Wednesday, April 15, 2009

If You Have Nothing Worthwile to Write. . .

Just a thought I had the other day -- what happened to colors? I mean colors used to be colors, right, like red, blue, yellow, purple, whatever. Not that the cardinal colors or whatever were sufficient, but of course we weren't necessarily limited to those, so it was ok. We could modify any color in any number of ways. No, not shackled simply to "blue" we could have light blue or dark blue. When light and dark aren't enough, we could even modify it with adjectives from outside the traditional realm of color. "Sky blue," "electric blue," "sea blue," "midnight blue," the opportunities are almost endless. Even if they're not endless, however, we could combine colors -- "blue-green" or what have you. And now the opportunities really are virtually endless.

And all of this before we even get into the colors that we don't really make use of anyway, like fuchsia, indigo, magenta, crimson, vermilion, mauve, teal, and taupe, to name a few.

Why is it, then, that things have suddenly become colors?

You guys, salmon isn't a color, it's a fish. Charcoal isn't a color, it's a carbon residue (I'll admit, I had to look that one up). Rasberry isn't a color, it's a berry. Our sofa is considered "mocha" (although it cost less). Mocha isn't a color, it's a freaking flavor!

Now I confess, there's no good reason why this should bother me. It's purely a product of my own mild nueroses, and I understand that. But still, where will this end? Will it stop with fish, berries, and flavors? Who's to say that it won't get worse and worse until someday someone describes something that's a sort of pale, unattractive pink (see how I just took a real color and modified it for a more specific purpose?) as simply "Ross." Besides, it had been too long since I'd written anything on here, and I just had nothing better to say.

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