(no subject)

You know those spam e-mails you get that are incomprehensible strings of words that sometimes resolve into surreal phrases before degenerating into incomprehensible murk once more? We get a lot of mail that's only very slightly better-written than that. And we have to answer every piece of mail that we receive. Yikes.

Started listening to The Word Nerds podcast today. Interesting. The very first installment was nerds & geeks. I'm surprised that the explanation for "geek" didn't once mention circus freaks. Makes me a little skeptical, although that discussion was more definition that etymology (not to be confused with entymology - *shudder*). Interesting factoid - "nerd" probably originated in a Dr. Seuss story. Cool. My Seuss is woefully lacking. boo

It did clarify the nuances between the two words, for me at least. The OED definition of nerd was along the lines of "someone obsessed with an unfashionable interest", while geek was more "a student of a discipline". There you're seeing my pro-geek anti-nerd bias, but we all view the world through our filters.

In that light, my word fascination is more geekery, but nerd rhymes far to well not to use it.