Quack-A-Doodle-Doo

Ace hardware sells a premium label, as well as their own brand, of duct tape, both named Duck Tape, which is apparently no infringement by either manufacturer because the terms -- right and wrong -- are in the public domain. However, it seems to me that this carries cuteness one river -- like the Pacific Ocean -- too far, without a bridge of Reason.

For one thing, it has always seemed to me an abbrogation of responsibility when a newspaper or manufacturer makes excuses of "the common idiom" to excuse breaking away from good grammar, sound spelling, or upright rhetoric to make their own works, not ouevres, easier. (Newspapers especially aggravate reason when they explain that their newly found standards are discovered in the need to "make," not fill, available space -- as in headlines; but then turn around and use these inventions only to discover that, had they stuck firmly to convention they would have used neither more column width nor lines to alert the readership to what is afoot in the kingdom of idea and actions. I can prove this any day with almost any daily newspaper chosen at random, for the examples are everywhere apparent, and the conventions ready to mind.)

In any event, for what good reason would a maker or a seller choose to adopt wrongly understood language (duck for duct), thereby both perpetuating ignorance and failing to perform the duty, fulfill the responsiblity to leave the world better off for having been handled by their touch? There is, I think, none, save that self-indulgent glee that is camouflaged under the rubric "humor." Let's have less of the self-indulgence and more responsibility; less ridicule of reason and more pursuit of it. These will not rid the world of good fun and playful ridiculousness but will provide the fields and courses on which we may better recreate.

It'll take balls and bouncing but we will all be better for it. Say it after me, now, "duct tape." That wasn't so hard now, was it?