Argotamine poisoning

Vocab transitions because individuals want their words to impact on those who hear them, never mind that English already has good, well-known, strong words.

Strangulation is better than “traumatic asphyxia” caused by “neck compression.”

Suspect is better than person of interest.

Longer is often not better. See my first clause above. Individuals!? People! (Or persons if you're using 1930s vocabulary.)

Who we ah

Until I got to New England, I had no idea I had a Southern accent. My college roommates quickly disabused me of the idea that having educated parents had immunized me against regional speech. In time, I overcame my initial distaste for regional New England accents, and I now appreciate them for their distinctiveness even as they sink into the great gray homogenized mix standardized by electronic media.

We don't drink, nor smoke, Norfolk

If you don't laugh out loud at the gray lady trying and failing to keep its British stiff upper lip, you're either dead or in serious need of antidepressants.

The council explained that it was only following national guidelines and that it did not intend to change any existing lewd names.

Gotta keep the traditional lewdness.

Update (1/25): I should note that here in Massachusetts the town and county of Norfolk are routinely pronounced 'norfork' (in a state that leaves the 'ahs' out of 'Hahvahd'!) because the traditional pronunciation, 'norfək', has become lewd ever since dictionaries first began to have the word 'fuck' in them.

Yummy editing

Newsweek teases its story of real estate desperation with this:

[A] palatable sense of desperation among realtors in areas hit hard by the housing crisis.

Tasty! The word you're looking for is palpable.

Meanwhile, Mr. and Mrs. Duhbya have millions to spend to stay the hell out of their vanity ranch in Crawford.

Out in public, 2

Walking up to the Registry of Motor Vehicles in Framingham, where there's quite a bit of hostility toward immigrant Brazilians, to renew my driver's license. The strapping sixtyish man in front of me looked back and said, "That's something. Two of us who look like Americans and probably speak English."

"No hablo inglés," I replied, since my Portuguese is limited to 'bom dia' and a few phrases from songs.

Double-take.

"Just kidding."

"Asshole," he said, but he was just kidding, too. After all, I was a white guy.

"Democrat Schwarzenegger"

This sentence is too weirdly framed not to draw a comment:

He is facing a repeat of the financial crisis that undid Gray Davis, former governor, the Democrat Schwarzenegger ousted in a turbulent recall election.

The efforts required to butt Democrat up against Schwarzenegger must have required almost as many steroids as Ahnuld shot up in his firm-man-tittied heyday.

At the very least, any decent editor would have insisted upon "... Democrat whom Schwarzenegger ...". And if whom is too priggish about pronoun case, I don't care, use who or that. But, even better, how about this?

He faces a repeat of the fiscal crisis that he used in 2003 to oust former Democratic Gov. Gray Davis in a turbulent recall election.

Somebody once said, "Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity," but this is pretty stupid even for the AP. (And I say that knowing that a good friend, whose name is already in my keyword list, worked for the AP for years without becoming stupid.)

Odd language of faith

I love stories of survival. They've moved me for more than 40 years. There are not many books I recall from elementary school, but I remember a compendium of survival stories published by Reader's Digest that I read in second grade.

That the Dominguez family survived in the snow is conventionally a miracle, but everyone in the CNN story is apportioning credit and blame bassackwards. The snow was an act of God; the rescue was human.

The definition of miracle seems to be something good that one had given up expecting.