Thursday Thoughts

1) Use of the word "sir" should really be discontinued, and here's why--it is so much more frequently used in sarcasm ("please put your pants back on, SIR, this is a family restaurant") than sincerity that it lost all meaning.

2) At some point in American history, we went from British accents to our current "American" accents. No one knows precisely when this changeover took place, but according to movies it was between 1800 and 1860, when we suddenly developed Northern and Southern accents. This is why George Washington and Robert E Lee are both Virginians and one sounds like he could announce the Queen and the other sounds like he could announce a NASCAR race.

3) When we translate foreign alphabets to our own, it makes no sense that we screw up the spelling. For example, the Vietnamese soup we spell as "pho" is pronounced "fuh". Why aren't we just spelling it the way we pronounce it? It's not like the Vietnamese even spell it with our letters.

4) Movies and TV shows where a fun loving redneck is speeding away from the cops (e.g., Smokey and the Bandit, Dukes of Hazard) often are careful to show that in the massive car wrecks caused by the pursuit, the cops crawl out of their smashed cars humiliated but unhurt. This is to appease the consciences of viewers who would find it a bit dark to see Sherriff Roscoe P. Coltrane paralyzed after hitting a tree while chasing them Duke Boys. But what they don't show is the impoverished southern town having to shut down its hospital or schools because they have so many more police cars to pay for.

5) I can understand how our ancestors discovered most food--eating raw fruit and veggies and meat, and then learning that they're better cooked over fire--but how in hell did they first invent bread? Who looked at grain stalks and said to themselves "if I thresh the wheat, grind it up, add egg, a bit of mold, put it near fire for a bit, this will come out really awesome..."?