"Upon whom shall I defecate?"

​Birds can do it all. They fly, have hollow bones, eat worms all day, and live in houses made of sticks and spit. If you think birds can't get any more amazing, think again. Researchers at the University of Kyoto have found that Bengalese finches follow a pitch pattern in their tweets that is essentially grammatical. Danielle Perszyk writes in Scientific American that the study found "the birds responded strongly to tunes ordered with certain structure, even when this structure was artificially constructed." Birds may be the only species that can drop a dookie on you from one hundred feet in the air while correcting your use of a split infinitive.

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​City Councilmen Peter Koo (R-Flushing) and Dan Halloran (R-Whitestone) want to "quell a culture clash between homegrown residents and new immigrants," reports the New York Daily News, by making shopkeepers change their awnings if the majority of the writing isn't in English. The councilmen say that the law is a safety issue, making it easier for police and fire officials to respond to calls. They -- and some shop owners -- also argue that it's better for businesses, which will be able to attract more shoppers with English.

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​Mobsters have a special way of speaking that is all their own, which you probably already know, having watched any number of the excellent mafia-themed films available on Netflix and your various cable channels. The New York Times has an intriguing look into some of the more "esoteric" of those expressions, as revealed by secretly recorded conversations between Vincent Basciano and mob boss Joseph Massino during Basciano's trial for the murder of Randolph Pizzolo. There are many colorful terms and phrases!

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​New Yorkers are easily identified outside of the city by any number of things. Maybe the way they expect everything to move faster, taste better, or speak clearer. Maybe the neurosis that expects everyone else to have a therapist, too. But often -- or "awftin" -- it's the classic New Yorker accent. Which people are trying to kill.

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Maureen Dowd, Garrr

​Did you read Maureen Dowd's column in Sunday's New York Times? It's about the masturbation-hating, sometimes witch Christine O'Donnell, who if we keep talking about, will probably become a U.S. Senator. O'Donnell, however, is the perfect character for a Dowd column, and the perfect foil for Dowd's version of a foundering Barack Obama, who really enjoys eating at Ben's Chili Bowl for lunch (???). Point being: It's a hard column to get through and much more fun in the language of a pirate. That's right, it's September 19 -- a/k/a Talk Like a Pirate Day 2010.

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Hoodie. Check. East Village backdrop. Check. Pensive expression. Check. Hipster? Hm.

​So, according to The Smoking Gun, there's this hipster dude/former day trader Marcos Esparza Bofill, who allegedly owes more than $172 million to the IRS. Hipsterly, he didn't even know what the IRS was, said one hipster pal to the Post. But, this may not be much of a story at all, save a chance to use the word "hipster" in a headline, because according to experts, the $172 million number was probably generated by the total amount of trades he made at his job and is not representative of what he actually owes.

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​It's time for the New York Times, the paper of record, to stop being so ridiculously prude with regards to printing curse words, especially when they're used in titles or within quotes. No one is saying that Tom goddamn Friedman should start writing like Gavin fucking McInnes, but from kids to the President of the United States, spicy language rings out. It's happening, it's real, it should be reported -- by adults, for adults. Writing around certain words is patronizing and obnoxious. More importantly, it shifts the focus from the story at hand to the creative rhetorical purity. It's bullshit and Sunday's piece on recently released emails written by Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan is especially bothersome.

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