Nathan W. Ho

For those who don’t know it yet, my recent life has been consumed recently with moving away from my home of 4.5 years (west Michigan) back towards my family. Just today, I have arrived in South Eastern Pennsylvania - which is going to be my new stomping grounds for the forseeable future.

Why the move? In a word: Family. For the last 10+ years, I’ve been the “remote” family member, who had to catch a flight back to the east coast to be with family. I’d make it out to be with my family two or three times a year - and the occasional extra-special occurrence. However, for the most part all of my participation in family events and discussions happened over the ‘net or by phone.

No longer! My family is all within a 4 hour radius of my new “home” - and I’m very grateful for the opportunity to be able to do this.

It’s true that I had to give up a lot to move back east (great friends, good health / few allergy problems, being next to the lake, etc) - but I am more than willing to give that all up for the sake of my family.

The drive out to PA was nicely uneventful - my mom was gracious enough to spend the week with me, helping me prepare and organize everything for the move (doubly so, since I had to work during the days and was only available at night to do things). And extra thanks to my sister, who helped do a TON of legwork on potential places to live.

I’ll be blogging a bit more about the move and the repercussions - but I wanted to blog briefly about something that came up during my drive out to PA.

As my mom and I were crusing down the highway, we noted that several of the semi’s (18-wheelers) had large, fancy advertisement-type paintings. This one in particular had a large painting of some beautiful rooms (a kitchen and a living room). Unfortunately, this type of painting can have a deletirious effect on the driving skills of people passing by.

Not that we had any particular trouble (since we were actively discussing that issue at the moment) - but it occurs to me that these larger-than-life advertisements can be a *REAL* distraction to many drivers. If someone doesn’t have the skills to stare and drive straight, then you’re creating a huge potential for car accidents. In my opinion, most drivers don’t need yet another distraction on their minds.

It’s bad enough when you see all the drivers rubber-necking (and causing traffic jams around traffic accidents and other stationary attention-grabbers). But now people are trying to get them to pay attention to MOVING ADVERTISEMENTS on the road?!?

I swear…..some people are so wrapped up in trying to get us to give them money, that they don’t stop and *THINK* about what kinds of potential trouble they might be causing with their advertisements….

Another reason to be glad I don’t have to drive to work, I guess *heh*

So, my sister calls me up recently (with a grin in her voice - you can totally hear it), and tells me that a co-worker shared something with her that she wanted to tell me. Apparently her co-worker had seen an interesting bumper sticker, and found it both confusing and funny - so my sister then proceeds to toss out this phrase to me:

Subduction leads to orogeny

And I’m thinking, “what the….great, from the mind of a pervert with a truly pathetic grasp of the English language” - but she patiently asks me, “Do you know what that means? Does it make sense to you?” in a hinting kind of way. She then spells out the words for me, and I take the time to look up their meaning (which slowly come back to me from my college earth sciences class…)

Orogeny (def): the process of mountain formation especially by folding of the earth’s crust

Subduction (def): the action or process in plate tectonics of the edge of one crustal plate descending below the edge of another

So after my sister and I stopped giggling, I stopped to think about this phrase a little more. I mean, c’mon - you *know* that the author(s) didn’t intend for you to read it the first time correctly (I’m guessing a bunch of geologists who were up too late drinking came up with this one - it’s right up there with “Don’t take salt for granite” / “don’t take salt for granted”). Whomever created that bumper sticker totally expects you to read it this way:

Seduction leads to erogeny

Of course, erogeny isn’t a real word - but by inference, it leads to the word “erogenous” - which is a very well known word in the adult world today *ahem* Both phrases make sense, but one is innocent in it’s basic meaning (the meaning - NOT the author’s intent), while the other is obviously not.

So, an interesting sticker - albeit not one I’ll ever own or put on something…

My sister and I then started discussing with whom else we should share this interesting sticker statement - and we instantly thought of our older sister (who is pregant), which then lead me to come up the following list:

Reponses to “Subduction leads to Orogeny” from:

• A pregnant woman: “Shut up - I know, I’m pregnant!!” (followed by a thrown object)
• A nerdy scientist: “Don’t I wish…..umm, wait….?”
• A parent: “It had better not, or you’re going to be grounded until you turn 50!!!
• A teenager: “heh heh heh……yeah….”
• A cop: “I’m going to have to write you a ticket for that…”
• A preacher: “You’re going to go to hell for that…HUH!!!”
• A biker (motorcycle): “Heck, that’s nothing…why just last week I….”
• A little old lady: “WELL!! Back in MY day, we didn’t use THAT kind of language in public…”

Feel free to come up with your own fun response….

So, I was driving recently (to pick up a pizza, if you’re curious), and I noticed a car in the other lane with a small sticker on the back that said:

Kill Tomorrow

“Kill what?!?”, I thought, “What in the world is that supposed to mean?”. The next thought I had was a question: Did the author of this sticker intend to be extra vague, or are their english skills just truly that pathetic? There are at least four completely different, potential meanings that I can see:

1. One potential meaning could be that they want people to hold off on fighting (”killing”) - kind of a “make peace today, kill later” pacifist type of message. However, if this is what the author is intending, it’s a rather vague way of saying it. I’d guess that less than 10% of readers would ever be able to puzzle out that meaning, if that’s what was intended…
2. Another potential meaning might be the old “kill time” type of meaning - where the sticker is mean to exhort people to use up all the time they have? Again, it’s a stretch to match this meaning to that phrase…
3. The next potential meaning that I can see is a bit morbid - and that is to end one’s life. “Kill Tomorrow” as in a person preventing tomorrow from happening for themselves. I find that to be a rather odd message to advertise, so I’m going to guess that’s not it…
4. The last potential meaning that I can come up with is just a literal “kill tomorrow” - some kind of statement about stopping or preventing the literal “tomorrow” from occurring? Of course, it’s impossible for us to stop time - so that really dones’t make much sense either…?

So what am I left with? Only the surety that either this sticker was meant to be vague on purpose, as some sort of inside joke or statement - or is yet further proof positive that this generation has truly pathetic skills with their own native language…

I guess you’ll have to decide for yourself

Addendum: I had a friend recently note that perhaps “Tomorrow” is the name of a person, and that the sticker represented a personal vendetta - to which I say: if so, then the person truly is a moron for advertising their intent to commit a crime…