Well, Chuck you made me look up bastardization. I was unaware that word had sprouted so many different uses. But the first reason it attracted my attention was the "z". I submitted some work to a british publisher and they wanted all surprizes, analyzes, etc to exclude 'z' and use 's' instead. I did not want to reveal the massive width, length, and girth of my grammatical ignorance so I just said "Okay." Anyone know if this is a proper use issue or just a personal taste thing? I also find myself misusing numbers: "Politics are my favorite subject". And so I tend to avoid the word "media".