Rubber Baby Buggy Bumpers

I've been debating about whether or not to do this for some time, but when I read Bilbo's blog today and he decided to talk about Tom Swifties, I decided that I'd go ahead with it.


I don't know if Dr. Seuss is as popular among beginning readers today as he was when I just a wee bairn (ask fiona what it means), but he was oh, so much more than those bad movies The Cat In The Hat and How The Grinch Stole Christmas. If you didn't grow up reading Dr. Seuss, then your life is not as full as it should be.

My all-time favorite Dr. Seuss book is called Oh Say Can You Say, and it's a book of tongue twisters. I mentioned this once several years ago to my wife and, being the wonderful person that she is, she saw to it that a copy of the book ended up among my birthday gifts the next time it rolled around. As a 40-something year-old guy at the time, you might think I'd consider a kid's book as something of a gag gift. If so, then you don't know me at all. I was thrilled, and this book is right up there on my bookshelf along with all my grown-up books (including the complete Winnie The Pooh).


I think these show the brilliance of Dr. Seuss as much as any of the more famous books he wrote. Maybe this one wasn't as popular because it's challenging in a different way than most of his books (read up on loraxes some time). This book challenges on a more physical level and less on a moral or intellectual one. And by the way, if you think that Dr. Seuss' writing isn't normally intended to relay a moral or intellectual message, then you're just skimming the surface (same with A. A. Milne and Winnie The Pooh).

Most of the tongue twisters are very easy to read to yourself. The difficulty comes in saying them aloud. Even reading them aloud can cause you stumble.

Some of them don't actually have much of a twist until the very end, when you're rushing toward the finish:

One year we had a brunch
with Merry Christmas Mush to munch.
But I don't think you'd care for such.
We didn't like the mush munch much.

Dr. Seuss' excellence as a wordsmith is in the seeming simplicity of these words that he runs together in ways that would never, ever have occurred to me:

The storm starts
when the drops start dropping.
When the drops stop dropping
then the storm starts stopping.

Some of them consist of the more familiar tongue-twister formula of using very similar words in new ways that are just freaking hard to say:

Bed Spreaders spread spreads on beds.
Bread Spreaders spread butters on breads.
And that Bed Spreader better
watch out how he's spreading...
or that Bread Spreader's
sure going to butter his bedding.

One tongue-twister that I memorized some time ago didn't come from Dr. Seuss. I'm not sure of the origin, but since I'm in a tongue-twister mode here, I'll share it with you:

A tooter who tooted a flute
tried to tutor two tooters to toot.
Said the two to the tutor,
"Is it harder to toot or
to tutor two tooters to toot?"

But that one is child's play compared to some of the ones in this book. As you might have guessed, it's also marvelously illustrated with classic Dr. Seuss creatures and people, adding to its appeal. This last one may be my favorite from the book:

Upon an island hard to reach,
the East Beast sits upon his beach.
Upon the west beach sits the West Beast.
Each beach beast thinks that he's the best beast.

Which beast is best?... Well, I though at first
that the East was best and the West was worst.
Then I looked again from the west to the east
and I liked the beast on the east beach least.

Blogs are amazing things. They can even get a middle-aged guy to admit that he still occasionally reads Dr. Seuss and Winnie the Pooh.

Who are these freaky people?

OK, like most of you folks out there, people stumble across my blog all the time by doing various web searches. Some are odd. Some make me wonder what people are actually searching for.

Back in August, I wrote a little piece about those flashing speed limit signs. I didn't think it was particularly funny, certainly not my best work, but we had encountered some of these on a recent road trip where hundreds of cars were speeding by and we had no idea which flashing MPH applied to which car. On a whim, I titled the piece with a lyric from a relatively obscure little song from 1971 (#3 on the charts for a few weeks) by an even more obscure group (2 top 40 hits) from Canada (I don't even want to talk about the cover by '80s hair band Tesla, the hacks), even though it had very little to do with the article I actually wrote.

