On the rare occasion my television viewing happens to stray from the History Channel and land on MTV, I’ve come to expect to see very little of quality. I am accustomed to seeing heavily adorned rapstars surrounded by less-than-dressed libidinous women. The rapstars constantly yell about how much bling-bling they have and how good they are at rapping.

Imagine my surprise when I heard a rhythmic back-beat with lyrics that included “ratiocinate” followed by “recalcitrant” and “circumlocutions”. Something just wasn’t right. This was MTV afterall; polysyllabic is just not cool.

I’m not given to recreational narcotics (unlike our fictional friend Sherlock Homes), nor was I inebriated at the time (or any time for that matter). In generation X parlance, some wack cats had spun some dope phat licks. Remind me never to try speaking like that again.

In case I’ve not been clear, what I’m trying to say is that Blake Harrison and Alexander Rappaport just put out a CD called Flocabulary and MTV was letting them plug their music.

I’d like to jump on that promotion bandwagon. I like the concept of Flocabulary — mixing SAT level vocabulary with hiphop music and rhymes. I also like listening to their CD, which came in the mail earlier last week ($12.95). You can get a study guide too ($9.95).

So you should all go out and buy their CD, unless, of course, you already know what pellucid, protean, and physiognomy mean. But, I didn’t know, and I’m betting you don’t either.