tchotchkes

[Bruce Dykes]

-----Original Message-----
From: Dennis R. Preston <preston at PILOT.MSU.EDU>
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Date: Saturday, February 26, 2000 9:32 AM
Subject: Re: tchotchkes


>Careful! Lots of us South Midlands persons have traditionally decorated our
>homes with tchotchkes (although we didn't know what to call them). My
>mawmaw would have called them "pretties' (pronounced "purdies," of course,
>and distinct from "play pretties"=children's toys).


Me and my friends often use 'dust magnet'. The chief characteristic of a
dust magnet, besides the requirement to be dusted, is nonutility.

So while Lladro and Hummel figures are dust magnets, books and cds are not.
An ornamental chess set, if there's no game in progress, is a dust magnet;
if there is a game in progress, it's not. Tchotchkes around your monitor
that ward off computer crashes and viruses are not dust magnets, tchotchkes
that sit on shelves are.

And a clarification: in my earlier post when I said WFMU offered tchotchkes
as premiums, I meant that they *called* them tchotchkes, and proudly.

bkd