"The gimmicky sideshow of the syntactic circus"

What a great line! Dan Zak of the Washington Post has written a delightful article on this week's American Dialect Society meeting. He not only reports on the selection of the 2009 word of the year ("tweet") and word of the decade ("google") but also on Steve Kleinedler's new tattoo! Check out the debate--sadly, no illustration of Steve's embellishment--at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/08/AR2010010803692.html. You can also visit ADL's more sober account of the proceedings, over which ADS executive secretary Alan Metcalf and American Speech columnist Grant Barrett presided, at http://www.americandialect.org/.