May I have your attention, please? Do you remember the last time you were asked politely to attend? It was probably that tinny public transit route change announcement that became gibberish as soon as you paused your podcast. The majority of appeals to your senses are much more forceful. White-hot numbers in blood-red bubbles cry for your eyes. All-caps headlines wax both apocalyptic and cryptic, slurping up your mind with a question it can't answer. Never mind that rattlesna
"Basic," adj. 1. "Used to describe someone devoid of defining characteristics that might make a person interesting, extraordinary, or just simply worth devoting time or attention to." - Urban Dictionary Some time around 2009, the word "basic" emerged from the bowels of internet exchange. According to this piece in The American Reader, the term first flourished among young women and gay men. As insults go, "basic" usually genders feminine very often pairs with the word "bitch,
Having just wandered through some species of reality, we find ourselves in reality TV. The Bachelor has wrapped up its twenty-first season since its premier in 2002, elevating it to the #1 trending topic on Twitter as it aired. We know a bachelor is "an unmarried man," who lives in a pad that will one day be nostalgically conjured into a man-cave after marriage, which he celebrated with an epic bachelor party. Bro. We are perhaps less commonly aware of the title's fittingly p
Welcome to our first Wander. We begin and end with a word in common English use today to address a simple question: "What are we saying?" The paths from here to there are less formalized and certainly less responsible. Some helpful guidelines can be found here. 2017 is already a banner year for the word “fact.” Before Kellyanne Conway pulled back the curtain on the “alternative”—and always more politically viable—version of the term, we had this comfortable understanding: “a