Well, Frank is my middle name ...

Now, I know I have a bit of a neurosis about my middle initial. Once I hit confirmation age I rarely wrote my name without it, much less signed anything. I even introduced myself that way. What can I say? My parents blessed me with few syllables, so I tried to include letters as many as possible.

 

But according to this article, Harry S Truman had a lot more to complain about.

 

"Harry S Truman's middle initial led to controversy. Truman's parents could not agree on his middle name, so they settled on the letter S, sans period. Some deemed Truman's lack of a longer middle name as emblematic of his slight stature. How could the short, lightly regarded machine politician sit at the great FDR's desk? As Bruce Kuklick recounted in The Good Ruler: From Herbert Hoover to Richard Nixon, "one frustrated voter exclaimed, 'They say the S doesn't stand for nothing; the whole god-damn name doesn't stand for nothing.' "

 

Now, the Truman family dilemma makes a lot of sense to me. I have many fears associated with production of offspring, including the possibility that I might bestow upon my child a name that becomes connected with a mass murderer or some other awful association during his or her lifetime. As David Wallis points out, even Barak Obama is a victim. I wonder if there are any/many names that have followed the opposite course, moving from infamy to acceptability.

 

The fear of poor name choice, however, is trumped by the fear of producing an axe murderer or serial rapist or mime or boy band member myself.

I'm the [insert carbohydrate here] man!

I'm not ready to concede defeat on a $20 bet I made with my sister over the weekend, about a children's story I remember my parents reading to me. The details are a bit fuzzy, but I remember the oft-repeated phrase "Can't catch me, I'm the Pancake Man!"

My sister remembers nothing of the sort and instead insists that the protagonist of this fable was in fact a gingerbread man, pointing to his recent appearance in the Shrek movies as evidence.

True, a Google search reveals far more references to gingerbread men than flapjack fellows, but I've found at least one example . Someone out there knows what I'm talking about!

Frankly, there's a lot of food on the loose, especially starchy ones, according to this Amazon list . Highlights include The Runaway Tortilla, The Flying Latke and that Hawai'ian favorite, The Musubi Man. Surprised not to see On Top of Spaghetti mentioned but by now you probably can't the first line of the song out of your head.

Listen to it on Scoutsongs.org:

"On top of spaghetti,
All covered with cheese,
I lost my poor meatball,
When somebody sneezed.

It rolled off the table,
And on to the floor,
And then my poor meatball,
Rolled out of the door.

It rolled in the garden,
And under a bush,
And then my poor meatball,
Was nothing but mush.

The mush was as tasty
As tasty could be,
And then the next summer,
It grew into a tree.

The tree was all covered,
All covered with moss,
And on it grew meatballs,
And tomato sauce.

So if you eat spaghetti,
All covered with cheese,
Hold on to your meatball,
Whenever you sneeze."

It's not the size ...

but how you use it.

 

A desi friend sent me this link to a BBC story that could make many South Asian men shudder --- Condoms 'too big' for Indian men : A survey of more than 1,000 men in India concludes that condoms made according to international sizes are too big for most Indian men.

 

Clearly they have not heard of this product .

curse words

Profanity is always exciting... its origins are ripe for urban legands and creative uses (different parts of speech, for example) should be applauded. Here is a link to fascinating commentary about the use of curses in Francophone Canada.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/04/AR2006120401286.html