Friday, May 26, 2006

#266 List of Lint

Writing a daily column on the minutiae of American culture means there’s a lot of ideas that end up in my idea drawer and never quite come to flower. Some ideas take wing, and I can dash off a whole page before I even look up from the keyboard. Oh to be a touch typist. A kinesthetic keyboarder. One of these days, when I’m in the old folks home curled over like a question mark, I’ll be able to tell all my cronies it’s an occupational injury from tapping out all these tirades over the years. Rant Rictus? Harangue Hunch? In any event, some ideas just wither on the vine and start to collect in my drawer like so many lint balls, good for nothing but belly button insulation. Herewith a sample.
A friend of mine was going on about recording artists selling out to the establishment. He waxed emotional about all these supposedly non mass market musicians who were on record as refusing to compromise their artistic integrity in order to make a fast buck. He brought up the name Sean Puffy Diddy Combs. So, I asked, Hip Hop artist Puffy comb’s actions contradicted his earlier proclamations did he? My friend nodded. Perhaps knowing me too well. So you could say he was guilty of hip-hop-crisy? Like I say, Lint.
But there’s a country lint as well. Like when Tim McGraw and Nelly did their chart-topping duet last year. All the money men in both camps weren’t saying yippy-kye-yay so much as hip hop hooray. As far as I know only one person in his posse said whoa Nellie.
So I get this water bottle the other day. Normally I’m not a bottled water drinker. I hate to admit that our society has been reduced to the point where we have to produce incredible amounts of waste products and consume immeasurable amounts of energy in the construction of, and oil in the chemical composition of, little plastic bottles within which to put plain water. Is it barely possible that the manufacture of the water bottle itself contributes to the pollution that makes the water bottle necessary to hold water that is harvested from areas not chemically polluted by water bottle manufacture? Anyhow. The name of the water was Crystal Geyser. Neither a hip name, nor one I would hop to. Because first, when I think crystal I thing glass. The idea of glass shards in my drinking water is less than appealing. Second, are these people trying to use geyser synonymously with fountain? Cause I always thought a geyser was hot water. In fact, my dictionary says the word geyser comes from an Icelandic name of a certain hot spring in Iceland called “Geysir” which means, literally, gusher. The modern definition is “a spring from which columns of boiling water and steam gush into the air at intervals.”
Kind of like a cranky columnist spouting off.
America, ya gotta love it.

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