Space Toilets and Hard A’s

By Lee Vander Boegh –

I have every intention of writing about the biggest news story of the day – that the toilet aboard the International Space Station is jammed up (read about it here) – but for the life of me I can’t figure out how to put one of those long lines over a typed “a.” I realized this as soon as I tried making a “Drano” joke. See how funny that word looks? It’s supposed to spell out the name of the clog-clearing, chemical-smelling, face-melting plumbing goop that I’ve relied on for years. The problem is that it requires one of those long line thingies above the a. That’s supposedly what gives in that hard a sound.

How in the heck can you write about a stopped up toilet without mentioning Drano? See, I used it again and it looks goofy. Maybe I should just type “Drain-Oh” from here on out. But that’s not funny either.

I checked the company website for help. After all, they bill themselves as “The Drain Experts,” so it makes sense that they are at least expert enough to use that fancy line in their company lingo – but they don’t! Even the experts couldn’t figure this one out. Instead they use one of those R-in-a-circle at the end of the product line. Which is clever in its own right, but it’s of little use to me. Now I’m not trying to tell the fine folks over at Drano-with-a-circled-R how to write up their media stuff, but it would be nice to see it written the way it appears on the product – along with an instructional ‘how to’ bit on their site.

So here I sit. Waiting for our office computer whizzes to show me the intricacies of making lines above letters. But rest assured, I had plenty of good one-liners ready to go. And this break will give me plenty of time to think of more. Read all about it in tomorrow’s Vander Bites-with-a-circled-R.