Have you seen the promotion that Pepsi and Amazon.com are running? If you buy Pepsi products, you can enter the codes on a website and once you've built up enough points, you can download music for free from Amazon.com. I'm not really a coupon or a promotions kind of guy, but when a promotion comes along for something I already use, I take advantage of it. But I had a problem. As I went to enter the codes on the website, I couldn't find the codes on my 20 ounce bottles of Pepsi. I read every word on the label. I looked under the label. Then I checked it all again. Nothing. I griped about it to a friend and he asked me if I'd looked under the cap. Oh. Well, I think I did. Turns out, I didn't. For those of you who are as dense as I am, the codes are under the cap.
So, I'm sitting at the table in my bowling league the other night, waiting for my turn to bowl, and I see the standings sheet. I flip it over and notice something I've never seen before--a section that lists all of the "temporary substitutes." That phrase played with my mind. Doesn't the word "substitute" insinuate that eventually, probably sooner rather than later, the original will appear, thereby making the substitute temporary? So, why the redundancy? Yeah, I know, I should should concentrate more on bowling than on the words on the bowling sheet. But hey, I'm a word guy.
I heard another funny one-liner by a sports announcer last night. I was watching a little bowling (something I rarely do) as I drifted off to sleep and I saw a guy apparently leave a ten pin--but not really. The head pin deflected off the side wall and rolled over to take out the ten to complete the strike. The announcer said: "It goes down like a keg at a frat party." You just know that the announcer has been saving that one for the perfect opportunity.
I read a story in Anne Lamott's book, Plan B, this week about how her teenage son kept coming up with new pet words as he was growing up. As she wrote that particular chapter, his latest word was "random." So, in the middle of a conversation he might say, "That was random Mom." It reminded me of a woman I used to know. She used the word "crunchy" in place of the word "weird" and I always thought that was so funny. I love it when a book can make you remember something you haven't thought about in years.
