The American Dialect Society hasn't voted on its word of the year for 2007 yet. All these dictionaries declaring words of the year of their own, now, are just bandwagon jumpers.
w00t is the word of what year? 1995?
3: shut up elitist early adopter.
Anyway, this would be a good excuse for this blog to change its font or whatever, so "w00t" containing the zeros does not look exactly like "woot" with no futurist-friendly zeros.
Seriously though that's absurd. Why not make the word of the year "groovy" or "bounder"?
Yeah, there's no reason that should be the word of this particular year. I agree with you.
The question is whether that was a worse choice than a word that nobody has ever actually used, like "locavore". Who comes up with these things anyway? There are actual linguists who actually study the appearance of new words, you know.
Why can't "quire" ever be the word of the year? Or "Rasselas"? Or "craquelure"? I hate this godless culture.
I thought this blog was read by all the media and power elite, but time and time again "Gayatollah" gets passed over for Word of the Year.
Couldn't Far/had Man/joo do something about this?
Or "pimpmobile"? Or "coprophage"? Or "Samothrace"?
Arioch!
Dude, that fruit was *lying there on the ground*. I can't believe seven of you just walked right past it.
Gossip Girl is completely awesome and getting better every week. I used to be somewhat embarrassed about watching it but have moved into the "shut up, haters" zone.
Although the breathless CW promotions for Gossip Girl telling you to "See it. Hear it. Blog it. Live it." both crack my shit up every time I see them and make me cringe for bloggers everywhere.
I've seen every episode so far of Gossip Girl. (I know someone with a minor role.) I don't think its appeal is much different from that of Dynasty, Dallas, Falcon's Crest, etc.: Lookit! Rich folks! Behaving outrageously! The bloggy conceit doesn't seem to operate in a manner so far away from a biting aside from Erica Kane or a spiteful phone call from Alexis Carrington.
And craquelure is an awesome word.
Next I expect the powers that be to discover that kids 'text message.' And that 'Google' can be used as a verb meaning to search for information quickly on the 'internet.'
You know, I just don't mind not knowing what's on tv at all, really.
All how-to books I've ever read about oil painting seem to suggest that if you don't do things absolutely properly (and use very pricey foundational elements), you'll see craquelure, if not horking great cracks, within like five years. I'm starting to suspect that they're trying to sell me rabbit skin glue.
Oh, and "troll" as an analytic sociological tool is very good.
17: the one and only oil painting I've ever done is almost 20 years old and looking fine, so yes, they probably are.
18: Oh, I own one. But we seem to have gotten into the habit of only using it to watch videos. Too cheap to pay for cable --> crappy reception + heavy internet use = no clue.
17: Yeah, some of those old masterpieces barely lasted 300 years. You'd best be careful.
21: I managed to skip the middle stage. I didn't have a TV all through grad school +. Now anything worth watching on TV is available on DVD or torrents or whatever --- so we just have a really nice big monitor. I don't know if I'll ever own a TV again.
Reading that article hurt. Seriously, learn to have a little margin on the left so I don't have to struggle with monitor's edge!
Yeah, bad layout. Quite badly written, too.
"or to cement a bond with a group who imagines that it will rile others up"
I don't think I understand this. Does "who" reference "group?" If so, how is attempting to "cement a bond" trolling?
"or just to get a little attention"
What else does anybody do in social interaction? It is at least always a minor purpose. I have, in response to such accusations, recently begun commenting with the goal of losing credibility and so become the ignored, but it is very challenging.
17 was good. I tried something similar with my movie reviews. The Ghost Rider was way cool.
Quite badly written, too.
Did you think so you soulless academic drone? "Waxing specific" was good. But I'm inclined to read Clover with a charitable eye, because I really like his poetry.
No, you're gay! No takebacks!
My favorite part about the whole w00t debacle is the declaration that l33t is "an esoteric computer hacker language." ROFL.
Runner-up: "facebook" (v.) is their runner-up.
