US – JonWestfall.com

Mental floss has a pretty interesting piece on Song of the South, the Disney movie that the characters from the ride Splash Mountain originate in (as well as the song Zip-a-dee-do-dah). It’s truly an interesting situation: popular franchise characters in a movie that hasn’t ever been released on home video in the US for fairly obvious reasons. If you’re scratching your head going “I’ve never heard of that movie..” Take a read and think about how we sorta forget that things we still see evidence of today were interpreted differently 70 years ago.

http://mentalfloss.com/article/60021/10-zip-dee-doo-dah-facts-about-song-south

(PS: I’m composing this on my iPhone, and Autocorrect almost turned the title of this piece into Allah Mountain. How it got Allah from Splash, I have no idea!)

I’ve joked about this before, but a while back it made news that Ohio was the “sweariest” state in the US. Apparently those of us who hail from the Buckeye state swore in 1 out of every 150 phone conversations in the study. Karey & I had great fun talking about this study, peppering our words with profanities beyond what I feel comfortable printing on my blog. And while we joked about it, I wondered if there was any truth to it. Sure, I can swear (I grew up the son of a salesman who hated people, so I heard a lot of swearing), but can I really swear better than my non-Ohioan peers?

Tonight I was editing some old writing of mine, in preparation to publish it on this blog. These are old stories that I never actually published on the blog, and I figured I might as well put them up as a sort of reminiscing over my childhood. And you know what? I had to edit that article something fierce! It sounded exactly like I would tell a story, not as I would print a story (since I like to keep my editorial tone on here G rated as much as possible). I suppose there is something to that study – if left to my native tongue, I will unleash a string of profanity quite epic. Next time I joke with my students that I’m showing amazing restraint by not swearing in my lectures, I suppose I might not be exaggerating!

Tag: US

Splash Mountain’s Origin

I Definitely Grew Up in Ohio