CARLY: [to customer] I'm sorry, but there's not much I can do about that sir. [customer leaves in a huff] Thanks, come again!
TERENCE: [walks up with a handful of CD's and a price ticker] What's his bitch?
CARLY: He's miffed about the stickers.
TERENCE: Stickers?
CARLY: On the CD's.
TERENCE: [glances at price ticker] How's he supposed to know what they cost if I don't--
CARLY: Not those. The "Security Device Enclosed" stickers.
TERENCE: Oh. Yeah, those do suck.
CARLY: Agreed. Having THREE of them on every CD and DVD seems a little extreme. They're a bitch to take off.
TERENCE: And that's the point. They don't want you to crack open the case and take the disc out before you've paid. That's why there's so many. I wish there were another way to protect the disc but right now there isn't.
CARLY: Exactly. I feel for the guy, but it's not as if you and I put them on there... they come that way.
[A customer walks by, looking confused.]
TERENCE: [nods and starts pricing the CD's in his hand] Right. It's no reason for apoplexy.
CARLY: What?
TERENCE: [looking up] I said it's no reason for apoplexy.
CARLY: What's that?
TERENCE: It's when someone has a ... fit. Y'know. They get real angry and nutty. Like a madman in an asylum.
CARLY: A silum? What's a silum?
TERENCE: An asylum is a mental institution where they keep people that have gone crazy, and who might be dangerous. Like you know Bellevue.
CARLY: Never heard of it.
TERENCE: Bellevue?
CARLY: No, asylum.
TERENCE: Come on have you never watched a movie with a person in a nuthouse before? One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest? Terminator 2? That's what an asylum is. You've got these people being observed by psychiatrists, and they're so dangerous they have to stand behind glass.
CARLY: Are psychiatrists really that dangerous?
TERENCE: No, dammit, not the psychiatrists... the patients! The patients stand behind glass so that they can't hurt the doctors when they have fits of apoplexy.
CARLY: Couldn't they just break the glass?
TERENCE: It's unbreakable glass, made from plastic.
CARLY: Plexiglass?
TERENCE: Right.
CARLY: So that's where its gets its name?
TERENCE: What?
CARLY: Plexiglass? Because it saves you from someone having apoplexy?
TERENCE: No, no! Jesus. "Plexiglas" is just a trademark. It doesn't have anything to do with apoplexy.
CARLY: How do you know? Maybe the people who invented it had just that in mind.
TERENCE: No, dammit, I --
CARLY: They're like "How do we save the psychiatrists of the world from apoplexy?" And then they came up with apoplexiglass and then someone said that name was too long (a marketing specialist probably) so they --
TERENCE: [calling] Chad! Can you come here?
CHAD: [comes out of the office into the store and approaches the counter] What's up?
TERENCE: Would you explain to Carly where the name for plexiglas comes from?
[A different, confused-looking customer wanders up behind them, and begins waiting for help.]
CHAD: It's a trademark. Who knows?
CARLY: Hah! So it could be from apoplexy!
CHAD: Oh I doubt that. There's nothing crazy about plexiglas. I suspect it is either because (a) the guy who made it thought it sounded neat, or (b) it is composed of folded polymers or the manufacturing process involves folding up polymers, or (c) the name was chosen because the substance has almost limitless uses--"manyfold" uses so to speak.
TERENCE: I vote for the "sounded neat" option.
CHAD: Don't be too hasty, after all the guy who invented plexiglas was probably a scientist with a good grasp of Latin.
TERENCE: [blank look]
CARLY: [blank look]
CHAD: The suffix "-plex" usually referring to something being divided into a number of parts comes from the Latin "plex" which means "fold". That's why "duplex" means two-fold.
CARLY: We live in a two-fold?
TERENCE: No dumbass, we live in a building which has two separate living areas for two families. We live on the second floor, and Justin and Simone live beneath us. That's why it's a duplex. The living spaces are two-fold. [to Chad] Right?
CHAD: [nods] Yeah. Plex connotes folding, or entangling. [looks at Carly] Get it?
[Confused customer impatiently checks watch, and wanders back off into the stacks.  Terence goes back to pricing the CD's in his hand while glancing up occasionally at Chad and Carly.]
CARLY: [shakes head] Okay, this is just too complex for me. What does apoplexy have to do with folding or entangling?
CHAD: Nothing.
CARLY: Well then why-- why's it--
CHAD: The "plex" in apoplexy comes from the root of the word "plague".
CARLY: Because the plague caused fits?
CHAD: No, because the Indo-European root "plag" which means "hit", became "plaga" in Greek and Latin meaning a "blow" or "wound", which was then used in the Vulgate to mean an infectious disease (that one might be "struck down" with). This was incorporated into Old French, and from there into English giving us the modern word plague.
