The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Like any earth-conscious soul, I’ve been troubled ever since learning of the existence of massive floating islands of plastic garbage sprawling across the planet’s oceans.

One, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is, according to Save My Oceans, twice the size of Texas.

That comparison seems unfair -- to garbage dumps. The Texas Hill country is splendid, but much of vast west Texas is so desolate even native troubadour Joe Ely says it only holds scenic appeal to men just released from long stretches in the pen.

But what to do about continent-sized masses of plastic garbage floating in our once-pristine oceans, most of which could probably have been recycled.

Clean it up? That sounds utterly futile. It’s just too massive.

And where would you put that much garbage? I guess even west Texans would oppose it being dumped all over them -- although all that shiny plastic would certainly add welcome sparkle to the landscape’s bleakness.

I say the solution is to colonize it.

But with whom? Should its purpose be penal or pleasure?

I thought long and hard about an idea that seemed to make perfect ironic sense: a Garbageological Guantanamo.

I thought it should be a penal colony for anyone who’s ever been busted tossing a Coke bottle or McDonald’s cup out the window.

But I had to discard that idea because I realized that over-population would soon sink the plastic island. There are just too many people who just don’t give a damn. They toss plastic bottles and trash-filled grocery bags out the windows of their cars all over my quaint little town.

I’d understand this if, say, their cars were about to be used in the royal wedding parade for Will and Kate. But that’s usually not the case.

Their cars are crap, too. And they dress like bums to boot.

It’s a pity because most of the really trashy people on the planet can’t be shamed into not littering and they are so pervasive that I’ve never heard of a single person getting busted for littering in a world that is literally awash in trash.

So until we change the laws and allow for vigilante homicide of petty litterers, there’s nothing we can do about it.

Then I thought maybe we could skip the common white trash trashers and go after the big guys. You know, the corporate big shots who are polluting our streams and air with careless business practices that earn them millions while poisoning the planet.

I know, I know. It was just a joke. We don’t punish people who do that. We offer them tax breaks. It’s stunning the multi-million dollar give-aways Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett is showering on fat cat donors from the Marcellus Shale gas industry at the same time his budget is forcing teacher layoffs all across the state.

So how about this? Instead of disparaging the massive plastic islands that are killing our marine life, we promote it as posh island living.

Yes, island living, the epitome of modern chic. People dream of hitting the lottery and picking up and moving to St. Barts or Virgin Gorda.

It would be an easy sell, I think, to pitch condos on an island that can pick up and move so residents wouldn’t have to.

Either way, something must be done. This is a very depressing problem on levels ranging from intellectual to just plain icky.

Researchers say more than 100,000 marine mammals and one million seabirds die each year from ingesting or becoming entangled in plastic.

So the fish eat the plastic and then we eat the fish. It’s a dreadful cycle destined to end, I guess, with the food chain becoming a real chain like the kind hardy mountain folks put on their tires to negotiate deep snow.

Fish are attracted to the the shiny bits of plastic for the same reason deceptive Rapala lures work so well.

If it keeps going like this, the fresh sushi I so enjoy will differ little in content from the little plastic replicas they put in the windows of the restaurants to lure in guys like me.

It’ll be a sad day for anyone hooked on sushi.

As if planetary matters could get any more sad.

A long story about bikers and blue socks

I own some nice shirts, a few sporty blazers, but your wardrobe in sum is probably nicer than mine.

All but the socks. My sock drawer is treasure chest of stylish footwear. There are dazzling patterns, garish colors, and a eye-popping pair of neon blues.

I realized years ago you can get away with dressing like a derelict as long as you wear really snazzy socks. I without fail pack great socks during any trip where it’s likely I’ll need to make a nice impression without risking opening my mouth.

It’s a fact the clothing item we put on our feet can most help a man, well, stand out.

So go ahead, fellas, and over-spend on suits, ties, and other fashion accessories. My socks will kick your butt.

That’s why it’s ironic those posh socks nearly resulted in getting my own butt kicked.

It was during the aforementioned recent trip to Hot Springs, Arkansas. There’s always one night on these press gaggles when the convivial folk will get together for a fine meal and a tour of the local saloons.

I asked the host prior to meeting: Is this dress-up night?

Yes, it was, she assured.

Nothing fancy for me. I’d packed lightly. That meant Navy blue blazer, khaki pants and “Save-the-Rain-Forest” tie with profiles of endangered little frogs.

