I was kind of glad my facial cleanser had taste, one particular similarly-foggy morning.
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See, we’d bought this toothpaste with an orange flavor, just to see what it was like, plus none of that variety’s mint flavors sounded good. I don’t recall right now if we did in fact have it at that exact time, but we’d had it previously. Just saying that it wouldn’t be weird to have some orange gel on a toothbrush in our bathroom.
It’s probably also important that without my glasses on, I have pretty crummy vision. Plus, you know, it’s morning and I stagger right into the bathroom after turning off my alarm, and don’t always even bother with the lights immediately (there is ambient light coming through the window) cause I don’t want that kind of pain that early.
Yes, the inevitable happened, and the lessons learned included:
postponing the toothbrushing until after the shower, when I’m awake
being glad that I’d chosen a cleanser with not-bad tasting (and not harmful) ingredients like orange oil, glycerin, aloe vera, flour, vegetable oil, and so on
buying a toothpaste in a distinctive tube and/or at least peering closely at the product I’m dispensing onto the brush before actually sticking the brush in my mouth
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I like the idea that someone might require a certificate to believe that that 1994-model hadn’t just been sitting on the lot for the last decade…
That reminds me of the signs along the highways in California that say “Speed enforced by aircraft”. Now, I understand that there are patrol aircraft, but unless I’m mistaken about their capabilities, they’re merely observing cars’ speeds. The enforcement is still done by cars on the ground.
This has always bugged me. You can’t buy a home. Home is where you live, and you can’t live in it until you’ve bought it. You can turn something into a home without buying it. Live under a bridge? Then that’s your home. In jail? That’s your home. That nice 3BR/2B split-level you’ve had your eye on? Somebody else’s home for now, but as soon as you’ve bought it, it’s not anybody’s home until you move in.
This is closely related to software companies calling a computer program a “solution”. Getting a little ahead of ourselves, aren’t we? I can think of plenty of programs I’ve bought that haven’t solved a damn thing, just sat there useless on my hard drive. And even when it works, the program isn’t a solution itself, it’s merely a tool involved in the solution process. We used to have computers and programs; now we have systems and solutions.
And don’t get me started about ads for movies that have come out on DVD where they say “Surf Monkeys 5: Douchebags in Paradise. Own it on DVD!!”. You can’t own the movie, you can only own a copy of it. I’m waiting for some pirate to claim a right to sell copies of a movie on the grounds the commercial said he could own the movie, and a judge telling some festering fudgepipe of an intellectual property lawyer that he’s upholding the right.
If George Carlin didn’t do a routine on this, he should have.
You’re being extraordinarily silly. I might just as well say “You can’t buy a pet. Your pet is an animal you take care of, and you can’t take care of it until you’ve bought it.” or “You can’t build a factory. A factory is where you manufacture products, and you can’t manufacture products in it until you’ve built it.” and so forth. You are blinding yourself to how language works.
A factory doesn’t have to actually be producing anything in order to be considered a factory. Once the factory is built, but before it goes on line, it’s just as much a factory as it is when it’s shut down for a holiday. There only needs to be the potential for production.
The pet example is almost a winner, because it implies a relationship, as does a home. A home is somebody’s home, just like a pet is somebody’s pet. However, hardly anybody says “I’m going to buy a pet”. They say, “I’m going to buy a cat” or “I’m going to buy a dog.” When people do say they are going to buy a pet, it’s only because they don’t know which kind of animal they’re ultimately going to choose. This is analogous to someone saying he’s going to buy a home because it’s easier to say than “I’m going to buy a house, condo, co-op, lean-to, or other permanent shelter.” I can actually stomach that. But real estate agents don’t talk that way. They say, “Look at these lovely homes I found for you” even when every one of them is a house.
