Two friends pointed out that my recently inaugurated feature, "Who To Hate," is grammatically incorrect. It should make use of the objective pronoun and read, "Whom To Hate."

A more vivid portrayal of the verbal snobbery of me and my friends (oops, my friends and me), I cannot imagine.

Yesterday, towards the end of the work day, I received a bit of fan mail. Yes, I receive fan mail. Yet this fan letter wasn't pure, unadulterated fanboy/fangirl love. It was tough love, in fact. It begins with a butter-'im-up opener:

"i enjoy keeping up to date on your life and hearing your funny quips and anecdotes. it makes me feel close to someone i consider a friend."

But then comes the Conjunction of Foreboding:

"with that said buddy,"

Followed by the foreboding material itself:

"a major purpose of your blog seems to be the unadulterated masturbation of your own intellect. i'm a big vocab guy--i like words too, but you take it to a new level."

Now, I'm a Man of the People, so I listen to my readers. Especially when, given the size of my readership, a single suggestion represents anywhere from 1/6 to 1/3 of my audience. So expect a little change around these parts. I'm still an unabashed word snob, so they won't disappear completely. But my reader(s) has (have) spoken, and I am listening.

Now it's time for a rant:

I was reading a NYT article on Ecuador's elections (the Eclections, as i like to call them) last Sunday, and they were talking about how there's a partial media blackout for 20 days before election day -- no opinion polls are allowed to be published. I think it's a pretty brilliant idea, and something that should also be done in the U.S. -- one minor step to tame the media monster and make the whole process less of a circus. And then -- get this -- the article went on to quote a private poll taken by UBS or some other mwahaha-give-me-money investment bank. They ponied up their own funds for a private poll during the blackout period so their Masters of the Universe (Latin edition, like Enrique Iglesias meets Hank Paulson) would have a better foresight on the election outcome. So, like, they undermined the spirit of the law (if not the letter) to make a little bit of money. And you know they were rooting for Daddy Warbucks (a.k.a. Banana Tycoon Alvaro Noboa) and all his business-minded good sense to win La Casa Blanca. Jesus.

Lastly, if you have any interest in corrosive criticism, read this review of a Rick Moody book.

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."