A as in Apple II

Somebody wrote in and asked, “Do you use “Four Score” for your “Four” word in your A as in Apple thing for numbers (AATN)? We love the idea and we’re already using it in our two small busini”.  Well, thanks for the kind words, but the answer is no, I do not use “Four Score” for the number four. The reason I don’t is that, if you remember, the phrase continues “Four score and seven years…”. Saying the word “seven” could confuse the hearer. So, I use “Four Seasons” or the “Four Weddings and a Funeral” or something like that.

For the number three I do not use The Three Musketeers, since, believe it or not, a movie sequel was made called The Four Musketeers. For three I typically use The Three Stooges. You’ll no doubt ask, “But there were more than three stooges, Tommy. Did you forget about Shemp after Curly died?” The difference here is that there were never more than Three Stooges at any one point in time. Let’s use common sense folks.

Plurality

Who decides on the plural versions of nouns? It seems to me that some of these pluralings could be improved. Have you ever thought that? Today we’re going to look at words that end in the letters ess. For words like mattress and seamstress we have historically just added -es at the end of word to make it plural, as in, “We need new mattresses for the boys’ bunk beds”. That’s too many s’s for me. We end up sounding like an angry cat. My plan would be to shorten these plurals to mattri, or seamstri, as in “That dress is so large that it may take multiple seamtri to alter it”.  

Try these out on your friends. I bet you’ll have succi!!

Roundup

Yesterday I heard somebody ask this senior citizen guy how old he was. The guy responded, “I’m gonna be 91 in February.” People often do that rounding up thing, don’t they. I’m not sure I get it. What’s wrong with just being 90? Is 91 something special? To my knowledge, you don’t get any additional tax benefits or special discounts at 91. You’re already getting the senior discount. How old do you have to be to do this rounding up?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad he’s looking forward. It’s better than answering the question, “Well, I was 89 last year.”

What if we had rounded up throughout history? “Four score and it’s gonna be 8 years ago…” Doesn’t have the same ring to it, does it?

A as in Apple

Do you ever spell out a name of something for someone by using the A as in Apple, B as in Boy method? That helps, doesn’t it? I use that method for reading back numbers as well. In fact, I invented this method. It works like this: Let’s say you have to read back a product code to someone. And let’s say it’s a mix of letters and numbers. Your reading of the product code would go something like this: “A as in apple, zero as in Zero Mostel, K as in Kale, seven as in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, P as in Poncho, etc”. I especially like the “seven” wording because the person hears the word seven 3 times. It would be pretty hard to mess that one up if you were writing down the code.

I of course have never seen Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, but sure enough, this person I used this method on last week had seen the movie years ago and had loved it. My goal is that this method gets popular to the point where there is a remake of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.

How many actor brothers does Alec Baldwin have?

Remote Access

Another football season is upon us. Time to check the batteries in your remote. From a health standpoint, is the remote a good thing or a bad thing? I’ve read some studies, and from the positive side, the remote keeps us from watching commercials, in particular those tempting food commercials. With a good remote, we are less likely to run to the kitchen or run out for Burger Kings or Taco Bell. From the negative side, the remote enables us to stay in our Lazy Boys with our feet up for two, sometimes three games. Our ancestors had to get up and change the channels, and, let’s face it, they were not as obese as we are.  

There’s a compromise here I think. This football season, I want you to continue to use the remote. But, instead of keeping it with you in your chair, place it on the coffee table out of your reach, so every time you use it you have to get out of your chair. Let’s check back mid-season and see how many pounds we’ve lost! Send us before and after pictures. But let’s try to get out of our chairs for the pictures.  

FNOPs Revisited

I’ve always found hyphenated names to be interesting. A kid will get a last name that typically contains his mother’s maiden name and his father’s last name. If Ms. Jones marries Mr. Smith, the kid will have the last name of Jones-Smith. But what happens with the next generation? Will we see a third name and second hyphen added? That would result in some really long names. Or will one of the original hyphenated names be dropped? If one is dropped, will it be the mother’s name or the father’s?

One solution would be to just drop last names entirely, and that of course is how we end up with FNOPs (First Name Only People). Madonna, Bozo, Cher, Ichiro, Barney. Yeah, those guys. And yeah, I’m still trying to out what happens when two FNOPs marry. If Cher marries Bono, will she become Cher Bono again?