I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and long words bother me.

It is more fun to talk with someone who doesn’t use long, difficult words but rather short, easy words like “What about lunch?”

“An early adopter or lighthouse customer is an early customer of a given company, product, or technology; in politics, fashion, art, and other fields, this person would be referred to as a trendsetter.”

I’m not old enough to have bought RCA’s CT-100, the first production color TV, but I did carry the first battery powered transistor radio to my elementary school so I could be schooled in the proper musical offerings of WFIL.

And speaking of appliances, we were about the last on the block to get a television at all (it was a 19″ black-and-white RCA that my dad bought used for $75 in 1955) and the last to get a microwave oven. I bought that new, but it was by then deeply discounted.

The “early adopter tax” refers to the trend of new products costing more when they first go on sale than later in the product cycle.

I hate to pay taxes. Hate it.

On the other hand, my great-grandfather had the first railroad train in a front yard in Doe Run and we were the first on our block to own a boat.

I’m a gadget guy from a long line of gadget guys but since bright and shiny long words like early adopter never swayed us, we ended up buying what we needed at the time we needed it, rather than the moment it appeared on the market.

I may not have been the first kid to trade my slide rule for a calculator but I was certainly in the top few; that was in the days when a good K&E slip stick cost $29.95 and the nixie-tube, 4-function calculator cost $179.95, about six times that. Of course the calculator could add and subtract, something I have never done effectively on a slide rule.

I never owned an IBM 5150, but I did build a Sinclair ZX80 which I replaced with one of the early Commodore C-64s. I ran my first business on that Commodore computer and might still be using it today had not the spreadsheets gotten too large for storing on a single floppy disk. My friend Rufus has a Betamax somewhere. On the other hand, he gave up his Pulsar watch for a Casio C-801 about 30 seconds after it arrived on the market. He still has a couple of those.

Liz Arden switched briefly from a standalone GPS to the Google™-driven app in her smartfone. She just bought a new GPS because it works better.

Today, I travel with a GPS (see above paragraph), an iPod Touch which I use as my PDA, and a “feature” cellphone. I think that’s all I need for now. Of course, I’ll be on a great silver bird in the sky on Wednesday where I’ll find a Sky Mall in every seat pocket.

Is it time for lunch yet?

No plastic garbage bag will open from the end you first try.
— Internet wisdom

Good to know.

I’ve never had that problem since I use plastic grocery bags in all the garbage cans.

Back in the dark ages, a grocery store bag boy carefully placed all your perishables in one proud paper bag and your canned goods in a double bag and your sundries in a third paper bag. The bags themselves were designed with folds to make them stack easily and flat bottoms to make them simple to fill. My mom could usually get a couple more uses out of a bag — carting books to the library or supplies down to the boat — before using it to line the trash can. And a paper bag full of trash could be burned easily or composted or left to rot away in days at the dump.

When the grocery chains stopped asking “paper or plastic,” I had to substitute a plastic bag for the paper bag in the trash can.

Now the Far Green wants us to stop using plastic grocery bags because they clog the landfills. Grocers are happy to go along because the grocery bags cost them money and because we now have to buy something to handle our trash.

Common sales wisdom is that the most effective marketing campaign ever was the addition of a single word to a label. The story isn’t true (a marketing executive becomes an industry legend by adding the word REPEAT to shampoo bottles in writer John Cheever’s son Benjamin’s novel The Plagiarist — shampoo sales doubled overnight) but that’s marketing.

I reckon the most effective marketing campaign ever was crafted when Canadians Harry Wasylyk, Larry Hansen, and Frank Plomp invented a product whose only purpose is to be thrown away.

Let’s examine that in light of our new, Far Green, sensibility.

“A bin bag, swag sack or bin liner or garbage bag or trash bag is a disposable bag used to contain rubbish or trash,” says Wikipedia. The only reason you buy a garbage bag is to throw it away.

Sheesh.

“Most commonly, the plastic used to make bin bags is the rather soft and flexible LDPE (Low Density Polyethylene) or, for strength, LLDPE (Linear Low Density Polyethylene) or HDPE (High Density Polyethylene) are sometimes used.

“Some bags are made of biodegradable polythene film. These will decompose when exposed to air, sun, and moisture or submitted for composting. They do not readily decompose in a sealed landfill. They are also considered a possible contaminant to plastic recycling operations.”

That’s good news. Not.

“Kind of makes you wonder what else the environmentalists got wrong,” Rufus muttered.

Anne and I both reuse grocery bags to cart books to and from the library. I’ve reused them to protect my cellphone in the rain and to carry a dripping towel from the beach. Rufus stores spent coffee grounds (which he figured is redundant) to use later as mulch. And we have never, ever had trouble opening a grocery bag to refill it with either stuff or trash.

For the record, no plastic produce bag will open from the end you first try, either, despite the HUGE green arrow printed onnit.

“Wet your fingertips first,” Rufus said. “It works much better.”

That’s exactly correct, as long as you actually try the end with the HUGE green arrow.