A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

MY ONLY REGRET IS THAT MY BUILDING HAS ONLY 13 FLOORS BETWEEN WHICH TO WATCH TELEVISION: I won't say that I love everything about the Captivate Network -- the service that puts LCD screens with ads, co-branded content, and factoids into office-building elevators -- but there's sure a lot to like:

• Truth in Labeling. I guess they also could have called it Imprisonet.
  
• The word of the day. This is almost always an eight-penny word that should never be used in ordinary conversation, accompanied by an examplar sentence using the word in the most stilted, inappropriate, and sometimes incorrect manner imaginable. Hypothetical example: "Nictitate: To wink. Ex.: The randy housewife nictitated at the pool boy to indicate her amenability to an amorous encounter." I should stop now -- I'm getting all recalescent.
  
• The PSA about domestic abuse. Sometimes what happens in the background is better than what you're seeing in the foreground. Paradigmatic example: the gym scene in Sixteen Candles, where Jake carries on a boring conversation about Molly Ringwald while in the background, there's a really funny giant-vs-pipsqueak wrestling match going on. Well, I had probably seen the endabuse.org PSA two dozen times before I noticed, in the background, a tiny little kid completely smothering a pass by what looks like the playground bully (it's at the end of the 30-second spot). If you're the kid who's a foot taller, how do you live this down? Do your parents point you out to their colleagues when they see this on their elevators, or do they pretend not to notice?
  
• Avoidance. I may never be forced by cramped quarters into another entire conversation in which my counterpart fails to inform me that references to "my boys" means her Welsh corgis, not any nonexistent children. For that, thank you, Captivate.