Ich bin ein [Texas-Born] Berliner

Blog, blogosphere, blook, cookie, facebook, folksonomy, godcast, me-media, netiquette – do those philological horrors have the same emetic effect on you that they do on me?  According to a poll just published, they rank high on the list of repulsive Computer Age neologisms as ascertained by the linguistically fastidious (and presumably British) Lulu Blooker Prize, a literary award for books.

(I’ve mentioned before that only a triumvirate of implacably determined friends finally succeeded in dragging me, kicking and screaming right up to the last desperate moment, into establishing this dump to which I’ve given a name that says it all: “Ich bin ein [Texas-Born] Berliner”.  High on my list of the exceptions I took stood the term blog itself, which at first encounter had immediately struck me as the most repulsive new American linguistic atrocity since … well, since the last of so many.  If anyone can tell me the culprit responsible, I’ll make a sincere effort to stalk him/her down and box his/her jaws.  (A momentary aside down Memory Lane: The immortal W. C. Fields once asked the gentleman occupying the adjacent bar-stool, “Ever kicked a woman wearing her corset? Like kicking an oil drum. Almost broke my great toe.”) I find it ironic in the extreme that I owe my awareness of this Lulu Blooker Prize shit-list to that Gang of Three’s infamous ringleader Perry Nelson.  He lives and does his dirty work in Knoxville, in case any fellow linguophile in that part of Dixie feels inclined to stalk him down and box his jaws, at least partially on my personal behalf.)

But hey, Blookerites – how come you’ve overlooked the hideous new verb to monetize?  (And if I’ve misspelled that atrocity, who feels secure enough to correct me?)  That horror first smote my sensitive Texan ears during a recent Skypecall with none other than the benefactor I’ve referred to here in a rather different context as St. Perry, who explained it meant something like “to turn into money, to realize money from”.

If you still have the stomach to read AFP’s entire squalid adumbration of these monstrosities, you might take a deep breath and click here.