The Recombobulation Area (2023)
21 comments
·February 9, 2025codeduck
dr_dshiv
With a word like that, it’s more like a discovery than an invention
xg15
I call parallel evolution!
Thorrez
Those quotes are recombobulate and recombobulated. Here's a quote from 1970 with recombobulation:
userbinator
I think the Discombobulation Area should also be indicated with a sign.
jonstewart
MKE is a great mid-sized airport. It has, of all things, a nice used book store in it.
uxp100
Yes. Renaissance had a huge store (over a million volumes across 4 stories) downtown for years that was pretty sketchy, with bookshelves full of copies of the NEC from the 70s collapsed into the aisles, just laying in piles, and hundreds of copies of titles assigned to high schoolers boxed up on their upper stories. Really sort of a warehouse for their tidy airport location. They now have a small second location in Southridge mall, which is a appealingly dingy. Their downtown competitor, downtown books, which was less of a dump downsized about 10 years ago to a single story from 3 stories but is still downtown in a different location.
sangerSCB
Renaissance Books! I’m reading a first edition of Ataturk I picked up there now. It’s not your average airport bookstore. MKE also has a coat check. Very handy for quick trips to warmer locales in the winter.
null
cafard
Wow! I browsed the book store in the late 1980s. I'm glad to hear that it is still operating.
rasalas
I knew exactly what this meant before reading the article.
I had to pass through a similar screening at the courthouse every morning while I was on a jury. (Unlike airports you don't need to remove your shoes.)
Pro-tip: If you wear a belt, get one with a plastic buckle.
Angostura
I could certainly do with one of these given the state of the world. What a lovely idea
scrumper
I'm so happy this is actually a thing that lots of people like and locals take pride in. It was such a delightful surprise to see it after coming through security on my way back from a stressful business trip to Kenosha, my first time in the state. I took note of it, sent a photograph of the sign to my wife and various friends who enjoy little bits of clever language, and took off for home with a really warm impression of Wisconsin.
muragekibicho
Polymarket poll that 'recombobulate' enters Nigerian conversational register before Jan 2027.
nullc
SFO terminal 2 has something similar, though they might have chosen a different neologism for it.
veryfancy
Beloved Milwaukee institution.
moffkalast
First, distract target...
null
> So in 2008, the wise and good-humored manager (who retired in 2014), did what no other airport manager in the world thought to do: he invented a word and a concept, "recombobulation."
Except that Piers Anthony used it in a book in 1983.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Citations:recombobulate