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Slash: Not Just a Punc­tu­a­tion Mark Anymore

Two weeks ago, one stu­dent brought up the word slash as an exam­ple of new slang, and it quickly became clear to me that many stu­dents are using slash in ways unfa­mil­iar to me.

(…)

6. I need to go home and write my essay slash take a nap.

(…)

12. JUST SAW ALEX! Slash I just chubbed on oat­meal raisin cook­ies at north quad and i miss you

via Boing­Bo­ing

Net­flix has me trained pretty well — I know never to read the red envelopes that show up at my place. These days, the flip side is always a promo for some exclu­sive orig­i­nal series I don’t care about. House of Cards is amaz­ing? That’s won­der­ful; let me know when I can actu­ally stream some god­damn movies, okay?

That’s why I was sur­prised when tonight’s Net­flix envelopes actu­ally man­aged to catch my eye. On my way back from the mail­box I found both clev­erly embla­zoned with dif­fer­ent life tips from movie moms. Tonight’s haul came wrapped in choice bits of For­rest Gump and Brave — timely for Mother’s Day and all that.

I won­der how many designs there actu­ally are in the series — I’m guess­ing far fewer than the hun­dreds the num­ber­ing sys­tem seems to sug­gest. I’ll be look­ing for more in a few days.

That’s actu­ally pretty sweet of them. I’ll… be sure to let mom know.

Wel­come to the first install­ment of This word doesn’t mean what you think it does. Go look it up.

Today’s word is ver­biage. Go look it up.

The stu­pid fuck­head wasn’t just in the wrong lane — they were two lanes too far, with no way out of the exit lane before the exit.

But they made space and time for their SUV’s last-second exo­dus, rather pre­sump­tu­ously bor­row­ing the space where my car should have been. And their turn sig­nal must not have burned out — could there be any other expla­na­tion for such an irre­spon­si­ble slight?

I con­grat­u­lated them on a maneu­ver well-executed with my horn. They didn’t seem to notice. As our cars drifted fur­ther apart, I found that for some rea­son I just had to gaze upon this spec­i­men of unadul­ter­ated Miami dri­ver­dom. I glanced over and saw just the sil­hou­ette of a pro­file. Only but a moment later, a lighter came into view and lit the cig­a­rette between their lips.

Not sur­prised, not even a little.

It was dark and the car was pointed east — some express­way was behind it and some more was ahead, with the exact pro­por­tions rapidly chang­ing. Its win­dows were down and its sun­roof was too. Around here, la madre nat­u­raleza usu­ally cra­dles us close to her sticky and often gross bosom, but she had taken the night off.

In Miami, mid-60s is fairly cool for any time of year. I take what I can get.

I couldn’t hear what was play­ing because the engine and the wind were too loud, and I was deter­mined not to be that guy. I prob­a­bly had some­thing on my mind too, but who can remem­ber? For a stretch of road per­haps a half-mile long, how­ever, the air and my thoughts were sud­denly full of the unmis­tak­able scent of freshly-baked… sour­dough. I think it was sourdough.

This was pleas­ing to me. Then it went away. I kept driving.

1. Hitler

I drove my girl­friend to the air­port this morn­ing. After I took her bag out of the car and put it on the curb, we stood there and exchanged good­byes, and every­thing you can imag­ine comes with those.

But I didn’t tell her to “have a safe trip.” Why not?

Because I don’t hate her.

If you really care for someone’s hap­pi­ness, is “a safe trip” really what you want for them? I mean, they already know you hope they don’t get harmed… because they know you don’t hate them. Every time you aspire to safety on some­one else’s behalf — wish­ing them a safe trip, or flight, or hol­i­day week­end, or what­ever they’re about to embark on — “the ter­ror­ists” (or whomever) have won.

So if I like you, instead of a safe trip…

• I hope you’ll have an amaz­ing trip.
• I hope your trip is unforgettable.
• I hope you expe­ri­ence new things on your trip.
• I hope your trip changes your perspective.
• I hope your trip makes you smile many times.
• I hope there are numer­ous photo oppor­tu­ni­ties on your trip.
• I hope that, if you’re into that sort of thing, your trip takes you out of your com­fort zone just enough to be remarkable.

And so on.

(Impor­tant excep­tion: I’m think­ing that if you’re someone’s mother, you get a free pass, because your wish is more than just words — it’s a reminder to not do any­thing stu­pid. And you’re hard­wired to believe that, when our of your sight, your kid is con­stantly doing stu­pid things. But you should really con­sider try­ing some­thing from the list above.)

So what did I wish my girl­friend this morning?

Um… I can’t remem­ber. It was really early.