Friday 28 January 2011

What Is It Called?

There must be a word for it - that thing where you sit down at the computer and open up your email, to try to find the one you have to answer in order to be able to pay your electricity bill on-line. And there in your inbox is a message from a friend and there's a link in it to You Tube and you look at what they've sent you and you like it and you wonder if there's more like that and then you want to read about the person who made the clip and whether you can buy their stuff and, if so, where. And then you  notice an interesting review about them in a magazine that actually turns out to have quite a few interesting articles and one of them leads you to a discussion of the latest work by a writer you like. And, finally, you look at your watch and realise that an hour and a half's gone by and you can't think what you're doing, sitting here, wasting time. And so you close down the computer and wander off to get on with things. And then, as you start your new task, you remember what it was you wanted.

And so you sit down at the computer and open up your email, to try to find the one you have to answer in order to be able to pay your electricity on-line. And there in your inbox is a message from a friend and there's a link to an article and .....

 There must be a word for it - fornetfulness is all I can come up with. Someone must be able to think of something better - or find it on the internet. By the time they do, of course, I won't be able to see it, as my electricity will have been cut off, because each time I go to the computer and open up my email to try to find the one I have to answer in order to be able to pay my electricity on-line - well, you know the rest.

13 comments:

  1. Thanks, Chris - can you think of a better word than mine? There must be one.

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  2. "cybercaromosity"? No -- that's awful. I've been at it all day at the drawing board at the back of my mind . . . and that's what I deliver? Horrid.

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  3. 'YouTuberculosis' is my own horrid contribution.

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  4. I get the cyber bit, but am being a bit dim about the caromos element, Chris, but I'm not criticising - I can't think of anything decent myself.
    Gadjo, that's v good, I reckon. It's a very easily caught disease.

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  5. . . . "carom" as in bouncing around . . . "-osity" as in the state of . . . Meh -- it still stinks. I like "i-tinerant" much better.

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  6. Sounds like a typical weekend day. I think it's called avoiding the ironing.

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  7. Oh, I see, Chris.
    I like itinerant, Raphael, except that it's exactly what one isn't - except in a cyber way, one is not going anywhere. But perhaps that's the beauty of the word.
    Get back to that board, Madame, you don't want to look rumpled on Monday

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  8. It is a form of procrastination. Maybe it's procrastinetion.

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  9. It's hard, isn't it, M-H - I can't understand why Google can't help me out.

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  10. This is awesome. So true!

    And trying to come up with a word for it will likely plague me now. I'll let you know if I come up with something...

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  11. Probably some brand-new word will float into our heads one day, instead of something cobbled together out of old ones, and then we will wonder how we ever did without it. Sort of like the Internet itself really

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