Now, I've written about (or at least cited) Keith Emerson, Bo Diddley, David Bowie, Eric Clapton, The Band, Kiss, Deep Purple, and many, many other really big names in music. I'll admit that my post on Johnny Winter has been found by many web searches. For that matter, my quotes from Elwood P. Dowd have garnered lots of hits. I suppose this means that Elwood has as many followers as Johnny does, although he doesn't sing in the movie.

But it never even occurred to me that so many people wanted to know about Five Man Electrical Band and their hit "Signs". This is a song that contains such poetry as "so I got me a pen and a paper". Meter, thou art a cruel mistress.

Now bear in mind that when I go to Google Analytics and tell it that I want to see all my hits sorted by keyword, the first and overwhelmingly largest is always "(not set)". After that, there's "gilahi" and a couple of other obvious ones. That makes this pretty much the leader in my hit rate:


Apparently, the first 8 words of this song qualify as the biggest earworm epidemic in '70s music. Then there are a couple of people who aren't really into verbs:

Then there's quite a list of people who manage to at least two of the first three words right:

And then there's these:


"long haird"? "low hear freaky people"? "we are the freaky people"? (see subject)

Every single week I get more hits on these lyrics of a 38-year old song.

You have no idea how tempted I am to put a post out there that contains nothing but the opening lyrics to little-known, underappreciated songs from my heyday, just to watch the search numbers.

As a matter of fact...

Dale a tu cuerpo alegria...

A little past my time, but let's just see what that might do.

In order to help out these seekers of the truth, here are the entire lyrics to this song by a little band from Ottawa:

Signs
by Five Man Electrical Band

And the sign said long-haired freaky people
need not apply.
So I tucked my hair up under my hat
and I went in to ask him why.

He said, "You look like a fine upstanding young man.
I think you'll do."
So I took off my hat, I said, "Imagine that.
Huh, me working for you."

(chorus)
Sign, sign, everywhere a sign,
blocking out the scenery breakin' my mind.
Do this, don't do that.
Can't you read the sign?

And the sign said anybody caught trespassin'
would be shot on sight.
So I jumped on the fence and I yelled at the house,
"Hey! What gives you the right

to put up a fence to keep me out
but to keep Mother Nature in?
If God was here he'd tell you to your face,
man you're some kind of sinner."

(chorus)

Now hey you, mister, can't you read?
You've got to have a shirt and tie to get a seat.
You can't even watch, no, you can't eat.
You ain't supposed to be here.

Sign said you got to have a membership card to get inside. Ugh!

And the sign said, "Everybody Welcome.
Come in, kneel down and pray."
But when they passed around the plate at the end of it all,
I didn't have a penny to pay.

So I got me a pen and a paper
and I made up my own little sign.
It said, "Thank you, Lord, for thinking 'bout me.
I'm alive and doing fine."

(chorus)

To all you pilgrims out there in Internetland, your search is at an end. You are welcome.

Trivia Day - The Word Edition: Answers

I've got a screaming head cold today and just got off of a 90-minute conference call with an unhappy customer. I'm at home in a robe sweating with a fever and waiting for the rest of my left lung to come up with the next coughing fit. Either that, or for my entire red, irritated nose to wind up in the tissue the next time I sneeze.

Still, I said I'd publish these answers today, so here they are. If you think I'm wrong on some of these, I have to say that at this point I really could not possibly care less. I'm going to go lie down.

Here's the post I originally had written:

Some fun. At least a few more people gave this one a shot than on the previous one. Thanks for reading, and I hope it was fun, if not educational.

Here are the answers:

1) What's the longest word in the English language that contains only one vowel?
Strengths - Nine letters, one vowel.

