Oxymora Dictionary Creator Retires Says Career Was Awfully Good

Partially successful in two major industries during his peak professional years, Sandy Clay Livingstone was perhaps the best known secret of the literary world for founding the original Oxymora Dictionary, later in life.

Recognizing the acute dullness of his first career choice out of junior college, Livingstone worked in the airline industry as materials buyer. Providing firm estimates for the gourmet airline food division of regional US carrier, Gamble Airlines, Livingstone was responsible for buying jumbo shrimp, gourmet hamburger, fresh cheese and yogurt, semi-boneless ham, plastic silverware, mild cleaning abrasives and tasteful men’s magazines. “It was a job. Brilliantly dull and mildly exciting at first, but I often worked alone in deafening silence”, says Livingstone.

Reportedly finding some semi-private affordable housing in the poor section of Beverly Hills, California, Livingstone left the airline industry after 20 short years to take a rewarding government job. “I was loosely connected to a number of federal divisions, from military intelligence to congressional action committees, mostly focused on document reviews, deliberately quick edits, and making original copies”. That was Livingstone’s first exposure to the management of the written word.

After several of his insignificant endeavors were partially completed, Livingstone admits to becoming sick of the organized chaos of his job, where the recognition of his hard work seemed clearly obscure and astronomically small. “It was time to follow my real fantasy, get away from all the crisis management, and start up my own business. It all sort of happened accidentally on purpose”, says Livingstone.

So began the International Oxymora Dictionary in 1993, with paid volunteers helping to round out the four corners of his first office. “Those were the good old days”, comments Livingstone. “Military intelligence, metal woods, truth in advertising, fresh frozen, resident alien. I was terribly pleased to find that many examples for our first publication and the list keeps growing”.