It turns out that no one likes the word "homosexual" but they okay with "gay." (Hey! It's a chant!) @4:12 PM 14
Elements of Stale, with Luke Mazur: Sister, You're A Poet @12:10 PM
So last Sunday I read an op-ed in the Times, where some dude argues in favor of Catholic priests saying Mass, while facing the direction opposite of the congregation. Now, this op-ed was most wacky to me not because of anything inherently awkward about facing away from the people you're talking to. (But, yes.) Or because Kenneth J. Wolfe assumes that there is very much of a congregation these days not to face. (Ha, I think.) But because I remember learning back in high school that the Catholic Church had already reversed this practice once before. READ MORE 9
Dissing, punting, sussing, gussying, grousing: the Times' associate managing editor for Standards does not approve. @12:50 PM 3
Should We Repeal "No Homo"? @2:40 PM
Negating the negatory: "If the point of 'no homo' is truly, as Weiner argues, to slowly make hip-hop less heteronormative, censoring 'no homo' can only speed up the term's intended progress. Why not encourage rappers to express alternate interpretations of masculinity without an easily deconstructed verbal safety net?" 12
Gay Marriage Trouble: What Do You Call Your Old Name? @2:20 PM
Q. "When two men get married and one takes the other's last name (rather than creating one of those hyphenated thingies), how do you refer to his former last name?" A. "Slave name." 11
Irish Syntacticians Reach Collective Climax Over Van Morrison Profanity @4:23 PM
Yes, finally, someone has dealt with Van Morrison's request to fans that they "Fucking shut the fuck up." The answer begins with this thorny issue: "The main syntactic problem is to determine whether the fuck is being used as an pleonastic (semantically empty) direct object of shut or as a pre-head modifier of the preposition phrase (PP) headed by up." OMG I KNOW. 4
At Least Two 'WaPo' Reporters Don't Actually Understand English @3:20 PM
Writers at the Washington Post, including Hank Stuever, have taken South Carolina governor Mark Sanford to task for his use of language in yesterday's HIGHLY ENTERTAINING and totally wacko press conference. They wrote: "Note all the passive constructions, the avoidance of first person." Actually, this is wildly inaccurate on both counts, writes Mark Liberman: "I count 180 tensed verbs, of which I can find only four instances of grammatical passive voice." Oh it goes on! I would get all up in this but I didn't go to no college and I'm not very good on parts of speech. 6
The Invention of 'Ms.': 1901!? @1:54 PM
"Every one has been put in an embarrassing position by ignorance of the status of some woman." —the Springfield (Mass.) Sunday Republican of November 10, 1901. 5
Persian For Beginners @11:15 AM
Google now offers a Persian option on its Translate page to help you better keep up with the fast-moving events in Iran. I just tried it, and while it is somewhat rudimentary, it translated the first Twitter message I found—"متشکرم اندرو سالیوان برای عط سبز "Ùˆ وبلاگ شما—as "I was not going to protest until I saw that Andrew Sullivan turned his blog green in solidarity," which seems about right. 8

















