​We love banning things and we love the English language, so you can only imagine the joy in our hearts upon encountering Lake Superior State's "List of Banished Words" for the year. While some of our most abhorred digi-speak is missing from this list, the list-makers make up for it by banning "Baby Bump." Unless that's a small fry-sized portion of cocaine that can be snorted out of a diaper, we want nothing to do with it. (Too far?)

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​Today in news you can use (to amuse yourself while you learn something, too), there is evidence that early man (and woman) spoke like Yoda. Meaning: Not necessarily full of wisdom, but using a subject-object-verb (SOV) word order -- for example, "I you like" or "Me cookie want," as opposed to the Cookie Monster's "Me want cookie." Researchers also believe that all human languages came from one form, spoken in East Africa some 50,000 years ago, and that one form was Yoda-speak. Yoda-speak, that form was?

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via

​Miss Heather at NewYorkShitty spotted this poster seeking "Hipstras" in front of T & N Wine & Liquor in Greenpoint yesterday. It may mark a new high in obnoxious terminology. You see, MTV is looking for people, who, given the illustrations lining the borders of the flier, are pretty much "hipsters" in the traditional or stereotypical sense (trucker cap, Jagger haircut, old-school sneakers, ironic 'stache, black-framed glasses, PBR [yawn]), but for some reason MTV is calling them "hipstras" for a show titled I Just Want My Pants Back. MTV is calling them this to indicate that said hipsters/hipstras get paid! Hipstra = Hipster paid to work in reality TV as an extra = Pretty much right back where we started. Go forth and conquer, Hipstra Nation. We'll be sitting here thinking "Lenny Dykstra" for no reason at all. [NewYorkShitty]

Related: Please Welcome "Hampsters," the Hamptons Hipsters

​Thanks to the pronunciation experts at the New York Times City Room blog, who told us the right way to say "Van Wyck" just weeks ago -- a Netherlands native says it's "Fon Weg"; do with that what you will -- we now know how to say three other place names that previously likely befuddled and bewildered you, should you have ever had cause to say them. The Times, who actually aren't pronunciation experts (per se) but know people who are (and that's half the battle), reports that they went to native speakers of the "mother tongue in question" to find out how to say the three most requested location tongue-trippers in NYC: Sputyen Duyvil, the Kosciuszko Bridge, and the Goethals Bridge.

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​According to information collected from the Facebook walls of more than 30,000 users by social media monitoring service Reppler, Facebookers are largely kind of a profane bunch. That is to say, nearly half of them have some obscenity or another on their walls, and 80 percent have at least one profane post or comment from a friend. Half of posts and comments using profanity come from friends. (If your enemies talk to you like that you should probably unfriend them.)

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via the Post

​"Lay off me, I'm starving" is essentially what this English professor told an Upper West Side Starbucks barista yesterday when she was refused her requested multigrain bagel until she answered the age-old question, "Do you want butter or cheese?" The unnecessary repetition of asking which spread a "plain bagel" (and linguistically conservative) orderer would prefer ruffled the customer's breakfast-time feathers, and shit went down in a big way, according to the Post.

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'Times' Goes LOLcat

​Author and NYU professor Katie Roiphe has a fascinating culture essay in Sunday's New York Times, in which she jumps headfirst into the messy lives of teenagers, specifically the way they write online. "The Language of Facebook" is hinged on the work of young-adult authors Lauren Mechling and Laura Moser, whose serialized novel My Darklyng has run on Slate throughout the summer. Their innovation, though, includes the story outside of the story, taking place on Facebook and Twitter on fictionalized accounts representing Darklyng's characters. Roiphe uses their work as a springboard to analyze the parlance of the medium, showing Times readers just how kids today interact with typed words. But Roiphe, as a professor of journalism herself, must have been responsible for about 13 aneurysms around the Times office, with copy editors getting the worst of it:

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​Each week in Best and Worst we'll bring you the Internet's finest and most devastating takes on something that is -- or is on its devious way to becoming -- a cultural phenomenon. What viral video shows its most hilarious (or horrible) aspects? Which Photoshopped or actual creation does it justice....or will lead to imminent disaster? Join us for our journey. Today, we take on the vuvuzela.

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via The New York Times

​The catio trend, introduced in The New York Times, is sure to explode in New York because we're all suckers for a good neologism. The same people who live in Nolita, Soho, or Tribeca, wear jeggings, and request Pomtinis at bars will not be able to resist a properly enclosed catio.

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via New York Times

​How many "Sorrys" does it take to fix a leaky oil well? Tony Hayward again apologizes today, this time in front of Congress, many of whom would still like to beat him down most mercilessly despite his deep contrition and now-practiced sadface. Representative Henry Waxman scolded the company for its lack of even one "e-mail or document that shows you paid even the slightest attention to the dangers at the well," per the New York Times.

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