Guest Blogger - Clark Brooks

As you may or may not know, I co-write a fabulous hilarious splendiferous fictional blog called The Unbelievables - in this effort I am aided and abetted by two scoundrels, one named Michael Noble, and the other is Clark Brooks.

Handsome devil, ain't he?

Clark is originally from Benton Harbor, Michigan and now resides in Tampa, Florida where he wears too many hats to even begin to tell you about, but his complete bio can be found on his blog, which is called Ridiculously Inconsistent Trickle of Consciousness (or Da Trickle to those in the know). Here he kicks off my fabulous Guest Blogger Month with this lovely piece below...

Jeff and I share some things in common. Yes, we’re both big fans of whipped potatoes but we are also writers. That means we love words and all the fun little tricks you can make them perform. Well, recently no less an authority on words than the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary released their list of “2013: The Year in Words” (http://www.merriam-webster.com/the-year-in-words/2013-entries.htm). Their list resulted from “Defining Moments: In politics, culture, sports and more, these words spiked in lookups because of events in the news.” That’s a pretty good way to determine a list and they came up with some nice ones. Like “Pyrrhic” and “Ambergris” and “Diaphanous” and “Argle-bargle”. Those are all fantastic words, but are they really the words that defined the year 2013? I think a better list would feature words that people used, or in most cases, over-used. Words like:

• Selfie – This was actually Oxford’s Word of the Year (http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2013/11/word-of-the-year-2013-winner/), and everybody knows what it is because everybody does it now, which is weird because this isn’t the first year that cameras were invented or even became standard issue with cell phones. But for whatever reason, 2013 was the year we all started pointing them at ourselves. Who’s to say why? We’re just weird sometimes.
• Sharknado – This is like one of those conjunctions that didn’t exist before we started really monitoring pop culture and marrying elements of it together. Now, every scandal is “Somethinggate”, like Watergate, even though there’s nothing with gate involved. Or how people demonstrating addictive tendencies are “aholics” and not merely “ics”, like “Chocaholic” or “Workaholic”, in spite of the fact that the substances Chocahol and Workahol don’t exist. In this case though, a Sharknado is a tornado full of sharks. Or more accurately, a really terrible movie about a tornado full of sharks. Either way, I believe this could totally happen in real life so it’s different.
• Obamacare – Oh boy. One word (also made up, like Sharknado), two opposing viewpoints as to what it means, both of which make everyone angry. That’s impressive.
• Twerk – This is a form of dance in which hip movements make one’s buttocks jiggle. Miley Cyrus didn’t invent it but is the most famous/popular person associated with it. But it was awful long before she got involved with it.

But as far as I’m concerned, the big one, the Word of the Year is…

• Bitch – Long ago, this word was used to describe a female dog. Then it became derogatory slang for either unpleasant women or subservient men. Somewhere along the line it also became a verb meaning “to complain” as well as a noun referring to the complaint itself. Now, it’s all of those things as well as a term of endearment and people say it All. The. Time. You probably know this if you’re familiar with the character of Jessie Pinkman on the critically acclaimed television show “Breaking Bad” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2o9cqa1M6fQ or if you hang around with packs of drag queens.