Dr. Nucleus

When and why did the American motoring public change the time-honored tradition of calling their automobile do-da an "aerial" to an "antenna"?

Motor-mouth

Dear M-m,

And well you should want to know seeing how this seemingly unimportant switch may well spell the end to American enterprise!

Aerial is composed of the roots AER (Greek for "air") and RIAL (the same as our word "reel".) Cars were given devices to reel in air necessary to the humans inside. Humans used this air to breath and to smell the roses or half-burned diesel fuel which invigorated drivers in those halcyon days before the Korean War. Northern motorists wrapped their aerials in raccoon skin to prevent icing ( a holdover still punishable in Canadian hockey).

After "The Great Police Action", hordes of foreign "buggies" returned with our dog-faces descending upon hapless American automotive buyers. Low price pseudocars were produced in hive-like factories by insects mutated by nuclear weapons and chemical warfare. The Volkswagen (Ger. "wagging tailed folks") Beetle and the Japanese Beetle were dead giveaways to this cruel hoax.

Insects do not have aerials; they breath through spiracles on their sides. They use antenna to communicate between members of their species. Imagine the furtive chittering floating in the aether as these alien lifeforms scheme how to hatch more and more of their kind.

Parts of cars must now be renamed to suit the Insect Lords. A partial list of the "buzzwords": the hood must be called the "prothorax," the windshield the "simple eye," the headlights "the compound eye," the trunk the "ovipositor," and the aerial is now the "antenna."

Scary? Yes. Avoidable? Sadly, no.

Roller-skating through the lab,
Dr. Nucleus