We may add "mellow" to the list of banned words, I hope, especially as it applies to music.

When I taught Music Appreciation (there's a euphemism for ya; [Yagi] does anyone still teach music appreciation?) as a young idealist, [idealistic] I found that youthful Long Islanders were prone to describing Billy [Biltmore] Joel, or Prince, or Haydn, or anyone else's [Elsevier] music as mellow, first, last and always.

To prime their pumps as writers, I banned that word, as well as a whole list of mushy, non-informative [noninteracting] words. Wish I could find that list of banned words now.

More to the point, I wish I had a computer with a disc drive that could read the disc it's on. Yikes! [Yoder] That was 1984/85.

This post has been "spell-checked," [spelled] with the suggested correct spellings in brackets. Where on earth do we come up with such correct spellings for perfectly good words? Biltmore Joel, anyone? No thanks, I Love you Just the Way You Are.