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Now this is fun. A North Carolina State Ph'D student, Joshua Katz, published a group of linguistic maps which show how differently Americans pronounce words. The linked site has 14 of these maps with word examples.
The first one they show is caramel which around the country may be pronounced as Car mel or Carr Ah Mel. If you enjoy maps and words this might be a fun site to check.
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On KMOX this morning Charlie Brennan and Debbie Monterrey were talking about a bacon festival and Debbie said, "If it weren't for bacon no one would know what a chestnut was."
Heh.
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Read this line somewhere this morning and it made me laugh.
"Upon hearing this, they immediately went into pearl clutching mode."
Perfect for so many occasions.
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Tomorrow night is the White House Correspondents Dinner, a fancy dinner for political reporters and the president which is also known as the 'nerd prom'. It's like the Academy Awards for journalists. Everyone dresses up, has dinner and then sits back to laugh at the commedian chosen to be the main speaker and then the president's humorous response.
This is televised in total by CSPAN with the cable news stations carrying the entertainment portion. What makes CSPAN's broadcast best is that they carry every minute of the evening from the red carpet arrival of big names in news, actors, rocks stars, athletes and the like, to people milling around their dinner tables to the exits.
Conan O'Brien will headline this year's event, hopefully he will be relaxed and confident enough to make fun of the president and press which has long been the purpose of the WHCA's dinner. During Obama's term, however, there has been a stiffness to the humor by other speakers and reporters because Obama is not one the media types really want to laugh at. Clinton and Bush were different. They seemed to enjoy the jokes and gave back as good as they got.
Whatever happens, it's a night of tv that is worth watching. CSPAN begins their coverage at 5:15 CST with the arrivals while the cable networks will begin at 8 CST.
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The folks at the Flying Dog Brewery in Colorado happened to get a box of each kind of Girl Scout Cookies recently and decided it might be fun to see which of their Ale's went best with each type of cookie.
This started out as a half baked idea, but they came up with acceptable pairings of cookies and beer. If the combination has a DD at the end, that means the cookies are dunkable.
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A tradition for many families on New Year's Day is watching the Rose Parade and then syncing seamlessly into football. The best station on which to watch the parade is HGTV because they show the entire thing without commercials.
The entire lineup for the parade is found here if you have one certain float or band you want to see and we always look forward to seeing the Lutheran Hour Ministries float. This will be the 62nd year the Lutheran Hour has had a float in the parade and the only Christian float participating.
A sub group of LHM is the Petal Pushers, 4000 volunteers who decorate not just the organization's float but at least 5 others. Those volunteers come from all over the country, taking turns during the time before and after Christmas to make the trip to Pasadena to push flowers into chicken wire and work up high to get the animated figures working. When Dale was the Lutheran Hour Speaker he road on the float at least twice and our whole family went along. The process of building those floats in a giant warehouse is amazing, colorful and fragrant.
There's Dale.
This year LHM's float will be 33rd in line out of 97 entries. Riding on the float will be Faith Spellbring,the wife of one of our former students here at Concordia Seminary who works for Lutheran Hour Ministeries while living in Southern California. We look forward to seeing Faith this morning.
There's Faith during the float judging which took place yesterday. And Paul Koch in the background playing Jesus and giving Faith bunny ears. I don't know if that will help or hurt during the judging.
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Vintage ads in magazines and newspapers give us a glimpse of how things were back in whatever decade you want to relive. Some are cute, some are the same products we see today, others are strange to our 2012 eyes.
This jello ad from 1956 is fun.
So many items advertised through the years are still available today. Soup was huge throughout most of the 20th century.
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Two stories from Maplewood this morning.
Last Saturday more than 70 backyard chicken farmers living in Maplewood, Richmond Heights and probably Clayton, flocked to Maplewood's Ryan Hummert Park of a Chicken Fest. The popularity of raising chickens in the backyard continues and events like this will only serve to egg more chicken fans on.
The Maplewood city council last night approved an ordinance allowing food trucks to operate within the city limits, although only in the Sunnen Business Park. The city has discussed food trucks in the past and at one time it appeared as though they would allow them in the commercial area with Target and Bed Bath and Beyond and PetsMart and Trader Joes, etc. But that fell through. By the beginning of November food trucks will begin serving in Sunnen. Sunnen Business park is bounded on the east by Big Bend and on the west by LaClede Station Road, it's where the St. Louis County Board of Election Commissioners has their office as well as a few other entities.
It's no secret that I like the idea of food trucks. They bring a sense of fun, generally good food and it's something different. However it's often very difficult for the operators to get permission to park and sell because brick and mortar restaurants don't want the competition. In any event they now have another St. Louis area place to go where there are no stand alone eateries.
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