On the other hand...

Lake Superior State University (Fitchburg State College's doppelganger of upper Michigan!) apparently released a list of words and phrases they are banning from use. This is the bizarro world version of the New Oxford American Dictionary folks mentioned below. In essence, Lake State bans the words about a year after the Oxford folks create them. Such is the yin/yang of life.

Sometimes they don't even wait a year. Among the words Lake State banned is "unfriend," which is Oxford Dictionary's 2009 word of the year. (Can't we all just get along? No one wants to see geek violence break out.)

Among the other words and phrases banned: 

Tweets
Teachable moment
Stimulus
Czar
Chillaxin
Shovel-ready
App
Sexting
In these economic times...
Toxic assets
Too big to fail
Bromance
Obama-(as a prefix)

Then there are the comments left by random people (mainly from the Midwest) about why these words should be banned. This includes a person named Chris Jensen, from Fond du Lac, WI, who has this to say about why "chillaxin'" should be banned:

A made-up word used by annoying Gen-Yers.

Damn right, Chris. How else do you think I ended up running FSC's blog? It took years of chillaxin' as an annoying Gen-Yer to get where I am.

The strange thing about Lake Superior State University creating this list is the matter of their English Department being--how shall we say this?--tiny. They don't even have a sole English Department. They group it with Communications. Total, they have seven professors. Seven! FSC practically has seven secretaries for their English department. (Actually, 21 full-time professors, as well as 16 adjunct English faculty, bringing the grand total to 37. Those college math classes are paying off, see?) Lake State has to be given credit for their chutzpah. Seven total English professors, and they've been banning words and phrases for over 30 years. By this degree of equality, FSC's English Department should feel free to ban not only words, but books, authors, and dozens of forms of literary theory.

One thing Lake State does have over FSC is burning snowmen. That's right. They build a snowman, pad him with paper, and light him up like a Guy Fawkes-wannabe.

Uhhh, yeaaah. Nothing is so tender quite like seeing smiling, harmless, inanimate objects lit ablaze while people hoot. Pyromania is exciting!

Banning words and burning effigies of Frosty the Snowman--the excitement never ends at Lake State!