And those devastating neon blue socks.

They were the talk of the evening, mostly because not a single other person bothered to dress up even a bit.

That was fine with me.

I’ve spent most of my life being the worst-dressed adult at every gathering I’ve ever attended.

So now I like to be the best dressed male in the room. The fashion competition, as you’re about to learn, is slim -- even when the people wearing the so-called fashions are anything but.

The evening would be followed by a traditional pub crawl down Center Street in Hot Springs.

I’ve been on pub crawls ever since shortly after I ceased actual crawling. I know the rules. And the first rule is that the last bar is always a big mistake.

That’s where someone starts a fight. And, by fight, I mean a careless word is spoken and someone’s feelings get hurt. I certainly don’t mean fisticuffs or bloodshed.

The night went just as I could have predicted. People who write for a living yapped about how raucous they could be, how much booze they could consume, blah, blah, blah.

The first bar had a great blues band playing. It was fun. The locals were friendly and, yeah, I was the best dressed guy in the whole damn joint.

It was cool there. In really cool bars they don’t judge you by how you dress. They judge you on if you’re a jerk or not. And I could tell it was the best bar we’d be in because of the eagerness of the posers in our party to exit it.

And that’s what they did. They had one drink and split asking if there was a bar where we could all sing, gadzooks, some karaoke.

But I’m a group guy and when I’m with the group, I don’t abandon ship. 

I caught up with them, bought a round and sat back in my seat at the table, crossed my legs and let those dynamic socks work their magic.

I’m just beginning to grasp the power of a quiet man in nice socks in a bar with a bunch of ceaseless jabberers.

Later, after I’d nearly been annihilated in the biker bar, one of the girls told me how classy I looked standing up to that drunken hillbilly who seemed intent on killing me because he’d never seen someone so flowerlike in his divey bar.

One-by-one our gang of about 12 faded to five, me, three girls and a burly guy who wrote stories for motorcycle enthusiasts and suggested we go down the street to a biker bar called “The Lazy Hog.”

Now, there’s a fine distinction savvy readers will immediately grasp. “Bikers” and “motorcycle enthusiasts” may sound similar. They are not.

“Motorcyclist enthusiasts” are white collar professionals who wasted 5-10 years of their youth studying things like accounting, law and medicine while “bikers” were engaged in felonious activities that led to 5-10 years of penal incarceration.

I tried to explain this, that this last bar would be a big mistake. The pseudo-biker writer said, no, they’d treat us like kings. After all, he said, he wrote for a big motorcycle enthusiast magazine and was wearing a T-shirt that mentioned the publication’s name on it.

“When they see this we’ll get free drinks, guaranteed,” he boasted.

Rather than free drinks, we almost got to see the female bartender’s new ass tattoo, but I don’t think that made us special.

Again, I insisted, this is a bad idea, especially with me dressed like Little Lord Fauntleroy.

Nonsense, he said. So in we went, me shaking my head.

It was probably the roughest bar I’ve ever been in -- and I’ve been in tons of bars since I got my first fake ID back in the fifth grade.

One guy about my height came straight up to me. His dark eyes were tombstones. They were the same kind of Richie Aprile eyes Tony Soprano described as “Manson lamps.” He was wearing torn flannel once favored by 90s grunge bands.

He wasn’t at all stylish.

The first thing he said to me -- the last thing I clearly heard was -- “Nice socks, dude. Did you go to Harvard or Yale?”

He may have said other witty things. I could not discern. The band started kicking Ted Nugent covers and the rest of all he said for the next 20 minutes was unintelligible.

I was fearful he’d be mumbling something like, “So do you think I’m some kind of pussy?”

And I’d mishear him and -- ever the gent -- agreeably respond, “I sure do! Never seen a bigger one!”

After about five minutes of us being nose to nose -- me trying to be chummy, him trying to goad me into a misstep -- the Sasquatch-sized bouncer approached.

I thought he was going to bully the guy into leaving us alone. He did not.

Instead, he frisked him head-to-toe for concealed weapons. Then he walked away.

This was not reassuring behavior from the bar’s hired security.

I think I could have probably taken the guy, but his scarred face hinted he was an experienced fighter and I wasn’t wearing my fighting duds.

I feared if he ripped my throat open my gushing blood would endanger my favorite tie, the one with the little endangered frogs all over it.

Then things began to get worse.

