Our hopeless, Affleck-ted species

I'm not saying that signing a petition to prevent Ben Affleck from portraying Batman is the best way to prove our species is undeserving of our intellect and ostensible role as dominant on the planet, but it probably does a pretty good job of suggesting it.

Come on, nerds--this is why you have blogs.

p.s. Youngsters:  It didn't work against Michael Keaton 24 years ago either.

A message for the future: Unique

A note to my children in the future: This may be difficult to believe with how language is by the time you read this, but there was a time when "unique" meant "one of a kind." One of your grandfather's pet peeves about contemporary English usage (of which there were many) was when people would preface that term with a modifier (for example: "the most unique") to suggest a spectrum along which something could be varying degrees of being one of a kind.

Obviously this usage stemmed from the application (some would say misapplication) of "unique" as a euphemism for "unusual" or "distinctive" or "uncommon" (or other such adjectives) where there is more of an implicit possibility of relative status where modifiers could be applicable, unlike the binary status the traditional definition of "unique" held.

Homophone trifecta

If there were a sous chef named Sue who was Sioux that would hit the homophone trifecta. But if Sue got sued that would be too much.

And if Sue were a male it would be mostly a Johnny Cash song.

(Surely this is sui generis. No other species must have such thoughts.)