Presidents and Pronunciations

That's a shot of none other than George Bush Senior, 41st President of the United States. At least, I hope it is 41st. I used to know all of my presidents in order, as well as other semi-worthless facts like a memorization of the periodic table, but I've really fallen off. It's one of the things I'm going to take the opportunity, along with perhaps geography - I am hoping - to brush up on while recovering from surgery in the upcoming weeks.

Back on Bush briefly, all puns and euphemisms somewhat unintended but not to be amended, I find this picture of him surrounded by the cheerleaders of a university whose motto is "Hook 'Em Horns" to be pretty spectacular. I look forward to visiting Texas and I think the burnt orange and white makes for totally sweet uniforms and university gear.

As usual I keep coming up with all manner of tidbits I mean to share but somehow manage not to find the time to post them up. So, also with my time off, I may try to do some retro-blogging, as in retroactive.

Before I sign off though, I've got to address word pronunciation or, rather, mispronunciation. Before I attack other people's errors, I must say that I am guilty of this kind of thing myself from time to time. For instance, the word "cache" which I was pronouncing with a long "a," rather than "cash."

A couple of my favorite offenders are the people that attempt to say mocha and would end up with a hard "ch" over essentially a "k" sound and, lately, people talking about chipotle. The former I experienced very often in my days as a popcorn-pusher at a local Loews theater as we happened to offer an iced mocha beverage. I was reminded of this when I had my first Starbuck's coffee experience about two weeks ago and overheard many a struggle. While I'd eaten some pastries there in the past, I don't really drink coffee, and I must say that my first experience was a bust. I think this is common coffee-drinker knowledge, but the beans were over-roasted, giving my coffee a burnt flavor which I would assume is somewhat of a function of needing to taste the coffee over all the sugary flavorings most people add to their Bux. Chipotle for some reason seems to induce temporary dyslexia, prompting it to be referred to as chi-pole-té.

These days I'm finding myself getting in touch with my British routes, downing a lemon zinger tea at work in the morning, and capping many nights with some bomb Ahmad . In the latter I decided to dunk some Costco madeleines of late, and I must rescind, or simply amend, my earlier vote of dissension on the classic french cookie-cake. That reminds me of when Nabisco ran fig newton ads, typically with someone eating them in bed, with the slogan, "it's not a cookie, it's fruit and cake." Not only are fig newtons delicious, but I think that it now says cookie on the very packaging in which they are sold. So much for that debate...