Banish This, Asshole

Friends,

Lake Superior State University has made a list of words are phrases that should be banished from "The Queen's" English because of over-, mis-, and wrong-usage. Here they are:

• perfect storm
• Webinar
• waterboarding
• organic
• wordsmith/wordsmithing
• author/authored
• post 9/11
• surge
• give back
• `blank’ is the new `blank’
• Black Friday
• back in the day
• random• sweet
• decimate
• emotional
• pop
• It is what it is
• under the bus

This Lake Superior State College, which is in the Ivy League I believe, has been making this list since 1976. Here's the list of all the words this place has deemed unfit for use...though many of them seem to be phrases or acronyms.

The list seems innocent enough, no big deal, and I was going to ask that if you had the power to banish phrases, as apparently the Lake Superior State College does (the O.E.D. is published there right?). But, then I found two things. First, they more or less admit that this is just a publicity stunt, which is a little refreshing, but I'd still like to pretend they were doing it for some kind of Aryaning of the English language, to keep it beautiful and whatnot. And I'm okay with that kind of language elitism because some people like to think that way...usually the same people who really think it's important that fifth graders know how to circle a gerund in a textbook (didn't Lake Superior State College pioneer that research?).

But then, on their 1999 Banished List, they had this nugget:

Verbing Of Innocent Nouns - LSSU received many nominations from folks who are disappointed with what seems to be a trend of turning perfectly good nouns into verbs. Some examples include: ‘to office’ -- describing the activity of running an office. Sent in through the Internet by Russell King, who notes, "Someone needs to suffer for it!" ‘to dialogue’ -- "It's not a verb! It makes me want to go home and monologue." Marion Boyer, Sault Ste. Marie, Mich. ‘to conference’ -- "'I am conferencing with her tomorrow'...What's wrong with I am going to have a conference with her?'" Karen Cheadle, English teacher, Dansville H.S., Dansville, Mich. ‘to mentor’ -- Instead of being a mentor, now folks talk about ‘mentoring' someone. "Another infamous noun turned verb by creative (lazy) users of English." Hugh Valiant, Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.

So, I can't make whatever nouns I want into verbs? So that means my quest for "to cunt" to be a verbal is bad form, and has been bad form for 9 years now? And, does that mean "to jorge" will never mean "to become nude" and "to tequila" will never mean to "to become nude whilst drunk?" What kind of horseshit, anti-language evolution baloney is that. Yeah, this list is horseshitting me. You should be able to make whatever noun you want into a verb...and they should call that action verbing. And, I think it is our constitutional right to verb whatever noun we want to verb. We can verb chair, beret, seashell or canister. No hoity toity school from the eastern part of Michigan's Upper Peninsula can tell me any different.

So screw off, Lake Superior State College. Why don't you go out to the shoreline and peninsula yourself good and hard.

Viva El Mustache!