originally published August 16, 2013 “Ye highlands and ye Lowlands, Oh, where hae ye been? They hae slain the Earl o’ Moray And Lady Mondegreen.” According to writer Sylvia Wright in a 1954 Harper’s Magazine essay, this was how she’d heard the first stanza of “The Bonny Earl O’ Moray”, a 17th-centuy ballad. The actual […]

originally published April 29, 2013 I’ll admit it. There are some days when I feel like posting a photograph and saying, “Look, there’s my thousand words. I’m done.” 485 days in a row of poking into some topic or spewing out some schtick can make a guy want a break. But sometimes it’s the words […]

originally published April 22, 2013 As a Canadian, I find myself uncomfortably headlocked between the sweaty bicep of American hegemony and the sturdy torso of my nation’s British roots. I share familial roots in both countries, though should the Revolutionary War once again rear its violent, musket-y head, my loyalty would fall immediately to Sweden. […]

originally published March 30, 2013 A warning to my more sensitive readers: today’s piece will be filled with some of the most vile, hateful, antagonistic writing my tap-dancing fingers have ever spewed. And none of it will be my fault. As a sensitive and kind-hearted soul (or so I tell the ladies), I try not […]

originally published March 19, 2013 As a full-time juggler, manhandler, and crass exploiter of words, I sense a giddy little lightning shiver of excitement when a linguistic topic floats to the top of the chum-pile for selection in my daily tithe. I’ve marveled at some of our most recent additions to the western lexicon, today […]

originally published February 6, 2013 As a writer, I have learned to love words. Specifically, I have learned to make sweet, sweet love to them in kinky and unfathomable ways that would make the Internet itself shut down and tell to join a support group. So when language straps on some weirdness of its own, […]