Kipple

I picked up a copy of Wired magazine at the airport last week. The only place I ever bother with that rag is at the airport -- it's a slim shade of its former self, no longer on the cutting edge of anything. Pretty much the technogeek equivalent of Cosmo, though, so it's perfect for idle in-flight skimming.

There was an article on Hollywood's love affair with Philip K. Dick, which I didn't read but glanced at a sidebar. He was apparently a bit of a paranoid in addition to being a brilliant sch-fi writer -- not that that's surprising -- and also invented a word for the useless detritus that gathers around us in modern life, the newspapers and discarded candy wrappers and rubber bands and all that. The word is kipple.

My life is elbow deep in kipple. Newspapers pile up, old pencils, notes and files that will never be opened again, receipts and fortune cookies and frequent customer cards and old floppy disks rattle around in drawers and on my desk. Regular cleanings do little to stem the tide. Even online, it's the case. The Google search for "PK Dick" delivers a text ad for "Pakistan sex."