Oxymoronisms

---by Micheal

Sometimes it's the littlest things that stop you in your tracks. A couple weeks ago, I had one of those moments. I went down to the laundry room to get some bleach to try on some vinyl siding stains. I picked up the bottle, but stood staring at the label. I was stuck.

My wife's maternal instinct for things being too quiet must have kicked in. She called downstairs, "Did you find the bleach?"

"Yes," I said. "But what's with this label? It says this is ULTRA Regular Bleach? How can something be both Ultra AND Regular?"

I could hear her eyes roll. "Don't let it send you into another one of your end-of-civilization-as-we-klnow-it rants," she said. "It's just bleach. Go clean the siding."

I was still stuck. Ultra, from the Latin, means "beyond." An Ultra-liberal is beyond ordinary liberal. Ultra-light, is beyond ordinary lightness. That's what Ultra means. "Regular" also comes from the Latin, in this case the root regula, meaning "a rule." Things are regular if they meet some regulation (There's another english word built on regula, by the way.) Something "regular" has met some benchmark or standard.

So, does something Ultra Regular no longer meet the regulation? Or is it supposed to mean it's very very regular? Whatever the heck that means. Is that like saying someone spelled a word Super Correctly? Huh? It was either correct or it wasn't. Or, can you spell "cat" with a more excellent "c" than someone else? Guess I never did.

"But this is oxymoronic!" I finally said out loud. "This is like saying something can be Extremely Average. Hyper Plain, or Super Ordinary. It doesn't make any sense."

"You're not going into another rant about how 'words don't mean anything anymore', are you?" She said with a sigh. "It's just a stupid label. Go outside."

She was right, as usual. I was going into one of my word rants. "Ultra Regular" was meaningless marketing fluff. It pretended to mean something, but was meaningless. Marketing hacks are corrupting our language, replacing the original meanings of words with generic fluff. These new fluff words get strung together like beads, having no real meaning beyond "Buy me! Buy me NOW!" When we, the consumer-lemmings, no longer jump at plain products in sufficient numbers, the marketing hacks tack on another fluff word to pique our interest. The marketeers must imagine a shopper saying, "Ultra Regular must be better than plain regular. I'll buy it."

Sadly, the marketeers are probably right. Many of us fall for it. No doubt, in time we'll see Super Ultra Regular bleach when Ultra Regular isn't exciting enough anymore. Eventually, our children will see Extreme Maxima Super Ultra Plus Regular Bleach, and decide to buy it because it simply must be better than boring old-fashioned Maxima Super Ultra Plus Regular Bleach. (of course, it will be just plain ol' bleach)

As it turned out, Ultra Regular bleach didn't get the stain off my siding. (Probably paint spatters, not mildew) The scary part is that with my failure, I could hear my inner consumer-lemming whispering, "Maybe you should get Super Ultra Regular next time. Maybe that will work...."