i wrote on my profile that i, "like every other twentysomething male with a toehold in a creative industry," enjoy hemingway. clearly the statement is overly general and encompassing, like a grandmother's quilt, but i like it nonetheless. i was musing on it at lunch, and thought that it might better read, "...toehold in a semi-creative industry."

why does the semi- sound better to my ear? perhaps because any hyphenated compound word sounds more academic, snobbish and, hence, literary. but also because we're living in non-committal times, and the addition of a semi- puts the statement in safer, more middling territory. thanks to four letters and a hyphen, i don't have to make an unequivocal judgment! hooray! i can caveatize, exceptionalize, and preemptively rebut ("i only said it was a semi-creative industry...").

thank you, semi! making safer ground for conflicted views since 1440. er, since circa 1440. or, maybe, since the fifteenth century. hell, let's just say, "for a while."