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At my annual physical yesterday, which I get exactly every two years or so, I finished the process with a stint in the room where you play with the chemistry set, pouring secret brightly colored mixtures from flask to test tube.
Just above the porcelain retort appeared a little advice on the wall: “Notify Staff If Toilet Dysfunctions”. I appreciate this doctor’s clean and modern facilities and was touched by the thoughtful reminder to remain socially aware if things run amiss — while not loading on the responsibility quite as much as the airplane bathrooms that request you run a sponge around the place after your visit.
But it seems to me this notice was constructed by someone who spends too much time in a doctor’s office. Or maybe they did indeed intend a situational pun but possess a too-gentle sense of humor and their Brother P-touch couldn’t make a smiley face.
Anyway, the gears of my inner linguist began to grind, churning out alternative versions of the sign, all as syntactically correct as humanly possible:
- Notify Staff If Toilet Malfunctions.
- Notify Staff If Toilet Becomes Dysfunctional.
- Notify Staff In Case of Ejectile Dysfunction (the toilet’s not yours
. . .which in your case would be Erectile Dysfunction and you should also tell us about it! Even Vice Presidents can’t perform sometimes.)
- If Toilet Sticks, Wiggle the Flushometer.
- If the toilet through mere obstinacy refuses to perform as desired, please understand. It is not sentient.
- If You See Something, Say Something.
- Flush Failure? Inform Authorities!
- In Case Of FAILURE,
BREAK ASS
Running in Opposite Direction.
Or words to that effect.
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Check out this litany of our two-term president’s accomplishments.
Written in honor of Bush’s current tour of the Middle East, it is in the form of a letter from the editor of the Gulf News, a newspaper in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Just to remind you, the USA and UAE are important allies in the […]
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My coining of Nyertoon [pronounced NYE-er-toon, pretty much the way it’s spelled] leads me to put this post under Llewellynguistics. It means New Yorker Cartoon, get it?
I was trying to come up with a blend of “cartoon” and some animal, preferably doggie hybrid style (whoa, that doesn’t sound right).
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Call Me Curious (Magenta)
Call me uncool, call me urban-not-country, but I hadn’t heard about this particular recreational trend until today, when I was doing some research on the noble gases, answering the kinds of questions that come to me in the shower. Really. Like why are the inert elements all gases at room temperature? […]
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July 25, 2005
My wife Laurel, dog Harrigan, and I moved from a dungeon-like apartment on the famous Upper West Side of Manhattan and bought a house in a charmingly funky part of Brooklyn — not as far up as Crown Heights or down as Flatbush, neither as hip as Dumbo nor as stuck-up as Park Slope — a neighborhood where it’s […]
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Pseudointellectual Language Discussion #73
More Questions Than Answers
How is it that “honeycomb” became the authoritative nomenclature when describing a hexagonal pattern?
Bee’s Honeycomb
Cow’s Reticulum
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I’ve been wanting to offer my images to the public for years and years, but never could find the right partner. I think Imagekind may be it. I am starting with selections from my urban series randomiCity
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Ancient Wisdom:
Where Not To Boldly Go when Naming a Website
Always-On
Fool-Proof
Error-Free
Always-There
Perfect-Genius
Never-Down
Spotless-Syntax
Faultless-n-Friendly
Zero-Defect
Immune-to-Laws-of-Nature
Offered as Evidence:
(Unretouched screen capture, 2008-01-05.)
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Ldawg.4377 scowled at the hovering image of the vidAAgent® so in his face. “I want a wucking window! And not over a wucking wing!”
“No problem. * Please note: Window locations present increased radiation levels potential, which have been demonstrated in non-trivial samples to cause cancer and genetic mutations. Some mutations […]
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Does your mouth get confused when you chew on a tongue sandwich?
Does it struggle to avoid the pain of biting itself?
Does it confront a moral dilemma when eating its own kind?
Which reminds me of another conundrum confronted in the deli: Honeycomb Tripe.
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