I don’t know about you but if my daughter comes home with a spelling test and “w00t” is on it, I’m going to be extremely annoyed. The whole idea of “l33t-speak” or alpha-numeric abbreviations for what was once real conversation is just baffling to me. I go to a party and someone actually says l-o-l instead of laughing??? Where’s the enjoyment in that? This review really has no point other than to state that Americans seem to be taking the shortcut to everything nowadays right down to how we communicate our thoughts and it concerns me that once-educational resources have caved into the idiocy of it too.

~WC~

BOSTON (Reuters) - “w00t,” an expression of joy coined by online gamers, was crowned word of the year on Tuesday by the publisher of a leading U.S. dictionary.

Massachusetts-based Merriam-Webster Inc. said “w00t” — typically spelled with two zeros — reflects a new direction in the American language led by a generation raised on video games and cell phone text-messaging.

It’s like saying “yay,” the dictionary said. “It could be after a triumph or for no reason at all,” Merriam-Webster said.

Visitors to Merriam-Webster’s Web site were invited to vote for one of 20 words and phrases culled from the most frequently looked-up words on the site and submitted by readers. Runner-up was “facebook” as a new verb meaning to add someone to a list of friends on the Web site Facebook.com or to search for people on the social networking site. (read the rest of the article here)

I have to say I admire the fantastic job Johnny does of staying out of negative press, but the idea of making movies that are so heavily merchandised pretty much negates the chances of him avoiding the “product” fate. Johnny, you are an icon and it seems you don’t even know it!

~WC~

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) — To Johnny Depp, freedom means simplicity and anonymity.

Johnny Depp’s new film is “Sweeney Todd,” which opens Christmas Day.

“I’m sure it will be a possibility someday again. Maybe when I get old. They get tired of you,” the actor tells Esquire magazine in its January issue, available Friday. ” ‘Didn’t you used to be Johnny Depp?’ That will be the clincher.”

The 44-year-old star of “Sweeney Todd,” which opens Christmas Day, talked with the magazine about the lessons he’s learned over his two decades in Hollywood.

His friend and mentor Marlon Brando taught Depp to keep his private life private. “That’s your world and it’s nobody else’s business,” he recalls Brando saying. “It’s not anybody’s entertainment.”

A self-described people-watcher, Depp says he’s learned to enter restaurants through the kitchen and hotels through the parking garage. “It’ll definitely make you a little weird if you’re constantly being stared at,” he says. While he loves his work, Depp says he’s “not a great fan of all the stuff that goes along with it.”

“I don’t want to be a product,” he says. “Of course you want the movies to do well. But I don’t want to know…  who’s hot now and who’s not and who’s making this much dough and who’s boffing this woman or that one. I want to remain ignorant of all this. I want to be totally outside and far away from all of it.”