The man’s buddy came up to him and whispered something apparently humorous because they both looked at me and began laughing maniacally.

The buddy was maybe the worst dressed guy in a venue full of men who would have made great fodder for the “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” gang.

He had vomit all down the front of his T-shirt.

Our host, the motorcycle enthusiast, was trying to be friendly with the bartender who was taking friendly a step too far. She wanted to show off her new ass tattoo.

The offer provoked an angry outburst from her boss who yelled, “Quit showing everybody your damned ass and get to pourin’ beers!”

It was only the second best girl fight we’d see during our 20-minute trip to The Lazy Hog.

Minutes after he’d frisked my harasser, the bouncer ran to the jukebox where a fight between three biker chicks erupted as the band banged out, I swear, “Cat Scratch Fever.” 

That’s when we all knew what I’d known 30 minutes previously: It was time to get the hell out of Dodge.

So was wearing those dashing socks a mistake? Certainly not.

I’ll wear them again next time I’m invited to some bar crawl and a motorcycle enthusiast says, “Say, I have a great idea!”

They’re the perfect muzzling accessory to shove down any idiot’s throat.

Home opener, movie reviews & tweets

Out of petty protest, I once again will not be attending the Pittsburgh Pirate home opener today. I won’t further enrich owner Bob Nutting who reaps enormous profits and never does anything to improve the once-proud franchise team.

But that doesn’t mean I can’t exercise my inalienable right to play hookie.

Happily, The Pond, the Latrobe tavern that rents me the shabby second-floor penthouse, understands this. Dave and Jill bring in a popcorn machine, offer deals on hot dogs and get a nice friendly crowd of inebriates to enjoy watching the festivities.

If Nutting could hear us booing him it would be just like being there.

So that makes it a good day to fire off a round of observations and sprinkle in some recent tweets before I take myself out to the ol’ ballgame.

• We’ve seen a bunch of movies, old an new, lately. Just saw “Paul” with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost and Seth Rogan as an errant alien. Pegg and Frost are the Brits behind two of my favorite movies of all time, “Shaun of the Dead,” and “Hot Fuzz.” Just hilarious. It was very good, but not in the league of their best, both of which score in the upper 90 percents with reliable critic compiler, www.rottentomatoes.com. “Paul” is scoring a still-respectable 74 percent, which is about what I’d give it. Still, it was a hoot and I recommend it.

• In a confounding deal they signed when he was over-the-hill in 2000, The New York Mets are obligated to pay former Met (and Pirate) Bobby Bonilla $1.2 million every July 1 through 2035. He was a fine Pirate -- I guess in at least one way he still is -- back in the early 1990s. I remember the Pirates in ’91 offered him $25 million, a then jaw-dropping sum. Bonilla declined and said he had to “take care of his family.” The line prompted this memorable outburst from manager Jim Leyland, “Heck, for $25 million you could take care of Guam.”

• Just saw reports that a Knoxville air traffic controller is extending the snoozing pilot tracker scandal after getting busted napping in the tower for five hours. I don’t sleep five hours in my own bed. Maybe I should apply for his job.

• While “Paul” was enjoyable, “Hop” must be avoided at all costs. We have two young ‘uns and enjoy supporting the local family-owned theater so we make an exception and will see what we’re certain will be crap there. We were right. It’s awful. Yet, it was made by the people who made “Despicable Me” and included many talented people. At some point, somebody had to realize that they were filming a charmless stinker. This will surprise critics of this blog, but I pull the plug on some topics when I think it’s not worthy of my feisty band of reliable readers. Does my blog have more integrity than Hollywood? Apparently.

• Last week I played the world’s worst April Fool’s Day joke on my daughter, 10. Told her I was offered a prestigious full-time job that would require relocation. She thought it preposterous.

• Oprah’s ending her show on May 25, four days after Christian group declares scripture says the world is going to end. Coincidence or just more evidence of Oprah’s business savvy?

• If grandma truly has a heart of gold, you might want to re-think that organ donation. It’s worth about $14,860.

• Americans should be required by law to watch at least one Alfred Hitchcock movie every six months. We just enjoyed “Strangers on a Train.” Wonderful. I guess my favorite Hitchcocks are “Dial M for Murder” and “Rear Window.”

• HBO cast Ed Harris to play Cheney in the mini-series. It could be fatal to Harris: Only Cheney can play Cheney. The role will kill lesser mortals, not to mention many innocent bystanders.

