So I updated a few things in the profile, added a few new blog-follows (run, don't walk, to Hyperbole and a Half . . . and then run over to Hanna Olsen's blog); and I will now try to think of a clever topic with which to re-establish my presence.
I know! I'll launch a new random feature: Essential Vocabulary. Today's list, with hints:
lmgtfy -- If you don't know this word, you could maybe Google it.*
Selon Moi -- You don't know what this means? So, then, why do you subscribe to my blog, again? (Kidding.) (But not really.) Selon moi, anyone who speaks English should know at least some French, as it's responsible for a third of our English vocabulary, and that ain't just on account of the Norman Conquest. (Latin's even better, but I know that's a pipe dream, even for me.) Hey, even if you don't know French, as an English speaker you automatically know at least 15,000 French words. But sadly, that group does not include selon moi, so you might need to resort to lmgtfy.
Descartes -- As in: Descartes walks into a bar. "What'll it be?" says the bartender.
"Hmmm, a gin and tonic, I think," says Descartes.
"You want peanuts with that?" the bartender says.
"Oh, I think not," says Descartes -- and then he disappears.
Grok -- If you grok "grok," then you are probably in a very special category of 7% of Facebook and Twitter users -- in other words, you are 55 or older. Despite all the press about our demographic's being the fastest-growing segment of FB and Twitter users, I found a recent set of pie charts that indicates we are perhaps a much more, um, exclusive club.
Troglodyte -- People who don't grok this word in English might know it by its French name, troglodyte. My friend and favorite voiceover partner Mark Lewis* definitely groks it -- enough to have coined an adjective out of it -- troglodytic -- which he used to describe himself by way of explaining in a Facebook message why he's not on Twitter. I, in turn, apologized for my troglodytic delay in replying to his message, since I log on to Facebook maybe once a month. I do glance at my professional FB page more often, but my personal FB site is kind of like one of those big parties back in high school that I usually avoided, preferring to (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) read Robert Heinlein.
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*Credits: Mark Lewis gave me not just troglodytic but also the Descartes joke. (Thanks, Mark. I just hyperlinked your name to your site to show my gratitude.) And my daughter Whitney (who inherited her snarky genes from me) introduced me rather snarkily to lmgtfy.com. My writing students are indirectly responsible for the facts about English and French vocabulary, since I couldn't help them prep for the vocab part of the SAT without first teaching them Greek and Latin roots, which conferred on me, selon moi, the moral obligation to give them a nutshell history of the English language.
And with that, I am
Yours Snarkily,
Heather
