A rose is a rose is an iPod

Unfortunately, there isn't all that much meat here, but there are few interesting blurbs on how tech-based products got their names.

Personally, I'm a total geek when it comes to this stuff, so if you throw in my professional inclinations, I'm ready-made to dive into a novel's worth of information about every one of the products listed here. But this is a simplified take on things ("Birds tweet, so hey...there's a name") that doesn't really delve far enough into the details to be truly satisfying.

On the plus side, nearly all of the products in the list have cool enough names to warrant further discussion. Except for Windows 7. It stands apart only because Microsoft fumbled so badly that they had to go back to their bland roots and remove any remnants of Vista from our memory. As Microsoft's Mike Nash said, "Simply put, this is the seventh release of Windows, so therefore 'Windows 7' just makes sense."

Bloody freakin' brilliant.

Am sending you this drawing I did of a spider

This is just about the perfect way to wrap up the week.

Pooh Bear gets what's coming to him

For some reason, and I'm not quite sure why, the funniest thing about this is the sad little boy sitting by himself, disapproving of the events behind him, but unable to do anything about it. Original is here.

A stupid idea

I wrote this a few years ago. I'm posting it here since I can't think of anything else to say.

A friend of mine is about to have a baby. He's been trying to come up with a name for the yet-to-be born kid.

I suggested he name the baby a color, but not the name of the color like "Yellow" or "Green". The actual color... the visual hue. It would be a name that could only be "pronounced" by seeing the color.

If the child's name was the color blue, you would hold up a blue card to address him. If you wanted to yell at him for doing something wrong, you would hold up a much larger blue card. When whispering to the kid before putting him to bed you would hold up a very, very small blue card. You get the idea.

If you didn't want to carry a bunch of color cards around with you, you could just grab whatever's handy, like chalk for a pool cue, an acid-washed denim jacket or something else that's blue. I really shouldn't have to offer suggestions for things that are blue. If you're too stupid to figure that out, you probably can't read this anyway.

Either that or you're color blind. Sorry. You probably are color blind. I hadn't even thought of that.

Admittedly, naming your child a color could cause a few problems, especially later in life. A phone call might go something like this: "Hi. May I please speak to (silent pause)." The person on the other end of the line would probably be holding up the colored card during the pause, but you might just think the person was being a dick by not saying anything. You'd probably have to use some sort of decimal system as an alternate spoken version of the name. So 23338.87880-2211-3990 would be the spoken version for the kid with the blue name.

I've got something to say

Let me start off by saying that I'm well aware that there are way too many blogs in the world. I also know that it's downright irritating that I'm adding to the pulsating mound of unwanted opinions and tiresome diatribes that (rightly) go largely unnoticed. Believe me, I'm as bothered by it as you are. In fact, what I’m writing right now makes me very angry. So, so angry.

Granted, there are the few voices that stand far above the rest and deserve to be heard. Out of the thousands and thousands and thousands of blogs, I would guess that there are probably about, at most, three that bear mention. At the moment I can't think of what any of those three might be. I’m sure they’re out there. I think I might have even read one of them at some point. Mostly, though, it's a big, leaking Tupperware bowl filled with smelly poo that's best left ignored to fester by the wayside. Nobody cares what anybody else thinks because we're all too busy making our own noise to hear anybody else make theirs.

With that being said, I present my blog, to be added to the many other blogs that nobody can really bother to find the time to be indifferent about.

I don’t expect anybody to read this (that means you, me), but I feel compelled to vomit the inanity that fills my head on a semi-regular basis. It’s gotta go somewhere, so it might as well show up here.

If someone does happen to read this, such as business associates or family members who may disprove of certain topics or crude words, I’ll apologize in advance. I’m sorry. I don’t want to offend you, but there’s no point in doing this if I can’t be openly blunt, annoying, stupid, ignorant, offensive, trivial and boorish. If I’m going to bother having a blog, I may as well go all in.

Be warned: I sometimes use foul language in my writing. I won’t admit to using such words in real life, but I will say that my inner monologue is composed of nothing but profane, four-letter slang. My thoughts are entirely blue, and they admittedly make absolutely no sense at all. How could they? You try forming so much as a single sentence using only a series of curse words, let alone live an entire lifetime filled with thoughts consisting of nothing other than expletives, and see what you come up with. Asshole.

I’d like to touch on a few topics to get things moving.

Let’s start with the name. The title of this blog is Bombaxing. It’s a word I made up after hours of pointless research in an attempt to come up with something memorable. Having failed that, I chose Bombaxing. It originated from the word “bombastic”, which commonly means “high-sounding language with little meaning, used to impress people..” Makes sense, doesn’t it?

Bombast, also known as “fustian” is also a term for a woven or twilled fabric that was worn by workers in the 19th century to display their allegiance to the British working class. Those working class types were “bombastic” in their puerile blather.

Bombaxing, in turn, is a word meant to connote the idea of contrived misanthropic speech,which is composed primarily of platitudes that go largely unnoticed and are immediately disregarded by anyone that happens upon them.

I know. I don’t care either.

The word can also be used as a verb. For example, you could say, "Bob, you're irritating the boils right off of my backside by endlessly bombaxing about the political leanings of red wattle pigs. You clearly don't know what you're talking about. If you continue, I'll tear off your arms and eventually learn to play the bag pipes for unrelated reasons."

The deeper, more meaningful purpose of this blog is to share my travels as I ebb ever closer toward my final years on this planet and die of old age, having lived a long, inspirational life that motivated so many others to moderate, comparable success and well-timed advantage.

I’m only 32, so you’re going to have to stick around for a while to get to the wisdom and death part. It’ll happen. Just be patient. I already have a very small assemblage of gray hairs on my head to prove it. Death and sound judgement (mostly death) are only many decades away. The End will either come from wise, old age or my propensity to forcibly inhale fist-sized gobstoppers into my throat, letting them melt by their own accord. Either way, I’ll probably impart or depart sooner or later.

Stay tuned.