WRONG.

ewww.

I enjoy:
orb

However, it was 1950s American culture that gave us the “panty raid”.

Weird.

‘moist goiter boil ointment’. The name of my new favorite english punk band

Sarah Neptune: Moist Fist, in the context of just sounding disturbing without necessarily evoking a disturbing image, like… say… Throbbing Gristle, is hard to beat. Please provide examples if you’ve got better.

My nomination: jejune. I find this word lacking.

It hadn’t previously occured to me that I do actually dislike “slacks” – not just slacks, but “slacks” (almost as bad as “khakis”). Which is somewhat odd because I do like the word “slack” in contexts such as “slacking off”, or just “there’s about a foot of slack in the rope”.

Moist handshake . . .

Ha! I blush to recall…

This list is suspiciously puritan…

Hmm. Maybe this is a locality/accent thing, but I say the l in salve about the same amount (with a little different colouring) as I say it in balm.

Is balm not another word with a silent l? Or do you actually not pronounce the l in salve, at all?

(Doing my best not to use quotation marks as word-as-word signifier.)

While I don’t consider myself a grammar nut, I absolutely cringe when I hear people end thoughts with, “.. and stuff like that.”

It makes otherwise smart sounding people sound dumb as dirt. Dumb as dry dirt.

Maybe not the word itself, but how it’s used, I hate.

And.. “Express / Feelings”

When an art teacher (with the best possible intentions) asks kids to “just express yourselves” or explains that art is about “expressing your feelings”, they immediately close off art to a majority of children. Not only because “feelings” and expressing them is a somewhat wishy-washy concept for most kids, but also because kids don’t really know what expression is (beyond the wishy washy bit). It’s like they haven’t separated their feelings from themselves yet, so they can’t see them as an observable thing (my vague theory).

I was always creative. I went to two art schools, released music, worked as a web/graphic designer for years, studied classical animation and am now studying computer animation.. and I can honestly say, I didn’t understand “express yourself” until years later (like only a couple of years ago).

I found out that taking the ideas inside your head, and making them concrete outside your head was “expressing yourself” (or a substantial part of it, anyway). And that drawing an aggressive, metaller picture, or an exciting action picture (or some emo/goth dark side thing) was a part of “expressing your feelings” too. Of course there are far more nuanced and accurate definitions of “expression”, but most kids don’t get that.

Art teachers would be two steps ahead if they laid off using that whole express/feelings angle, and just said, “draw whatever you want” or “imagine X, now draw it how you imagine it” (again, I know art teaching is far more nuanced than how I’m portraying it, but this is my rant, dammit!)

/Rant

Oh totally. I would normally say ass or arse in an everyday setting, and bum in a friendly/jokey/personal way.

Bum was really just an example of why butt is a crap word.

(Don’t know if I have the hang of the italics word-as-word thing yet..)