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(Sigh) I suppose it was inevitable…

From the Fort Wayne Journal: Like, totally

Two decades after the song “Valley Girl” popularized it, a fresh effort is afoot to stamp out this linguistic quirk. The generation that grew up saying “like” is hitting adulthood – and the workforce. As a result, it is now in the lexicon of investment bankers, doctors and even teachers, where it can sound especially jarring. “I’m sure I say, ‘like’ a lot,” says Liza Sutherland, 28, a sixth-grade humanities teacher in New York. “I don’t worry so much about how my students speak.”

Like a verbal virus, this usage is also increasingly spreading to other English-speaking countries. British and Canadian kids now grease their sentences with the word. Sali Tagliamonte, professor of linguistics at the University of Toronto who has researched the speech of the elderly in the United Kingdom, found that they, too, have a surprising fondness for “like.” “If I showed you a written document of the conversation, you would think they were young women in North America, not 78-year-old ladies from Scotland,” she says.

[…]

Linguists say “like” has a growing number of meanings. It can act as a “hedge,” to tell the listener that what is being said is an approximation or an exaggeration. (Example: “She has, like, a gazillion shoes.”) It can also be a “focuser,” to declare that the next bit of information is important. (“He is, like, so hot.”) One of its most ubiquitous uses is as a substitute for “said.” (“So my mom was like, ‘Do your homework.’ And then I was like, ‘I did it at school.'”)

[…]

Defenders of the practice argue that these usages are just a natural evolution of the English language. Indeed, even some linguists say the word can be downright useful. When dropped into the middle of a sentence, for example, it gives the speaker time to gather his thoughts so he doesn’t say the first (sometimes insipid) thing that comes to mind. Studies also show that people who have learned not to use filler words are interrupted more often, and tend to use simpler sentences.

“It really is a wonderful, useful word,” says Muffy E.A. Siegel, an associate professor of English at Temple University in Philadelphia, who has studied the use of “like.”

Personally, this drives me up the ever-loving wall — and, of course, it’s even worse when I catch myself doing it!

Aah, the times they are a-changin’.

iTunes: “Innocent Children” by Crack Machine from the album Freak Accident (1994, 3:56).

Everyone else is convinced it’s a hoax, but just for fun, I think I’ll enjoy playing with the idea that this pickled dragon could be real.

A pickled “dragon” that looks as if it might once have flown around Harry Potter’s Hogwarts has been found in a garage in Oxfordshire, England.

The baby dragon, in a sealed jar, was discovered with a metal tin containing paperwork in old-fashioned German of the 1890s.

Allistair Mitchell, who was asked to investigate the dragon by a friend, David Hart, who discovered it in his garage, speculates that German scientists may have attempted to use the dragon to hoax their English counterparts at the end of the 19th century, when rivalry between the countries was intense.

Hoax, shmoax. I can believe in dragons if I want to!

Besides — living as close to Capitol Hill as I do, believing in fairies is easy enough. Why not dragons too? ;)

(via BoingBoing)

iTunes: “Another Samba” by Ugly Duckling from the album Journey to Anywhere (2002, 4:01).

Something for a list of places to go should I ever visit Los Angeles: the brand spanking (ahem) new sex museum.

One look at Hollywood’s newest tourist attraction and it’s easy to mistake it for any number of adult shops along the popular Walk of Fame.

The nude pictures, sex toys and stag films aren’t meant to arouse but to edify. This is, after all, the Erotic Museum, which pays tribute to all things sexual, from the tame to the tawdry.

It chronicles sex through the ages with nude abstracts by Pablo Picasso, erotic jade figurines from ancient China, vintage sex toys and sultry computer-animated dancers.

For nearly \$13 for the price of admission, visitors can touch rubber toys or peruse patent applications for various oddball erotic inventions such as a diagram of a newfangled “female security device.” No one under 18 is admitted.

(via Prairie)

iTunes: “Dirty Epic” by Underworld from the album Dubnobasswithmyheadman (1994, 9:55).

Eeeewwwww.

LAST February, Morgan Spurlock decided to become a gastronomical guinea pig.

His mission: To eat three meals a day for 30 days at McDonald’s and document the impact on his health.

Scores of cheeseburgers, hundreds of fries and dozens of chocolate shakes later, the formerly strapping 6-foot-2 New Yorker – who started out at a healthy 185 pounds – had packed on 25 pounds.

But his supersized shape was the least of his problems.

Within a few days of beginning his drive-through diet, Spurlock, 33, was vomiting out the window of his car, and doctors who examined him were shocked at how rapidly Spurlock’s entire body deteriorated.

His liver became toxic, his cholesterol shot up from a low 165 to 230, his libido flagged and he suffered headaches and depression.

Over the course of the [month], Spurlock [was] regularly examined by a gastroenterologist, a cardiologist and SoHo-based general practitioner Dr. Daryl Isaacs.

“He was an extremely healthy person who got very sick eating this McDonald’s diet,” Dr. Isaacs told The Post.

“None of us imagined he could deteriorate this badly – he looked terrible. The liver test was the most shocking thing – it became very, very abnormal.”

Spurlock, who says he ate at McDonald’s only sporadically before his total immersion in the Mickey D’s menu, says he even began craving fat and sugar fixes between meals.

“I got desperately ill,” he says. \”My face was splotchy and I had this huge gut, which I’ve never had in my life.

“My knees started to hurt from the extra weight coming on so quickly. It was amazing – and really frightening.”

Just disturbing.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a sudden craving for a Double Quarter-Pounder with Cheese. ;)

(via Kottke)

iTunes: “Get Off My Land” by Operatica from the album O Vol. 1 (2000, 5:05).