Speaking of which – if you get bored of your current job – why don’t you apply to be an Astronaut?
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My colour-in lizard entry…
Beta Challenge: Colour in this lizard… My entry:
This has got to be my fetish of the moment – ever more pseudo-Apple product designs – some weird, some awful, some truly beautiful. The mistake that is made a lot – particularly in the renditions of the potential new design possibilities of a flat-screen iMac – is that the iMac has to be a friendly looking computer – a computer that has removed all the ‘computery’ bits that worry people. Some of the projected designs look like flash-backs to 1990, or earlier. Or they look like sleek designer products for people with very urban, stark sensibilities. Where’s the ‘cute’ appeal that the iMac has?
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Will the iPod be impressive?
Wired is reporting that the new device from Apple is a portable music device called the iPod. This doesn’t sound that impressive – but we shall have to wait and see.
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On pseudo-Apple designs…
Lots of weird pseudo-Apple product designs, entertaining to look at… here.
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In the midst of calamity…
Five links illustrating that even in the midst of calamity, the net remains full of variety, news and weirdness – in almost equal measure: The Smoking Gun has images of the envelopes that contained anthrax. Apple is to announce a breakthrough digital device – no one knows what it is, but it’s not a Mac. Derek’s going to be battling Heather – boyfriend versus girlfriend in photoshop tennis tomorrow. A Russian newspaper claims that all the evidence for Taliban involvement in terrorist attacks on the US is a farce. And a student teacher has swallowed her own toothbrush. You couldn’t make this stuff up.
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Saving Harry from fizzy sugar water…
Despite my vast daily consumption of Coca-Cola, I have to say that I’m weirdly drawn to the Save Harry campaign to keep Mr Potter off cans of fizzy sugar water…
I have a bone to pick with you. You’ve all had a drink in your lives, I assume. You’ve all gone out and bought some alcohol? Some of you may have got rather too keen on alcohol. You might even have become addicted. you might have become an alcoholic.
The term alcoholic is a slightly strange one. It sounds like a religion or philosophical position. Like Marxism. But more logically it sounds like a medical condition. Like necrotic (it means ‘dead-like’) or neurotic (someone with a neurosis). It’s clearly an adjective derived from a noun – in this case “Alcohol”. Alcohol, according to various dictionaries, comes from a word meaning any distillation or essence – and eventually only to what was previously called “alcohol of wine”. So alchohol goes to alchoholic, right? It’s simple! Alcohol is a substance, and the person who is obsessed with that substance or dependant upon it in some way is an alcoholic…
Now answer me this. When in your life have you ever drunk sexahol? Or workahol? Or chocahol? I’m not saying that a couple of drinks of sexahol wouldn’t go amiss at the moment. Nor, for that matter would a draught or two of chocahol. But they’re not substances. They don’t exist! So how can there be someone who is a workaholic? Or a sexaholic? Surely a more plausible description would be a workic or sexic or chocolatic? Well of course, the derivation of each of those words is different – they come from different languages and have evolved in different ways – so you can’t generalise quite in that way. But what is clear is that workaholism is just wrong. Plain wrong. Offensively wrong.
According to this model, alcohol becomes to be based around the idea of addiction. That the ‘alc’ part refers to drink, and the ‘ahol’ the addictive quality. But where is this phrase when you look at truly addictive products? Where’s the nicotinaholic? Where’s the crackaholic? Where’s the heroinaholic? It’s absurd. They’re just ridiculous words. They mean nothing.
Addenda: This rant was yet another one to emerge from a cursory viewing of Ally McBeal, the most annoying television series of all time.
Damn you, Simon, I don’t have time to play worm games all day. You wait til I get my hands on you, young man…
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I love Gina Snowdoll.
I love Gina Snowdoll.