2) What are the two words in the English language that contain all the vowels, including "y", in alphabetical order?
facetiously - In a facetious or flippant manner; in a manner that treats serious issues with deliberately inappropriate humor

and

abstemiously - Marked by abstinence or restraint, especially in relation to food or drink. I'm surprised that one of you, Mike, got this one.

3) What's the shortest non-capitalized word in the English language that contains all the vowels, not including "y"?
eunoia - A medical term that means "a state of normal mental health". I'm not surprised that no one got this one.

4) There is one word (and its variants) in the English language that contains 3 doubled letters (like "tt", "rr", etc.) in a row. What is it?
bookkeeper (or bookkeeping, etc.), also identified by Mike.

5) What's the original plural of the word "opus"?
opera - As identified by Bilbo and Mike.

6) Linguists refer to a word in which no letter is used more than once as an isogram. What's the longest isogram in English?
uncopyrightables - No other 16-letter (or longer) word has no repeated letters. Identified by Mike.

7) What's the only common English word (plus any derivatives) that ends in the letters "mt"?
dreamt - As identified by Fiona and Mike.

8) There are only two common words (and their derivatives) that end in the letters "shion". What are they?
cushion and fashion - As identified by Fiona, Eudea-Mamia, and Mike.

9) There are no common English words that contain all the letters "a" through "g". What are the two shortest English words that contain all the letters "a" through "f"?
There are lots of words in English that contain all of the letters "a" through "f", but the two shortest ones are feedback and boldface. Mike got one of these.

10) There is only one common English word that has 5 vowels in a row. What is it?
queuing. Mike got this, although he misspelled it with 6 vowels in a row.

11) What's the longest word with only one syllable? This applies to American English only, as the English English and most other English-speaking countries would pronounce it with two syllables, and in fact I suspect that some would argue about it even in America. It's my quiz, and this is pretty widely accepted, so don't fight me on it.
squirrelled

Oh, by the way, did I happen to mention the upcoming good time that's going to be had by everybody who's anybody in the DC area on January 18th? It's not too late to sign up. Just go here or here or here and follow the instructions. We look forward to seeing our new friends and to making even more new friends. Don't miss it!

This is normal, right?

It's not just me, is it? Surely this has occurred to someone else. Every time I see an ad for this product:



My first thought is always that it's a laxative.

Right? Right? Come on.

Trivia Day - The Word Edition

(First, a public service announcement from our friends bringing you the Bloggerational Ball on January 18. Read all about it and sign up here. It promises to be a good time for all!)

All right, due to the overwhelming success of my last trivia quiz, which a grand total of two people attempted, I've decided to try again. This time, with something that may be a little less obscure: English. Specifically, words. In response to the feedback from the previous quiz, I will make this one shorter and, I hope easier. As always, I'd appreciate it if you didn't go to the web to look these up. If anybody can come up with examples of other words that prove I'm wrong about any of the assertions below, I'd love to know them.

Also, since I can never be counted on to follow Sean's example and publish on Tuesday, I just decided to arbitrarily call this "Trivia Day".

So here goes:

1) What's the longest word in the English language that contains only one vowel?

2) What are the two words in the English language that contain all the vowels, including "y", in alphabetical order?

3) What's the shortest non-capitalized word in the English language that contains all the vowels, not including "y"? (The word "Iouea" is a genus of sea sponges, but as such is capitalized. Knew you'd want to know.)

4) There is one word (and its variants) in the English language that contains 3 doubled letters (like "tt", "rr", etc.) in a row. What is it? I'll take any form.

5) What's the original plural of the word "opus"? Today, people use "opuses", but that's a relatively new form.

6) Linguists refer to a word in which no letter is used more than once as an isogram. What's the longest isogram in English?

7) What's the only common English word (plus any derivatives) that ends in the letters "mt"?

8) There are only two common words (and their derivatives) that end in the letters "shion". What are they?

9) There are no common English words that contain all the letters "a" through "g". What are the two shortest English words that contain all the letters "a" through "f"?

10) There is only one common English word that has 5 vowels in a row. What is it?

