Did you hear the one about the guy in Sweden who survived two months “hibernating like a bear” in his snowbound car under sub-zero conditions near the Arctic Circle? True story!

What’s not exactly true is the reporter’s writing that the man was found “emancipated and barely speaking.” While he was, in a manner of speaking, freed from his bondage, the article should have stated that, since he lost 44 pounds during the ordeal, he was “emaciated and barely speaking.”

Such an error is termed a malapropism, defined by Merriam-Webster as “the usually unintentionally humorous misuse or distortion of a word or phrase, especially the use of a word sounding somewhat like the one intended but ludicrously wrong in the context.”

Today, February 16th, is the date when my wife gave birth to our younger son. Happy Birthday, Justin!

He shares his day of birth, unfortunately, with several  infamous personalities such as tennis bad boy, John McEnroe, gangsta rapper Ice-T and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il.

Some fatherly advice given over the years has been: keep a wide berth (an amount of distance maintained for safety) from some of those who share your birthday. A few names with better reputations on the other side of the birthday ledger today include Hugh Beaumont, LaVar Burton and Sonny Bono.

Happy Valentine’s Day! It seems only natural that February, the month the wraps Valentine’s Day in the very middle of it like a shawl, should be declared American Heart Month.

In a similar vein, the Hartford Financial Services Group, also known as The Hartford, uses a hart as its logo and symbol of strength. A hart is a “red deer stag more than five years old…or its fully mature state,” and the Connecticut state capital of Hartford, therefore, ”is thought to be named after a place where deer forded a watercourse.”

Interestingly, my alma mater, Fairfield University, situated off the historic Old Post Road in Fairfield, Connecticut, has the Stag as its mascot. On the other had, the University of Hartford, where I earned my graduate degree, somehow missed the antler connection and chose a Hawk instead of the more logical…hart.

Most organizations and associations hold annual meetings, and oftentimes do so on a biannual basis. Biannual can be taken to mean twice a year, or, every other year. So, whoever communicates those meeting announcements has to clearly specifiy the exact dates and intentions.

On the other hand, biennial only has one definition, that is, occuring every other year. Interestingly, it is difficult to find such groups.

One notable exception is the very appropriately entitled, Slow Food movement, which started in Italy in 1989 and and believes “everyone has a fundamental right to the pleasure of good food and consequently the responsibility to protect the heritage of food, tradition and culture that make this pleasure possible.”

Given that their logo includes an image of a snail, you can understand why they schedule their world conference meeting on a biennial (or biannual) basis.

You don’t want to get into a legal hassle with the National Football League by inappropriate use of their registered trademark for their championship game Sunday, preceded by other festivities that kick off (two words) today.

Did you know that groups, such as churches, cannot mention the unmentionable event by its legal name if they are sponsoring a party to watch a “professional football game” tomorrow (the only one in the world, obviously)? Nor can they charge admission for it. (I suppose they could try to get around it by calling it the Superb Owl, but that probably wouldn’t draw much of a crowd, except, perhaps, some bird watchers and a few NFL attorneys.)

All in all, approximately 125 million people worldwide will view the kickoff (one word) at 6:30PM EST Sunday.

BTW, the last name of the New York Giants player who will set up the football at that time on the kicking tee: Tynes.

Go, Giants!

Here’s a toast to glamor model and actress Christie Brinkley, celebrating her (gulp) 58th birthday today. The statuesque, 5′ 9″ blonde, for years the face of CoverGirl cosmetics, could theoretically also represent Starbucks’ new lighter blonde roasted coffee blend.

A local, male Starbucks barista (who is not blond) complained to me the other day that now every joker guy in town is walking into his location and boasting: “I’ll take a tall blonde, please.”

The Atlanta Freelance Writer had to take a deep breath and expel it this morning after reading this article about New York City schools: “They have trouble with spelling, grammar and showing up to class on time — and we’re not talking about the students. The city tried to expel 26 teachers from the classroom last year for gross incompetence — such as English teachers who couldn’t write or speak the language properly.”

Even though they did not excel in spelling, only half lost their jobs as English teachers (!) due to union constraints. Imagine a teacher giving a test to immigrants and instructing them to spell “thin” as “Ihin” and “thick” as “thik.”

When that level of gross incompetence is discovered, the city school  board needs to act immediately as an expellee and the teachers who misspell so egregiously need to become “ex-spell-ers” at the schools.

The infamous, tragic shipwreck of the cruise liner off the coast of Tuscany may also be a literal environmental disaster for the nearby pristine island of Giglio, which means “lily” in Italian.

This symbol of purity will be at high risk as the the actual pumping of diesel fuel begins on Saturday, and that process alone could take a month. Dismantling of the ship may be done on the spot, or the ship may have to be towed away. It will be a dangerous operation either way.

All caution will be taken to avoid any despoilment of the littoral habitat of flora and fauna surrounding the island’s perimeter. Experts say that this entire salvaging operation could last possibly one to two years.

When traveling in the Liguria Region of Italy a few years ago, I learned that the basil capital of Italy is the Genoa area. This aromatic herb, basil, together with  parmesan cheese, olive oil, pine nuts and crushed garlic,  is a key ingredient for pesto, a sauce for pasta that dates back to the  Romans.

Three hundred miles to the north of Genoa lies Basel, Switzerland. Since the Romans settled in that area as well, I wonder if pesto is still a popular dish served by the Basler chefs in their Italian restaurants? 

A third homophone to these culinary and geographic sound-alikes is the word, basal. While Merriam-Webster defines it as “relating to, situated at, or forming the base,” you can take it one step farther and note that basal means “arising from the base of a stem,” perhaps as in the case of the basal part of a sprig of basil that may be consumed in Basel.

The late Art Linkletter used to host a television show on which he would interview pre-school and grammar school-age children who would respond with hilarious results. He later immortalized these remarks in his humorous book entitled, Kids Say The Darndest Things.

I can attest to that statement by relating some of the cute things my little granddaughters have spoken to me, such as “Papa! What happened to your hair? Did the wind blow it off in the park?” Or, “I have too much energy!”

On the more, shall we say, serious, side, Ali, the 6-year old, has started to learn anatomy. Recently she was able to recite the names of several bones, including the radius, ulna and the humerus, aka, the  “funny bone.”