Part of me is horrified by the trainwreck of cultures necessary for this kind of misunderstanding (seriously: word of the year?) to occur, which is worse because it really doesn't matter. The rest of me thinks it's hilarious, because it really doesn't matter.
27: Bob, what I think Ogged is referring to is the following sense of "trolling", which is the earliest use on the 'net that I am familiar with.
The most likely derivation of the word troll can be found in the phrase "trolling for newbies," popularized in the early 1990s in the Usenet group, alt.folklore.urban. Commonly, what is meant is a relatively gentle inside joke by veteran users, presenting questions or topics that had been so overdone that only a new user would respond to them earnestly.
Why can't "quire" ever be the word of the year?
Too bare and ruined.
Did you think so you soulless academic drone?
the perspicacious linking taste
Too bare and ruined.
Oh you clever boy. Would ruinéd have been overdetermined? Or better? Can't decide.
31: nice.
Gossip Girl sounds like a sweet gig for Kristen Bell.
Did you think so you soulless academic drone?
Yes I did you desperate, aimless hip-snapper.
"Ruinéd" isn't how it scans in the original.
Culture is about business, but business is equally about culture. Consumption is driven by commodity *fetishism*, not genuine need for commodities.
Consumption is driven by commodity *fetishism*
What do you mean by fetishism here?
It's the low-hanging kunkelfruit.
37: Really? I mean, anyone's knowledge on this is greater than mine, pretty much, but I feel like I've always heard it read that way. Huh. Go email Da/v/id Be/ving/ton.
Consumption is driven by commodity *fetishism*, not genuine need for commodities.
Believe it, folks. When I roam my warehouse full of pallets of pig iron and gypsum, sometimes it's hard to keep my mind from wicked thoughts. All those ingots just sitting there, all dull-grey and dusty. They know what they're doing to me!
42: I took his class. Very pleasant guy.
Gossip Girl - a friend writes for the show and he was the first in our WB progam to get staffed. While most of us couldn't stand the show (I found the pilot to be very hateful, not getting how popular hate is amongst the tweener set), we knew immediately that he'd just landed a gig for life. With KB as the voice of god, the rich-girl settings and the aspirational sex lives, how could it fail? On my to-do list: create a show which makes me feel dirty (pander to LCD, add moneyed characters + illicit sex), add a soundtrack heavy on sad piano-playing boys from Chicago suburbs singing just out of their range, and wait as the 100th ep and a ticket to syndication rolls in. Of course, that all assumes the strike will end one day.
What about a teen soap set in the elite levels of some sort of eating-disordery sport? UnBalanced Beam, or something. That could get really unpleasant.
Commodity fetishism is a well-established and much studied concept.
Nice, and the v/o is by a character named Ana, who, a la Pushing Daisies, ticks off calories expended and consumed by the leads.
What's weird is that it wasn't until I found the Ana stuff on Cafe Press - which was also with Mia stuff - that I wondered about Me and Mia. I now feel a little idiotic, never having gotten what he was talking about, even though I really like that song and used to RUN TO IT.
51: I have that experience of songs all the time. If you hadn't heard the Ana/Mia stuff before there would be no way to figure it out short of close reading, which is not the same of repeated listening. I was quite pleased with myself for figuring out the Ted Leo. My mother and sister both worked at an eating-disorders clinic and my ex-wife was something of an exercise anorexic in high school and maintained a interest/obsession with it, so I was primed.
Sorry wrong thread.
45: Hey, me, too--a grad class on Medieval Drama.
39, 40, 48: Am I misremembering? Isn't Gonerill actually an expert on Marx? I think he was asking PGD for a more specific formulation of his understanding of Marxian fetishism.
Sorry, didn't mean to assume that Gonerill was a "he." S/b "he or she."
Gonerill is a classificational "he".
I used to think that Gonerill was a woman married to a CT blogger.
I used to think Gonerill was married and had a couple of kids. Then I discovered he's actually a priest.