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Our beloved John Martz keeps hitting these strips out of the park. Merry Christmas, everyone!

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From the Globe and Mail, December 24, 2011.

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By Mark Peters

Some people and characters are forever associated with a word. I dare you to say refudiate, malaise, nanu-nanu, despicable, winning, and meep without thinking of Sarah Palin, Jimmy Carter, Mork, Daffy Duck, Charlie Sheen, and the Road Runner (or Beaker).

Without a doubt, the poster boy for varmint is Yosemite Sam, the rootin’-tootin’, razzin’-frazzin’ cowboy who was so often outwitted by Bugs Bunny in immortal Looney Tunes cartoons. Sam started popping up in the 1940’s, but the OED reveals that varmint (or varment) goes back much further, referring to “An animal of a noxious or objectionable kind” since the mid-1500’s. It’s a variation of vermin, which I was surprised to learn originally applied to reptiles, not rodents, back in the 1400’s. Like beauty, obscenity, and fugliness, vermin-hood and varmint-itude have always been in the eye of the beholder.

Though Mr. Sam never seemed like the reading type—his intellectual rigor rivaled that of a box of rocks—I wonder what his personal book of quotations would look like. I suspect Yosemite would make predictable revisions to suit his personal mission, like so:

“Hell is other varmints.” –Jean-Paul Sartre

“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the varmints.” –William Shakespeare

“Some of us are becoming the varmints we wanted to marry.” –Gloria Steinem

“To use a varmint to show that a varmint is not a varmint is not as good as using a non-varmint to show that a varmint is not a varmint.” –Chuang-Tzu

“My eleven-year-old daughter mopes around the house all day waiting for her varmints to grow.” –Bill Cosby

“Never have varmints, only grandvarmints.” –Gore Vidal

“When I need a little free advice about varmints, I turn to country music.” –George H.W. Bush

“For just one night, let not be co-workers. Let’s be co-varmints.” –Ron Burgundy

“Every woman adores a varmint.” –Sylvia Plath

“Imagine there’s no varmints. It isn’t hard to do.” –John Lennon

“We fought a war on varmints, and varmints won.” –Ronald Reagan

“It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘varmint’ is.” –Bill Clinton

“I’m going to take my varmints to South Beach.” –LeBron James

“Omit needless varmints.” –William Strunk Jr.

Mark Peters is a lexicographer, humorist, rabid tweeter, language columnist for Visual Thesaurus, and the blogger behind The Rosa Parks of Blogs and The Pancake Proverbs.

I was doing a lot of thinking earlier this week. That old dude, Charlie Sheen, is like some kind of freekin' genius! I mean just look at the guy - he's living like a rockstar. And Winning! He's got a million hot chicks wanting to be his girlfriend which he says is all because he has tiger blood. So I grabbed Garth last night and headed to the zoo after it closed. But I wasn't interested in

The storytelling site Broadcastr launched an iPhone app this morning, allowing writers to record three-minute audio stories on a smartphone and link the recording to a specific location–like Foursquare for storytellers.

Follow this link to see the free app in the App Store. If you want to see how it works, this GalleyCat editor just recorded a one-minute mediation on the gloomy weather, Charlie Sheen, and pulp fiction writing economy. Electric Literature c0-founders Andy Hunter and Scott Lindenbaum introduced the storytelling site at the eBook Summit last year.

Check it out: “Just like in human memory, every story is bound to a place.
Whether dishing last night’s details to friends, uncovering local lore, perusing restaurant reviews, listening to travel guides, tuning in to citizen journalism, contemplating oral histories, or sharing hilarious anecdotes, Broadcastr amplifies all our voices. Users can take a GPS-enabled walk as stories about their surroundings stream into their headphones, like a museum tour of the entire world.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

On Monday, actor and poet Charlie Sheen posted a job ad seeking a paid social media intern–generating 95,333 clicks in an hour and more than 74,000 applications.

Here’s more about the job: “The #TigerBloodIntern is expected to be proactive, monitor the day-to-day activities on the major social media platforms, prepare for exciting online projects and increase Charlie’s base of followers. You will learn how to promote and develop the social media network of Hollywood’s most trending celebrity.”

What does this mean for writers? As the recession continues, book advances dwindle, and paying writing jobs fade away, these social media jobs might become bizarre careers for writers–churning out thousands of tweets and Facebook posts for famous people. Novelist Cornell Woolrich described a similar lifestyle as a Depression-era pulp fiction writer in his story “Penny-A-Worder.”

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.