The Thinking Writer’s Bible

BORN IN THE FIELD.BUILT FOR THE FUTURE. That’s what the headline said. I tried to wrap my mind around a ‘concept’ and couldn’t come up with anything. Except maybe something mildly obscene related to the sheep-loving Owen Newitt character in BBC ‘s award-winning The Vicar of Dibley series.

“What do you think this means?” I asked Nyel. He thought it over for a bit and then said, “Something to do with cotton fabric?” That seemed to make pretty good sense since the words were at the top of an Eddie Bauer catalog page picturing something we used to call polo shirts. So I read further into the description and found that they were made from micro-textured polyester/nylon to keep fabric off your skin…

 Clearly not cotton and perhaps not even a shirt. How in the world does this mystical material stay away from your skin? Actually, the concept was vaguely creepy. So I moved on. Sadly, the super-hype didn’t get much better and, actually, the clothes themselves got a lot stranger.

An Illuminating Book

On a page yelling (yes, positively screaming) INTRODUCING MOTION in huge letters there was a picture of a T-Shirt with carefully crafted holes in it, front and back. FREEVENT^TM TECHNOLOGY Accelerates evaporative cooling… The world’s only sweat-activated venting system.

OMG. What happened to the old adage, “Horses sweat. Men perspire. Women glow.” (No question mark needed… The remark is so rhetorical as to be a non-question.) Clearly, we are living in less genteel times these days and I am stuck in a time warp.

On the other hand, catalogues come in the mail nowadays and I read them at my leisure, not on the run (so to speak) in the privy out back.  Our new Church Outhouse here in Oysterville will offer real TP, not the old Sears or ‘Monkey’ Wards reading material of a century ago.  Although, come to think of it, was it an editorial commentary that those early catalogues were placed where they were most useful?

Bottom line, I’m glad we don’t get many catalogues  anymore. Not only are the advertised products geared to a clientele fifty years younger than I, the verbiage goes beyond my understanding of the purpose of language. All that text does nothing to illuminate; it does everything to confuse. At least to this old gray head. It’s definitely a case of BabbleSpeak Meets “A Dark and Stormy Night!”