“Fantasy Football Anthem” Tells The Truth

by Kevin Burton    All love to Kevin Rowland and to Dexy’s Midnight Runners, makers of Come On Eileen. All love to Eileen, all love to Johnnie Ray, all love to bib overalls.    But I may just have a new all-time favorite song.    It’s called Fantasy Football Anthem, and it’s by Holderness Family …

USA And UK Divided By Common Language

by Dictionary Scoop    While many things bring Americans closer to the UK, some aspects of our language set us apart.    English is spoken by more than 1.4 billion people worldwide; with so many people using this language, it is understandable that some differences have developed.    Today we walk through 10 drastic vocabulary differences between American …

Significant Words About Insignificance

by Kevin Burton    You may not have heard of some of the words on today’s list from Merriam-Webster, especially the first one.    The dictionary is serving up words about insignificance. But the first offering is from my childhood days at the Ohio State School for the Blind.    I may have heard this …

She Did The Mocking, I Did The Drafting

by Kevin Burton     In business, you have to give a report to the CEO from time to time, so she knows what’s going on.    It’s called being accountable. And this is serious business.    So it was Thursday that the CEO of the Burtons’ fantasy football company paid a visit to the Mock …

“Peanuts” First To Introduce Minority Character

by Kevin Burton    “At the time of Charles Schulz’s death he had produced 17,897 strips, and Peanuts had run in more than 2,600 newspapers worldwide and been translated into 21 languages,” reports http://www.interestingfacts.com.    Today we continue yesterday’s post, presenting more facts from that website.    I know for a fact that the Peanuts gang speaks …

Facts About The “Peanuts” Comic Strip

by interestingfacts.com    Charlie Brown and his gang of lovable young’uns are bonafide stars when it comes to classic American comic strip characters.     Peanuts, the brainchild of cartoonist Charles Schulz, is so well-known that many of its quotes and common catchphrases are now a part of our cultural lexicon. (Think: “Good grief,” “AAUGH,” and …

Facts You Might Not Know About M*A*S*H

by Interestingfacts.com    From its premiere on CBS in Sept. 1972 through its historic series finale watched by more than 106 million Americans in Feb. 1983, M*A*S*H changed television forever.     The series followed the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital during the Korean War of the early 1950s and seamlessly blended comedy and drama like never before. …

God’s Impetuous Child Lives At My House

by Kevin Burton    I actually did this, I promise. Neither Winston Churchill nor any other learned observer from the past, present or future, would have called this “my finest hour.”    I bring you this, even though there may be somebody reading Page 7 for the first time today. Sheesh.     There was a …

Scrabble Words And “Y” As A Proud Vowel

by Kevin Burton    Merriam-Webster promised me a list of Scrabble words without vowels, but delivered a bunch of words (with one exception) with the letter Y in them.    Y is a vowel, a card-carrying vowel. The fact that it has a part-time job as a consonant does not change that. The venerable dictionary …

The Unkindest Contranym Of All? Ask Fido

by Kevin Burton    Imagine if you will, a Richard Pryor bit from the 70s, that could have been, to introduce the concept of the contranym, a word with two opposite meanings.    These lines are from the family puppy, whose usual panting, tail-wagging enthusiasm for a car ride (oh boy!) has gone tragically wrong: …