How am I gonna introduce my annual post about the annual LSSU Banished Words List when “It’s that time of year again” has itself just been banished? Maybe with an assortment of links not-very-related to the words on This Year’s List…

(Going) Green
Carbon Footprint / Carbon Offset
Maverick
First Dude
Bailout
Wall Street / Main Street
-Monkey
<3
Icon/Iconic
Game Changer
Staycation
Desperate Search
Not So Much
Winner of X Nominations
It’s That Time of Year Again

“This year, in a gesture of humanitarian relief, the (Lake Superior State University Banished Words) committee restores “truthiness,” banned on last year’s list, to formal use. This comes after comedians and late-night hosts were thrown under the bus and rendered speechless by a nationwide professional writers’ strike. The silence is deafening.”

Of course, “(thrown) under the bus“* is on this year’s Banished List, along with “perfect storm“, “webinar“*, “waterboarding“, “post-9/11“, “wordsmith“, “back in the day“, “surge“, “x is the new y“, “give back” and other seemingly “random” words and phrases.

*One of the requirements for a Banished Word or Phrase is that it has been used as a title for a Blogspot or Typepad blog.

Yes, we’ve done this before. Consider it a tradition or a bad habit.