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I saw this today:

We are committed to continually enhancing your online experience.  
This is accomplished by occasional system outages.

I certainly hope that is incorrect. Perhaps they should have tried:

We are committed to continually enhancing your online experience.  
To accomplish this there will be occasional system outages while we perform upgrades and fixes.

Words I Can Never Remember

There is a set of words that always tickle at my conscious but I can never seem to grab them when I want them. The other day my friend Karen, copywriter and idea-girl extraordinaire, helped me find them so I could make a record.

Nervio

Nervio is the feeling of loving something so much you want to cause it harm, often accompanied by gritted teeth or tight muscles. Sounds totally weird until you put it in this context: You are so cute I could just squeeze you to death!

Here is an awesome picture of Picasso expressing Nervio towards his child. And hey, it’s even on Urban Dictionary!

I could give you more examples from my own life, but unless you experience this yourself it just makes me sound weird.

Perceptual Vigilance

Perceptual Vigilance is when you notice something, then you start to see it everywhere. Like a new car you way, or the number 23. We found this here.

Idiom Collocation

Word Collocaiton is when you see words going together or in a certain order. Thunder and lightening. Shoes and socks. When I was little shoes and socks never made sense to me, why say shoes first since you put them on last?  Check out this word matcher to see it in action. 

This work includes the photo “Itty Bitty Lot,” available under a Creative Commons Attribution license, © Jeremy Vandel.