Rick Nelson and Claude Peck dispense unasked-for advice about clothing, etiquette, culture, relationships, grooming and more.

CP: So, like, Rick, you know what? I like, um, really like like our little talks. They are so amazing.

RN: No-yeah. Um, like, bee-otch, you know, huh? Wait, dawg, what were you saying?

CP: Speech pathologies, señor. Trying to weed out repetitive, unnecessary, inane, trendy and annoying tics of speech is not child's play. I'm, like, talking well is really hard. But so worth it, don't you think?

RN: Absolutely. We all fall into the language traps, revisiting the same words or expressions ad nauseam. If only I could expunge the use of "absolutely" as an affirmative from my vocabulary.

CP: Yes. Excise that word along with its omnipresent sibling "exactly!"

RN: Totally. Or should I use the superfluous "clearly"? Then there's the fingernails-on-chalkboard habit of starting sentences with "Now."

CP: "Now" is the new "um." It seems to be overused most often by talking heads on TV and radio, where they are always striving for up-to-the-millisecond currency.

RN: It could be worse, they could be making transitions via "Anyhoo." Yikes.

CP: Another bad one: Drifting off into a crutch-like "so. ... " at the end of each utterance. Imagine if Ralph Waldo Emerson had said, "Obey thy heart, give all to love. So."

RN: There you go, flaunting that Macalester liberal- arts education of yours again. That's right up there with the ever-present "like." Like, the last time I was on an airplane I was trapped next to two chatty young women who inserted it between, like, every, like, third word. It was -- no pun intended -- like being trapped inside a cable-access version of "The Hills," which is no Chekhov to begin with, you know what I mean?

CP: What fiery hell it must have been. Also, when a person talks, he or she "says." He or she does not "go."

RN: Dude, I'm cringing. Sorta-kinda along the lines of when I hear traces of the dreaded Minnesota accent in my voice. My fear is that someday I'll wake up and it will be thicker than the hair on Alec Baldwin's back. Or when I unconsciously utter Minnesota-isms that I thought I'd shaken years ago. As in, "Will you borrow me a quarter?" or "Do you want to go with?" Old linguistic habits die hard.

CP: "With" as a sentence-ender is something up with which I will not put. A whole 'nother thing I loathe is when meteorologists talk about "your weather later today." The weather is ours, actually.

RN: As long as you retire "actually" from your wordbook, I will, like, agree with you.

E-mail: witheringglance@startribune.com.

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