• Boutique urban lodging places that were once brothels and are now trendy spots for business travelers to stay should be called ho’ tels.

• I’m embarrassed by my ignorance of Libyan geography, but will rebels need to go through Singoli and Douboli before getting to Tripoli?

• Josie, 10, is getting old enough to watch some of the great PG movies that we hope will show her there’s more to entertainment than iCarly and “High School Musical.” It’s working. We recently let her to stay up late to watch two of our very favorites, “Sneakers,” and the rarely remembered Stephen Spielberg/Leo DiCaprio film, “Catch Me if You Can.” “Sneakers” is a cerebral 1992 Robert Redford caper flick with an outstanding ensemble cast that includes Sidney Poitier, Dan Ackroyd and the late River Phoenix. “Catch Me If You Can” from 2002 is the true story about impostor con man Frank Abignale. Josie loved ‘em both. She may be lax about cleaning her room, but that kid’s going to have good taste.

• I’ll try and post a reminder, but I have a funny story due to run tomorrow on MSNBC.com. It’s about Lake Jackson, Texas, the most confusing town in America. It has streets named This Way, That Way, Any Way, Which Way, Circle Way, Center Way, etc. The city manager told me it’s not uncommon to give directions that include “Go three blocks on This Way, then make a left on That Way and bare right on Any Way.” When the confused motorist inevitably asks, “Which Way?” they have to say, no, that would be the wrong way.

• As previously, mentioned the aggregate totals on www.rottentomatoes.com are a reliable gauge about a movie’s worth. That’s why I felt immense relief when I checked to see that critics are thinking about the Russell Brand re-make of “Arthur,” another favorite of mine. It is currently tracking at 8 percent. Japan is dealing with a nuclear nightmare and news of another earthquake. Still, if they offered to take Russell Brand off our hands in exchange for their woes, I’d consider the swap.

• More random tweets can be found @8days2amish.

Go Bucs!

In praise of, yikes, winter?

I endured a skin-crawling moment of awkwardness last week when I felt forced to say nice things about something I fear six months of the year and loathe the rest.

I had to point out the finer aspects of a really nasty winter.

It was like reading aloud affectionate sonnets about Cheney.

Hating winter is a core component of my existence. That’s why I was surprised to hear myself -- sober, even -- defending bitter winter to three Southerners who talked about the joys of doing things like deep frying turkeys in shorts on the porch at Thanksgiving while I’m up to my nose in snows.

And, to be clear, the chefs were in the shorts, not the turkeys.

They were three women from Florida, a state for which I have an instinctual contempt.

I’ve long suspected it was home to the stupidest and laziest people in America, a belief confirmed during the 2000 presidential election whenever the nightly news focused on that guy who self-hypnotized staring at dangling chads.

It’s always struck me as ridiculous that anyone would choose where they live based solely on a weather forecast.

It’s a clear sign of weakness. I’m convinced if we sanctioned a tug of war between Florida and Pennsylvania we Keystone Staters could drag their sad, skinny asses clear to Maryland where they’d perish the instant the first drops of sleet splashed their bronzed skin.

Understand, too, I probably have more good friends in Florida than in any state in the union -- and that should prove my point. Stupid and lazy are an essential criteria for friendship with me.

If I wanted smart and energetic I guess I’d vacation someplace like Vermont with Ben and Jerry, and I’m talking about proper same-sex couples and not high-caloric tubs of ice cream.

But to hear three Floridians deride a big part of my very existence was too much.

“I hate snow! I hate cold! I spent one winter in Boston. I’ll never go back!”

Good points, all. Winter can be perilous.

But there is no summer equivalent to cuddling loved ones at home in front of a  warm fire while the snows fall outside.

It’s magnificent. One of my favorite days each winter is geared to a weekend when no one in their right mind would leave the house unless they were low on liquor.

We stoke the fireplace and pop “Gone With The Wind” in the DVD. It’s a full day of marvelous pageantry and entertainment. The girls just love it. Me, too.

Plus, it gives me the opportunity to talk about the history of cinematic profanity and make swearing in front of the children seem educational.

Then there’s the soups. Cooking a big pot of aromatic soup is one of life’s most soulful joys. It nourishes. It lasts all week. It fills the house with heady scents.

As much as I love spending an hour around the Weber Grill with a beer and a baseball game on the radio, it simply doesn’t equate to all winter cooking has to offer.

