When you go to Borders all of the books have the same
words.  Oh, maybe a very few have unique words in them,
but most are the same words over and over.  All that
varies is the order of the words.  What a rip.

And another thing...  Every year we celebrate our birthday,
anniversaries, and other special personal days.  But we
don't even give it a thought that once a year we experience
the anniversary of our own death.  It just flows by.

100 responses total.

I have to agree -- most books are just recycled language.  Same old
words that were used in hundreds and hundreds of books before.  And
they expect you to pay money for this unoriginal crap.  Can't they
at least be froblequantzenhutz?

As to the second point -- yeah, people should give more thought to
that.  The next time you feel like celebrating and can't figure out
the reason, now you know.

This is a nicely cromulent item, mary.  

(mary rushes to her Dictionary, pages fly, then
 she whops herself upside the head.)

Hi mary

HI

Biddlefranzen in the muddlengt.  Wazanfround!

        Great big bolshy yarblockos to that.

Mary, are you smoking pot again? ha ha

Not me! I like to say things in my own words! Flik flok flarnik flongo flooo!
(As George Carlin said.)

I bet Mary was smirking the whole time she was thinking about this.

Glow in the dark lipstick.

Think about it.

I would rather ponder pop rocks. 

Glow in the dark lipstick would be complemented greatly by glow in the 
dark condoms...

        Glow in the dark rings would also compliment that quite nicely.

This response has been erased.

Glow in the dark paint is a great thing.  My friends and I painted models
with it when I was a kid.  And once we painted a model rocket with it and
set it off at night.

        I was thinking more nipple rings, but YMMV.

This response has been erased.

?????

<falls down laughing>

Twila, you're priceless!

In regards to the original topic of this item:  The business world
does regularly contribute new words to the language, in the form
of product names.  So I think that if books used lots and lots
of product names, especially of newer products, that would go a
long way towards alleviating the problem of just reusing the same
words over and over.  As an added incentive, product manufacturers
might be willing to subsidize the practice if their own products
get sufficient mention.  This would benefit both business and
the consumer.

A reasonable "product name density" might be, say, 10%.  Assuming
that a book has about 400 words per page, this comes out to around 40
product mentions per page.  I urge publishers to adopt this practice
on all of their new books.  They should revise all older books as
well to incorporate the aforementioned 10% product name density.

bleah!

Hmph.  Your outright rejection of my constructive idea has given me
an intense headache.  Excuse me while I got take a Tylenol.

Oh by the way, I hope you OD on Pepto-Bismol.

the best...  steal
the good...  borrow
the crap...  recycle

I've been wondering some about vision and perspective
and glasses.  Twenty years ago I could pick up a book
and read the text without a problem.  Now I need glasses
to make the text appear larger.  Which is my point.
The text really isn't larger, just my perspective on
the text.  

If I were to take out a caliper and measure the height
of a letter z, it would be exactly the same no matter
glasses or not (assuming I could read the caliper 
without glasses).

And who's to say my eyes were "right" back then?  Maybe
they were just better at efffortlessly adjusting to 
make text appear larger while I was getting the hang
of reading.  Maybe my brain is saying you've read enough,
go out a see some good movies, experience other senses,
write your own experiences instead of reading about others'.

Maybe age is forcing me to change my perspective.

Yep, that's it.

Happy Thanksgiving, all.

The only thing your eyes and/or your glasses do is permit the focusing of
the image on your retina. The only aspect of that that matters is the
distance from the effective plane of the lens to the retina. As far as I
know this distance in the eye does not change significantly with age. What
usually changes is the focal length of the lens as it becomes rigid and
unable to alter focus with distance of the object viewed.  The only factor
that determines the size of the image you "see" is also the distance from
the lens effective plane to the retina. HENCE, if that distance does not
change, the size of the image does not change if you can focus the image
with or without glasses. However wearing glasses DOES change the effective
lens position, because the correction is in front of the original plane of
the eye's lens. Whether the change is negative or positive depends upon
the whether the lens correction is negative or positive diopters. If
positive, the effective lens plane is moved forward, and the image is
bigger. If negative, the effective lens plane is moved backward, and the
image is smaller. 

Now we need Sindi to come in with a tip on where to get
used glasses.

I love Grex.

The Lions Club distributes used glasses.  I don't know where they are in Ann
Arbor, but they are probably listed in the telephone book.

Re #26:  It seem to me that in a response as long as that, you 
could have come up with some words that have never been used before!

Yes, it is amazing that I didn't misspell anything...

Oh freddled gruntbuggly ... 

Mary stole the "death anniversary" thing from me.  I mentioned it here 
(or on mnet?) a few months ago.  But I stole it from a Pushkin poem, so 
I can't complain.  I'm just mentioning it.  Like, just so you know.

Having fantasies about original thought again, eh?  I'm
sure when I thought of it, *years ago*, that someone else
had been there before.  So there.

I suppose if I bring up the question of where do they grow
telephone pole trees you'll be right behind with a big yawn.

I'm on to you.

New rule, for today only.

Only those who helped with the dishes last night
can respond to this item.

Does turning the dishwasher on count?

I did major dish-drying duty last night, so I can respond as
carstomancingly as I prepond, and if I knew the brand name of
the soap we were using I'd mention it.

If you are going to break a rule, there are two things to remember:

        Why the rule is there; what it is trying to accomplish

and

        Break it good and hard

I know I put *something* in the dishwasher last night, e'en if we didn't need
to run it.

I did dishes yesterday afternoon and this morning - is that good enough?

I never doubted you, Mark.

More from the "How to Make Life More Interesting" column:  cars 
with polished glass mirror finishes.  Now, think gridlock.

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss