At some point, 'level up' and 'dial in' lose the earthy texture that had made them attractive. Bountiful semantic soil turns into paltry word dirt. These once-catchy phrases become little more than influencer argot.

Writing well – really well – is like turning the lights on; but it starts with turning the dark off. That means resolving not to write poorly anymore: not to use generic, misapplied, overused words, phrases, concepts.

By definition, precious few creations in this life may be called genius — and that’s how it should be, lest the currency of adoration for high art become radically devalued.

Weirdly, ‘weird’ has become the catch-all moniker for anything that is less than good, not yet bad; left of normal, not quite beyond the pale; possibly common, certainly not habitual; not preferable, though not necessarily detrimental.

These days, ‘around’ is misapplied around the world and around the clock. The circuitous practice must've started with the physically impossible 'to center around' around a quarter-century ago.

People love their TV shows and pets, their trucks and their honeys, their shoes and their country. Also: fast food, slow food, organic food, and their love of the latter.

Back in the day, there was a time when 'it’s cool’ actually meant something. These days, ‘cool’ is a pale shadow of its once bracing self, a shriveled atavism ripe for routine surgery.

'So' and ‘such' are seemingly superlative yet cruelly non-specific modifiers, as in, “that was such an amazing experience” or “I am so grateful to you”. The world is awash in such words, and they muddy the waters so.

Once upon a time, back when fairytales were non-fiction, the word 'great' meant something. These days, 'great’ is great no longer, and now, instead of denoting quality, it begs for a halfway decent burial.

Why is everyone using a word that hardly means anything anymore to signify an increasing number of things? Brace yourselves. This may get contentious.

There are two types of people in this world: those who divide everyone into two types of people, and those who don’t.

Call me squeamish, but I wouldn’t let anybody I didn’t know unpack my carry-on case, much less create clutter in my head by dismantling the Lego pieces of some carefully assembled mental construct.

For something to be called a journey, there must be loss, learning, dead ends, mind-numbing grunt work, swerves from the stated path, sessions with bottle/therapist/shaman, zigzagging progress...

With a freakishly large number of connotations, ‘freak out’—though expressive and groovy-like—is too generic to describe strong emotion.

It’s hard to feel sympathy for people who blithely refer to themselves as consumers while bemoaning the undue influence of 'global elites'.