I'm the snappiest dresser right down to my inch wide tie

[austin_dern]

Let Your Undies Power Your iPhone
--- Headline from cnet.com.

``What a beautiful headline. Maybe the best I've read in years.''

``It's great prose, but a complete failure as headline.''

``It's a masterpiece of the headlining arts and sciences. In just six words it's created a vision of people powering iPhones with their underpants. How could you more efficiently get people to imagine something like that considering how hard it is to direct hallucinations without a court order?''

``It's a great vision. It suggests living with all kinds of consumer electronics might be powered by underwear. It's great for everyone who wears clothes and has electronics.''

``Tough times for the nudist Luddite.''

``They're used to them. But as headline --- ''

``And I can't imagine there's anything unique about underwear besides not wanting to be seen in it. Surely the technology making electric underwear could be extended to gloves or sweatshirts or pants of all species. You can imagine a day when a refrigerator is powered entirely by used towels.''

``I can, but I won't. Why should I have to buy used towels to keep the ice cream refrigerated?''

``It's a new world, once it's finished being paid for. We'll have to get used to changes leaping out and dragging us down to their level.''

``You suppose this would work with socks?''

``What are socks but underwear that covers a different part of the body and isn't embarrassing to have seen in public and that you can skip wearing with less chance of being uncomfortable?''

``They're the basic unit of the sock puppet industry. Underwear plays almost no role in that business.''

``For old-fashioned, hand-crafted sock puppets maybe. The modern stuff they skip the sock stage and go right to puppet. For really sophisticated ones they skip the puppet stage too, and some also avoid the puppeteer and just go right to the fan-created Wiki full of Discussion page threads about how the performance would have been inadequate had there been any to discuss.''

``So we don't have anything to worry about.''

``That's a refreshing change, but it only applies to sock puppets, and what makes you bring that topic before the court?''

``I'd like having a cars powered by socks is why. But the headline's still a failure.''

``How? Look at all we're anticipating without even knowing what the article was about?''

``That's the failure: the headline is so wonderful I can't read the article. It can't live up to the promise. Unread the article suggests a universe lit by electric pants. Read, it might be some dull piece about making thread into batteries, and where's the fun in that?''

``You'd never need change the AA's in your pocket anymore. You know, in the late 19th century people giving dinner parties hired women to walk around in dresses festooned with electric light bulbs.''

``Why?''

``I think so they could wait for someone to finally ask `who had this bright idea?' secure knowing they had a comeback.''

``Blast, now I know what I should have done last time I held a dinner party in 1892.''

``Elephants also went over big back then.''

``Elephants go over big almost anytime they go over at all.''

``I bet elephants wouldn't be afraid to read the story after such a perfect headline.''

``Ever know an elephant to finish reading the newspaper?''

``I've never known one to read the paper, but that doesn't mean anything. Since elephants are mostly blue-grey even if the newsprint rubbed off on their trunks we'd never see the difference. And I bet some of them figured out how to re-fold the paper so it doesn't look obviously read up.''

``What's so good about having cars powered by electric socks, anyway?''

``You're missing the opportunities they offer.''

``There's none, if you drive with shoes on.''

``You have to think of the days you don't really wake up and need to hide in bed under the covers a couple extra hours.''

``Still going nowhere.''

``Exactly! With that scheme you could call and say you can't get the car started because you left your socks on overnight.''

``Won't work.''

``Why not?''

``They'll just start making solar-powered hats.''

Trivia: The American League on its organization in 1900 adopted the Spalding-made Reach baseball for its games. Source: The Rules of Baseball: An Anecdotal Look at the Rules of Baseball and How They Came To Be, David Nemec.

Currently Reading: Designing The Centennial: A History Of The 1876 International Exhibition In Philadelphia, Bruno Gilberti. You know how it is. Some folks just notice one day they don't really know much about the Centennial Exhibition.

Comments

[mondhasen.livejournal.com]

Is this current news? Didn't the good Professor Yi Cui realize this would make him the butt of a joke? Does anyone want to buy underwear that promises to keep you going, and going, and going? Are nanotube-socks next?

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

You're awfully kind not to put up resistance to this essay. (It's a bit experimental, for me, and I'm not really satisfied with how it turned out.)