The vowel sound in the first syllable of Worcestershire is like oo in book. The final -shire. syllable rhymes more closely with 'her' rather than sheer.

A Japanese company would likely pronounce it with a long O sound but very much the same as your Finnish rendition. And then they would be too polite to correct anyone who mispronounced it.

Spiders just freak me the fuck out. And tigers, too. Spiders and tigers. Unless there's a spider that eats tigers, I don't want to see them.

I'm not the only one.

I am probably misremembering, but I believe rubber bands are used to castrate young rams.

Little Tangawizi made me feel downright sunny despite the obvious deep poverty. But it's such a lovely child and the fact that it's a cuddly toy just underlines the sweet innocence of the image.

I used to feel as you do regarding finishing books. I felt I needed to fulfill some kind of commitment to myself, or at least give the work a chance all the way to the end. Now I feel that if the book doesn't hold my attention it doesn't deserve it. Perhaps I rationalize a shrinking attention span, but honestly I…

Topsoil is awesome. Who could hate it?

Too few to merit an "are," sadly.

Good lord, who gives a rat's ass about the opinions of 16-year-olds when it comes to cars?

The Giulietta wagon is what you're really missing. It's beautiful. The sportiva is fine, don't get me wrong, but the lines of the wagon are splendid.

Wrong! My 15-year-old nephew caused a big kerfuffle at JFK last summer when he wandered out of the the kid corral (where they coop up unaccompanied minors between flights) to find a men's room. It turned out that he and some other kid wandered in and out of several high security areas, through doors that are…

@_hope_springs_infernal: You are hearted, my friend, for fecal pellet. It sounds so, ... so, so science-y!

@_hope_springs_infernal: The woven leather bit is BV's signature effect, but I'm confident that the nice policeman would not give a rat's hiney (don't want to get tasered for using a cuss-word) about it. He prolly just picked it up at the cop supply store.

@_hope_springs_infernal: Bottega Veneta.