Some Blog Site

One of the more fascinating things about today’s modern world is the naming of medicines. There are a lot of medicines, and there are a lot of new names needed for new medicines, and I’m always impressed on how someone can invent a new word that’s not like another existing word.

I mean, some of the names do sound ridiculous, but they are unique and memorable. It seems I would mispronounce half of them if I didn’t hear it pronounced in the ad.

I did look it up, and there are agencies that the drug manufacturers use to come up with the names. It sounds like a lot of work, and a lot of regulations for drug names. It would be a lot easier to name a product without legal constraints. But on the other hand I think that is how you get these uniquely memorable names.

I just know if I tried to come up with a name for a new medicine I’d probably do best by typing a bunch of clumps of random letters and picking one of those that sounded right. It’s hard to think of a new name that doesn’t sound like anything else, because trying to think of things brings to mind the words that already do exist.

Perhaps those million monkeys are actually at the naming agencies, having not gotten close to writing Shakespeare.

I’ve mentioned people leaving bad reviews before. Not reviews with a bad rating of the product, but the review itself was poorly done. Here’s a previous example of how to write reviews.

But I was looking at something on the Home Depot website and of all the reviews, this one had me shaking my head. For the most part, people who are bad at reviewing things don’t know it. I think they mean well but are clueless as to the uselessness of their review.

This guy, however, was not clueless. He just straight out admitted he shouldn’t be leaving a review. But yet he still left one. I can only guess he was either being blackmailed or threatened with violence that he had to leave a review right then. Or maybe he got some kickback for leaving a 5-star review and that was the last day the kickback would be available.

I was behind a Honda Element at a stoplight last week, and I was mildly amused by its license plate

Here is what I saw:

And here it is zoomed in a slightly enhanced:

So there you have it – the elements are Earth, Wind, Fire, Water, and Honda.

Not love, despite what that movie tried to claim.

This post is a repeat – I’m phoning it in today because I’m enjoying the holiday.

Happy Birthday

A M E R I C AA M E R I C AA M E R I C A!

It’s mid-to-late June, and it looks like there’s snow on the ground here in southern Michigan. In northern Michigan it might be actual snow, but here it is just the cottonwood trees shedding.

I didn’t get a good picture of the fluffy white “cotton” falling gently through the air, but this is what it looks like after it lands.

Unfortunately, it does not pack well into snowballs, nor can you make fabric out of it. It’s just for visual interest, and for finding out who has seasonal allergies.

Here are some thoughts I jotted down that aren’t quite sufficient for their own individual blog posts. If you’re the type of person who likes Twitter, pretend each of these is a tweet.

• Mom has a couple of dictionaries she won back in school for being first place in the spelling bee. I think that’s backwards – the spelling bee loser should get the dictionary.
• Someone asked me “If Cinderella’s glass slipper was a perfect fit, how did it fall off?” And the answer is that it was a slipper not a sticker.
• The person who coined the phrase “when one door closes, another door opens” must have had a refrigerator like our old one. The top freezer door kept popping open when the main fridge door is shut vigorously. This one was compliments of Delta – I don’t know if he made it up or heard it somewhere.
• The mosquitoes here are pretty bad, but the other day no matter how many I swatted I kept seeing more. It turns out I just had a bunch of eye floaters, no wonder I couldn’t hit them.
• What if I want further ado?

When the boys get to high school age, we give them their own laundry basket and tell them they’re responsible for their own laundry. So we have only one child left who throws his dirty laundry in our hamper.

It makes it much easier to sort now, before that I had to check if this shirt was Gamma’s or Delta’s.

And socks. Socks were the worst because there aren’t sizes to go from like the shirts and shorts.

But sorting is easy now – my wife’s stuff is pretty distinct compared to mine and Delta’s. And I know which clothes are mine, so anything left goes in Delta’s pile.

Until…

We were at Costco and someone remembered that Delta needed new socks. Well, he had seen my Weatherproof socks and felt them and they were comfortable so he asked for those.

I was against it – I thought he should get a set of socks that were unique to him. But I lost that one and he got a set of socks that matched mine.

I thought I would be able to tell his socks apart from mine because his would be newer and wouldn’t be getting threadbare in the heel and ball-of-the-foot areas.

Not all my pairs of socks were worn enough for that to be foolproof. But I did find a foolproof method.

He takes his socks of by peeling them off, so they’re always inside out in the laundry. I always takes mine off by sliding them, so that they don’t go inside out and that saves me work later because I don’t have to turn them back inside in.

So now it’s simple – any socks in the basket that are inside out go into his pile, and any that are outside out go in my pile. Hasn’t failed me yet.