The Audible Letter

More U.S. history: Why do some American’s put the “r” in Washington? “Warshington”, they say. Linguists say it’s a Midwestern accent thing.  They say the tongue slides through the r to get to the s. Apparently the tongue knows the alphabet…

What we have here is the opposite of the silent letter. This is a letter that’s not in the word, but it gets pronounced as opposed to the silent letter which is there but it’s not pronounced. This is not taught in our schools but maybe it should be. And we need to name this phenomenon. It’s been around long enough (250 years in the case of Warshington). Some possible names:

“Extrar” – Do we need to go any further?

“Englirsh” - This could be it

This could cause problems for Wheerl of Forturne. We're gonna have to work through that.

What Exactly Are We Celebrating?

 

Well yeah, there it was. I hope you enjoyed celebrating America’s 250^th birthday, ‘cause the 300^th won’t be celebrated nearly as much. Why, you ask? Because that date will be overshadowed by the celebration of Taylor Swift and Kelsey Grammer’s 50^th anniversary. People will say, “Oh yeah. I guess it is also the 300^th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence”.  Yeah. You watch…

Yeah. Do these celebrities think about these types of things? Like, the effect that’ll have on fireworks sales? And yeah, forget about their 50^th anniversary, what about even next year? Will the fourth of July ever be the same?

What’s my wife gonna do with these leftover red white and blue paper plates?

TNT

More American history: We saw some great fireworks over the weekend. But no fireworks can compare to what took place in New York City over the weekend: Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift tied the knot. What a way to begin the next 50 years of American history. The couple will get to celebrate their 50th anniversary at America’s 300^th anniversary. I look forward to that. Apparently all kinds of celebrities attended the wedding. Adam Sandler officiated at the ceremony. (Adam Sandler?) Was the pope not available? C’mon, we’re talking Taylor Swift here…

My only regret was that her mother Loretta Swift (from M*A*S*H) passed away last year and was unable to attend.  

Axe to Grind

More US history: Some guy in the 1800’s wrote that our founding father George Washington chopped down a cherry tree when he was young. The legend has grown to the point that a good percentage of Americans believe it.  We don’t know how old George was (10?, 17?) and we don’t know the size of the tree. We don’t know if it was their only tree or if they had an orchard? We only know that George owned up to chopping down the tree. He could not tell a lie. OK, but apparently he couldn’t be trusted around cherry trees. When asked about the new stump in his yard, George’s father probably said, “Oh George did that. But he told us about it. We’re proud of him.”

Chopping down a cherry tree is kinda wimpy. This writer needed to enhance his story and make the tree a council oak or a redwood. C'mon, this is George Washington we're talking about here...

Lastly, isn't it crazy that America's best apples come from the state of, you guessed it, Washington? Oops, looks like I'm mixing apples and cherries. 

Happy 250th, America! 

 

Fun Time

More US History: We used to have a roller skating rink in town called Fun Spot. And guess what? I always had fun there. Always. Fun is a word that shows up a lot in advertising. I had a Fun Size package of M&M’s last week. It had 11 M&M’s in it. I thought that was an unusual number, so I opened another package. That package had 10 M’s (Do I really need to add the “&M”’s in this context?) in it. Regardless, I don’t consider 10 or 11 M’s “fun”, do you? You may not even get all the colors. And some say all the colors taste the same, but I’m not so sure. Shouldn’t “fun size” be the larger size?

Should we describe clothes sizes the same way? Petite = fun size. Should Big and Tall be “More Fun”?

The Dawn of American History

I know I promised to write about aspects of US history leading up to the 250^th anniversary of the United States next month. I'm trying. (See below.) I was in a record store over the weekend and the owner was playing a Tony Orlando and Dawn LP on a shabby little record player. I asked him pleasantly, “Hey, what’s up with the Tony Orlando record?” He said that his good stuff sells OK so he tries to promote his stuff that doesn’t sell. (Dude probably took a marketing course in college, I bet.) I did not question his strategy – hey, it’s a free country (for 250 years!). But I didn’t buy any Tony. Or Dawn.

Interestingly enough, (and here’s some interesting US history), Dawn was not a person. No. Dawn was a group, a pair of women, neither of whom was named Dawn. I couldn’t find any info on the choice of the name, like if they often woke up before sunrise, or whatever…

It dawned on me as I was writing this that there must be hundreds of guys in Orlando named Tony who go by Tony Orlando. I bet at least one of them is married to a woman named Dawn. I’m pretty busy running this blog but if somebody could look into that, that’d be great.

Getting Past the Gatekeeper

I called a business yesterday. When I asked to be connected to a certain individual, the receptionist responded with the line, “Will she know why you’re calling?” Yeah. When a receptionist asks this, it’s your job to take control of the conversation. You at this point need to flip the conversation to make it appear she is questioning her boss. I responded, “I don’t know if she’ll know why I’m calling. I don’t know her capacity for remembering stuff. I really don’t know her that well. Do you think she remembers things particularly well? You know her better than I do.”

This seemed to work. There were no more questions. She put me through to the person’s office. Bingo. This typically works. Try it!