Who Do I Tell About My Glastic Idea?

(March 08, 2006)

Oh for the love of fuck! I just read a phrase that made me roll my eyes so hard they almost fell into my head.

First to explain -- I love words and expressions. I can discuss nuance and meaning for days. I've had half hour conversations on "amused" versus "bemused." I am constantly fascinated by the way people talk. Hub's father has a way of talking that matches old expressions from his childhood with techno-babble from his career as an IBM programmer, so he'll say something like, "This WAN expansion is raising merry Ned with my schedule." Joe's sister is a master of cliche and she daisychains them together, so she says things like "For the life of me I don't know why the waitress was so rude, it left a bad taste in my mouth, but after a few sangrias I was feeling no pain." I overheard a girl on the train who ended every single sentence with "and everything or whatever." "We went to his house and watched a movie and everything or whatver." I just re-read all the Anne Tyler books and the Baltimore-ian expression of "and them" was getting me. "Ma, Claudia and them are here." "It's Danny and them." How do these things evolve? Fascinating.

I especially like the very old words and phrases that ring with an unexplainable charm. Like fortnight and bailiwick and swan song and life of Riley.

But I also love the new expressions that you wouldn't be able to easily explain to yourself if you went back twenty years in a time machine. Like Google and text (as verbs). And spam and blog.

Jump the shark. Podcast. Bling. All new words, all good.

But this one is just unforgivable. I just read a blurb (hey, there's another new word) on a website (hey another one) that said "Need training? If you missed the webinars, you can download..."

WEBINARS !?

Look, I was right on board with VJ and EJ arising from DJ. I like the ring of vidiot as in making a damn fool of yourself on video. I do think "texting" sounds pretty stupid, but what can you do, it's one of those flat-out descriptor things like "walkie-talkie" and "movie" that only look weird later.

But WEBINAR...no, someone should be shot over webinar.

I came up with "glastic" and think the guy who invented Plexiglas should pay me for it. Isn't glastic ten times better than Plexiglas? It's BRILLIANT.

Well maybe not brilliant, but it's not as dumb as webinar.