Irregardless of standard english grammer rules, I will use whatever word I want

So boyfriend felt the need to check up on my use of the word irregardless (which I debated over using) in the last post, and it turns out there is a Wikipedia entry devoted to it. So I decided to resuscitate the dying Word of the Day feature to focus on the controversy surrounding it. According to Wikipedia:

"Irregardless is a term meaning in spite of or anyway, that has caused controversy since it first appeared in the early twentieth century. It is generally listed in dictionaries as 'incorrect' or 'nonstandard'.

The origin of irregardless is not known for certain, but the consensus among references is that it is a blend of irrespective and regardless, both of which are commonly accepted standard English words. By blending these words, an illogical word is created. "Since the prefix ir- means 'not' (as it does with irrespective), and the suffix -less means 'without,' irregardless is a double negative."^[1]"

Word of the Day / Question of the Day

So I know it's a little unconventional to incorporate two elements in one post, but it works, as long as there is a theme. The theme here is hair, a much-beloved topic in Lauraland.

Word of the Day:

We'll start with the word of the day (number 2) - bouffant. It's just such a great word, and it quite accurately describes my current hair situation. I first learned this word from my Aunt Renee, back when I was about 6 and first experimenting with bouffanting hair-dos. If I think of it when I get home, I'm totally going to dig through my photo albums and post the picture that I am currently thinking of.

Anyways, back to the present. Most people who know me well know that my hair changes on a monthly, or bi-monthly basis, so it's quite extraordinary that it's remained the same for like 5 months or so now. Crazy, I know. My roots are getting bad as it has been the same color for way too long, and my hair is in the crazy "I don't want to be straight, I don't want to be wavy, I don't want to behave no matter what you do to me" stage. Frustrating to say the least. But at the same time, I'm hesitant to do anything, seeing as how I'm setting records on how long I can leave my hair alone, and who knows, maybe I can actually achieve long hair in the not so distant future. Needless to say though, pigtails have become a staple hair-do, and I don't know quite how well that fits into my professional persona. I've also gone back full-force to my habit of twirling sections of my hair while I'm thinking, so by the end of the day I end up with about 40 mini-dreads sticking out in weird directions. Not the most attractive. So this leads me to the question of the day.

Question of the Day:

What in the world should I do with my hair? I'm even considering going back to the perm route, even though it qualifies me for becoming a cast member of Golden Girls. I always liked my hair curly, and I don't care what I have to do to get there. :)

For the sake of posterity, and the fact that I see most of my readers maybe twice a year, here is what my hair looks like today:

Feel free to chime in and offer suggestions!

The Mustache of Justice

Ah, the news that gets reported in D.C....where every element of political life is thoroughly analyzed, right down to facial hair. The Washington Post reports on the rise of the mustache in government, due to Obama's staff. My personal favorite is Rep. Henry Waxman (the far right picture). The post says,

"The 'stache went totally A-list last week when Rep. Henry Waxman was elected the new chair of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee. Waxman's short, military brush has terrified Capitol Hill for years and earned its own nickname -- "Mustache of Justice" -- with a line of magnets, mugs and buttons.

How powerful? Stephen Colbert teased D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton that she ranked below the 'House speaker, majority leader, congressional pages, tourists and Henry Waxman's mustache.'"

(Photo courtesy of The Washington Post)

And yes, I know I'm already slacking on the word of the day for yesterday (I'm allowed to take the weekends off though), so to make up for it there will be two words today. And yes, one of them is mustache.

Word of the Day

So I am going to continue the theme of commonly used words as the word of today. I was typing an email and I completely blanked on how to spell color. Seriously, I tried coler, coller, colur, and eventually figured out how to spell it. I have no idea where that came from. So today's word of the day is color, or as our friends to the north (and any other English-speaking country) like to spell it, colour.

Funny story about the u. One of my favorite authors is Jasper Fforde, who writes the amazing Thursday Next series. Without getting into a long, drawn-out explanation, let it suffice to say it's a somewhat science-fictiony thing, where the main character is able to jump into books and is a police officer of sorts in the book world. So in this series, there is a text sea, where all the letters that form all the words in books come from. There happened to be a shortage of Us at one point in the series, so they decided to drop the U in certain words, such as colour, flavour, etc, and call it a regional anomaly.

Word of the Day

So I was reading this morning on the metro, and I came across the word vacuum, and it made me very happy. So I've decided to start a new feature of my blog, word of the day. Obviously vacuum is not an uncommon word and I'm not going to make up a sentence to use it in, but I am just going to spend 2 minutes enjoying the double u sound - uuuum.

To make this a bit more literary, I will include another word that is a bit more unused, that we discovered last night in community group - boanthropy. This is the disease in which humans think they are cows. For example, Nebachanezer suffered from boanthropy. On a related note, apparently there is also a disease in which people honestly believe they are werewolves - lycanthropy. The things you learn in a Bible study....