words

• Postmodernism annoys me. Just one example: the "smirking forceps of quotation marks." "Smirking forceps" is a better descriptor than "scare quotes." If anyone was ever scared off by punctuation, it wasn't a postmodern. Postmoderns are in love with them. After all, there's no better way to indicate sophistication than to smirk.
• Contronyms, words that are their own antonym, amuse me (e.g. "strike" means hit, except in baseball, where it's a miss).
• Technological neologorrhia annoys me. Neologorrhia is my neologism for the flood of new words that seems always to accompany new technology. "Neologorrhia" doesn't count, because (1) I invented it and (2) it's postmodern neologorrhia, not technological neologorrhia. It'd be hypocritical of me to complain about that, after trademarking postculturalism in my last post. Or would that be just appropriately postmodern enough?