And I contend Florida is at least as inhospitable as any northern winter.

The four summer months in Florida are a time when even committed sun worshippers admit they never leave the house, choosing instead to stay inside either watching Jerry Springer or doing things that earn invitations to televised appearances with Jerry Springer.

It’s true. Nearly ever goofy news story involving dysfunctional families originates in the Sunshine State. Why do you think National Enquirer is headquartered in Boca?

Understand, too, I’m referring exclusively to Florida and not the many other splendid Southern states like South Carolina, Georgia and other titans of the confederacy.

Those are places rich in heritage with proud people who’ve lived there for generations. It’s been said north, east and west are directions, but the South is a place.

That doesn’t include Florida, a geographical oddity that would be the national drain if you ever tipped America up on its side. It’s the state where so many lost souls swirl around like so much soggy lettuce before they congealing at the bottom of the American sink.

If that seems unduly harsh, so be it.

It’ll be something you Floridians can think about when they're deep frying your turkeys next Thanksgiving.

Just don’t come crying to me when hot grease scalds your exposed skin.

Frankly, my dears, I won’t give a damn.

America needs a yap app

For the good of humanity, it’s time someone conceived a yap app to monitor the exact number of words each of us speaks in conversation.

Like a helpful exercise pedometer, it would count word-by-word just how much each of us feels compelled to say.

If, for instance, we were in a lunch conversation with three other people, it would vibrate whenever our chat started to race ahead of our table mates.

The alarms would then increase in severity whenever our word count began to outrun the others by more than 500 words per person. Each yap app would include tinker-proof factory settings that would result in self-incineration anytime the device detected the sound of our voices was making everyone else in vicinity sick.

Studies about how many words each of us speak are all over the map. Most say the average talker speaks about 16,000 words a day and that women out-speak men.

The numbers seem flawed. I know some men who can speak 16,000 words when ordering a two-item pizza. Worse, they do it like they want the pizza joint to hear them through the window in a thunderstorm from two miles away.

Certainly, many women can talk the ears off acres of corn. They go into excruciating detail about pointless minutia -- and it’s even worse when it’s just women talking to other women.

That’s why I advocate in any group of three or more women gathering in public, at least one man should be stationed among the group, sort of like a prison guard assigned to prevent a road gang from malicious conniving.

About 75 percent of what the average woman wants to spout to other women is justifiably hateful things about the average man. But women have a natural and charming shyness about saying it front the offending gender.

That applies universally to females, unless you get them all gassed up. Then all bets are off.

Men have no such dainty restrictions regarding what he thinks is fit to say out loud. Nothing short of ballistic intervention can silence a man determined to talk.

I think most of us talk too much, myself included, because we’re desperate to be liked. We think the more we talk the better our chances are of being likable.

In fact, the exact opposite is true.

I’ve always been drawn to quiet people. Many of my best friends have always been  quiet in comparison to your average guy. 

And by “quiet,” I’m including numerous chums who’ll spend consecutive hours passed out cold with their heads glued to the bar surface. In fact, I prefer the company of the comatose to that of most men who are able to decide -- enough’s enough -- to get up and walk away.

Why do you think I started blogging?

Certainly, deploying the yap app in their company would lead to my ultimate demise.

That’s why it’s so vital.

The world is absolutely awash in unnecessary words and most of us are unaware of our contributions.

Just think how much more serene it would be if everyone made a conscience decision to simply reduce the number of words we use.

We’d have more time to think, to enjoy the sounds of nature and proper music. What little we’d have to say would make so much more sense because we’d have thought it through instead of simply unleashing it on ears that are forever struggling to sift knowledge from nonsense.

Imagine the quiet dividend we’d enjoy if all the men and women paid to talk politics were at the mercy of a yap app? Many of the largest offenders would be reduced to silent and sizable piles of ash.

It’d be sublime.

I think I’ll stop now before anyone thinks to apply the wise precepts of the yap app to blogging verbosity.

I wouldn’t want my family to walk in and discover I’ve made an ash of myself simply by saying too much.

Stress-free me

The masseuse reacted the way I imagine a genetic biologist with a bad combover will when he discovers a ground-breaking cure for something like baldness.

“Wow,” he said. “I’ve never anything like this before. No knots. No tension. Yours may be the first stress-free back I’ve ever seen in 14 years of physical therapy.”

