twisted; crookedness (of eyes),
and so also figuratively, “moral transgression”
from Latin obliquitatem, “slanting direction, obliquity”

Thus: sidelong, slanting, awry; in a bad sense, envious, hostile

Perhaps from ob- (“against”) +‎ licinus (“bent upward”), from a Proto-Indo-European root meaning “to bend, to be movable.” However, de Vaan finds no credible Indo-European source and assigns no known etymology.

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My favorite etymology: No Known. But listen, too. Week. o’ Bleak, yeah? Where it started actually.

My eyes have always been crooked, unless you believe the myth that they got that way from a rock hitting me in the face when I was two. Personally, I am favoring the always theory. No one really knows.

So in the tyranny of English this physical characteristic represents a moral turpitude as well, sort of like being left-handed; compare oblique with sinister.

***

In the Amanda Fucking Palmer song I like best, there’s a line that goes: “Hello, I’m good for nothing; will you love me just the same”?

Generally or globally speaking the answer to that is No, not if good-for-nothing is the whole truth.

So either we get uncommonly lucky, or we go without love, or we become good for something, and something emotionally marketable.

I’ve had some luck and it gets me by–most of the time I haven’t had to go without entirely.

For a while I was good for being pretty in certain ways. I was good for covering the night shift, and then I was good for moving freight, I was good for making websites and parlaying that into being good for posing as faculty.

During the week oblique, I have been good for this.

I don’t imagine it looks all that appetizing, but it will, when used as building blocks for a half-week’s worth of meals or maybe a whole week of (breakfast) burritos. Straight from 25 pound organic sacks and paired with maybe eggs at seventy-five cents apiece, and so on.

And now with a single video and this single post, I can claim to be good for the most marginally belletristic practice imaginable.

Food for two (I mean she likes my beans at least) and thin spiritual sustenance for another dozen.

A thin, scrabbling, scratching, oblique start.