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| Posted by Robert L. Blake on 13-Aug-2005 | The Trouble with English, a short poem
Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sleeve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation -- think of Psyche!
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough --
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!
Author: G. Nolst Trenite
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| Posted by Kate Sugar Gal on 13-Aug-2005 | ImponderablesHow come wrong numbers are never busy?
Do people in Australia call the rest of the world "up over"?
Does that screwdriver belong to Philip?
Does killing time damage eternity?
Why doesn't Tarzan have a beard?
Why is it that night falls but day breaks?
Why is the third hand on the watch called a second hand?
Why is it that when you're driving and looking for an address, you turn down the volume on the radio?
Why is lemon juice made with artificial flavor, and dishwashing liquid made with real lemons?
Are part-time band leaders semi-conductors?
Can you buy an entire chess set in a pawnshop?
Daylight savings time - why are they saving it and where do they keep it?
Did Noah keep his bees in archives? Do pilots take crash-courses?
Have you ever imagined a world with no hypothetical situations?
How can there be self-help "groups"?
How do you get on or off a nonstop flight?
How do you write zero in Roman numerals?
If a jogger runs at the speed of sound, can he still hear his Walkman?
If athletes get athlete's foot, do astronauts get mistletoe?
If Barbie's so popular, why do you have to buy all her friends?
If blind people wear dark glasses, why don't deaf people wear earmuffs?
If peanut butter cookies are made from peanut butter, then what are Girl Scout cookies made out of?
If swimming is good for your shape, then why do the whales look the way they do?
If tin whistles are made out of tin, what do they make fog horns out of?
If white wine goes with fish, do white grapes go with sushi?
If you can't drink and drive, why do bars have parking lots?
If you take an Oriental person and spin him around several times, does he become disoriented?
Why do the signs that say "Slow Children" have a picture of a running child?
Why do they call it "chili" if it's hot?
Why do we sing "Take me out to the ball game," when we are already there?
Why is the time of day with the slowest traffic called rush hour?
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| Posted by Brad H on 13-Aug-2005 | Tightwad ContestA Tightwad Contest in Oakland has been won by a retired welder who separates two-ply toilet paper to save money.
"It's no trouble at all; it just takes a little practice," said Luis Torres, 64, who won top honors in a "How Cheap Are You?" contest sponsored by the Oakland Tribune. He also buys generic groceries and day-old baked goods, reuses plastic bags and never tosses out soap slivers. "I always did things to save money," said Torres, who attributes his frugal ways to growing up with 14 siblings.
Runners-up included a Berkeley couple who said they save dental floss on a bathroom hook for reuse, and a Richmond man who claimed he refreezes used ice cubes. (One couple said they collect 2-for-1 coupons to restaurants and then invite another couple. "We make them pay for their half, and we dine free," they wrote.) And from Elmer Hurren in El Cerrito came this admission: When his vacuum cleaner bag fills, Hurren cuts one end, empties it and sews it up for reuse.
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| Posted by Samantha L. Jones on 13-Aug-2005 | On Drinking and HangoversAnd speaking of hangovers:
In Haiti, locals cure them voodoo-style, by sticking 13 black-headed pins into the cork of the bottle that caused the problem.
George IV, England's fattest king, ate breakfasts consisting of three beefsteaks and two pigeons washed down with a bottle of wine, half a bottle of champagne, two glasses of port and several glasses of brandy.
One of Napoleon's top soldiers, Gen. Bisson, drank eight bottles of wine a day with breakfast.
Was Noah the first farmer to get plowed? As we read in Genesis, "Noah was the first tiller of the soil. He planted a vineyard, and he drank of the wine and became drunk."
Talk about miracles!
Back in the 1500s, St. Brigid of Ireland changed her bath water into beer for thirsty guests at her Kildare abbey. The drinkers reported that the beer had a "saintlike" taste.
In 1632, the weekly children's food ration in a British hospital included two gallons of beer.
After dying in the battle of Trafalgar, Admiral Lord Nelson was shipped back to England in a cask of brandy -- to keep his body fresh for his funeral. After his pickled corpse was removed, the brandy was served to his sailors so they could drink a toast to their fallen commander.
The thirstiest beer-drinkers in the world live in the Northern Territory of Australia, where each man, woman and child chugs an average of 61 gallons per year.
When Philip the Handsome of Spain drank himself to death 500 years ago, his wife, Joanna, took to drink herself -- and for three years, she kept Philip's corpse in bed with her, drinking toasts to his health each morning and night. The smell of the corpse finally forced the servants to remove it one day after Joanna had passed out.
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