In The Advocate online the morning, one of the editorials ended with a -30-. That’s unusual. Usually, the -30- gets edited out before the article goes to press or gets loaded up online. It made me nostalgic for my journalism days. I don’t recall if my journalism teachers ever said exactly why you’re supposed to end an article with -30-. So, using the handy dandy internet, I looked it up. According to this nifty article from the American Journalism Review, no one knows how the tradition got started and what it symbolizes, but there are some neat speculations. Maybe my teacher just didn’t care toRead More →

Ever since I saw Jon Stewart’s spiel about emboldening the enemy on the Daily Show, I’ve been hyper-conscious of the word. Here’s this nifty entry on emboldening the enemy at Source Watch. When I saw a headline at MSNBC, it consequently caught my attention: Abortion ruling emboldens opponents. “Emboldening” is a word I associate so closely with “terrorists,” so that it’s not hard to interpret “Abortion ruling emboldens opponents” as “Abortion ruling emboldens terrorists.” Surely that wasn’t the implication. Or not…? Maybe it’s just a vast liberal conspiracy. I wish there were such a thing.

I just discovered a friend I haven’t talked to in years wrote a book Her name is June Casagrande and her book is called Grammar Snobs are Great Big Meanies. I can just hear her voice saying that. She’s so expressive. Anyway, in an interview for Powells.com, she said something about why she writes that struck me: Because I feel an impulse to write. There is no other reason to. Writers spend a lot of time asking each other, “How do you discipline yourself to write? How do you force ourself to sit down and just do it?” And my answer to them is aRead More →

The #1 word of the year is Truthiness, as voted on by the Merriam-Webster online community. The word comes from Stephen Colbert, of course. Merriam-Webster defines truthiness as: 1 : “truth that comes from the gut, not books” (Stephen Colbert, Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report,” October 2005) 2 : “the quality of preferring concepts or facts one wishes to be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be true” (American Dialect Society, January 2006).

An article about Internet Addiction from CNN.com asserts that internet addiction is a fact, but it struggles to do so, since there is no real evidence to suggest this is true. The term they use is “clinically addictive.” The article states: Red flags should start flying, however, if time spent vanquishing electronic enemies or keeping up on e-mail results in reprimands from your employer and arguments with loved ones. Which is true for anything. What is addiction, exactly? Addicts can be addicted to anything, whether it is the internet, or television, or anything else. At least the article admits this much. You’d think that, afterRead More →

Did you know that Elmer of the glue fame is Elsie the Cow’s “husband.” Where Did Elmer’s Name Come From? Elsie the Cow became Borden’s very popular “Spokescow” in the late 1930’s. She was a big hit at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, and soon afterwards the character of Elmer the Bull was created as Elsie’s husband. In the late 1940’s, Borden’s new Chemical Division asked to use Elsie for its new white glue product. The thought of Elsie representing a non-food product didn’t seem appropriate, so as a compromise, Elmer was loaned to Chemical as their very own “spokesbull”. To this day, ElmerRead More →

What is the origin of the term “French kissing?” This article talks about the use of the word “French” in a variety of slang phrases. French letter, for instance, is a condom. The first use of the term French kissing appeared in the early 1920s, according to the article. That seems awfully late to me. Around that time other slang using the word “French” also appeared, because the French were seen as risque. Anyway, the article is from the ever-reliable Good Vibrations website. This summer tidbit is brought to you by the letter K.