I'd love to meet the dude who posted this.

I'm surprised "required" is correct and "access" is not. Weird.

Even more proof . . .

That made up or misspelled baby names are bad ideas.

Semicolons on the subway

A story from this winter about my least favorite punctuation mark making an appearance . . . and it's actually used correctly.

Yay for new words!

hyperwhite adj. Relating to speech and dress patterns devoid of non-white influences, particularly among nerds. Also: hyper-white.—hyperwhiteness n.

junior moment n. A momentary lapse into immaturity; nervousness or folly caused by youth or inexperience.

plutoid (PLOO.toyd) n. A celestial body that orbits the Sun, has a roughly spherical shape, is farther away from the Sun than Neptune, and shares its orbit with other objects.

tweetup n. A real world meeting between two or more people who know each other through the online Twitter service.

cowpooling pp. Purchasing a whole cow or side of beef from a local farmer and sharing the cost among multiple families. [Blend of cow and carpooling.]

CGI fatigue n. Feelings of boredom and frustration caused by viewing movies that use excessive or inferior digital special effects.

BlackBerry prayer n. The head-down, slightly hunched position that is characteristic of a person using a BlackBerry or similar device.

staycation n. A stay-at-home vacation. Also: stay-cation.

Yay for WordSpy!

Ambi-what-now?

Reader question: If you can be AMBIVALENT, does that mean you can be BIVALENT?

Hoyden answer: Uh, no.

Reader question the second: Why the hell not?

Hoyden answer: Because the prefix of the word is AMBI, which means "both" in Latin. AMBI-VALENT means you could go either way. AMBI-DEXTROUS means you have dexterity in both hands. AMBI's Greek counterpart is AMPHO. So an amphibian is an animal that can live in both land and water. Get it?

Reader question: Oh. So does that mean I can be valent?

Hoyden (sighing) answer: I suppose technically you could, but no one would know what you're talking about.

Wibbly-Wobbly

This is my new favorite stupid word of the week. I've been using it to describe things. I need to stop. In case you're not familiar with Stranger Than Fiction, "wibbly-wobbly" plays a prominent role in one of the phantom narrator's more hilarious lines about a government mental wellness professional:

Why was Harold talking to this man? This man... was an idiot;

this man used words like "wibbly-wobbly" and "convo,"

and explained that trees were trees. Of course trees were trees;

Harold knew that trees were trees.

Dumb as wibbly-wobbly may be, it works rather well for certain descriptive instances. My apologies to Kay Eiffel and Harold Crick both.

More from the bad-talking cats

This might just look funny, but I'm interpreting this as a harsh criticism of this type of overstimulating children's toys and the long-term damage they have on attention span, memory, and learning ability.

What kind of experience is that?

On the local morning news a few days ago, the new (blonde) anchor was discussing our state's candidates for U.S. senate. She informed the viewers that one of the candidates had given a speech where he "tooted" his experience. At first I thought she meant "touted," but I could be wrong. I mean, if the dude is looking for attention, tooting your experience is one way to get it.

Oh, stop the smiling!

This one is just making me crinkle my nose because it's adorable . . . and crazy too. Nothing in this is wrong, per se. It's just . . . well, look at it!

Raving reviews

So this week I've received 2 e-mails talking about the raving reviews a movie has received. Um, isn't it supposed to be RAVE review? Raving is a word that's usually used to describe lunatics, if I'm not mistaken.

Maybe I'm just being a raving harpy. Or a rave harpy?