Byzantium's Shores: chronicling the misadventures of an overalls-clad hippie

It occurs to me that I should read up a bit on linguistics and etymology, since I love language and since I am attempting to become a Writer (as opposed to a small-w writer, which is a person who writes but doesn't get paid). Anyway, a couple of recent observations from the lingual district of Blogistan are on tap.

:: I'm sure I've indicated before that I find blog to be, itself, an ugly word. I just don't like it, and I deliberately avoided using it in the early days of Byzantium's Shores. I would use euphemisms like "e-journal" and such. I've since accepted the word, even though I still don't like it and even though I still question its necessity in the first place. But now I see some other words used to describe blog-related technical processes that just make me wince.

For instance: the RSS service I signed up for last week refers to its software "scraping" its registered blogs for new content. I'm sorry, but this just sounds like a medical procedure to me, and not a very pleasant one.

"Now, Mr. Simpson, please take these pills so we can start the procedure. You won't feel a thing. We just need to…scrape your blog."

"Ewwwww! Are you sure that won't hurt?"

"Not at all. Please take the pills."

"What are they?"

"Ten thousand milligrams of ibuprofen."

:: But I have to say, this one I like. It's a new bit of political slang, and I find it just hilarious. I wish I knew who coined it, but its genesis is in the liberal annoyance that so much ink has been spilled over the last decade about the sexual exploits of Bill Clinton. The word?

The Clenis. (Example in context.)

This word is often followed by a TM symbol, to signify that it's virtually become its own trademark.

:: This is an old one, actually, but I don't like the sound of "skins". (As in, "Download some new skins for your browser".) For some reason, I inevitably think of going out and killing a beaver or something similar and then decorating my computer with its pelt.