worst!”
Although, in their defense, people can be very indulgent about learning new words. For my entire career, I’ve trotted out five-dollar locutions in this column, sometimes because they’re the most precise term for conveying a particular thought, sometimes just to show off. Either way, readers invariably take the bother of looking them up, occasionally even writing in, grateful to learn a new word.
Words like “juxtaposition.” Setting one thing next to another, for comparison and contrast. To clarify a point that otherwise might be elusive.
Opinion
For instance. Remember in early May, when cybercriminals shut down the east coast’s Colonial Pipeline? Suddenly everyone was panicked about gas shortages and price spikes. That video of some idiot (people . are . the . WORST!) filling a garbage bag with gasoline. Nobody greeted the Colonial crisis with “Hooray for hackers! I hope the pipeline never re-opens.”
The Great Wings Rush
By Josh Dzieza | June 1, 2021, 10:00am EDT
Photo illustrations by Alex Castro, Amelia Holowaty Krales, Grayson Blackmon
It was March 2020, and restaurants across the country were shutting down, setting up takeout windows, or doing whatever they could to absorb the shock of COVID. But it was Chuck E. Cheese, of all places, that had the foresight and steely clarity to see not just what the new era required, but what it permitted. With much of America suddenly interacting with restaurants through delivery apps, the food industry had been transformed into e-commerce, and the arcade better known for its ball pits than its food was free to invent a new identity: “Pasqually’s Pizza & Wings.”