11) What's the longest word with only one syllable? This applies to American English only, as the English English and most other English-speaking countries would pronounce it with two syllables, and in fact I suspect that some would argue about it even in America. It's my quiz, and this is pretty widely accepted, so don't fight me on it.

Good luck.

The Meming of Life

It appears that she had some reason to believe that I wouldn't find it, but Photocynthesis tagged me for what is possibly the longest meme of all time. Apparently, I'm supposed to wonder "what the hell", so here we go:




Nah, I'm not really upset, I just liked the picture.

The thing about this particular meme is, there don't seem to be any rules or instructions, I'm just supposed to list a whole bunch of stuff about myself that nobody really cares about. Not even me. Still, in the spirit of good sportsmanship and just to show Ms. Cyndy that she'll have to hide better than that if she really wants people not to find stuff, I'm off.

All About Me
10 Years Ago:
I had several of my body parts replaced with Hefty Cinch Sacks full of Jell-O Pudding. When everybody started doing Bill Cosby imitations every time I came into a room, I decided to have all of my original body parts reattached. I still have my extra head, though. You never know when you're gonna need something.

8 Years Ago:
In a burst of mid-life crisis, I decided that I would no longer obey the laws of gravity or evolution, and for a time became a flying monkey. I soon found that the only occupation available to me was as an extra in "The Wizard of Oz", but being paid scale for performing in a movie that was completed 62 years earlier wasn't enough for me to survive on, so I cleaned up my act, moved to Virginia, and started my new position with my company. Oh, and I got married. I can still fly, too.

6 Years Ago:
The apocalyptic nightmare hit and the entire planet was destroyed in a series of fiery explosions that ended all life on earth just before the kind beings from Nepton-6 took compassion and replaced everything with exact cybertronic duplicates. What, you don't remember that? Oh. Never mind. Just go on about your business as if I hadn't said anything.

4 Years Ago:
Just in case you think everything I've recounted up to this point is unbelievable, in 2005 George W. Bush was inaugurated for the second time.

2 Years Ago:
My hair was darker, I weighed less, I was on track for early retirement, and my idea for an animated movie detailing the life of Sir E. Farquhar Buzzard with Gilbert Gottfried providing the voice of the title character still hadn't caught on. On a side note, I believe this is the second time that I've gotten to work the name E. Farquhar Buzzard into this blog.

5 Yummy Things:
1. Tabasco Sauce
2. Breyer's Heavenly Hash Ice Cream

3. Tyra Banks
4. Egg Nog
5. Black pepper

5 Songs I Know By Heart:
1. "Happy Birthday" (if I know your name)
2. "Wipeout"
3. The Alphabet Song (sung to the tune of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star")
4. "Tequila"
5. Beethoven's 9th Symphony

5 Places I Would Like To Escape To:
1. Petticoat Junction
2. Maggie's Farm
3. Up Around The Bend
4. Junior's Farm
5. Stone Soul Picnic

5 Things I Would Never Wear:
1. Asphalt
2. Uranium-238
3. Phlegm
4. Carbon paper
5. Crocs

5 Favorite TV Shows:
1. "The Dick Van Dyke Show"
2. Scrambled porn
3. Test pattern
4. Commercials
5. Closing credits

5 Things I Enjoy Doing:
1. ___ (this blog does not contain adult content)
2. ___ (this blog does not contain adult content)
3. ___ (this blog does not contain adult content)
4. ___ (this blog does not contain adult content)
5. Scratching

5 Favorite Toys:
1. Clumps of dirt
2. Sticks
3. Aluminum Foil
4. Dry Cleaner bags
5. Shoe boxes

5 People Who I Am Tagging To Fill This Out:
1. E. Farquhar Buzzard
2. Attila the Hun
3. Tyra Banks
4. Groucho Marx
5. That guy who's always asking for a quarter outside the Subway at lunchtime