Obsolescence

I learned a new word today at work.  A variation of the word obsolete.  I never thought that work, of all places, is where I would learn something like this, but alas.  I've been schooled.

A line of machinery had been discontinued and as such the parts for that implement are no longer of any value, except (likely) what can be collected via scrap.  A HUGE waste of money, overall, if you ask me.  I mean, why produce an excess of the parts needed for the production of the original line?  Needless to say, there be a f*ck load of shit that needs to be scrapped over the coming weeks.

However, I digress.  Complaining about the stupidity of the higher ups is not my intent for this little blog, today.  To report on the idiocy of the bureaucrats at work would be about as informative as announcing: Water is wet!  No kidding?  Thank you Capt. Obvious!

Obsolescence be thy word.  All day long, I saw it posted on a couple of crates, collected to begin heaping hoards of obsolete parts into for recycling and otherwise.  The word seems so simple, yet complex at the same time.  The more that I repeated the word over in my head, the more the word made me smile and chuckle to myself.  For the word, in and of itself, does not sound like what it actually means.   

The word obsolescence, to me, sounds instead like a virus.  A disease you'd get as a result of eating too much red meat.  I thought tomato-based products at first, as this always makes me race for the bathroom, but red meat can be all the more destructive, if allowed.

"Oh boy!  I shouldn't have gone to Rodney's barbecue and ate all the rare beef.  Now I have a scorching case of Obsolescence.  I can't stray more than a few feet from the toilet before racing back to evacuate my bowels."

Yes.  That's right!  To me, obsolescence sounds like a viral infection that causes you to shit streams of gooey ungodliness.  The kind of unruly turmoil that results in using over half of a roll of ultra-soft toilet paper in hopes of soothing a burning aching backside.  Definitely a double-flusher.

Obsolescence...