By Any Other Name

Often it's not enough to think of something on your own. Sometimes you have to think of it first. You get zero extra credit for an idea if it turns out later that somebody else had the same idea, like, five years ago.

And if somebody else had the idea and subsequently threw it out for being too stupid, you might even get negative points for being dumb enough to have that idea to begin with.

A couple of weeks ago I had the idea to rename my blog "Rocket Surgery," thinking I had thought up the phrase all on my own.

Noper nope nope. Here's how far ahead of the learning curve I am: "rocket surgery" has been in use for at least ten years, according to the web site I just found, Double-Tongued Word Wrester Dictionary.

I knew a girl in college who had a knack for coining new phrases, without apparent effort. If you were doing something to get on her nerves, she'd yell at you to "Quit it out!"

In times of stress, I have been known to exclaim "Oh, for cryin' out sake!" I think I must have picked up the phrase from some comic immigrant character in an old cartoon.

If I'm scouting for a new blog title—and the one I have at least has the virtue of being original—maybe something like "Senile Ramblings" would, as they say on the BBC, strike a bit closer to the mark.