6/22/2004

seen on the way home

We now have a Spam billboard in my neighborhood. With a huge picture of "Huevos Spamcheros." Ugh.

Nearly every week in the Chronicle of Higher Education there's an ad from Xerox asking readers to please not use "xerox" as a generic verb -- making the point that although their trademark is casually used in this way, it's not technically correct. (there must be a specific linguistic term for such words, right? but I don't know what it is -- like "let's get a Coke" when you mean any soda.) I wonder if the makers of Spam are similarly upset by everyone calling junk email spam.