I thunk this weekend as I lazed away on a corn on the cob. This itself made me ponder the use of the phrase. Now I was not exactly lazing on the corn which was on the cob. I was lazing and enjoying the corn on the cob. Corn when consumed many years back from a road side vendor in India was simply that Bhutta or a delicate yet crisp, grilled to prefection snack. What is this cob?
Turns out the pole in the middle around which the kernels are hanging has the dubious distinction of being known as the COB. Then again it gets more confusing when some certain individuals in the Midwest of America keep calling it Ears of Corn. So now its ears of corn on the cob? What about the other parts then? Why waste time on the ears when there is a whole abdomen somewhere? Who knows.
So moving to more erudite observations -
1. If a person saw another getting pecked to death by a chick (which can happen if the pun was applied) should we suspect fowl play?
2. Did the Malaysians get influenced by the Brits that kept saying to 'ring it up' when defining a name for their currency?
3. There is a homeless problem in America. Well that is because all the mattress stores are not letting anyone use theirs. Mattresses that is. Have you seen how many there are? On a recent excursion I saw more than total number of homeless I have seen in a year. So there - that is solvable.
Here is another essay on the subject of first names. As in birth names. Or names provided to an offspring at birth. While the developed world tends to shy away from the exotic like Refrigerator or Coca Cola for their new production there is a plethora of Jims and Johns and Bobs or Robs. Speaking of which I do not think there is a categoric decision point at the time of birth if a child will be hereafter called as Bob. I mean have not yet met a toddler called Bob or Rob for that matter. At some point though the parental instinct to mouth out multiple syllables runs out and they switch from calling the crawler Robert to simply Robbie to Rob. Now speaking of - it is strange that the name sounds like something you would not want Rob to do - i.e. Rob anyone. Then why call someone that? After all Rob Peter to Pay Paul is not exactly a maxim to live a young life? Is it? Perhaps Peter or Paul might want to have a say in it? Then there is this matter of going to the John. Why degrad...
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