
In the Ghostbusters movies, the eponymous heroes blast ghosts and otherworldly beings with their proton packs, and the ghosts explode into a mess of slimy green ghost goo. This goo is called ectoplasm. I first encountered ectoplasm through Hi-C’s companion drink, Ecto Cooler, in elementary school whenever I brought my lunch. Ultimately, Ecto Cooler couldn’t hold a candle to the greatness of Kool-Aid Blasts and Capri Suns.
The late ’80s and early ‘90s were a wild time for brown-bagging it. Of course, my kids refer to anyone born before 2000 as people “born in the 1900s.”
On the theme of “words that end in ‘-asm,’” I’d like to discuss neoplasms. While...