• I only play the “Mother! … You Bitch!” drinking game with barbicide.

• No, androids do not need haircuts and you’re stupid for asking.

• [Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiisssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss.]

1/23/12 5:46 PM (5 hours ago) - secondary number called: (XXX) 251-9000

Two putt. It’s Daltry. Call me back immediately. Yeah, I’m still looking highway right now that I mean tell you what’s up and down. Oh snap. If I didn’t pleasure pig horseshoe crab then I thirsty Wednesday. Double trouble. Anyway, hope to bend it oblong and take it power load. Hillary pissed. All case, but what I know. Shoot me back.

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Grandpa (773) 324-2189

1/23/12 2:13 PM (8 hours ago) - secondary number called: (XXX) 251-9000

Yes. Hey, He He, hey later bye hey hello hello hello hello. So I was beautiful. But. Hello. Hello. Hello. I’d. I’ll talk to both that we’re going. Call first, but hopeful for movers around. Hello. Hey this is all of this. Is this is hello hello hello call. Although see, well for you. Hope to hear from you soon bye bye is what’s about to do. No is August 1st, but quick that were Auto Center dot had a really interesting 3 program hot dogs like voice, hey, obviously. This is an important role of yo. Hey, what’s up. Hello. This is Pate, this is about your no one thought alone Yeah, I think I was just calling to say hello. Hey, Where, bye. God What all okay bye and I think this is, Hello yeah peace. Yes, Yes. Hey, ohh bye shh. 3. Hello. But bye. Hello. Bye. Hello. Hello. Yeah, Yeah. Rick, Hey, bye hey hey. Hello.

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In advance of our show, I often pre-interview guests. When I called Peter Tuesday afternoon, a funny thing happened. He answered his phone very quietly and whispered, “Hey. I need to run into another room. Is that okay?” I said sure and he tenderly set down the phone, popping back up on the line a few seconds later in a loud, peppy voice. Curious, I asked about the instantaneous volume shift. He laughed. Lexicographers kind of work like monks, he later told me. Their work environment is open (kind of like a newsroom), but there’s virtually no talking whatsoever. Mirriam-Webster (which operates out of Springfield) used to even have a formalized no talking rule, rendering sticky notes (and e-mail) the sole medium of communication among lexicographers. Today, Peter says that’s relaxed a bit. Folks talk. But still not very much. Most lexicographers are silent, studious people. They love reading and charting how people use words.

And that’s basically how a word gets into a dictionary. Lexicographers read a lot and track every new word they encounter. The process is involved, and can include thousands of citations of words and the context and publication in which the word appeared. Once a word attains a critical mass (enough citations among a wide-enough array of sources), it gets added into the dictionary. There’s no academy. No committees. There’s absolutely no lobbying.

Peter explains the process on the M-W site.

If you have time, check out the show. Peter was really great. We also spoke with Erin McKean from Wornik and Jonathon Keats, an artist/columnist for Wired (and one of my favorite recurring CMS guests.)

Also, to my friends in retail. Be sure to look up a word before plastering it all over your store, okay?

Having found a way to communicate with humans, lint brushes rejoice. It turns out lint brushes love talking about all manner of things (the intricacies of lint removal being a subject lint brushes attempt to avoid – in recognition of the fact that a lint brush talking about removing lint is, after all … boring as lint.)

You’re an inquisitive young fellow, so you ask your lint brush the two obvious questions.* Then, finding yourself at a momentary loss for further conversational topics, you pause, wondering what to say next …

Which brings us to our question, Internet. What else would you hope your lint brush could talk about?

*The two obvious questions being: (1) “How are you talking to me?” (Answer: Magic elf space dust.)  (2) “What’s it like to remove lint all day?” (Answer: Bothersome to my allergies, actually.)

Located within walking distance of West Hartford Center and Blueback Square. Head down, go clubbin’ or sign up for some intense yoga and master the pincha mayurasana. (Fcuk yea fitness!!1)

What’s the house got? We got so much #$%^&^% stuff. We got a porch. BOOM. And another porch. DOUBLE BOOM. (Two porches omg!!1) We got that hardwood flooring and a mother $%$^&*! dishwasher. (say whaaat?!) We also got a garage and a working fireplace (romantic as fcuk!!!1) Pets? Word. Up. I accept and love all creatures (platonic love only lol!!1)

Like to smoke a fatty? Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn. Just keep that @#&! outta my house because I am a non-smoker and I’m looking for other non-smokers.

