Like most people I have a number of character flaws and am willing to cop to some of the minor ones.

To name one, I have on occasion succumbed to the vanity of personal taste. If I know about something cool before others do, my intellectual vanity swells. For example, while watching Jim Jarmusch’s Broken Flowers, I felt smugly pleased with myself ( Read more... )

So I’ve got this idea which is either brilliant or stupid. To find out which requires some research involving business conditions and numbers and such-like. While conducting this research I keep coming across this horrible word.

MonetizeEww ( Read more... )

Last time I was going on about the vivid proper names involved in the burgeoning Hookergate scandal, it completely escaped me that a central figure in the case has a name so completely metonymic that it really does belong in a Restoration comedy. Let’s parse the name of felonious congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham ( Read more... )

Like any fan of the hardboiled, I am always happy to run across a new instance of gritty slang. Today’s entry comes from Police City, the confessional blog of a pseudonymous police officer in the US Southwest. From a shot-to-the-groin account of an effort to roust a trespasser from a seedy motel comes gaffle her ass up. As in:

The information on ( Read more... )

Some folks think that winter begins on December 21st but here in Toronto we know better. Mere calendrical concerns aside, the real start to the season occurs the first time you hear one guy say to another, “Cold enough for ya ( Read more... )