Wich Stayts Nede Speling Hellp

For years I have warned that permitting retail establishments to intentionally misspell words would have dire consequences.

Schoolkids with minds full of mush would grow up confused about what to do with the letter Q. Adults learning English would face difficulties discerning how to spell certain breakfast pastries. Fans of beef and fowl alike would forget how to spell chicken. General havoc and mayhem would ensue.

A recent report by Google about which states need help spelling which words proves my fears were well-founded.

Google is a great help in research, such as “how to spell prestidigitation.” One of the drawbacks, however, is that Google records such things, and now everyone knows what your state’s citizens can’t spell.

Another drawback is the inability to use a dictionary, because, well, you have to have some skill in spelling to find the word you need to spell properly. And, because, well, you have to properly identify a book.

Summer Weather Blockbusters

I’ve noticed that things tend to run in cycles. I know; I display an amazing perspicuity. But the cyclical nature of things is even reflected in motion pictures, where it can become quite the aggravation.

Note, by the way, that I said “motion pictures” instead of “movie.” The highbrow types refer to motion pictures as “films” and refer to themselves as “film critics.” The Film crowd considers “movie” intolerably lowbrow and pedestrian, but when was the last time you heard anyone say “I saw a film today?”

Other than x-ray technicians (Man, today I saw some exciting film of the third lumbar region!), my guess is that it must have been after high school biology class: Whoa! Dude, what a hip film about the mating habits of earthworms!

Diversionary Tactics for Toddlers and Other Aliens

Children are not right.

The way their little brains function, the undecipherable languages in which they speak to us and to each other (which to them, apparently, is quite understandable – I’ve seen two of the extra-terrestrials speaking to each other in alien-speak, with appropriate hand gestures, and apparently resolve some dispute over the order in which they were to play with a tire swing), and their unearthly energy levels proves to me that they were dropped here by Martians.

The robotic rovers now searching the red planet for signs of water will not discover the tell-tale signs of intelligent life – they will, however, find three-year-olds.

Local Family Misses Church Due to Bacon

Spoof, WI (Wire) — Church leaders were surprised to learn recently the reason that a family had been absent from worship services.

One of the elders reported that everyone was alarmed when the family, usually regular attenders, missed church.

“When we went by to check on them that day, they told us that they had been ready to come to worship, but decided against it after a big country breakfast. One of the kids had scorched the bacon. The pork aroma permeated their clothes, and they didn’t want to smell up the sanctuary.”

Don’t Take Any Wooden Nickels

 

Granddaddy always wore a tie.

He wore a tie to work, and he wore a tie to church. He wore a tie to mow the grass, and he occasionally wore a tie when he went fishing. He wore a good shirt and tie to plow the garden, and it drove Grandmother crazy.

Merrill Brooks Faircloth was born five years into this century, when Teddy Roosevelt was President and no one had heard of kudzoo. Friends called him Metz and siblings called him Bubba, spelled “Bubber.”

Granddaddy was an athlete, and lettered in four sports in high school. He played college basketball when contact wasn’t allowed, baseball when they used those funny mitts, and football when they wore leather hats. He once returned kickoffs for touchdowns on two consecutive plays. He injured his leg at a time when doctors had limited knowledge about such things, and walked with a limp the rest of his life.

Learning to Water Ski in South Alabama

People are usually surprised, and skeptical, when I tell them I learned to water ski slalom. For some reason, it was easier for me to control one water ski rather than two.

Skiing on two skis requires that you 1) keep them separated and 2) keep them pointed straight ahead, neither of which I could ever do. Any violation of 1) and/or 2) results in a watery wipe out, usually accompanied by either a) large amounts of pond water accumulated in the sinuses, eyes, or other body cavities or b) a lake water enema. There is a difference.

How to Chill Tea with Sweet Potato

At the risk of sounding like one of those new parents who thinks his baby is the most intellectually astute or physically adept and that everyone else wants to hear about the tot’s early exploits, I will reluctantly relate one of my own experiences.

Every new parent thinks that the profound changes that occur in his household as the result of the first child’s birth are the most hilarious and the most novel, but seldom do they prove to be either.

Robert Brooks Faircloth was born to Carrie and me December 11, 1999. It was a marvelous event, but I was crushed that Carrie couldn’t hold out just a little longer and give us a shot at winning all those millennium baby prizes. You can be reasonably assured that I would hold my tongue about it not really being the millennium if we were being loaded up with cool, free stuff.