Thoughts at large

By MARK PATINKIN
The Providence Journal
Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Thoughts at Large:

-- Some Web site keeps sending me the following e-mail: "OMG, Someone Has A Crush On You." Nice try. The last time anyone had a crush on me was during the Gerald Ford administration.

-- I know it's now resolved, but someone should have drawn a political cartoon of autoworkers with strike signs marching righteously off the end of a plank.

-- Meanwhile, I'd like to see a law requiring car companies to put on stickers that list the true breakdown of what we're buying: Sunroof: $1,200. Heated seats: $400. Health care for UAW retirees in Michigan: $2,500.

-- How awkward is it when you're watching TV with your children and a Viagra ad comes on?

-- Did they come up with the word scrimshander because scrimshawer is too hard to say?

-- A reader asks: How do they get Teflon to stick to a pan?

-- If there were no women on earth, Stanley Steemer would be out of business. Show me the man who ever thinks his carpets or couches need to be cleaned. (Note to my wife: I'm still thinking we should have spent that money on the MLB package from Cox.)

-- As far as Ahmadinejad speaking at Columbia, we wouldn't need the First Amendment if it was just for speech everyone liked.

-- Does anyone ever not click the "skip this ad" link?

-- A reader writes to ask: "Why do people who are 'on oxygen' go to smoke-filled casinos?"

-- Did you see that James Frey, who Oprah dressed down for a questionable "memoir," got a $1 million advance for his first novel? I'm thinking it's his second novel.

-- Shouldn't it be a "hersterectomy" and a "hisnia"?

-- How sick are you of having to type passwords twice to confirm?

-- I like Google a whole lot more than the Dewey Decimal System.

-- Whose idea was it to make a small L and a capital I look identical in many type fonts?

-- Remember when the only people who had to deal with fonts were publications?

-- If men never did anything wrong, florist sales would be down 85 percent.

-- Why isn't phonics spelled like it sounds?

-- Remember when you could go years without ever needing the (at) sign?

-- A decade ago, my newspaper alone bought 25,000 rolls of film each year. Today, I doubt you'd find a single roll of film in any newspaper building in America.

-- I'm the kind of a paranoid father who even wants my kids to wear helmets when they're sitting on the couch watching television.

-- I'm sorry, but you just won't get me to order a grande at Starbucks. It's a medium.

-- Finally, I have a friend whose son hates boarding school after three weeks, so they're exploring a transfer to local schools, but he raised a question about himself and all of us modern parents: "What happened to dad saying 'suck it up' and the kid doing it?"