A Blog Post Curated For you By Me

Herb’s Blog, Herbdate 22596 – 909

Here’s the haps:

There are a couple of words that have been overused, misused and flat out abused. Lately, the word curated seems to come up everywhere in regard to pretty much anything. The second definition of the word means to organize and sift through a collection of some kind. It used to be just museums and art museums and places like that which curated collections but now…Okay, so, yes, you can use it for pretty much anything, but it’s still annoying and pretentious in a lot of cases. Curated salads? Curated artisanal bread?

Another annoying word is artisanal. Something produced in a limited quantity by an artisan. An artisan makes something by hand in a traditional way. Artisanal’s meaning can also mean a company or person that makes or produces something usually using traditional methods and in limited quantities. Oh, a baker can also be an artisan, even an artist, to be sure but I find it difficult to believe that a nationally known bread company manufactures one of their products in such a way and with such finesse and art that it justifies being called artisanal. My mother-in-law produced artisanal bread and cinnamon rolls but she did not use a bread machine.

Yesterday I was talking with my teenage grandson and he asked if there was something in the folder. I have a folder on my computer that I call, “Show Doug.” As I purvey the daily comics on Comics Kingdom and GoComics along with cleanmemes I occasionally notice there is a comic I think he’d find funny. Then, whenever he comes with the family to visit (Being a teenager he sometimes has much more urgent/pressing/exciting/interesting things to do) we go through the folder together and have a few laughs. Yesterday I said, “Douglas, as a purveyor of artisanally crafted comic strips, I have curated this collection especially for you.” He grinned at me and said, “Grandpa, are you okay? You’re talking funny.” “I’ve got some ‘toons in the folder.” “Oh, why didn’t you say so?” He knew full well what I was saying but also plays along with me. We get along pretty well and he used to call me Bumpaw when he was his little brother’s age.

Anyway, I curated this post on this artisanal blog for your purveyance.

Good Night Purveyors of Sleep

23 Comments

  1. I fell prey to Sara Lee and the Artisanal Bread. It just tasted like regular manufactured white bread with a dusting of flour on the crust. I was bummed out.

  2. The first time somebody said to me…I’ll show you my photos, but they have not been curated yet, I said, Wait, what? Whatever happened to sorted? As to artisanal, nothing that comes from a factory should be called artisanal. Happy Sunday Herb. Allan

  3. Didn’t even know what ‘artisanal’ meant. I am now smarter for having read your blog, Herb. One word that always surprises me in my Western novels is ‘palaver’. The cowboys and outlaws and ranchers of the 1870-90’s ‘palaver’ with each other. Good grief. No one I know is smart enough in these modern days to know what that means (I had to look it up).

    Fun what one can learn while having a good time.

  4. When I worked at Wendy’s they experimented with fancy sandwiches they said were on “artesian” bread. I insisted on pronouncing it “artisan” because I thought it was already pretentious enough. But very, very tasty. I’m sad their fancy sandwiches were so short-lived.

    • I don’t remember those but if the marketing department couldn’t be bothered to teach people to pronounce the word correctly…I think that should have come from top down. Yet you had Artesian sandwiches? Well, well, well.

  5. I listen to “language fads” too. A few years ago, the fad was to say that someone “took all the oxygen out of the room”. For some time now, commentators love to call something an “inflection point”. A new one is to “put a button on” a particular subject. It’s quite amazing how it goes.

  6. I also see a lot of “old fashion” (urgh) and its correct form of “old-fashioned;” then, “hand-crafted” and “limited batches” and such. I highly doubt that gallons or pounds of things done in bulk is that unique of a product.

  7. Words to express the idea that something is better than other things have a long history. Deluxe and custom ran out of steam decades ago.

    The one that irritates me is when I see a bottle of Tito’s Handmade Vodka. You can make a lot of things with your hands but vodka isn’t one of them. They were probably trying to avoid using the word artisanal. Although artesian vodka would be an interesting concept.

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