May 21, 2025 — In honor of Orange Forest’s 100th anniversary, we’re gonna cover an absolute Top-10 Banger, the hot-from-the-printers book An Oral History of Orange Forest Written Down, Typed Out, and Printed for Readers by Professor Namuh Lamron, PhD.

Even though this is Professor Lamron’s first published book, he writes with a confident ease, weaving stories, anecdotes, and primary sources to spin a captivating yarn chronicling Orange Forest’s history.

Lamron hooked me from the kick-off by starting the book hundreds of years ago, long before the Zweebster’s great-great-great-great-grandfather Zizek Zenger hitched a ride across the Atlantic, hidden away as an undetected stowaway in a lifeboat. Anywaaaaay, waaaaay back then, the area around Orange Forest served as the hunting grounds for several ingenious tribes. But check out this sweet face I just learned: the Nouvelle Vire River’s tributary rivers are named after a few of these tribes — the Abaca, Cooboosoo, Foxile, and Nebic. Maybe some of you Bangerheads already knew that, but it was news to the Zweebster.

The narrative then spends a chapter talking about the first American settlers to post up in the area in the late 1800s. And, in a shocking twist (sarcasm, obvs), we find out that the settlers wanted what wasn’t theirs. But obviously the people who had been living there for hundreds, if not thousands of years, were all like, “Nah, we good.” So the settlers started blasting the natives.

It was around this time that a group of vigilantes fed up with outlaws formed a posse known as The Long Arms to enforce the law. Coincidentally, the majority of these “outlaws” the posse rounded up, tried, and sentenced just so happened to be members of the Abaca and Foxile and Nebic tribes. The Long-Arms would eventually cleave into two groups, one of which would ultimately become the Orange Forest Law Enforcement Corps (OFLEC), while the other group would incorporate into Privocular Private Investigation and Agency Intelligence (now just Privocular Private Investigations). Lamron doesn’t offer a reason for the split, but notes it was an amicable and strategic arrangement. Makes me think one group went public and one group went private to control both sides of the coin. I mean, even to this day, OFLEC and Privocular would be the closest things we’ve got to true outlaws, as in people who exist and operate outside of the law. Don’t get me wrong, I love our boys in black, but we all know about the thin black line. Rules for thee, but not for me.

Anyway, after the U.S. Congress passed the Indian Citizenship Act in 1924, most of the tribal people were either removed, assimilated, or outright erased, and the violent skirmishes largely faded away. But nah, seriously, no joke, that chapter was brutal.

Which brings us to 1925. Anyone who went to an Orange Forest school, at any level, knows the triumphant origin story of two brilliant, innovative businessmen who set up shop in a rickety shed back before radios, TVs, or widespread household electricity existed. And following the success of that small business, our four great founders — Jannes, Jambres, Maplemay, and Haversmore — established the City of Orange Forest with a few hundred people in 1925, pretty much all of them either working for Jannes & Jambres Charted & Consolidated Commercial Chemicals, Industrial Dyes, and Press Forging, Incorporated or married to someone who was. So we don’t have to rehash all that jazz.

Okay, hol’ up. I gotta be square with my Bangerheads. This book doesn’t offer any new insights or twists about Orange Forest or our history. But Lamron does an absolutely bodacious job of tracing a single, clear, linear chronological thread across centuries, perfectly illustrating how the City of Orange Forest was predestined for greatness. 

Spizzerwhatnow?

Now we need to talk about weird word Prof. Namuh uses a fuckton throughout the book to describe the je ne sais quoi, y’know the special sauce that makes us Orangeforesters unique. Not only is it just a weird word to keep dropping every dozen pages or so, but he spells it differently all through the book.

Spizerinctum

Spizzerinctum

Spizarinctum

Spizzerinktum

Spizerinkum

I kept getting hung up on it, and, not gonna front, I had to look up this one online.

Currently, the word apparently means “zest for life,” “the will to succeed; vim, energy, ambition,” “determination, ardor, or zeal,” and “chutzpah, guts, nerve, or backbone.” (While none of the definitions I could find mentioned “will to power,” I think one could argue that it also somewhat fits the definition.) A 1944 U.S. Marine Corps book defined spizerinkum as slang for “intestinal fortitude”. Then, scope this, I also found out that this other word Prof. Namuh uses, pizzeringtom, has nothing to do with pizza, and it’s just another variation people used back in the 1920s to mean “the quintessence of pep.”

To put it in Zweebspeak for all you Bangerheads, the word means, “Very Iggy.” Got a lust for life bum bum bum ba bum bum bum ba bum bum bum!

But then, I found another origin story. It says, “Spelled ‘Spizarinctum,’ this peculiar word was used in the mid–1800s for ‘specie,’ that is, for money in the form of coins. In fact, the word ‘spizarinctum’ is thought to be simply a fanciful coinage from 'Specie.’ Here’s the word used with a slightly different spelling in 1869, by someone writing about ‘greenbacks, or paper money: ‘They (greenbacks) had gotten no further west than Marshall (Texas), and everywhere west of that, when a man named a price, he meant ‘Spizerinctums.’”

I read that and was like, huh, interesting. Took a hot second before the synapses started snapping, but I’m guessing the word got its current meaning because it’s like, isn’t hustling to get that coin — get that specie — a zest for life, a will to succeed? Can’t stack that green without some kind of zeal, y’know what I mean?

Which makes perfect sense when you think about the Orange Forest Goal that we’re all racing toward at full blast, turboboosters and all. Until next time, my rad comrades, keep it banging!

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