Endangered words and creepy girls

Gawker put up this post about endangered words and the scary thing is that I frequently use most of the words people are worried about losing and/or saying should be brought back. Why, just the other day I remarked to a friend, "Zounds! I'm headed to a hootenanny where I shall squeeze my guts with a stick! Then I shall tweet about any terrific frippery I encounter after said gut squeezing." Which begs the question: Am I that person out there in the linguistic forest chained to a big tree? Because no one cares about that person. I mean, you don't want them to get chopped down because that's gross, but in general it's like, "you should have thought about that before chaining yourself to a tree." It also begs the question, does anyone chain themselves to trees or is that just a plot device from Family Ties?

It also begs the question if my references are anachronistic in the extreme so pretend instead of Family Ties I'd said One Tree Hill.


The other day Anna and I were talking and I told her a story where I'd worried I'd come off as a creepy goober and she stopped me and said nothing I could have done would be worse than having used the word goober. "But I like goober!" I weedled asthmatically. It was attractive. She relented a bit, perhaps I am more in touch with slang zeitgeist was the thinking, however I've since embargoed goober.

Goober, goober, goober, goober, goober, goober, goober, goober, goober, goober, goober, goober...

Oops, embargo repealed!

So, want to hear the story where I was worried I came off as a creepy goober? I think you do!

I had potential plans to hang out with someone I don't know well however we're both incredibly famous and exceedingly wonderful. He invited me to a thing and I couldn't go to the thing so then maybe we were going to meet up the following day. He texted, "I'll touch base with you tomorrow." I quickly typed into my phone: "Not if I touch your base first." And, here is the thing, I was sitting there staring at my own text thinking, "Don't send this, it's sending a message you aren't intending to send." And then I watched myself hit send, knowing this was quite possibly going to make things weird, because ultimately I was more in love with my dumb wordplay than anything else. Hence the question which I discussed with The 404, can girls be creepy?

See me on The Strategy Room at 3pm today EST

You can watch it here. www.foxnews.com/strategyroom

And then I'll be on Red Eye Thursday night/Fri morning and The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet on Friday morning. I'm totally infesting your TV.

Infest is a gross word. Even if you had an infestation of something cute, like ducklings. In fact I'd almost say a duckling infestation is an oxymoron. But it's not. Just almost. You know?

I need to write a book

I just do. I am too delightful and I know too many words to not have my delightfullness represented in an author photo and my words tucked between dust covers. I don't even need my words to be alphabetical. Or real!

But really, I am tired of going to Barnes & Noble and seeing all these books by all these people and not seeing any by me.

At the same time, I hate paper in general and yesterday I got this crazy papercut when I opened up an envelope containing fabric swatches and then I had to go hunting around my apartment for bandaids and it took forever to find one. That's what paper will do to you. It will cut you. In fact, if I drew cartoons for the New Yorker I would show an envelope saying to a woman who is about to open it, "I'll cut you, bitch." The envelope would be somehow made to look like it's in prison by the way. It would be a tough menacing envelope.

But anyway, what should I write about? I need something fun and easy that doesn't involve that much time or energy or hard work. You know, like a book I could write in the shower.

I'm joking. Kind of!

But really. Ideas? I mean, I could collect all my funny essays and some blog posts, that would be a damn good book, but it seems like a new idea would be better. I should probably clear that path to my door so more publishers can beat a path to it. Maybe I should also get a doormat that says "Welcome, publishers!"

what we talk about when we talk about salmon

Here's what I'm wondering: You know on food labels where they list all the ingredients and occasionally there will be some info in parenthesis about what one ingredient does? How is it determined which ingredients they gloss, if you will? Because, for example, on the back of this box of Gorton's Grilled Salmon fillets I've come to learn that Sodium Tripolyphosphate is added "to retain fish moisture" (mmm... fish lube!) and Sodium Laurel Sulfate is added for lather, but it's not like I know why Disodium Inosinate or Disodium Guanylate are in there. But Propyl Gallate is added to protect flavor. Probably from flavonoids!

Propyl Gallate is a good name for something which protects something. It's very gallant. It's like the "Lance" of the food label world.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go barf from thinking about the phrase fish lube.

Ginny, if you are reading this, I'm sure that:

a) it freaks you out that I just mentioned your name, and
b) fish lube isn't as disgusting a phrase as fish moisture

"promoterol"

I think I just heard this word in a commercial for some kind of asthma drug. I may have misheard it, however if it exists (as a made-up word) I think it's:

a) awesome
b) something PR people should take
c) something publicists run on
d) something publicists run their car on
e) something you could accuse someone of taking if they're acting too self-promoting
f) like "what the fuck, are you mainlining promoterol?"
g) or "someone took their promoterol..."
h) or, if someone is being overly self-deprecating you could wonder if they FORGOT to take their promoterol!
i) god, possibilities: endless!
q) I'm tired of the alphabet
w) so this guy and I were once talking about what we wanted on our tombstones
k) I'm fighting the urge to make a pepperoni joke
x) and I said "she liked words"
e) and then I added "more than people"
s) I forget what he said
p) I kind of suck
v) I mean, not in general, but just, if you're having that kind of goth conversation you should really remember what the other person said