Word: meaninglessness
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Company officials also note that the Datsun name is meaningless. Dat, the word for rabbit in Japanese, comes from the initials of the company's three chief financial backers. It was originally lengthened to Datson or "son of rabbit." But the word son had an unlucky connotation in Japanese, which was seemingly proved correct when a typhoon hit a Datson plant in 1933. Therefore, the company changed the marketing name to Datsun. Executives at Nissan are convinced that despite the worries of their dealers, a Datsun by any other name will sell as swiftly as ever...
...catalogue descriptions have a peculiar, stilted style that becomes almost hilarious in its repetitive affectation. Phrases like "explores the varied meanings and manifestations of..." and "a discussion of the emerging concepts, ideals, styles and genres and functions..." and "examines some of the major works of..." grow ever more meaningless as decision time grows near...
...seriousness? We laugh at McCluhan, and rightfully so, for the simple reason that he didn't seem to understand that television's sort of art can reflect life while at the same time being entirely removed from it. It just doesn't translate. Such "art" occupies a small and meaningless universe all its own, with an internal logic that, while it may look like ours, fundamentally has nothing to do with ours. Why, one wonders is Bladkov's Cement--the quintessential work of socialist realism (which contains such gastronomical metaphors as: "The sea was like boiling milk")--taken more seriously...
...masterstroke, however, was to come up with a made-up jumble of supposedly Danish syllables that proved to be astonishingly catchy. Häagen-Dazs, as he called his new ice cream in 1960, is meaningless in Danish, and, as Mattus observes somewhat impishly, the Danish language does not even use the umlaut, but he "thought it gave more pizazz." In fact, Mattus had no connection with Denmark; his own family had emigrated from Poland. But on the tops of his ice-cream cartons he printed a map of Scandinavia, with a star marking Copenhagen and an arrow swooping toward...
...controllers have the right to eat well, to work in safe conditions, and to retain their dignity on the job, then one must also support their right to strike--without it, or without the mandatory arbitration used for public safety employees in this state--the right to unionize is meaningless. And though the air traffic controllers present an easy target, being well-paid if overworked and subjected to ulcer-inspiring stress, they will be just the start. Before long, all public employees will be facing pink slips should-they dare to ask for more money (money Reagan must...