Have you ever had a tube of Krazy Glue die a natural death, that is, run out of glue? No. Neither have I. And just today I had a sudden insight into something that should have been pretty damn obvious during all my decades as an occasional Krazy Glue user. I always assumed that when my Krazy Glue tube became hopelessly clogged with a glob of rock-hard, dry Krazy Glue, and cutting the tip (again) with scissors no longer worked, and the Krazy Glue had to be reluctantly given up for dead — I always thought this was because of my own incompetence or negligence.
Well guess what. Are you ready for this? Sit down. I’m serious! Sit the fuck down and listen to me!
OK that’s better. Here’s the deal: the people that make Krazy Glue don’t want you to use your Krazy Glue until the tube is empty! That’s right: they want it to fail so you have to go buy anther one! So next time your Krazy Glue gets so thoroughly petrified that you have to discard it in utter despair, remember: it isn’t your fault.

I read Barbara Ehrenreich’s outstanding Nickeled and Dimed, and among other things, got inspired by one of the scenes she describes. She was working for a cleaning service scrubbing shit from the toilet bowl of a well-to-do mom who spent her time tracking her investments and her baby’s bowel movements. Think of it: a nice little spreadsheet with columns for date, time, volume, aroma, color, texture… I decided I wanted to borrow a page from her play book but with a linguistic twist. I counted all the words I could think of in my 19+ month old daughter’s vocabulary. Stuffed ’em in a MySQL database table because of my geeky proclivities.

I didn’t cheat. These here are 72 genuine active vocabulary items, not random shouting or mimicking, observed as of 31-December-2004. I probably missed a few.

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