Shh!!! Don’t yell! Diz hood is sublimely quiet and safe. Wanna call your ex-girlfriend at 1 a.m. and blubber about how she needs to take you back? YOU A CHUMP. But make the call outside becuz on deez late-night streets, you ain’t gonna get got.

Here’s THE DEAL: My ideal roommate is quiet, courteous, relatively neat and pays bills on time. You gotta be employed full-time and/or gettin’ yo learn on as a full-time student. Even though our rent is CHEAP I ain’t taking no freeloaders, son.

Yea. I sed the rent is cheap. Like reeeal mutha$#%^&* cheap …

$650 per month + utilities/heat/cable/Internet (omg!11 whaaaaaaat!!!!!)

Our landlord is chill as fcuk, but he keeps it on DA REAL and requires a $650 security deposit and one month’s rent up front. (You a BALLA … so that ain’t no thang.)

Wuut?!?! U wanna move in RIGHT NOW?! I’m flattered. But hold up, son. This sparkling room aint’t available until Jan 1. (Earlier is negotiable.*)

I’m looking for purposeful moments where you are en route to something, but not there quite yet. These can be simple things like riding an airplane or mundane tasks like tuning your instrument or sharpening a pencil. Really any moment where you are occupying physical space or performing a task not defined properly as a “place,” or a “task.” Still, you gain satisfaction from being in that moment. Perhaps your favorite in-betweens are more sentimental … walking hand-in-hand with a good date from a restaurant to her car or hugging an old friend in their doorway after seeing them for the first time in years. This information isn’t particularly for anything. I’m just curious. I happened to be on an escalator today and realized I (genuinely, really do) get some satisfaction out of that “in-between.” What are some of your favorites?

While you’re out there today, be sure to hug someone, alright?

‘Love & Theft’ by Andreas Hykade

• DFW’s genius was how he viewed the world. On our best days, we all think like DFW did. It’s just that we can’t articulate our vision of the world as eloquently as he was able to do time and time again. DFW observed things about cruise ships, tennis and lobsters that all of us have thought, but could never say so completely and so well. And that’s DFW’s universal appeal – his ability to paint a clear vision of the world that is simultaneously articulate and remarkably accessible.
• DFW’s experience with 12 step programs informed his populist streak. Maria Bustillos (who is incredible, by the way) explained this to me today. DFW struggled with addiction and depression his entire life. The idea of someone as brilliant as DFW turning to someone like John Bradshaw for life’s eternal truths seems really surprising. But as Bustillos explained, Bradshaw was all the rage in AA circles at the time. Bradshaw’s The Family along with books like Alice Miller’s Drama of the Gifted Child really “nailed and revealed” DFW to himself. They helped form his very raw way of writing, but more importantly they influenced DFW’s ability to write about issues at the forefront of the average person’s mind. DFW was a heady academic, but he had an uncanny ability to write about very grounded and real themes.
• DFW draws in so many young readers because he is so not a canon writer. I guess this is obvious, but high school and college students are forced to swim in the canon of the “classics” for their entire lives. Teachers make them read scholars and intellectuals who proudly bear those labels.  DFW was both a scholar and an intellectual, but I think they were labels he largely shrugged and categories his writing refused to adhere to. Both DFW’s fiction and his nonfiction constantly worked to make itself as “uncanon” as possible. And that rebellious streak is very appealing to young readers. Heck, it’s appealing to journalists too.
• DFW didn’t influence how we speak online. Again, I side with Bustillos here. While it is true people write and speak online today in a lot of the ways that DFW wrote and spoke, that’s not because DFW’s writing was so influential that it established some kind of hard-to-define “voice of the Internet.” It’s because, today, a lot of “every mans” are writing on the Internet and it just so happens that DFW wrote and spoke like an “every man.” A hyper-intelligent and remarkably articulate “every man,” but an “every man” just the same. The voice of the Internet is diverse – shaped as much by the medium in which people are writing (Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc.)  as it is in the writers who have influenced the styles of its authors. To pin that much influence on the shoulders of one man is a bit of an overreach.