Enlarging the Lexicon.

My wife, Amanda, inadvertently helped me coin a phrase last week. Much to her chagrin, mostly because the phrase is crass and juvenile, I haven't stopped using it since. I was watching one of my favorite Food Network shows, Diners, Drive-thrus and Dumps, when apparently I made a sound like I was enjoying the idea of bacon-wrapped meatloaf a little too much. Amanda sarcastically asked me if I had popped a boner and I told her, "Yes, dear. A food boner."

So now I'm out to make "food boner" the preferred measuring stick(so to speak) for rating dishes. Male food critics of the world I implore you to drop the star system in favor of the Food Boner Index. Your sushi was fresh, delicious and perfectly rolled? How about three food boners out four? The food was okay, but the atmosphere was terrible? Perhaps this cafe only merits two food boners. Better yet, since I'm not terribly interested in counting boners, maybe we could make it all or nothing, pass/fail style. If the food and experience rock, you get a Food Boner. If the food and experience stink, you get a "Flaccid" next to your name in the write-up. Help me America, join in the crusade to make "Food Boner" so popular that it joins bling, green-collar and staycation as ridiculous additions to Webster's Dictionary.

And while on the subject of words, I'll hip you to another of my mini-crusades(you'd think I really have nothing important to do)-I want to bring Grass back as the preferred slang term for marijuana. Not pot, weed or dope-grass. As in "Pass the Grass." or the cheesy bumper sticker form decades past, "Ass, gas or grass, nobody rides for free."