#243 A Merkin

In a quick follow-up to my last essay, in which I dealt with the new Free Range Chicken Broth, one of my listeners asked if it’s true that McDonalds is going ahead with a plan to put out Free Range McNuggets. Remember, you heard it here first. It will happen. McDonalds is a trend-meister and if they sniff public sentiment shifting in the free range direction, you can bet they’ll have a fast food product exploiting it in no time. And it’ll keep the hot side hot and the cold side cold with out destroying the ozone layer this go around.
Funny how trends emerge. Ten years ago if I had seen an ad in the paper for free range chicken broth I would have assumed that one: the product was for the stove top, and two: it was complimentary. Maybe a come-on by Swanson to promote their new range-top chicken broth. Swanson, ever your dietary friend. Low salt, no fat, kosher, and free range, soon we’re going to pop open the can and nothing will pour out. And speaking of words slipping into new usage. Been to the theater lately? Every third slide in the ad show before the previews start says those three special words: “Silence Your Cellphone!” Sounds like a command at a Nazi prison camp, or a demand from a frustrated London mayor. Silence him! It’s so final or fatal. I guess the more genteel and polite “please turn off your cellphone” wasn’t working. So on the one hand the theaters compromised, they no longer tell you to turn them completely off, but on the other hand they got more insistent about it, Silence them or die! The annoying thing is, last time I went to the theater, the guy next to me had his phone out and was text messaging something and the annoying glowing screen on his unit was distracting as hell.
As you know by now words fascinate me. And what fascinates me even more is how words evolve, there own little Darwinian survival of the fittest thing going on right before our eyes. The other day some one said something I agree with and I replied, “Right on!” Big phrase from the sixties. And only a slight difference from the English “Right-O” but how differently we visualize the people speaking them. An English fop and a Black Panther. Kind of like the spread between Eldridge Cleaver and Beaver Cleaver.
So it is with the term Al Jazeera. Pardon me, but I always feel like replying with, “Gesundheit!” Yeah, yeah, I’ll be sure to not put that joke into a cartoon. And I’m always torn with the drug company’s name Merck. Reminds me of an abbreviated form of the word for a toupee for the nether regions, once worn by prostitutes. Back in medieval times people wore wigs in different places on their bodies cause they shaved all their hairy regions to eliminate lice. The down under wig was called a merkin. I guess Australia hadn’t been discovered yet.
A merkin, ya gotta love it.