Not just a pretty face...

"I hate to use an ugly word like 'hypocrite,' so picture it in a lovely floral typeface."

Randy Cohen, "The Ethicist," The New York Times Magazine

I don't recall what thorny dilemma evoked this comment; I was too captivated by the notion that changing the size, shape, and color of a word or phrase might render it less objectionable.

I figured it was worth a try, so I opened my word processing program with its many, many fonts and typed a few words, including proper names, that get on my personal wick.

It's kind of fun: highlight the word, scroll through the typefaces, look for the least apposite to its real meaning, and pick an inappropriate color. The last entry in the list above, for instance, is a face called "Jokerman." (In retrospect, I should have used Bankers Gothic for "poverty" and colored it the green of newly printed currency.)

Originally, I had planned to see what George Carlin's "Seven Words You Can't Say on the Radio" would look like in the aforementioned "lovely floral typeface," but I can't remember what they are. Although I'm sure they're out there on the Net someplace, don't look for them here anytime soon.

Of course, there are many varieties of distasteful language, many words that make our individual toes curl, whether they are universally deemed unpleasant or not, and they aren't the same for each of us. I invite you, therefore, to give it a try with your own list. (Considerately, I have left "Rush Limbaugh" and "Ann Coulter" up for grabs...)

What 'City of No Illusions?'

This past Sunday's Buffalo News business section brought me an absurdly cheering bit of information: the city often called "The Buckle on the Rust Belt" and by other depressing monickers is the home of Milk-Bone dog biscuits, America's No. 1 doggie treat, and the company is about to celebrate its 100th anniversary.

That got me thinking about the businesses that haven't decamped from Western New York: a whole lot of them make people (and their pets) happy, or at least give them a whole lot of enjoyment. Consider these:

• Cheerios (General Mills)
• Perry's Ice Cream
• Anchor Bar chicken wing sauce
• the kummelwick roll
• Righteous Babe Records
• Rich Products frozen eclairs (and other goodies)
• Fisher-Price toys
• Ford gum balls
• kazoos
• New Era baseball caps
• QRS piano rolls
• the Sunday comics pages (Quebecor)
• Harlequin romance novels (U.S. distributor)
• Dyngus Day (Poles in most other parts of the country never heard of it.)
• and last but not least, the new headquarters of Labatt's USA

Say what you want about our lack of illusions---we know how to have a good time!