Query

Why is 'barn-burner' a synonym for a good thing? Sounds like a Klan Christmas party.

Is there

anything more asinine than saying to a Literature teacher 'You like to read a lot, don't you?'

The perils of self-awareness

What have we become when we 'understand' ourselves so well that all our questions are rhetorical?

- Zadie Smith, Changing My Mind: occasional essays

What indeed.

[NB It is not clear to me whether the above is a rhetorical question. (Or the one above that.)]

Semantics laid bare

In Chuck Palahniuk's wilfully quirky - not to say 'patchy' - travelogue of his home town, the author offers us (should we be interested) 'a list of places to get lucky in Portland'.

Only question is whether luck, per se, has anything to do with the case where the listed premises - sex shops, clubs, brothels, etc. - are concerned (where, frankly, luck ought to be rendered moot by cash).

Is there anything more depressing

than eyeing up an attractive girl and then hearing her speak in German?

Semantics

Do stupid people have what it takes to 'play dumb'?

Why, oh why, O Spotify?

The songs on Spotify are not in alphabetical - or any other discernible - order. Er... why not?

magnum o'pus

puss / pus

Words in flagrant breach of the Double Consonant = Short Vowel rule.

Are there others?