TERENCE: [confused, stops pricing] SO??? What the fuck has that got to do with apoplexy?
CHAD: Oh sorry, there's an alternative root to "plag" in Indo-European--"plak". Which is where the modern word apoplexy derives from. Like plague, it connotes being struck or hit in some way. Someone is "struck" with apoplexy. It contains "plex" but not the root "plex". Another example of the "plak" root in a modern English word would be "plectrum".
TERENCE: Ermmm.
CHAD: Plectrum--a guitar pick. When one "plucks" the strings with the pick, one is "striking" chords. In a way, one is sort of striking the strings.
CARLY: I get it. "Plec" from "plak".
CHAD: Right.
CARLY: And "trum" from "strum" which is the other thing you do with a guitar.
CHAD: [looks at Terence]
TERENCE: I wouldn't.
CHAD: [looks at Carly] Right. Still perplexed?
CARLY: No I think I get it. Apoplexy is getting struck down with something, and plexiglass is something that there's no point in hitting because it's unbreakable. And uh, they call it a solar plexus because it's a bad spot to get hit. Uh, especially during the day.
TERENCE: [to Carly] I shudder to think of the havoc you will wreak when you finally get that teaching degree.
[A customer enters.]
CHAD: [to customer] Hi! Welcome to Musiplex--"Home of the Hits". [to Terence] Speaking of wreaking havoc, I got another complaint today about stuff being misfiled.
CARLY: Yeah that was my fault, last week a shipment came in and I filed them all wrong.
CHAD: A WHOLE SHIPMENT OF DVDs AND CDs?
CARLY: [glumly] Yeah.
TERENCE: [glares at Carly] And I've spent most of the last couple days trying to straighten them out. [to Chad] It was a real mess, there was no rhyme or reason to it.
CARLY: They were in order by ISBN number, I told you.
TERENCE: Which essentially means, no ordering at all. When was the last time someone came in here looking for that hot new movie 1-4049-5266-7?
CUSTOMER#1: [looking up from stacks] Ooh I loved that one! Fay Masterson is hot!
[Carly, Terence, and Chad all stare in disbelief]
CUSTOMER#1: What?
CARLY: [to Terence] I was in a hurry! I said I was sorry! Look I promised I would stay late today and help sort it out.
TERENCE: [brusquely] I don't want YOUR help. [to Chad] Don't worry about it. I've just about straightened the whole thing out. I'm pretty sure this handful of U2 CD's are the last few that were in the wrong place.
CHAD: I hope so, I don't want to get any more complaints. It makes us look bad. [he goes back into the office]
[a customer approaches Terence]
TERENCE: Yes ma'am, can I help you find something?
CUSTOMER#2: Yeah, I'm trying to find Strip Magnetique? It's a new techno album? I looked for it under "S" and I couldn't find it.
TERENCE: Well the music is sorted by band name, not album name.
CUSTOMER#2: I know that, the band name also begins with S.
TERENCE: [starts to walk toward the stacks] Come on, I help you find it. What's the name of the band?
CUSTOMER#2: "Security Device Enclosed".
TERENCE: [turns, eyes bugged out] WHAT??? [looks at Carly] You! YOU!!!!
CARLY: Hey, you don't want MY help, remember?
  • APOPLEXY:
    This is a medical term as well, often used to mean internal bleeding of some sort.  In the brain, this can lead to a seizure or fit, which is how the term eventually became incorporated into everyday language to mean a rage or a fit.  Here's a medical definition at the Medline Plus Medical Encyclopedia.
     
  • BELLEVUE:
    Of course this is not really an asylum, it is a reference to Bellevue Hospital in New York.  It is a hospital noted for the treatment of mental illness.  It's got such a long history that often referring to someone as being "an escapee from Bellevue" is generally accepted as another way of calling them "crazy".
     
  • PLAG/PLAK:
    Etymology described here.  This site Take Our Word For It, is a neat periodical about words and word origins.
     
  • -PLEX:
    At dictionary.com.
     
  • PLEXIGLAS:
    Read the Plexiglas FAQ.
     
  • SECURITY DEVICE ENCLOSED:
    I hate these fucking labels, they're a pain in the ass to remove, and often damage the DVD case in the process. 
    • I'm not the only one who hates them.
       
    • Here's another person who has wondered what will happen when someone finally makes a movie or a band called "Security Device Enclosed."
       
    • Clear-vu, which makes the Zenith-Pac, the special only-they-guy-behind-the-counter-can-unlock-it case that some video games come in, warns that the sticker isn't much of a deterrent.
       
    • The folks at Horror.com hate these stickers even more than me.  One goes so far as to claim "those stickers killed my parents and made me a pirate".