He was wrong, but only by just a bit. In fact, I was feeling a wee snap of stress at the time, but that was only natural in any heterosexual man who feels awkward having another dude rub warm oils all over his naked body.

But it was undetectable to a therapist at a historic Hot Springs, Arkansas, spa where I’d been sent to research traditional mineral bath treatments.

Where, he asked, was all my stress?

I told him it was at that very moment coursing through the body of my poor wife.

While I was being pampered, she was stressed to a nasty frazzle. The kids were warring, the laundry was exploding and the dog no one’s ever bothered to train was again pooping near our pillows.

It was as if it had all been pre-ordained.

I knew when I was approached about travel writing that I’d be enjoying a lot of assignments so splendid I’d rarely even mention them aloud to friends for fear they’d resent me. I made a choice nearly 20 years ago that I wasn’t going to do any writing that involved council meetings, legislators, warehouse fires or labor relations.

Instead, I’d write about things that made people smile. Things like games, cocktails, good food and pleasant surroundings.

As for Val, well, she should have known it would all come to this when she said, “Sure, what the hell,” to my marriage proposal.

I can’t even begin to imagine the stress of being married to a stress-repellent like me.

And what most surprises me about the whole situation is how so many truly stressed people are drawn to me. You’d think they’d resent the hell out of me. They do not.

They love me. Val, she loves me to death.

That’s not all. I’m always meeting stressed-out strangers. They love me, too.

I’m in Dallas awaiting a connecting flight back home. I just got off a plane with a seat mate who by all rights should be one of the planet’s most stressed people.

Get a load of his itinerary. From Little Rock, he flew here and will soon depart for Dallas, then it’s to Germany, and then, yup, to Kandahar.

He and his wife are U.S. soldiers.

When I heard non-romantics running the airlines separated the couple, I offered to switch seats. The gesture would might have been unnecessarily burdensome, but fate intervened, take-off was too near and I was spared the stress.

So I settled in for outstanding conversation with a serviceman who’d been defending freedom for 14 years. 

We talked politics, history and lots and lots of baseball. If it wouldn’t have been so stressful, I’d have offered to get on the flight with him and his wife to Germany just so we could continue the fine chat.

It meant a lot to me because the airports have been awash in service personnel and I’m never sure the appropriate way to express my gratitude.

I’d like to give them all a big hug, but they might feel the same twinge of awkwardness I felt when I was getting that soulful massage back in Hot Springs. 

So the opportunity to become micro-buddies with even one soldier was very satisfying.

Then came what to me is the most stressful aspect of my otherwise carefree life.

He asked what I did for a living.

When I told him I was a travel writer, he gave a big chuckle. His expression conveyed the joy you see on faces of children at the zoos when they see a really playful monkey.

He said he doesn’t think people care enough about the soldiers and their sacrifices. It was said as an even-handed observation and not a bitch.

Just then the flight attendant came by and dropped two mints in his lap and said, “Thanks for all you’re doing for our country.”

I give trick-or-treaters wearing Spider Man costumes more substantial gifts.

Still, he took them, said thanks and kindly offered one to me (I declined), out of politeness I suspect. It certainly couldn’t have been out of his gratitude for me being a travel writer.

It has me thinking of carrying around a handy bag of mints for those to thank those who complain so little that stress-free guys like me have so much.

And, sorry soldiers, but I’m offering the first one to Valerie for helping me be all I can be.

Happy 50th Birthday to these words!

I was pleased to see recent media fuss when it was announced that “OMG” and “LOL” were born last week.

Of course, these obnoxious words have been around for it seems like years or maybe I’m just confusing the words themselves with the people who use them.

I’ve always known people who, “OMG!” were shocked by things like the daily sunrise and would “LOL!” at banal Facebook observations.

But there’s nothing I can do within the crush of laws concerning unlawful imprisonment of people who say those things so we might as well celebrate the birth of two new words, even words that connote dimwits.

And by birth, I mean recognition of the words by the Oxford English Dictionary. 

We don’t think words and phrases have birthdays, but the venerable Oxford English Dictionary does. It lists exactly when almost all of the nearly 600,000 words in the English language entered the lexicon.

Some of these singular words say as much about society and our advances as entire essays. 

For instance, both “Weight Watchers” and “all-you-can-eat” were born in 1961. So were “doomsayer,” “moonshot,” “rehab” and “advertorial.” Some words that were new then are passe already (“dial-up” and “splashdown”).

