I find myself spending more and more time every week at NanoTrax. I am still shit at driving the radio controlled cars, but the racing is fun and the company is amusing; none more so than the owner, Q’on.

Q’on is American, and you don’t need to meet him to discover this. Only an American would write a report and describe someone being beaten in a race as being “pimp slapped” (which is not a term I have heard before but intend to use in future whenever I deem it appropriate).

Being British, I waste no time on berating him on his appalling mutilation of the English language. A favourite and obvious provocation is to ask him to pronounce aluminium. Of course he pronounces it “aluminum”, and would probably spell it that way if he could find an excuse to use it in a sentence. “If Chuck had used aluminum wheels he would not have gotten pimp slapped, y’all”.

This morning I was delight to discover that the aluminium/aluminum debate has spread wider than the confines of the NanoTrax club. Gizmodo has a report on The Greatest and Most Dramatic Wikipedia Edit Wars, and alumin(i)um is right up there alongside The (the) Beatles.

The latest entries are rather lacking in the professional niceties one would expect from academics.

“shit eatin aluminium fuck ass poop balls”? Someone needs a good pimp slapping.