Pop Cesspool

LEXICOGRAPHY: 'ADVENCHORE'

If your vacation is based on some sort of volunteering that involves an activity which is otherwise generally optional for the local people, then you're probably on an advenchore. Going to Haiti to help after the earthquake would not meet the definition. That's not really an advenchore; you're providing a critical service in a time of profound need. Flying to Africa to help a relatively stable and prosperous village paint a community center? That's probably an advenchore.

LEXICOGRAPHY: RAKIM EDITION

"Don't sweat the technique," Rakim urged, and logic tells us that he was speaking to "technique sweaters" everywhere. But neither The God Himself nor his acolytes were inspired to disseminate such an epithet, most likely because the imperative "don't sweat the technique" is suitably forceful and succinct on its own; flipping it into a nominative was wholly unnecessary. But its intellectual heft, nonetheless, is greater than the non-Rakim-inspired "player haters," which has become an idiomatic scourge in the interim. Of course, the phrase "technique sweaters" also has insurmountable semantic and lexicographical weaknesses. This cannot be refuted. The proposition, then: Claim the hate and keep the technique. Call your enemies "technique haters," for Rakim has earned this from you.

I'M CRANKY TODAY

If you're speaking in a relatively formal or professional setting to a group of people (or you're talking to somebody about his or her colleagues or associates), please don't refer to the group as "you guys," especially if there are females in the mix. It makes you sound clumsy and lazy.

But if you casually use "dude" in a gender-neutral way, I'm fine with that.

WRONG: "Do you guys think you'll be done picking a new pope today?" or "What are you guys doing about that genocide thing?"

RIGHT: "Dude, did you get an epidural when you were in labor?" or "Dude, your boobs are awesome."

POP CESSPOOL: REFRESHING YER LEXICOGRAPHY SINCE 2001 (OR 1993, IF YOU WANT TO BE A FANBOY ABOUT IT)

Shit ain't the bomb or the jam or the shit or the nuts anymore. It's the robot:

"Man, that chowder was the robot."

Robots are awesome.