I am looking forward to my 50th birthday in 2013 and will be pleased to blow out the candles with the word “boink.” I’m tickled that the OED says both boink and I were born the very same year.

Boink is a splendid word, not to mention pastime, so it pleases me that we’re aging together hand-in-hand. 

Of course, you won’t hear me doing a lot of bragging that the OED felt the need to recognize the word “dipshit” the same year I was born.

It pains me to think that the word was in its embryonic stages for years and didn’t need barnyard liberation until the year the docs told my folks, “It’s a boy!”

Who knows? Maybe I did something to push the popularity of the word as soon as I was born. I know my late father said the word so often that I still turn around and say, “Yes?” anytime I hear it spoken in my vicinity.

But I have a busy week and am going to take the easy way out today by presenting you with a list of words that are turning 50 this year.

What interests me is that many of these words seem to stem from a Madison Avenue heyday of when rampant consumerism was really starting its American roar, and how many of the words stem from space exploration.

It must have been an exciting time to be alive and not just some little dipshit awaiting delivery.

• advertorial -- This is advertising masquerading as advertising. I’ve sneered at advertorials, but only when I’m not being paid to write them. I’ve done maybe two or three of these in what for a lack of a better word I call my “career.” Guaranteed, I’d be a lot better off if I’d done a lot less sneering and a lot more selling.

• all-you-can-eat -- I wonder what they called this before they coined this now-common phrase. Probably gluttony.

• A-OK -- The space program gave us so much. In hindsight, it seemed like such an  exciting time. I think right now things are about C-OK, which is an improvement over F-OK from just a few years ago. 

• back-talk -- How come there’s still not a goody-goody front-talk?

• bionic -- That means the word to describe him is about 25 years older than the man who came to represent it: Astronaut Steve Austin.

• dial-up -- Even the reading the seven-character name makes me tap my fingers in impatience today.

• doomsayer -- It took until 1961 to get to this word? I’d have thought doomsayers would have been around since Pontius Pilot started toweling off his dripping hands.

• fab -- The word would have faded into obscurity had it not been for John, Paul, George and Ringo.

• gillion -- Someday I’m going to get around to doing a story about the biggest number known to man. I’m pitching a piece now about the shortest time measurements. I’m going to call it: “No Time At All.” Just wait. No one will snap it up and I’ll write a half-assed version of it for the blog in a New York minute.

• incapacitate -- A word that was launched just in time for a decade when access to and consumption of mind-bending drugs made the word so necessary.

• intel -- This must have coincided with when the CIA was devoting more time to snappy acronyms and abrevs. than actual intelligence of what was going on in Southeast Asia.

• moon shot -- Baseball fans ought to relate to this. The meaning, of course, is another space program coinage adapted to mean what guys like Mickey Mantle was blasting them out of the old Yankee Stadium.

• no-win -- How did this once come about? You mean before this there were just win-wins? It feels like I’ve been no-win on every March Madness pool I’ve entered since before Mantle was blasting moon shots.

• off-air -- Imagine a simpler time when every TV set could receive just three stations and they were on the air for just about 14 hours or so a day. What did people do with the spare time? Read? Drink? Boink? Ah, the good ol’ days.

• omigod -- It took us 50 years to condense this one? All I can say is, OM--, er, amazing!

• randy -- Austin Powers rules, baby!

• rat fink -- It’s just the perfect pairing. Go ahead and try substituting any other loathsome animal and watch it fail. Things like skunk fink or roach fink just don’t cut it. Didn’t James Cagney corner the market on this one with “Dirty Rat Fink?”

• rehab -- You mean rehab predated Betty Ford?

• retro -- As mentioned, this word is still cool. I don’t watch much “Mad Men,” but I sense its retro appeal.

• skyjacker -- Oceanic pirates have been around for centuries. How did we get skyjacker instead of sky pirate? I like sky pirate better.

• wazoo -- I’d say I’d have to look more into this one, but I’m fearful of what the ol’ research would require. 

• Weight Watcher -- Fascinating. Both Weight Watcher and all-you-can-eat were born the same year. To me, it’s the chicken and the egg argument all over.

• woody -- This, I guess, refers to the old station wagons bands like the Beach Boys sang about. I like the newer meaning, but it would be fun to time travel back to 1961 and tell mom I was going to run my big old woody down to the beach to meet the bikini babes.