RE DANK

In the post before last I used the word "dank" in its slangular sense; that is, to say that something is "cool." I'd like to take this opportunity of having a keyboard in front of me and four beers in me to say that I discovered this term. My brother, who is fourteen and cool-for-high-school (meaning that he plays sports), said that one day his friend came in and said, apropos of nothing, "who wants some of this dang crack?" Now, I usually hate "crack" jokes, because they're usually lazy and I've seen too many of my friends and peers swallowed up by it to ever find the topic anything but unutterably heartbreaking (and the same goes for crystal meth).

But when my brother repeated what his friend said to me, it sounded as if he said "dank crack," which, for whatever reason, was hilarious to me. The conflation of the concept of crack (horrible) with the concept of a musty basement in desperate need of a dehumidifier (mundane) made me laugh but hard. And now I'm saying it! And writing it, on my silly blog! I'd say help me, but you and I both know the vicissitudes of language. They are not to be helped.