100% Pure Whoop Ass

My younger brother once wore to high school a shirt that said “Chubby’s Footlongs” that featured an image of a hot dog. The English teacher reported him to the principal, and he was told to turn the shirt inside out, because it supposedly was vulgar. I thought that was ridiculous, and I berated the teacher,Continue

We Had Ought To Do Better

When I think of Dr. Angie L. Carter, I think that we can do better. I think that we had ought to do better. Ought, it just so happens, is one of my favorite English words; not that I use it the most often, rather I think that it is the most humanistic of allContinue

In My Family’s Words

Everybody has a way of speaking called an idiolect (idio = “one’s own” + lect = a variety of language), and every family has an ecolect. My family certainly had its own ways of speaking. If you eavesdrop on one of my mom’s conversations, you’ll hear her recall conversations by saying, “Then I says toContinue

The Amazing Darwin Lineage

Much has been written about Charles Darwin and his family. It is my intention here to not write extensive biographies of the Darwin line; rather, I wish to leave out many of the details to provide the gist of Darwin’s highly successful forefathers and progeny over a few generations, in a very condensed manner. IContinue

Hope: A Poem

I searched and I searched, but I did not find. I tried and I tried, I swear that I tried. I almost gave up hope. O, I tried to stop caring. But my hopes would not stop, and I keep holding on. I am incredibly weak, but something holds strong in my soul, in myContinue

On English As An Official Language

In the biography section on my Twitter account, I declare myself an iconoclast. When I typed that word on my Twitter, I meant it in first sense given on Dictionary.com: a person who attacks cherished beliefs, institutions, etc., as being based on error or superstition. Aside from destroying a wooden Christian Nativity display at aContinue

Metaphors, Polysemy, & Onomatopoeia

Browsing a local store, I overheard the bagger, a teenage boy, complaining about his English course assignment. He took another customer’s bags to her car as I was checking out. “What was he talking about?” I inquired of the cashier. The cashier informed me that he was talking about a book assignment, but when IContinue