"Snark" Gene Not Recessive

I was just reminded that the hat is not all I got from mom. I received a wonderful email from her today, in which (among other things) she said she just had to tell me about the most recent time she wished I still lived at home. She was reading an article in the San Jose Mercury News with delighted disgust at the degeneration of television and society -- the article was covering Hugh Hefner's new reality series. My mom did a double-take when, toward the end of the article, one of Hef's 3 live-in girlfriends, "well-educated Bridget Marquardt, 31, who is working on a second master's, in broadcast journalism," is quoted as saying: "I think there's two main adjectives people think when they see us: bimbo and slut."

Although people say that nobody ever misunderstands you like your family, I think this amply illustrates that sometimes nobody really relates to what makes you tick in the same way family can. I know that whenever there are typos or catachresis in the paper, my family fondly thinks of me. My mom wants to know whether Lynn Elber, who wrote the piece, deliberately included the quote in order to illuminate the fact that the best-educated of Hef's current girlfriends seems to be confused about the difference between an adjective and a noun. Marquardt probably just remembered that in elementary school she was told that adjectives are "describing words." Although "bimbo" and "slut" are not adjectives, they are words we use primarily to describe, so I guess we can all try to sympathize with the misunderstanding.

Oh, and in cleaning my apartment recently, I found some pages from an old "Word A Day" calendar that I had saved, and "catachresis" was one of them. I stuck it to the fridge to remind myself to give it some exercise -- and so soon there has been an opportunity!