My fiancee has created a new word for the growing Internet-age lexicon. She went to iTunes the other day, bought some music. Later, she was telling me about it and sort of stumbled in the telling. Did she download some music? That sounds like it was free. Did she buy some music? That only tells half the story. Did she buy and download some music? Accurate, but too wordy. She thought about it a second. What did she do?

Downbuy.

That’s it, folks. That’s the word to describe any sort of electronic purchase where you are able to download the content and use it immediately. You downbuy it. Past tense, downbought. Works with iTunes (music and video), Xbox Live or PlayStation Network content, Amazon Kindle books, or anything else you can buy online, download, and start using. “I’m going to go to iTunes and downbuy the new Burning Puppies CD.” It’s snappy, descriptive, and sounds just vaguely geeky enough to be considered cool by the Web folks.

Hey, it makes more sense than “LOL,” “pwn,” and whatever hell “teh roxxorz!!1!” is.

4 Comments »

The fiancee and I went to see The Dark Knight in IMAX on Monday night. 9:15PM show and it was a sell-out crowd. Great movie, by the way. Recommend you go, and see it in IMAX if at all possible. Anyway, the movie gets done, the credits start to roll, and, I swear, at least one hundred people immediately flipped open their cell phones as one to see who might have possibly tried to call them or text them during the two hours when they were—gasp!—not reachable by cell phone!

What is this? Are you all doctors on call? Do you have some huge business deal pending at midnight on a Monday? Expecting a call from your lawyer about that escrow account closing? Folks, you don’t need to be in constant contact with each other twenty-four hours a day, especially for the kind of insipid, banal crap most of you seem to be talking about when you take these all-important phone calls while seated next to me in a restaurant. Honestly, are you that starved for attention and contact that you simply must check your cell phone anytime you have to go more than five minutes without being able to answer it?

In fact, you know what? Got a challenge for you cell-phone addicts. For one day, one twenty-four-hour period, turn off your cell phones. Just shut them off. Toss them in a drawer. Leave them at home. No calls. No texts. No email. If you want to be really crazy, the next day, erase all your waiting voice and text messages without listening to or reading them. Just go for twenty-four hours without being reachable at every waking moment for your friends to let you know whatever insignificant thought just crossed their minds.

Call me up and let me know how it goes.

No comments »

Scotch-Brite brand scouring pads have a claim on the package that says, “Guaranteed not to scratch non-stick cookware.” And I wondered: Why would you need to scour non-stick cookware? Isn’t that kind of the point of the stuff?

1 Comment »

So I’m at the grocery store the other day, buying food and whatnot. My current job pays for squat, so I’m always on the lookout for bargains, sales, discounts, that sort of thing. Glance at the list and see we need some dryer sheets so our clothes will come out of the dryer softer or drier or something. Never fully understood what dryer sheets actually do. So I’m looking over the boxes and I see a 200-sheet box of Bounce dryer sheets with a large sticker on the front boldly proclaiming “11% More!” Eleven percent more? Kind of an odd upsize, I think. Not, say, twenty percent more or thirty-three percent? Isn’t that what they usually do? Still, a bargain’s a bargain and eleven percent more free is still more.

Then I take another look at the sticker. It doesn’t, technically, say that extra eleven percent is free. Looking at the tiny type under the gigantic “11% More” declaration, I read “than the 180-sheet size.” I do some quick math in my head and, yes, two hundred is roughly eleven percent more than one-eighty. But it’s for the same price, right? A glance at the prices shows that it’s not. The two hundred count box costs almost a dollar more than the one-eighty box.

So this is in no way a deal for the consumer. They’re advertising the simple mathematical fact that this box contains more than that box, hoping you’ll just assume that the prices are equal and buy an extra twenty sheets for about a nickel a sheet. Thanks but no thanks.

I bought a box of Snuggle brand dryer sheets instead. That little bear is creepy but, dammit, he’s honest.

1 Comment »