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Banished Words of the Future: A Black Balloon "Curation"

January 16, 2012

Trickeration. Blowback. Ginormous. Lest you think I'm coming up with Huffington Post headline ideas, these are just three of the dozen words added to this year's list of banished vocabulary. Diction has been a hot topic here of late: last week, James R. offered his thoughts on banishing, or at least curbing, our use of the word "literally."

Like Literally: Rethinking the World’s Worst Contranym

By James Rickman

January 11, 2012

What follows is not an attempt at grammar Nazism, even though the first thing that pops up when you google the word “literally” is a definition that includes the words “not literally.”

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Eat Prey Drug: Summerland

Escaping a catastrophic blizzard to take peyote in the Arizona desert, Paul Kwiatkowski concludes his investigation into alternate perceptions of consciousness.

The Biggest Little-Known Influence on H. P. Lovecraft

M. R. James was an English author, scholar and inspiration to Lovecraft, though the world may have forgotten it.

The Sun Don't Shine on a Moonshine Still

Get a bleary-eyed view of moonshining from a modern day bootlegger.