Random Complaint Center: Linguistic peeves...

Evangelist (when used in a business context) - If your job doesn't involve a big white tent, a basket of serpents and G-O-D, please call yourself a software marketer instead.

Road warrior - Look around you. Be honest. Do you see the battlefields of Iraq, or the bar of the Courtyard Marriott?

Um...okay. (especially when used in an online posting) - Um...I'm too hip and cool to really respond to your hopelessly 2006 statement. But let me give you the textual equivalent of a condescending pause and a "aren't you stupid" stare anyway.

DC Independent Film Fest: "I" in independent film stands for ..."Is that a severed cat's head that kid just found in his birthday presents?"

Scary Movie Night kicked off the DC Independent Film Festival with a decidedly quirky touch (and a short about a gay swamp creature, too). Sunday followed with the trials and tribulations of a harried inventor and Afghan immigrants post 9/11. And the not-found-at-AMC creativity continues through Sunday...(www.dciff.org)

An X-Rated Classroom Somewhere: No porn left behind

A barrage of lewd images usually is a good thing. But not if you're a substitute teacher who pulled up a little Internet surprise with the morning lesson plan.

As I digested the news story, my reactions were all over the map:

- 40 possible years in prison - yikes! (and many human rights activists agree: http://www.alternet.org/rights/46925/)

- In this age of spyware, who among us haven't fallen victim to those nefarious popups? Or typed whitehouse.com rather than whitehouse.gov?

- Sweet Lincoln's mullet, why didn't she toss her coat or a blanket over the monitor?

- Although it's not like kids these days are delicate flowers in need of cloister. Eight-year-olds have probably seen things on Myspace that would make me blush.

- "The students were using the Internet to search hair styles"

...WAIT A MINUTE. Now I find that even more disturbing. Unless this was history class, and the hair style search involved how elaborate wigs and other frivolities by Court of Versailles inspired the French Revolution, I don't think googling hair styles is appropriate book learning for our tax dollars and future generations.