Past invitations have been sent to environmentally-oriented illustrators, to entrepreneurial conservation artists, to sandplay free spirits, to wildlife management scientists, and to food prodigies; but not enough attention has been paid, in our invitations, to word specialists. So, moving right along, Kathryn please be our guest. We would love to host you here and/or here and/or here.

We have not read the book in the link above, nor even a review of the book, but we are linking to its homepage because there you will find not only information about her book but also links to the two TED talks given by the author, whose profession is listed as Wrongologist. Catchy titles are not what catch us. Scintillating writing on the meaning of words does. For that, you could not do much better than starting here, which will also justify our invitation, as wordplay appreciators, to one of the best:

What Part of “No, Totally” Don’t You Understand?

BY KATHRYN SCHULZ

Not long ago, I walked into a friend’s kitchen and found her opening one of those evil, impossible-to-breach plastic blister packages with a can opener. This worked, and struck me as brilliant, but I mention it only to illustrate a characteristic that I admire in our species: given almost any entity, we will find a way to use it for something other than its intended purpose. We commandeer cafeteria trays to go sledding, “The Power Broker” to prop open the door, the Internet to look at kittens. We do this with words as well—time was, spam was just Spam—but, lately, we have gone in for a particularly dramatic appropriation. In certain situations, it seems, we have started using “no” to mean “yes.”

Here’s Lena Dunham demonstrating this development, during a conversation with the comedian Marc Maron on his podcast “WTF.” The two are talking about people who reflexively disparage modern art: Continue reading →